PLAY 65 GAMES

“So what we're looking into is, a separate league in Europe. I mean, basketball is the number two sport in Europe after soccer. Enormous interest. There are a lot of different pro leagues country by country, and then there's something called the Europe the the the they have a broader European league that that sort of covers top clubs, you know, from from around Europe. It's what they call the Euroleague. So what we're looking to do is see if there's an opportunity to create a new a new league, maybe comprised of some of those existing clubs and some new clubs. It would be separate from the NBA. I will just say over time, you know, could some of those teams potentially compete, like, in a cup tournament that we have? You know, maybe years and years from now, you could imagine when, you know, supersonic jets come back, you could see some of those teams maybe competing in our playoffs or, you know, matchups between top US, you know, US teams and European teams or or US and Canada.”

“First and foremost, tanking. You know, this has completely gotten away from the league this year. I mean, it's interesting because the lottery has changed, I think, essentially five times now. So arguably, there's less incentive under the current formation, you know, and odds of the lottery. There should have been less incentive than any time in our prior history to tank. But yet because of modern analytics, whether you know, interestingly enough, I always have to remind people. I mean, unfortunately, tanking is a strategy not to lose, but to win. It's just to win over a longer period of time, obviously. But I think where we ended up this year where, you know, make up make the numb you know, eight teams, nine teams, 10 teams, whatever, which was essentially racing to the bottom. You know? Again, in a desire to win, not to lose was not acceptable. And, you know, what exactly we could have done about it in hindsight, you know, we're about to make significant changes. And we have a already scheduled board meeting of our owners for late May.”

“To defend the league for a second on the 65 games. It wasn't quite arbitrary. I mean, so that's 80% of games in the season, and that was collectively bargained with the Players Association. Again, it's it's zero sum. There's gonna be same number of players who are all NBA. There's gonna be a defensive player of the year MVP, etcetera. And the feeling was, as we sat down with the players, that we needed our stars to be on the floor and that that was a you know, based on average number of games missed historically for injuries or whatever else, that that was a fair benchmark. And, you know, with this exceptional language and so we made two exceptions this year of guys who, you know, two guys who missed it by a game.”

“So when I the teams that I worked for and now I'm starting to date myself with, like because it's been fourteen years. Like, we didn't do as much of our own internal mock drafts as much as it was, you know, okay. Let's just kinda if we're picking 22, let's make sure we're honed in on who our top 22 players are. And then this is our, you know, this is the the group of we think our pick's gonna come down to one of these seven, eight guys, so then making sure everybody in the room has watched those seven or eight guys because some might have not done them, so that we can really hone in and discuss those guys. And then they would have, like, the the leadership group would get together and have more of a strategy session of, like, okay. These teams are on these positions based off of what we know from talking to people, based off of their their top 30 visits, based off the pro days that they attended with their decision makers. So, like, an example in this draft would be, okay. You're picking in the twenties and you wanna tackle, and you're going, okay. Well, we're looking at some of these tackle teams.”

“Yeah. I mean, it it's not nothing. I know the teams they're I've talked to teams that aren't concerned about it, and I've talked to teams that are extremely concerned about it, that think it's, like, a major, major problem. And the the reasoning was interesting because, it was, like, his ability they think when he gets in the NFL, the guys are worried about it. Or, like, okay. You know, he's all power, power, power. But then once you're stuck like, there's a lot of there's a lot of wins that come in the pass game and the run game with your second move. In other words, I hit you with my first move. It stopped. How do I how would I pivot off of that and then either escape in the run game or get, you know, get navigate around you to get to the quarterback? And they're like, I don't think this guy and once the once the power is stopped because of his length, he's not gonna be able to escape against bigger, you know, the better tackles, the bigger, stronger, better tackles in this league.”