Mr. President’s Mind: How Shane Battier Learned to Lead (and Shut the F*** Up)

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Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

It is time to try

my

gravity.

I think I'll try

Right after this ad

I love when a guest has a notebook.

I do.

I feel like such a boomer.

I mean, I'm getting old.

I'm 46 years old.

I forget things.

But if I write it down, I have notebooks upon notebooks of just maxims and quotes.

If I put it in my phone, it's gone.

And you have the good kind of pen, too, by the way, that thin, oh, the Mooji pen on

pen.

That's right.

That's

better.

The finer things in life.

But I wonder if you've used that Mooji pen to write down at any point the quote I wanted to actually start with, which is, of course, from Mike Shaszzewski, Coach K,

head coach of your Duke Blue Devils, who said this, quote, Shane was an alien.

I wanted at the end of his career to crack his head open and see if he was really human.

End quote.

I think that's a compliment.

Pablo, I was psycho.

I was a psycho, a psychotic,

neurotic

person in my time at Duke.

And great steal by Forte.

He'll go for two.

No.

Oh, wow.

Come on,

what a play.

That's one of the great defensive plays you'll ever see right there, baby.

When Coach K recruited me, I was part of a very talented recruiting class, number one class in the country, Elton Brand, William Avery, right?

Chris Burgess.

I grew up watching you guys.

Right.

And we were going to a team that had,

you know, at the time, 10 McDonald's All-Americans.

We had 10, 10, which is crazy.

So you're saying, like, why would you go to a team that has 10 McDonald's All-Americans?

And Coach K,

people always ask me, like, what's so great about Coach K?

Coach K can peer into your soul and know what button to push.

Finding the heart of the team is

huge.

I call it a spirit.

He is a different spirit.

Once we get him in our program, I have to give him some more latitude where he feels comfortable

in instinctively following that spirit.

He knew this when I was in high school.

So he came into my living room and he said, you know, Hayshane, I'm not going to promise you playing time.

I'm not going to promise you shots.

I'll promise you one thing, the opportunity to earn playing time every single day.

And if you're good enough to play so he had me hook line a sinker and i'm like i'm gonna show you i'm gonna show you and i'm gonna make you play me

you're gonna stab people's eyeballs with that fine ballpoint mooji pen i would i would have i would have i used to throw up before every game every game every game my my freshman year i started and literally i'm going out to the jump ball circle i'm so anxious i want to play well so bad i would run back to the run back to the bench grab a gator a towel throw up in it, throw it back out, and then they toss the ball.

And just to be extra clear about this, Shane Badier barfing his ambitions into a towel before every game as a six foot eight Duke freshman was a thing that pretty much everybody who cared about him found intensely unsettling, I am told.

And this was true of his college girlfriend, who was now his wife, and it was true of then Duke assistant coach Quinn Snyder was now the head coach of the Atlanta Hawks

although

there was one notable exception I think coach K loved it because he's like it matters to me he cares but Quinn Snyder was like this is not healthy you cannot do this and so he literally would like breathe with me breathe yeah breathe he's like Shane breathe breathe breathe

But when it comes to Barf, the first thing that I personally think about when I think about about Shane, whose brain, by the way, not unlike Coach K, I also plan to just crack open here,

is a different liquid.

And it dates back to the first time that I ever met Shane, which was at a bar during the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference about maybe a decade ago, which would be around sometime after he played pickup with Barack Obama, which we'll discuss.

And probably also around when he was just winning championships with LeBron James, James, who would call Shane, quote, the number one smartest basketball player and person I've been around, end quote.

But that night, during that conference, Shane Battier introduced me to something else.

It's a magical mixture of alcohol that was introduced to me by my teammate in Miami, Greg Odin, who learned this drink from Beast Mode himself, which is totally on brand, and that drink is called Petrenacy.

And what I found out that night is that patrenis is exactly what you think it is, and exactly what Marshawn Lynch apparently envisioned.

Half Patrone,

half Hennessy.

Which is why I also found out that drinking petrenicy made me feel like Shane Battier during his freshman year.

And so we were bonded from that moment on.

I mean, you look at me, I look at you, and the first thought is paternity.

And just to clarify here, by the way, I did not grow up dreaming of a bond with this man.

As I said, I grew up watching Shane take charges, slap floors, become a champion at Duke, and the National Player of the Year and a three-time defensive player of the year.

But he went to Duke.

And after the Memphis Grizzlies, the god-awful Memphis Grizzlies, drafted Shane sixth overall in 2001,

I mostly forgot about him.

I think most people did.

But in 2009,

no less than Michael Lewis wrote a seminal article about Shane Battier for the New York Times magazine.

And this article had an unforgettable headline.

The no stats all-star.

Because Shane, at this point, was a 30-year-old glue guy, a nerdy glue guy, grinding away for the Houston Rockets.

And what Michael Lewis basically did was make the case for why this relatively minor character, who had this vomitously maniacal devotion to defense, to frustrating the most unstoppable scorers in the world, actually represented the modern evolution of sports culture, writ large.

Shane was analytical.

He avoided taking two-point shots because of their inefficiency.

And also,

when the story first came out, I had mixed emotions.

I'm not going to lie.

Well, you see the headline.

Yeah.

And it's like,

it's the biggest backhand and compliment you can get.

You know, it's Michael Lewis.

So, like, Michael,

Mr.

Moneyball.

That article has generated, you know, a lot of money for me over the years.

You know, my speaking career and

podcast.

So, like, I, it was my opus, and I would not be here without Michael.

And so at the time, when you're, you know, I was still, what, probably eight years into my career, you know, I still thought I was a really good player and, and, and more than just like a glue guy.

Um, but now I love it.

And now I love that that's my, that's my reputation.

That was always authentically who I was, right?

So like Lewis hit it right in the head.

That's, that's how I was from kindergarten all the way to my last day in the NBA.

So I'm very proud of that moniker.

It's super nerdy, but I'm nerdy.

So it's all good.

The embedded sort of premise of the no stats all-star is that in ways that cannot be actually quantified, but can be begun to be detected by the most advanced metrics.

So it's really the advanced math all-star more than it is the no stats all-star.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I want to just quote the thing about you that Daryl Maury, who is now, of course, president of the 76ers, a fellow PTFO guest, as is Michael Lewis.

This is all very incestuous.

I want to just quote Daryl.

Daryl says, quote, I call him Lego.

When he's on the court, all the pieces start to fit together.

And everything that leads to winning that you can get to through intellect instead of innate ability, Shane excels in.

I'll bet he's in the hundredth percentile of every category.

So again, familiar compliment, insult, sort of like layer cake

instead of innate ability.

You know,

there was something that you were great at that was kind of ineffable.

Give us the sort of like

gallery of people that Shane Badier had to puke into his towel to sort of contemplate defending.

A house of horrors.

And the best thing that happened to me my rookie year

was

I played two guard.

So here I am out there.

I'm guarding Iverson.

I'm guarding Paul Pierce.

I'm guarding Ray Allen.

I'm guarding Kobe.

The ball comes in.

Cody's got it.

Above the three-point line, taking a little bit of time.

One dribble pull-up for the winner's got it.

And they kicked my ass my rookie year.

But I learned, you know, I learned so much.

I learned so much.

I learned angles.

I learned how to use my height.

I learned how to be physical.

And that was the best instructor for me.

And so, look,

I took a great pride in catching all those guys.

Carmelo.

It's Carmelo against Battier.

His defense has been destroyed.

Badier's defense, though, is against Carmelo.

Inside.

KD.

Drives on Battier, throws it down.

Kevin Durant.

You name it.

I played against the greatest players of my generation and I miss that anxiety.

All right, Garden Kobe Bryant is scary.

I never will forget the feeling of getting on the bus at the Marina Del Rey Ritz.

And it's like a 45-minute ride to Staples Center.

And I'm just thinking to myself, shit, this guy's trying to embarrass me.

Like, I know, like, I know he's just like, he's lathered right now.

And he wants to score 80 points on me tonight.

Like, and so like that anxiety was real, right?

And so I call it productive paranoia.

Instead of being like paralyzing, I use that to be like, man, I better know everything about Kobe that there is to know about him.

And so that, like, that, like, I tried to learn and threw myself in the data analytics and just learned Kobe better than Kobe knew himself.

On Kobe Bryant, following the game plan, the strategy, contesting every shot, not giving him a wide open look, fighting through screen.

You talk about when he goes up, you go up as a defender.

Doing an outstanding job of not surrendering an inch.

Shane Baddie says, hey, I stay the course.

And

it allowed me to stay in the game.

And I understood: okay, I'm not going to stop these guys, but I can be a human yellow light.

It's slowing down a little bit.

And that was my only goal: just be the human yellow light.

This back to school season, one thing is clear: kids need a way to stay connected.

Between pickups, practices, and after-school activities, having a phone is a must.

But it shouldn't come at the cost of their mental health.

The youth mental health crisis is growing, and social media is a major driver.

Teens are spending up to nine hours a day on screens, and studies show a direct link to anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts.

That's where Gab comes in.

Gab offers kids-safe phones and watches with no internet or social media apps and just the right features for their age.

From GPS-enabled watches for younger kids to phones with parent-approved apps for teens, Gab's tech-in-steps approach grows with your child.

So, this school year, skip the adult phone.

Get them gab, social connection without the risks.

Visit gab.com/slash get gab and use the code get gab for a special back-to-school offer.

That's gabb.com/slash get gab.

Gab, tech in steps, independence for them, peace of mind for parents.

Hey, I'm Tricia Hirschberger, gamer, streamer, and Amazon Live host.

I stream about tech, gaming, and the stuff I actually buy right here with my community.

And Amazon Live makes it easy.

Streaming gameplay, scouting new gear, chatting, and shopping all at the same time?

That's my kind of multitasking.

And it all happens on Amazon Live.

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This is electric performance redefined.

The whole thing of like, I'm going to slow you down, but I know I'm not going to stop you.

Yeah.

Right.

When it came to why these guys,

as much as they would talk about how, you know, we're not afraid of Shane Badier.

Yeah.

Does it feel different facing this team with Battier gone?

You guys had a lot of classic matchups throughout the years.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess.

I guess.

The stats actually indicate, like, yo,

you slowed down.

I wasn't bad.

You slowed down at the yellow light.

As it turned out, as it turned out, I wasn't half bad.

Is there an element of this that is teachable?

Yeah, because because I had the answer to the test before I took it.

Like

in the NBA, everyone overestimates how good of a 20-foot jump shooter they are.

A 20-foot jump shot is a really hard shot to shoot, especially if you dribble once.

It's like a 40% shot.

That's a tough shot.

And people will argue with me, oh, no, it's part of the game.

No, that is a hard shot for even the best player, unless your name is Steph Curry or Kevin Durant.

All right, Devin Booker.

And the one thing that, you know, I was able to do that a lot of people can't do, I detached myself from the outcome.

I didn't care.

I didn't care if a guy made a shot or not.

I really didn't.

I cared where they took that shot.

And I knew if they took the shot in the wrong area,

in the area where they struggled the most, given enough time, sample size, they would beat themselves.

And so I just had to sort of lead them to that conclusion.

And so you can teach somebody kind of the squares in the court where it's just hard to make a shot.

A two over Battier.

Rebound by Bynum.

Relentless pressure.

He's going to put that on you every single possession.

And you know what?

You got to give Shane Battier a lot of credit.

When you look back at how you got to be this way, that's the part where I'm like, I don't know if you can really teach that.

Look, I grew up in a middle-class part of Detroit.

All right.

I was very poor.

You know, the roof leaked when it rained.

I remember what a government cheese sandwich tasted like.

I had patches on my jeans and all my clothes.

Like we had like no money.

You know, I learned the phrase, Rob Peter to pay Paul like when I was in kindergarten, right?

We were very, very poor.

I was the only kid in town that had a black dad and a white mom.

So in an elementary school of 500 kids, I was the only black kid.

Okay.

I got a pick on Pitcher Day.

Everyone else got a comb.

Okay.

On Martin Luther King Day, I was expected to know everything about black culture from the dawn of civilization.

And I was a foot taller than everybody else.

Okay.

So I was the kid who always had to carry a birth certificate with him at the Little League game.

So like I was an outcast outcast wherever I went.

So I was mixed, tall, and poor.

The only place I really felt at home was at recess

and playing kickball and playing dodgeball and playing basketball and baseball, all the sports.

And I realized like when I help my friends win, like I'm not, I'm no longer the poor kid, the mixed kid, the tall kid.

I'm just the kid who helped my friends win.

So I didn't care, I didn't care like about what I did or how I looked.

All I cared about is did we win?

And did I help my friends win?

So I'm going to do whatever it takes.

I'm going to do whatever it takes to make sure my friends look good and that we win.

I took that lesson from kindergarten.

So it was born out of desperation.

It was born out of just, hey, I want to be loved.

I want to be accepted.

And

that's what put the dog in me to just be just

intense and paranoid and all those things.

I find that a big learning that people hopefully have had about

the nerd as a creature in American life

is that

the nerd can be among the most competitive people that you've ever imagined.

Oh, yeah.

The guy who, and again, and this is me fact-checking as a journalist, the guy who had a subscription to Laptop Magazine.

Yeah, I'm a gadget whore,

but, you know, there was a magazine called Laptop Magazine.

I mean, this is just depth that I, I, I'm obviously somebody who is, this is a judgment-free zone, but I didn't know there was a laptop magazine.

We share an insatiable curiosity.

Yes.

And that, that, like, yes, knowing your story, that was my secret power.

I was so scared that there's the answer is out there.

I just haven't found it yet.

And so, yeah, I subscribed to laptop magazine because they had all these new gadgets come out.

And I said, oh, shit, like, maybe this could be the answer to like to change my life, right?

Again, that was my superpower in the NBA.

Like, I don't know how to guard Kobe Bryant.

Like, well,

maybe if I, if I learn this about him, like, it'll help me.

But the whole idea of like winning over a room, right?

Which is embedded in the premise of culture, which is to say that like it needs buy-in.

Yep.

You need to convert people to the thing that you revere.

Yep.

How hard was that for you in these locker rooms?

When I go to the Grizzlies, they had the lowest winning percentage of the four North American professional sports leagues.

Okay, they had a 20-winning percentage.

That's a good stat.

That's a good stat.

They won one out of every five games in the history of the franchise.

Okay, so you talk about a franchise that had like

no idea how to win.

This is the Grizzlies.

So we lose our first 10 games.

You know, we're on a bad team.

I think we're like 2 and 15.

Their style has not been good.

They have

stumbled along the way.

They have not had their productivity out of their scores.

They have been passive at the point,

and they've lost 11 in a row.

A lot of work to be done here in Memphis.

We call like the most overhyped, overused term in pro sports, the players-only locker room meeting.

Oh, God.

It's the worst.

I've been fascinated by this ritual.

Okay, so explain.

For those not familiar with why this is a thing, please explain the thing.

So, a player's only meeting only happens when you're, you're, you know, you're getting heat from the media, the fans are on you.

All right, look, you know, you're not playing well, okay?

So, you know,

all the movies, you know, say, you know, you know, the captains, the veterans, they call a player's only meeting.

We're going to air our grievances and we're going to have a kumbaya moment, and that's going to propel us to

better performance.

Okay.

And so during this particular locker room meeting, you know, here I am, you know, full of righteousness coming from Duke, the coach KOA.

Yep.

And

I'm the first one to stand up and I say, you know, I got to be honest, the veteran leadership on this team sucks.

Very honest, very direct.

And they said, hey, Duke boy, shut the f ⁇ up, go sit in the corner.

Who are you?

And I was just like, oh man, I did not read the room.

It humbled me.

And I realized like, man, I can't come in here guns a a-blazing because there's, there's kind of like an ethos and a creed and kind of an unspoken locker room path you got to take to earn credibility.

And I hadn't done that to that point.

And so I shut my ass.

I went to work, right?

But

I didn't become cynical.

I didn't become jaded.

I wouldn't allow that locker room to change me.

So I kept working.

And a funny thing happened, like the guys who maybe were on the fence and didn't know how to, how to act and how to win started to have like

winning attitudes and like winning behaviors.

And all of a sudden, like you kind of feel the locker road kind of shift a little bit.

And we started to believe a little bit.

And Hubie Brown comes in the next year.

We start winning some games.

Memphis now 26 and 31 since that 0 for 13 start.

The team that was once an easy out now holds the key in the Western Conference playoff race.

It was pretty awesome to be part of that.

I'd never been part of like a culture change.

Yeah.

But this is a mythical concept of like, how do you change culture, the thing that every business is going to have to grapple with at some point if they meet what is more likely than not, which is failure.

Yep.

It's not

the rah-rah speeches.

All right.

It's not the sayings on the wall.

It's the small, subtle acts that most people don't even pay mind to.

It's the unmeasurable.

It's the unmeasurable.

Which is all to say that there are these inflection points in Shane Badier's life when he has had to decide whether it is time for him to take the microphone or not.

And this can be a difficult political exercise for somebody who loves karaoke as much as Shane Badier does, as we need to explain in a bit.

But this takes us to a moment for now on the court when the human yellow light wasn't actually trying to slow down a superstar.

Because it was June 2012, and Shane was playing for the Miami Heat.

The Miami Heat, for those not familiar, fetishized culture more than any other team in sports, as our own Ryan Cortez will gladly tell you.

And it's to the point where the Heat would go on to later hire Shane as an executive.

But on this June evening in 2012, what Shane Badier was mostly trying to do was just not get in the way of one of his fellow starters.

The issue, however, was that LeBron James, one of the best scorers ever, obviously, who was now being given the greenest possible light, had won zero titles at this point.

Speaking of measurables, LeBron had joined Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosch in Miami, only to be humiliated by Dallas in the finals the year before this.

And so here the Heat were in 2012, overhyped and trailing in one of the most tense Eastern Conference finals in memory.

And they were about to be eliminated by their most hated rival.

Welcome to Boston and a sold-out TD Garden.

It's game six of the Eastern Conference.

They're saying, look,

there's no way the Heat are going to win this game.

a chance to move on.

Way double teamed as he has seen all series long.

David slaying Goliath.

Yes.

We know if we lose game six, this is like maybe the most failed experiment.

The most

highly publicized failed experiment, and there's blood on everybody's hands.

Yeah, and by the way, there's just salivating from everybody who talks about sports.

These guys are villains.

You guys are Goliath.

Again, that's the other key part of this: is that it's what does Goliath do to save his own ass?

They drove the hearse to td bank arena that night but like before that game there wasn't like a huge rah-rah speech it was just like look we just got to be ourselves we've been through the fire and there was a trust what was lebron like because this is now in in terms of his the character study the lebron game Yes, and also like adding an inflection.

Exactly.

That was the inflection point for his entire Hall of Fame career.

The story of his life is so different if that game goes differently.

Different.

No one knows, no one realizes that.

And so, like, of anybody, LeBron knows he has the most at stake.

Yes.

The most.

Yes.

The most.

And so, like, he was very calm that day.

He didn't say anything.

He didn't puke into a towel.

No, no.

But like,

I'm going to tell you what.

When that motherfucker has that look, man,

let's go.

It's like when Adam turns into He-Man,

I

have

the power!

It's almost like an aura around him.

We're just like, oh my gosh, this is unbelievable.

Go!

James comes flying in and throws it down.

He's got 27 first half points.

I remember watching this game

and imagining what must it be like to be around him in this moment.

You didn't talk about it.

You didn't look at him.

You're just like, I don't want to jinx it.

Here at the TD Garden.

30 in the first half.

These are all second half.

The one-foot step back, and then the little floater as he posts up Rondo at the elbow, and then the 17-foot catch, that jab step, jump-shot game.

And so we win the game.

You win big.

We win big.

By the way, like curb stomping suffocation.

Yep.

Big.

Yep.

Because the final score is 98 to 79.

LeBron, for the record, right?

Do you remember his stat line?

45.

45 minutes, 45 points, 19 of 26.

Yeah.

19 of 26.

Ridiculous.

Also, by the way,

15 rebounds, throwing five assists, casually.

I mean,

the greatest game I've ever seen anybody play.

It's a hard argument to beat.

It was given the stakes, given the gravity of the situation, given like the

historical implications.

Historical.

We're going to be arguing Jordan versus LeBron forever.

And this game is the reason why it's plausible.

I'm always going with LeBron for a simple reason.

For a simple reason.

Is it because you scored eight points that game?

LeBron did something twice that Jordan, I don't think, could have done once.

He won two NBA titles with Shane Battier as a starting power four.

No way.

No way, Jordan.

No way, Jordan could have done that.

As great as Jordan was, LeBron dragged me across the finish line.

The Albatross had never been so heavy.

And that's my story, story, and I'm sticking to it.

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It's third down.

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Now that we've gone through one of the

glorious chapters, do you remember the most humiliated you ever felt in a league?

My last year.

My last year.

When I was told, without being told, that our best chance of winning doesn't include you, Shane.

When, you know, Spo started to sit me in the fourth quarter, nothing was worse to me than sitting me in crunch time.

That was my identity.

And it hurt me to my core.

And that's when I knew I was done.

I was embarrassed.

I was embarrassed.

And I checked out and I was cynical.

And so when I retired, I was very cynical.

And so I was sad, but I was also very cynical.

What does cynicism mean at this point in your trajectory?

I shut people out.

I was probably battling some depression.

I didn't know what depression was.

I never had this feeling before, but feeling very isolated.

I didn't feel anyone understood what I was going through.

I felt very alone.

And I pushed people away.

I pushed my wife away.

I pushed my kids away.

And I just was a jerk.

I wasn't like doing destructive things.

I wasn't like I was drinking every night,

but I was just, I was emotionally unavailable.

And I was hurt and I was

pissed off.

And I had all these emotions I had never associated with basketball.

And it was a big mistake to go work for ESPN.

I was really bad on TV.

You can probably go on an awful announcing and say, oh,

we're going to find some Shane Baddie A.

I was low lights.

I had zero passion for it.

Zero.

Congratulations.

Your father was a great point guard for the Russian national team.

What has he meant to your career?

Oh, I think now

he watched this, he watched drafts.

You're like, a lot of emotion you have.

So same like me.

Well, that's great.

But at this point in our episode,

everybody listening understands how insane that is.

That you, guy they've been listening to, tell stories with this level of alacrity,

couldn't do that

because of

this internal.

Was this the hearse?

Was this finally you being like, I guess I got to get in this thing now?

I was chasing relevance.

When you retire, like, you don't know.

This is all I knew.

It's all I knew.

30 years, right?

I had purpose every day.

I had a scoreboard above me and told me where I was.

All right.

I love my teammates.

I love being part of a team, right?

The money was great.

You know, I had status.

I had all these things that like people are chasing these things in their professional life.

I had, it checked every box.

So to not have that when you wake up one day, because you don't have the jersey, you don't have the locker room, you don't have the purpose.

It's scary as shit.

Yeah.

I was terrified.

I was terrified.

There's one quote that I remember you giving at one point, and it was:

if you had filet mignon every single night, you'd stop tasting it.

Yep.

Which is to say that even though you missed so actively the thing that you weren't doing anymore,

it felt like by the end, also your

ability to enjoy it was also changing, which is an interesting tension of like missing something that wasn't even the thing that for you it

was anymore.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's weird, it's a weird feeling.

It was a weird, it was a weird time.

I went through a lot of, who am I?

Who am I?

My identity was so tied to basketball.

It was tied to the nostat all-star stuff.

Right.

Right.

So like, I, in a lot of ways, I felt like I was an actor in my own life,

that I had to only take, like, I couldn't turn it over.

I couldn't take two-point shots because I talked about it.

No, literally.

So

I get it.

So I felt like.

almost like I was playing this role of this guy.

And we talk about authenticity and I played it to the best of my ability,

but I questioned, like, who the heck am I?

What am I about?

Like,

what am I doing?

What am I doing?

And, you know, going to ESPN and being terrible at it and that disaster of a year didn't help.

And so, you know, I had never been to therapy.

My wife, you know, of 22 years when we met in seventh grade, said, look, Shannon, I know you like optionality.

Here's three options.

You can, you know, here's a number to the Marriott.

Here's a number to your attorney.

And here's this number to this life coach/slash psychologist that comes very highly recommended.

I said, Heidi, I'm not a very smart man.

I'm going to choose door three.

And so I had to unpack a lot of crap that I just didn't deal with because I was so driven.

I was, I was throwing, I was too busy throwing up.

I was too busy grinding and just like pursuing whatever it was in the basketball career that I did not give time to and like not healthy at all.

You know, I was not stable.

Well, this is is the other thing about like having a superpower in any way, right?

Is that there's an implication that,

man, look at this gift.

But the more I learn about sports, the more I realize that extremity in any fashion also implies a certain imbalance if you're not extraordinarily careful.

100%.

And I don't,

would I do things differently?

I don't know.

That's the thing.

I know it wasn't healthy.

But like, I never had a sports psychologist when I played because I was so scared of anyone getting inside this and taking away my superpower,

which was like my IQ and my ability to read and react.

I'm like, I don't, I don't need to be thinking.

I don't need to be

emotive here.

I just need to be like a great defender and make open shots.

And like,

I'll deal with the metric.

The standard of success is not a health.

It is, are we winning?

Are we winning?

Am I still here?

And so.

I don't know what I would have done differently.

Did you get a sense that when you got went to therapy that your psychologist was

I know exactly the type of person you are?

Or were they saying something that was...

Yeah, I don't think I was out of the ordinary for a retired athlete.

I think every athlete goes through some version of this, some form or fashion.

And the longer you're in the game, the more work you got to do.

Right.

And I describe it as, and I think this befalls any

person of success, all right?

But especially young people, you know, entertainers or people who win the first third of their life, right?

When you're identified as a young talent or even an old talent, you know, you're told you're great, you know.

And if you show any vulnerability, guess what?

We're going to take your dream and give it to that person because they don't show any weakness.

So what do you do?

You start building walls.

You always have the answer.

All right.

You can't feel anything.

You're bulletproof.

Right.

So emotionally, psychologically, financially, sexually, like, I got all the answers.

I don't need any help.

Give me space.

Just give me a laptop, magazine, and some space.

I'll figure it out.

And it's all good until it ain't, right?

When you don't have that purpose and you don't have that support system of the locker room and you're like, who the hell am I?

Well, I've been doing it solo for so long that I don't know how to ask for help.

I don't know how to, you know, so like, and what you realize is it's, it's all relationships.

It's all relationships.

And it's being authentic in your relationships and fostering those things.

So like, that's what I would have done.

I would have done a better job of fostering

relationships and allowing people who I care about to help me along the way.

When you talk about basically having these relationships, building a cabinet of people around you,

I think about

how you are also one of the very special lucky people to have played basketball with a man who had his own cabinet.

What was playing basketball against Barack Obama like?

I was actually on his team.

So, first of all, to get the

call to go to the president's birthday.

What's that call like?

Unexpected.

Unexpected.

A call out of the blue.

Hey, what are you doing this day?

The president has requested you to play in his birthday pickup game.

He's turning 49.

Turning 49.

And like, it was, you know, Kobe was hurt by them, but it was Carmelo, Magic Johnson.

I mean, it was like Alonzo Morny, LeBron, D-Wade, Chris,

Hall of Famers.

And so, like...

Stuff a kid would do who loved basketball and had the power to invite everybody.

Yeah.

And here I am, some schlepp.

The coolest part was like getting in the SU.

Why were you invited?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't.

Still to this day, I don't know.

I don't know.

They're trying to, you know, bring some, I don't know, IQ to the game.

I don't know.

But I got to play this team.

And, you know, the defensive driving, like Navy SEALs who drove us to the gym, that was badass.

That was the coolest part.

I mean, those guys were bobbin and weaving.

But we lose the first two games and, you know,

President Obama says, guys, bring it in.

As your commander-in-chief, I command you to not lose this last game.

Were there hard fouls?

There are no hard fouls, but there was definitely like they're blocking his shots.

I think, you know, the president appreciated that.

He just, you know, he didn't want charity.

That was part of it.

He said that.

He's like, I don't want charity.

All right.

I want everyone to play.

We're here to win.

All right.

So,

he got a taste, he got a taste, and he hit the game when he shot.

You know, he did, he hit the game when he shot.

He's like this, like, like this, this kind of squirrely left-hander.

Oh, I've seen the footage, you know, yeah, it's weird, but it goes in, it goes in, and he hit the shot, and he's walking around holding that holding that thing up high.

So, it was an unbelievable day.

The coolest, the funniest part was we're on the south lawn having a barbecue, birthday barbecue afterwards, and you know, they got some hip-hop playing, whatever.

and all of a sudden a pony by genuine comes on

and i'm just thinking to myself you know our forefathers are are just rolling in their graves right now that genuine wine's pony oh my god is playing on the south lawn first time

first time ever that somewhere somewhere the ghost of teddy roosevelt i was going to say yeah teddy roosevelt andrew jackson yeah better yet yeah to

Can't believe it.

Ride it, my pony.

My saddle's waiting.

Come and jump on it.

If you're horny, let's do it.

Ride it, my pony.

How great's that?

I mean, that's the American dream.

That is the, it is the American dream.

And my wife and I look at each other like, this is on, like, no one understands how wonderful this moment is.

It's what we worked all these years for.

Exactly.

When you were summoned to the front of the class to explain black history to everybody in Michigan, you did not have the audacity to depict this image.

One day, I dream of barbecue in the South Lawn,

and we will play pony

and we will all be merry.

Part of what is so interesting about hearing you trace your path through life is that at various points, you have lived

a movie that I find to be endlessly amusing.

And one of the scenes that recurs is just you doing karaoke.

First of all, who are you telling?

Who are you telling?

I mean, you know, when I look at my journals and write a book now, and it's just like, I.

It's crazy that you've lived all of this already it's Forrest Gumpian yes it really is Forrest Gumpian you both met the president yep uh you both love running so I toured China so my karaoke uh story in China uh I wore a Chinese uh basketball shoe called peak yeah okay because Yaoming was my teammate in Houston and they wanted a presence on the Rockets so I went there I never heard of the shoe and I had like 50-foot billboards in like every city you never heard of in China and so I was very I was very very famous in China much more famous in China than I was in America So whenever I go to

a press conference in the city when I'm touring,

there would be a bunch of reporters there.

And

they gave me the name Mr.

President

because my cadence and the way I talk and gesture was like Barack Obama.

I was going to say, your sleeves are rolled up to your elbows.

This is not a coincidence.

So I would be in, you know, Qing Tao and

the press would go, Mr.

President, Mr.

President, how do you find Qing Tao?

And I said, you know what?

It has the most beautiful women and the best beer.

And then I would go to,

what a politician.

And then I could go to Shanghai.

Mr.

President, Mr.

President, how do you find Shanghai?

It has the most beautiful women and the best beer, right?

But they knew I love karaoke.

And so I went to this beer, actually, the Qing Tao Beer Festival in Qing Tao, China,

beautiful city on the water.

And they wanted me to sing karaoke.

And so this is like a festival.

And I swear to you, there was like 20,000 people at this festival

and they want me to sing billie jean and i'm like all right

no no no no biggie i'll do it well i get up on stage and so i start singing you know uh she was more like a movie queen from across the scene and all of a sudden the the words just cut out and so i have no monitor your prompter goes dead my prompter goes dead ultimate politician's nightmare and so i'm in front of 20 000 people playing billie Jean,

you know, fumbling my way through the song, trying to dance to take the, you know, the ice off my horrible.

It was a nightmare.

It was a nightmare of epic proportions to be in Qingta, China, in front of 20,000 people.

At a beer festival.

At a beer festival with no words, but they still cheered for me.

I actually, people don't believe me, I hosted the Chinese version of SNL.

What?

It's called Happy Camp.

They get like 100 million people.

I can't make this up.

They get 100 million people a week tuning in on Saturday night.

And I was the host.

I don't speak of Lickamandarin, like at all.

But again, I had a translator there on TV and it's like a sketch, it's a comedy sketch show.

And so they wanted me to come and sing karaoke.

So I sang New York, New York.

You know, I came out of the, you know, doing the kick, doing the Sinatra.

And yet, is that as weird as the time

that

you did this?

Jade, listen to me.

Just stay retired.

You can still be in the lead

at the team front office floor.

You can have all you ever

wanted.

I know.

So, this is the voice of Darryl Maury.

Yes.

No.

I can't want it

anymore.

So, Daryl as the Good Witch, and Shane as Alphaba, I suppose, in this condition of

a brand new game.

I'm screwed back by these rules.

I want back in the game.

It's too late,

analytics.

Too late to take on Hillary.

It's time to trust my instincts, close my eyes, and lean.

It's time to try

gravity.

I think I'll try

to find

gravity.

And you can't pull me down.

I mean,

Daryl wearing a blonde wig and a dress, and you, I mean, when I say that you

sang your heart out with a broom in one hand.

Daryl Maury is a very close friend of mine.

I wouldn't be here without him, what I learned from him.

And he actually wrote that.

He loves musicals.

He loved musicals.

So he and Ellen, his wife, rewrote the words to that and had an idea.

So that was all Daryl's idea.

And, you know, I love that he put on the pink Linda dress.

So, that's an event called Battyoke

that we held in Houston, held in Miami.

It raises money for my foundation, the Batty Take Church Foundation, giving over $4 million in school.

It was remarkable the last decade.

So, it's for the kids.

Daryl, on the one hand,

did you blackmail LeBron and D.

Wade to do Robin Thick?

That was their own volition.

The bad yoke, we don't mess around.

I dare say that Mr.

President has assembled a rainbow coalition

of people to do the thing that you

made peace with, which is

humiliate yourself.

For a good cause, you know, you can never humiliate yourself too much.

That is also a thing that we hear at Pablo Torre finds out that we believe in.

Shane Badier, thank you for turning this podcast into a very happy camp.

Pablo, you're my man.

I can't wait to do paternity with you.

Oh, God.

I'm going to see you next time.

Oh, God.

I just felt, I just felt, I just felt the need for a towel.

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metalark media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.

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