Fowl Shots: The Untold Story of Brickin' for Chicken (PTFO Vault)

Speaker 1 We have a bit of incredible news to share.

Speaker 1 Our show, Pablo Torre finds out, was not only named one of the best of 2025 by Apple Podcasts, but our episode, The Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree, which was, you know, the whole investigation and aspiration and Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers, was also chosen as one of Apple Podcasts' best episodes of the year.

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Speaker 1 Thank you for making clear what Apple Time, Apple Time actually means.

Speaker 1 And today,

Speaker 1 you are going to find out what this sound is. That's why I signed in New Orleans so I can get free secret for life.

Speaker 1 Right after this ad

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Speaker 1 Let me just close out all the windows on my computer. How many tabs do you have opened on this? 8 billion.

Speaker 20 8 billion. I don't know.
You know, I thought I had a cure by opening a second window for the overflow. Now I have like several windows of a million tabs.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the old, let's just throw all my laundry in a different room. Yeah.

Speaker 1 When your tabs look like LeBron James's Instagram stories after he wins a championship, it's time to acknowledge you have a problem.

Speaker 20 I can't believe my life is like this.

Speaker 1 I can't believe you've been on this assignment for us that your life is like this, by the way.

Speaker 20 Yeah, no, you know what, man? Sometimes there's like a calling that happens. I imagine this is what those pigs they've used to find truffles.
Yeah. This is how they feel, right?

Speaker 20 You get that scent, and now I can't stop. I keep going deeper and deeper and deeper.

Speaker 1 We've been arguing already about can we even show the footage that you've collected that I have not even seen yet? And I don't know if legally we're allowed to, but we'll get to that, I guess.

Speaker 1 But like, we're talking about blurring and voice modulating. And this is sensitive in a way that I did not presume when we assigned you this.

Speaker 20 This is one of those things. I remember the why in the wire that said you follow drugs.

Speaker 20 But you start to follow the money and you don't know where the f it's going to take you. I felt like I followed the chicken and I ended up some weird places.

Speaker 20 Most importantly, places where nobody wants to talk about this.

Speaker 1 Your enthusiasm to talk about Brickin for chicken

Speaker 1 and the resistance you have faced around the sport that you know as well as anybody. Explain why you've been eager to talk about this for people who don't know what any of this even is.

Speaker 20 Truth be told, you could be a huge NBA fan, watch tons of games on TV, but if you've never been to an NBA arena, you may not even know this promotion exists.

Speaker 20 Kingsman, they show how loud we can get right now.

Speaker 20 In the fourth quarter or in the second half of games, depending on which arena you're in, when the opposing team is at the free throw line, if they miss two free throws in a row, everybody in the building gets free chicken.

Speaker 1 Bricken for chicken.

Speaker 20 But there was one moment on national TV that happened where the announcer let the viewers at home know: hey, this is why everyone is going crazy.

Speaker 1 All right, it's that time for chicken. Free chicken.

Speaker 20 This is a play-in game. The winner plays against the Knicks as the seventh seed.

Speaker 1 I remember this acutely. Right?

Speaker 20 The loser then has to go and play against Chicago. So you might not even make it to the playoffs.

Speaker 1 This was deep in the third quarter. The Sixers, I remember, had blown up.
They were awful. They were awful.
They were getting booed at home.

Speaker 1 Here are the first half from the frustrated Sixer fans.

Speaker 20 Just like the champions. And then...
Midway through the third quarter, the heater up 11, Caleb Martin, who is usually a dependable free throw shooter misses one and then

Speaker 20 yes

Speaker 1 and the crowd explodes

Speaker 1 my oh my it's so easy to make people happy

Speaker 1 apparently the chicken is very good they don't spike

Speaker 1 i felt that in mike breen's loins by the way yes yes

Speaker 20 but the crazy thing here is they've done the charting of what the win probability was for the heat at that moment in time. It was upwards of 80%.

Speaker 20 It was in the bag. And that moment is the moment where everything changed and you see the win probability descend, descend, descend, descend until all of a sudden you got a Sixers win.

Speaker 20 That promo, Pablo, saved them.

Speaker 1 So the argument you are making here is that brick-in for chicken is changing meaningfully the course of basketball games in a way that has even exceeded the whole novelty, marketing, sponsorship kind of design of it.

Speaker 20 I'll take it one step further. Dan Levittard thinks it saved the Sixes organization as a whole.
This organization was ready to crumble last night, and then free chicken arrived.

Speaker 21 Yep, Chick-fil-A.

Speaker 20 And it made everything better.

Speaker 1 It's an actual nightmare. Like, the idea that Chick-fil-A

Speaker 1 is what did this is just, it's unfathomable.

Speaker 20 there's a graphic right there look at it

Speaker 20 the inflection point the cliff clearly the cliff that the heat fall off is directly overlaid onto the moment when chicken was up for grabs it's insane and yet it's undeniable what happened there and so this is one of those moments i think where you got something that you want from the marketing side right you got something that you want to galvanize the fans with.

Speaker 20 And then you got something that basketball ops, right? The coaches, the front office, are like, hell yeah, this, this can help.

Speaker 20 When you get all three of those things in the same place, that's business nirvana.

Speaker 1 Business nirvana for the NBA.

Speaker 1 Also, I am told reliably, a business nightmare for Meadowlark Media, which has funded truly a new high when it comes to the we paid a mean what to investigate what the f ⁇ graph.

Speaker 20 Pablo, like I I told you earlier, you follow a chicken, there's no telling where you might end up.

Speaker 20 And where I ended up was in some weird places investigating one of the 75 best players of all time, right? And in the process,

Speaker 20 completely ruining my reputation in the NBA, which already wasn't stellar to begin with.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 That was a risk that I was expecting to have. Didn't expect it to get this dangerous this quickly, though.
For the truth, it's all worth it.

Speaker 22 300 sensors, over a million data points per second. How does F1 update their fans with every stat in real time?

Speaker 18 AWS is how.

Speaker 22 From fastest laps to strategy calls, AWS puts fans in the pit.

Speaker 22 It's not just racing, it's data-driven innovation at 200 miles per hour. AWS is how leading businesses power next level innovation.

Speaker 4 This holiday season, millions of families will pack their bags, load up the car, and head off for a family vacation.

Speaker 3 But not every trip is going to be somewhere fun.

Speaker 1 The American Red Cross responds to about 7,000 emergencies during the holiday season alone, from home fires to natural disasters, providing families a safe place to go when the unthinkable happens.

Speaker 8 But they can't do it without your support.

Speaker 6 Please donate at redcross.org.

Speaker 10 Hear that?

Speaker 11 It's holiday cheer arriving at Ulta Beauty with gifts for everyone on your list.

Speaker 14 Treat them to fan favorite gift sets from Charlotte Tilbury and Peach and Lily.

Speaker 16 Go all out with timeless fragrances from YSL, Ariana Grande, and Carolina Herrera.

Speaker 17 And you can never go wrong with an Ulta Beauty gift card.

Speaker 18 Head to Ulta Beauty for gifts that make the holidays brighter and even more beautiful.

Speaker 17 Ulta Beauty.

Speaker 19 Gifting happens here.

Speaker 1 So this is a, in other words, psychology experiment that we're watching play out. And I want to get into the minds of the players.

Speaker 1 I mean, you promised me entree into the psychology of NBA players who have all of this at stake. But in terms of how this

Speaker 1 stunt originated,

Speaker 1 where does that begin? Well,

Speaker 20 as with a lot of conspiracy theories in this country, it starts in our nation's capital.

Speaker 21 Well, I'm vice president of global partnerships at monumental sports and entertainment. My name is Lou Stredler.
I started here way back, 1982. So so this is my 43rd year.

Speaker 20 So this is the man behind this promotion, the man who thought it up.

Speaker 20 He is the big wig exec for the Washington Wizards who in essence makes the partners, which is the corporate sponsors, dreams come true.

Speaker 1 Which is a hard thing to do over 43 years when you're selling the Washington Wizards.

Speaker 20 And he's been tasked with coming up with a promotion that helps the local Chick-fil-A franchisees get more foot traffic in the door. And that franchisee was a man named John Natoli.

Speaker 20 What John Natoli said was, hey, what we found is for most people, if they try our chicken, they come back.

Speaker 20 But how do we get them to try it? So Lou says, I got it. We'll run a promo where we give away chicken when some sort of event happens.
Now, what kind of event could that be?

Speaker 20 Could it be when the wizards make two free throws?

Speaker 21 And then we said, wait a second, that could be negative. Our players could get booed.

Speaker 21 If they go and make the first free throw and miss the second they'll get booed for missing so we've got to do something where everyone is incentivized to keep rooting for this right no matter what where the business side where the basketball of the wizards lose side is protected and also the chick-fil-a side gets what they want gets what they want i said wait let's concentrate on the visiting team doing something that'll generate excitement for Mars

Speaker 20 this is the brilliance of it. This is almost, in a way, recession-proof.
Hey, what if we're down 50? They still can miss two free throws in the fourth quarter. So it is something that's repeatable.

Speaker 1 It's repeatable.

Speaker 20 Yeah. So there's no point in time where you're like, well, that promotion's over up until literally the final buzzer.

Speaker 1 It's funny just to remember how like golf works

Speaker 1 and golfers hate when the crowd is interfering with their rituals, how their sport has always operated. How did the NBA react to, yeah, a bold stunt like this? Well, it was an instant hit, right?

Speaker 20 And it should come as no surprise.

Speaker 1 Fans love it, of course.

Speaker 20 I got free chicken. Chick-fil-A, the sponsor, loved it.
Hey, we got the thing that we wanted.

Speaker 1 We wanted people walking through the door. But the players, though, how did they feel?

Speaker 20 Well, according to Lou, the Wizards players loved it, including one guy in particular.

Speaker 21 Absolutely. The name comes to mind real fast, March and Gortat for the Wizards.

Speaker 21 Marchin Gortat, as soon as this happened, would stand up, grab a towel off the bench, and start shaking it over his head to bring the crowd support. Marchin Gortat was so great that

Speaker 21 they kept calling and saying, ask Marchin when he wants us to deliver sandwiches.

Speaker 1 Did Martin Gortat actually get the chicken he was promised?

Speaker 20 Did he get a chicken? They threw him a party.

Speaker 20 It was catered and everything. John Natoli, that Chick-fil-A franchisee, was there.
Lou Struddler was there. And Margin Gortat was there.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 Well, you guys got everything I asked you. You caused a big hubbub.
Listen, all I know,

Speaker 1 we got to come up with a different rule. Two free throws, two miss free throws, it's too much.
Two miss is too much. And

Speaker 20 the Chick-fil-A cow.

Speaker 20 We'll come back to that a little later.

Speaker 1 So I do want to point out something about pro athletes, which is, yes, all of them can afford lots of Chick-fil-A. Yes.

Speaker 1 But there there is something about watching a Polish-born NBA player with like a Zange

Speaker 1 mohawk just like enter into a room in America full of free chicken that feels like kind of the dream he was promised.

Speaker 20 And then, like a real American, feel entitled enough to say the threshold is too high, too, Miss Free Throws. What are we doing? What is this? Communist Russia? No, it needs to be a turnover, right?

Speaker 20 He's

Speaker 1 consistently campaigning to lower the threshold to get more free chicken.

Speaker 20 More free chicken. And at one point, John Natoli even promises him: hey, we'll have the cow bring it down the line.

Speaker 1 All right, we got it. We got it.
We'll do that. Any home game now? Any home game you guys have?

Speaker 1 Do we have a Chick-fil-A at that renovation? Yes. Perfect.
Can we have someone from the staff bring little boxes

Speaker 1 in maybe like, you know, 10 cents with just number fours with pepper jack cheese? Absolutely.

Speaker 1 And if you guys get up by enough points, we'll bring it to you on the bench while they're shooting a free throw.

Speaker 20 That's what I'm talking talking about and this phenomenon was such a a transcendent moment that as tends to happen in our league copycats are happening across the league because the league has this group called team bow team business operations what they do is they take best practices and they spread them to everybody so they're like hey this promotion in washington works really well Everyone else should do it.

Speaker 20 And so what you see now is across the league, almost half the league has a chicken giveaway based on missed free throws. So much so to the point, Pablo, that now the Wizards are being targeted for it.

Speaker 20 They are now, instead of being the beneficiaries of this great promotion, they are now the victims.

Speaker 20 Just the other day in Philadelphia, a young wizards player named Colby Jones received a new nickname from his teammates because of his exploits during the giveaway.

Speaker 1 Why do they call you Chick-fil-A?

Speaker 1 Because I sold when we played Philadelphia. I lost two free throws.
Actually, four straight. Four straight.
Not gay. I think I fed the whole city

Speaker 20 So, Pablo, you might detect a certain note of joy coming from Kobe Jones.

Speaker 1 He has a new nickname. He has a new identity that I now will think of every time I think of Kobe Jones.

Speaker 20 But the crazy thing is, I listen to that sound. I don't hear the talk about the nickname, Chick-fil-A Natchez, whatever it is.
What I hear is, I think I fed the whole city, right?

Speaker 20 I think I fed the whole city. And that's what got me thinking.
Wait a second. What if this isn't just guys getting rattled at the pre-throw line?

Speaker 20 What if there are guys out here who are doing a solid for the road crowd?

Speaker 1 Hold on. So you are alleging that these NBA guys, because of this incentive structure with free chicken, are betraying their franchise by taking free chicken and giving them to the people.

Speaker 1 Okay, two things.

Speaker 20 One, I'm not alleging anything. I'm asking questions, Pablo.
And two, I'm not the only one asking these questions.

Speaker 20 Take a listen to Chris Miller and Drew Gooden on the Wizards broadcast talking about Tristan Thompson at the free throw line in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 1 Last year he shot 29% from the free throw line and couldn't think of a better person at the free throw line because if he misses this, oh the fans are going to get some chicken.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 fans are happy, but the Cavs get the basketball back. Did he do it on purpose?

Speaker 1 I wouldn't be surprised. He's the man.
Man of the people. Man of the people.

Speaker 20 Look, that's someone asking the question that I was asking, but you don't have to take it from me or Drew Gooden or Chris Miller because Spencer Dinwiddie owned up to it.

Speaker 20 Take a look at this tweet exchange. So fan tweets to Spencer, I hated watching you miss these fourth quarter free throws, but thank you for lunch tomorrow.
And this is what Spencer says back.

Speaker 20 Missed the second one on purpose. Wanted everybody to eat like the squad.
Shrug emoji. Okay.

Speaker 1 Now, in the case that I know you are trying to build, there is clearly also just some guys trying to spin their own failures into something positive that they can then, you know, make jokes about.

Speaker 20 I thought you might say that, right?

Speaker 1 I thought you might say that you thought that I might say that.

Speaker 20 We could do this all day, but I have prepared evidence of a player not only claiming it, but claiming it in the moment. I present to you Exhibit C, Boban Marjanovich.

Speaker 1 Fans are getting excited here. There might potentially be some freedom chicken on the board if he misses his second free throw.

Speaker 1 So that's why the fans are getting a little

Speaker 1 flothy.

Speaker 1 Oh, they're pointing to anything. Bobon's playing with the ground.
Say, you want chicken?

Speaker 1 Here's your job. Oh, he gave him chicken.
He's a man of the people.

Speaker 1 He's a man of the people. He did that not perfect.
He did. He gave out free chicken.

Speaker 1 Goosebumps. I'd forgotten about that.
Goosebumps.

Speaker 1 For people who forgot about this, dude, that's an eight-point game with four minutes and change left in the fourth quarter. And Bobon

Speaker 1 actually did very clearly say, I'm going to miss this, and then missed it.

Speaker 20 If you are one of the people who's listening and not watching the video, he is pointing at himself. He's like, I'm going to miss it.
And he's looking at the crowd. He's, I'm going to miss it.

Speaker 20 He tells his team.

Speaker 1 Such an insane video.

Speaker 20 I'll build up to it. It's not just like, it's not the Spencer Dinwiddie where he misses.
I meant to do that. He is calling his shot like Babe Ruth, pointing to the outfield, right?

Speaker 1 He's like the opposite of Babe Ruth. Well, Well, yeah.
All of these guys on a relative basis are themselves like sideshows.

Speaker 1 These are, relatively speaking, scrubs, Kobe Jones, Tristan Thompson this season, Bobon.

Speaker 1 These are a circus acts in a circus promo, just having fun off to the side, basically.

Speaker 20 I thought you might say that.

Speaker 1 And this is the whole point of my investigation.

Speaker 20 Follow me, if you will, right? What if I told you that the guy that this story is really about isn't a sideshow or a scrub as you very very disrespectfully call those fine young men

Speaker 20 what if i told you actually this guy is a former mvp no a former two-time mvp you might know him by his own nickname that wasn't given to him by his teammates after failure no

Speaker 20 It's given to him because this guy is a freak of nature, the one and only Yannis Anto de Cumpo.

Speaker 1 First of all, I'm supposed to be in Vegas right now.

Speaker 1 I'm supposed to be in Vegas right now, you know, partying.

Speaker 1 But I'm here already in Chick-fil-A.

Speaker 1 Can I have a 50-piece? Sorry, I will put you. Can I put your camera on? Do you mind or no? Sure.

Speaker 1 There's 150,000 people watching you right now. Really? Yes.
So

Speaker 1 can I have please a 50-piece Mac Minis? 50, exactly. Not 51, not 49.
Chicken minis, yes. 50.

Speaker 1 And let me have a large drink, no ice, half sprite, half lemonade.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 20 So you might be asking yourself, how much does Yana Sano de Coupo love fast food chicken?

Speaker 20 And the only answer I can come up with is as much as any human being has ever loved anything in the history of mankind.

Speaker 1 I'll be getting free Chick-fil-A for life now.

Speaker 1 I want free Chick-fil-A for life. There's no way.

Speaker 1 That's why I signed in Milwaukee. So I can get free Chick filé for life.

Speaker 20 So there's all of these documented instances of Giannis professing his love for chicken. Like there's a time he showed up to a press conference with a bucket of chicken wings.

Speaker 20 There's a time where he tweeted about Roscoe's and how much he loves Roscoe's and wishes they would open one in Milwaukee.

Speaker 20 There's the trip to China where he goes and he professes love for chicken feet.

Speaker 1 Anything you want to try, but not quite yet feeling is true. I don't know.

Speaker 1 Can you guys maybe say something?

Speaker 1 You love chicken feed. I love chicken feet.

Speaker 1 I now am remembering how Giannis, you know, won all-star MVP and decided to celebrate in the way that you are alluding to. So what's it feel like to finally

Speaker 1 win this thing? Winner, winner chicken dinner.

Speaker 1 And yet, none of this has to do with the promo.

Speaker 20 that we're talking about amin so this is his love of chicken in general but what about how he's interacted with the incentives that we're dissecting okay so here's a video of him at a Milwaukee Bucks game where there's a chicken giveaway while the opposing team is in a chicken scenario speaking of wings

Speaker 1 everybody gets wings free wings from Wingson look at Yannis he's scanning it he's capturing the moment he's getting the uh he wants to get the QR code to get his food

Speaker 20 he's on the bench obviously. It's the end of the game.
And he pulls a phone out to scan the QR code for the free chicken giveaway that they're giving to the fans.

Speaker 20 He's so enthusiastic about chicken and about the promo, he wants in on it like everyone else in the arena.

Speaker 1 It's such ridiculous video that I'm overlooking the fact that Giannis just had a cell phone on the bench, by the way. You never know.

Speaker 20 You never know when a QR code might pop up, Pablo.

Speaker 1 But okay, so granted, fair.

Speaker 1 But in terms of his personal

Speaker 1 at-the-line performance, not as a spectator, right? Not as marching Gortat, but as somebody with something to lose or in this case, win.

Speaker 1 How does he do?

Speaker 20 So, in essence, Pablo, what you're asking me is we've seen him be the marching Gortat of this, kind of rooting for it for the home crowd.

Speaker 20 But have we ever seen him be the Bobon where he's on the road and he's...

Speaker 1 That is the investigation.

Speaker 20 Okay, this is what I'm going to tell you right now. When it comes to chicken-eligible free throws, Yanis Antoinocoupo is the Robin Hood of chicken giveaways.

Speaker 22 300 sensors, over a million data points per second. How does F1 update their fans with every stat in real time?

Speaker 18 AWS is how.

Speaker 22 From fastest laps to strategy calls, AWS puts fans in the pit.

Speaker 22 It's not just racing, it's data-driven innovation at 200 miles per hour. AWS is how leading businesses power next-level innovation.

Speaker 10 Hear that?

Speaker 11 It's holiday cheer arriving at Ulta Beauty with gifts for everyone on your list.

Speaker 14 Treat them to fan favorite gift sets from Charlotte Tilbury and Peach and Lily.

Speaker 16 Go all out with timeless fragrances from YSL, Ariana Grande, and Carolina Herrera.

Speaker 17 And you can never go wrong with an Ulta Beauty gift card.

Speaker 14 Head to Ulta Beauty for gifts that make the holidays brighter and even more beautiful.

Speaker 17 Ulta Beauty.

Speaker 19 Gifting happens here.

Speaker 4 This holiday season, millions of families will pack their bags, load up the car, and head off for a family vacation.

Speaker 3 But not every trip is going to be somewhere fun.

Speaker 1 The American Red Cross responds responds to about 7,000 emergencies during the holiday season alone, from home fires to natural disasters, providing families a safe place to go when the unthinkable happens.

Speaker 8 But they can't do it without your support.

Speaker 6 Please donate at redcross.org.

Speaker 1 So now we're at the tabs open on now both of our computers.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to run through the research here that you've assembled for a term that you dropped on our audience as if anybody would know what the f you're talking about. Yes.
But chicken eligibility.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 20 What I found, Pablo, is when you are investigating ground that has not been sullied by human feet, right? This is fresh snow. This is untouched by humanity.

Speaker 20 You have to create metrics to measure the things that no one even considered.

Speaker 20 And so we came up with this term, chicken eligible shots, because, all right, the way the promo works, in case you haven't figured it out by now, you miss the first free throw, you miss the second free throw, everyone wins free chicken.

Speaker 20 If the opposing player makes the first free throw, guess what? We don't care what happens on that second free throw shot, right?

Speaker 20 So the only way we can figure out if you're handing out chicken as an opposing player is if you are converting on chicken eligible shots.

Speaker 20 So that's the second missed free throw after you missed the first one. Right.

Speaker 1 You've created a helpful graphic here. Chicken eligible, parentheses C C E, any free throw where a miss on that individual shot would result in the activation of a chicken-based promo.

Speaker 20 Yes, precisely. We have another term we need you to understand.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 20 Because metrics, we have to build metrics off of this. It's not enough to say, hey, how many chicken eligible shots did he take?

Speaker 1 Oh, sorry. You're moving us from counting stats now to...

Speaker 20 Efficiency, which is the key to any good metric, is we want to know how efficient you are.

Speaker 1 Of course. Of course, I must agree with this.

Speaker 20 And here's the graphic. The chicken conversion rate, which is your chicken-eligible misses divided by your chicken-eligible attempts.

Speaker 20 In essence, this number gives you the efficiency you have at providing chicken to 20,000 people.

Speaker 1 So just to over-explain this, CCR is the rate at which a player will miss a free throw with chicken on the line. Yes.

Speaker 1 And so Giannis Ade DeCumpo, when it comes to his conversion rate when he's chicken eligible, I mean, is what?

Speaker 20 So his CCR over the last two years, 80%,

Speaker 20 80% of the time he's got an opportunity to get you chicken, he comes home with it.

Speaker 1 Eight out of 10 times, Giannis is converting free chicken for the crowd.

Speaker 20 Yeah, he's shooting 20%.

Speaker 1 Yeah. That's pretty bad.
It's awful. Yeah, but he's also a bad free throw shooter, though.

Speaker 20 Sure. Yeah.
I mean, look, he's not great at shooting free throws, right? Overall, in his career, he's in the 60%

Speaker 20 spot. But here's the crazy part.
When you look at his quarter by quarter free throw percentage for this year, let's say, right?

Speaker 20 He shoots 64% in fourth quarters of games. He's a pretty, like for his standard, pretty good free throw shooter.

Speaker 20 The only time we have a drop is when he's shooting free throws versus when he's shooting free throws with chicken on the line. And then that drop goes from 64% all the way down to 20%.

Speaker 20 Pablo, that is the difference. That delta that we have there is the equivalent of Steph Curry shooting a free throw versus Shaquille O'Neal.

Speaker 20 You're telling me that this guy, who's not a great free throw shooter.

Speaker 1 I mean, famously, people count down. Crowds are blocking him by pointing out how long he takes to shoot a free throw.

Speaker 20 And now you've got

Speaker 1 a sign from Giannis in the end zone.

Speaker 1 And he hits the free throw.

Speaker 1 Even that guy, you're saying, becomes that much worse when there is this incentive at stake.

Speaker 20 It strains credulity. I don't know if I'm saying that word right.

Speaker 1 I think stunningly you might be. Okay.

Speaker 20 It strains it, though.

Speaker 1 It strains my credulity that you know to pronounce credulity.

Speaker 20 So it strains credulity to believe that someone who is bad at free throws is magically horrendously worse only when there's a chicken giveaway.

Speaker 1 This is where I just need to continue to channel the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and point out that the theater, and it is convincing theater, graphical theater, full of lots of terms.

Speaker 1 The theater you're giving us is kind of small sample size theater. Like I'm looking at the graph, when you say 80% and I say 8 out of 10, I mean we're talking about 10 shots here.
That's not a lot.

Speaker 20 It's 10 shots for chicken. Right.
Because here's the crazy part.

Speaker 20 When it comes to giveaways of any other sort of variety, pizza, ice cream, hot dogs, whatever it is, he shoots his regular free throw percentage.

Speaker 20 But when it comes to chicken, he shoots the absolute worst. And Pablo, this is where all of that content we ran through, we were like, why are we seeing all these videos and clips and stuff?

Speaker 20 That's why, because this guy has a demonstrated connection with a love for fast food chicken.

Speaker 20 I wish I had a Charlie from, it's always Sunday in Philadelphia bulletin board here where I could have some strings and attach all the connecting factors here.

Speaker 20 He loves chicken and he wants to share that love with everyone.

Speaker 1 What does Giannis have to say about all of this?

Speaker 20 Well, Pablo, I had the same question. So I went home to Phoenix to see the Milwaukee Bucks play the Suns to ask Giannis myself.

Speaker 1 So you land in Phoenix, you land back home, and the Bucs are visiting. They're the road team.
There is chicken in the air. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But you want to go ask questions, journalistically responsible questions, of the person that we are theorizing about. How hard was that?

Speaker 20 You know, it wasn't easy, right? Because I don't know if you know this, NBA shootarounds, what they do is they do their practice, their little morning walkthrough on the day of the game.

Speaker 20 But then they don't let the media in until the very end, which allows for players to escape without talking to media if they don't want to.

Speaker 20 And I had been warned that Giannis notoriously does not talk to media.

Speaker 1 He has a reputation. If you're not familiar with the reputation, that that he doesn't, for all the videos we played, doesn't actually like giving time to us journalists.

Speaker 20 And yet, I saw him and I try to catch up with him.

Speaker 1 This is a video of you running through the tunnel.

Speaker 1 That's that patented amino acid.

Speaker 1 Sprinting speed. Just missed him.

Speaker 20 Just missed him.

Speaker 20 We'll get to the bottom of this. They're going to try and sneak him out the back way, but we're going to get to the bottom of this.

Speaker 1 That was that episode of Severance. You're running down hallways that don't go anywhere.

Speaker 20 And so I'm trying to catch up with Giannis, but he's a big guy with big strides. So I did the next best thing.

Speaker 20 When I got to the game later that evening, I went to locker room availability and I tried to talk to one of his teammates about it. I don't know if you've noticed this.

Speaker 20 You know, some of these arenas have a free giveaway if the opposing team misses two free throws, right? Sometimes it's chicken, sometimes it's pizza, something like that.

Speaker 20 Even though Giannis shoots better in the fourth quarter on free throws, when it's the chicken giveaway, he tends to miss those. Why do you think that is?

Speaker 1 I don't think there's any reason for it.

Speaker 20 Shots go in or shots don't go in.

Speaker 1 It's just name of the game.

Speaker 1 I mean, to clarify why the thing we alluded to before, we actually did need to do here, the doctoring, the voice modulating, the blurring of this secret video. Why is this so secret?

Speaker 1 Why aren't we seeing and hearing what you heard and saw?

Speaker 20 Because the moment I asked the question, I was asked politely to leave. They didn't want any questions about this whatsoever.

Speaker 1 The question you asked, as soon as you articulate it, which we did hear, the implication becomes,

Speaker 1 wait a minute, I should answer this very carefully and perhaps not at all.

Speaker 20 There was a weird energy around this. Clearly.

Speaker 20 From

Speaker 20 the approach at Onyana's to entering the locker room to the conversations afterward, all of it felt like the Bucs wanted nothing to do with this.

Speaker 20 And we reached out to Giannis directly through his agent to talk to him. That was rebuffed as well.
Right.

Speaker 20 I mean, we've tried, even the beat writers, by the way, the guys that cover the Bucs on a day-to-day basis, when I tried to talk to them about it, everything was like, nope, don't want to be involved in it because they were worried, I think, like how that would reflect on them.

Speaker 20 This is the part where I said, I'm risking my reputation here

Speaker 1 for you.

Speaker 20 For your show.

Speaker 1 This is where, as I was hearing what was transpiring, I was like, oh, so the, so the Giannis that is the most vocal global ambassador for chicken in this regard is the exact opposite. Right.

Speaker 1 And the general, by the way, the flavor around even the champions of chicken, like, I mean, it's worth pointing out too. Eventually,

Speaker 1 we here at Pablo Torre finds out, we reached out to Margine Gortatz.

Speaker 1 And his response was, what? How would you describe that?

Speaker 20 I won't describe it. I'll just show it to you on the screen.
And so this is his response to our request for an interview. Quote, sorry, guys, but don't really see that laughing emoji.

Speaker 1 With the, with the like sweat bead.

Speaker 20 With the sweat bead on it, exactly. Me talking about chicken, gritted teeth.
Emoji.

Speaker 1 Dot, dot, dot, gritted teeth.

Speaker 20 Pablo emoji. That's not the response of someone saying, hey man, I don't feel like talking about that.

Speaker 1 That's not the guy we saw in the video who was like having a chicken party.

Speaker 20 Right? Like who was requesting that the threshold be lowered on what the chicken giveaway is. This is someone, again, who does not want to be on the record of this.

Speaker 20 And you know what it reminded me of, Pablo? It reminded me of a prior episode of PTFO when we went to go see the haunted hotel in Oklahoma City, remember? Yes.

Speaker 20 And Nate Robinson, who had experienced supernatural activities there, when we reached out to ask him and he said, no, I don't want to talk about that. And he texted something very similar, right?

Speaker 20 Like you can pick up the telltale signs of someone who feels disincentivized to have anything to do with this conversation.

Speaker 1 So, Giannis doesn't want to touch this. The people that we think would want to touch this actually do not at all.
But there is a game that night. Yes.

Speaker 1 And so, what happens when the ball is tipped? An NBA heavyweight matchup highlights the bill on this Monday night with two teams in full fight mode down the stretch.

Speaker 1 It's It's a solid box here in the PHX on Arizona's Family Sports.

Speaker 20 So, fast forward to the fourth quarter, because that's the only part that anyone cares about, right? It's the chicken giveaway, which in Phoenix, by the way, it's called a foul shot.

Speaker 1 You're right, F-O-W-L.

Speaker 20 Yeah, see, it's a double entendre. So,

Speaker 20 Suns are up to.

Speaker 20 Giannis gets fouled. About two minutes, 19 seconds left in the game.
He goes to the free throw line. He misses the first one.

Speaker 20 And then this is what happens on the second move.

Speaker 20 You hear that, Pablo? They're not counting like they usually do. They're not booing.
They are going nuts. And in the corner, I don't know if you saw

Speaker 20 the little Chick-fil-A cow. Oh, I saw it.
Oh, the same cow that was at March and Gartat and Lucy.

Speaker 1 At his chicken party. Yep.

Speaker 20 It's back dancing its ass off. God.

Speaker 20 It could not have been scripted any better.

Speaker 1 I mean, again, rational brain wants to enter the conversation. Okay.
So as much as it's a signal that something that is total proof of your theory is happening.

Speaker 1 I mean, like, it was a, that was a two point. I'm looking at the score.
Yeah. That was a two-point game.
The Bucks badly needed this.

Speaker 1 The whole theory that Giannis is being incentivized because of his love of chicken and because of his love of, frankly, humanity,

Speaker 1 the theory that he's doing this on purpose.

Speaker 1 I mean, again, they need these wins. I mean, why? Why would he do this?

Speaker 20 Well, why would he do it in general, regardless of whether the game is on the line or not? It's a lot of things.

Speaker 20 Maybe it's, again, he loves chicken. He wants everyone to have it.
Maybe it's because, hey, this is my weakness that everyone jeers and mocks me for.

Speaker 20 That turns it to something that makes me a little bit more affable, right? Maybe it's, hey, guess what, Pablo? Ever look at the all-star voting? You know who's number one?

Speaker 20 Not Steph Curry, everyone's darling. Not LeBron James, the greatest player ever, according to some people.
Not Victor Wembanyama, this phenomenon.

Speaker 20 The number one all-star vote guy in the league is Giannis Antidocumpo, who plays for Milwaukee. It's not like everyone in Wisconsin turned out to stuff the ballot boxes.

Speaker 1 Wait, you're saying that Giannis Anto de Cumpo has been using chicken the way Elon Musk has been using money to win elections.

Speaker 20 I mean, look, what I'm saying is this guy is really popular.

Speaker 1 It's a quid pro chicken.

Speaker 20 He's really popular, Pablo, more popular, arguably, by the metrics than LeBron.

Speaker 1 It is, it is a shock. I did not realize that.
That is actually quite shocking.

Speaker 20 And on the other hand, he loves chicken, right? And you bring these two things together. I'm giving opposing fans.
opposing fans. It's one thing to win over 20,000 people in Milwaukee.

Speaker 20 It's another thing to win over 20,000 people in 29 other NBA areas.

Speaker 1 He's campaigning across the aisle.

Speaker 20 Yes. That's basically what he's doing.
He's reaching across and it's working. It's working.

Speaker 1 We're now, we're firmly in the realm of trying to climb into the mind of someone who does not want us to see inside.

Speaker 20 You know, Pablo, there is one person I didn't talk to who could address those things, the inner psyche of Yannis Anadakumpo, who knows him better than anybody on the face of the planet.

Speaker 20 It's his brother. I know.
You're going to have to talk to Thanastis Anna the Nakupo.

Speaker 1 I mean, I guess I can totally believe that you have dragged me to this point, but

Speaker 1 it's time for us to make one more call.

Speaker 1 So, the very first thing that you need to know about the guy I'm about to call here is that he is Giannis' older brother.

Speaker 1 One of five Anadukumbo brothers in all, four of whom, by the way, have made the NBA, which is its own incredible story.

Speaker 1 But Thanassis Anadukumbo, crucially, is the only Anadukumbo brother to have played alongside Giannis.

Speaker 1 Thanassis was a third stringer when they won a title together in Milwaukee in 2021, and the two are so close to this day that Thanasis still lives and works in Milwaukee right alongside Giannis, whom he calls his best friend and his partner.

Speaker 1 And so, while Thanassis's two-time MVP-winning brother would not take a call from Pablo Torre, finds out, most especially during these ongoing NBA playoffs, Thanassis, I was told, actually would.

Speaker 1 Because Thanassis and I also happen to share something very important in common:

Speaker 1 an incredible affection for the truth.

Speaker 1 One of my nicknames is Truth Teller, because if you don't tell the truth, if you don't say that the way it is, they won't listen to you.

Speaker 1 And this is a lesson, it turns out, that Thanassis has been heating at home with Giannis and in locker rooms around the NBA, and also now on his own podcast, which he titled Thanalysis, which is, you know, a pretty good name, got to admit.

Speaker 1 And so at this point, I just decided to ask the NASIS straight up about the truth behind bricking for chicken.

Speaker 1 Is that the one with the free throws? Do they miss free throws? You get the chicken? Bricken for chicken. Bricken for chicken.

Speaker 1 Wow. You know, one time we actually was looking at the jump and chart.
We was trying to get our phones to get the scanner to get the same discount, too.

Speaker 1 Which you may now recall from earlier in this episode with Amin when we talked about that game where Giannis somehow had a cell phone on the bench, was trying to scan that QR code off the Jumbotron to get free chicken alongside everybody else in the building.

Speaker 1 And this memory

Speaker 1 got the NASA's thinking about a different game,

Speaker 1 actually, from a few years ago in Atlanta.

Speaker 1 You want to hear a story? We come in, and this guy had to be 2022 or 2021.

Speaker 1 one of the busy years we come in third unit third string we come in you know trying to trying to finish the game you know as always not the best you know sometimes sloppy, sometimes it's okay, you know, just not the best time to be in, but I'll take it.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm blessed, I'll take whatever I can get. 11 different Atlanta Hawks players have scored here tonight.

Speaker 1 Thanassis going for his first points.

Speaker 20 So I'm shooting the free throws, and I missed the first one, and everybody's going ballistic.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, what? I look around.

Speaker 1 I'm like, why is everybody so hyped? And as you can hear, it's getting very loud because it is foul time. And then, you know, I hit the second for the third i hear this oh

Speaker 1 deflation

Speaker 1 no chicken for you

Speaker 1 shut up and then i see i was like why is everybody what did i do why is everybody was everybody like booing and yelling it's like no it was free food that's why

Speaker 1 the coop rolls

Speaker 1 depriving these atlanta people of much needed nourishment was any part of you Thanassus, if you were aware, if you were aware of the free food you could have given that city,

Speaker 1 is there any part of you that was like, man,

Speaker 1 I wonder what it would feel like if I missed the second one? No, a part of me would have said, make both and I'll buy you guys dinner. I'm not missing a free throws, man.
Dinner's on me. It's okay.

Speaker 1 You know, I don't make my free throws. Well, this is this is the thing I'm fascinated by is that the crowd is trying to root you on,

Speaker 1 but the opposite, right? They're trying to, they're actively trying to get you to miss because the free food thing is a magical lure.

Speaker 1 What I'm curious about is whether you're aware of how much free chicken your brother Giannis has won people around the NBA. So I'll tell you this.
They usually free throws.

Speaker 1 Those free throws come in the clutch. In the clutch, he makes them.
Like he's never, he doesn't miss in the clutch.

Speaker 1 Maybe in the beginning, they don't have that offer in the beginning

Speaker 1 in the game. So I don't know specifically, but I would assume these are definitely giving out like food.

Speaker 1 Definitely. This is the funny thing.
Okay. Mm-hmm.
In the past two NBA seasons, Giannis has had 10 chicken eligible free throws. Okay.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So this is the second crucial free throw with chicken on the line. We call them chicken eligible free throws.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And he's had 10 of them

Speaker 1 and he has missed eight of them.

Speaker 1 So what do you mean? So he gave eight of them. He gave chickens, chicken, bacon chicken to people.
Oh, that's it. He's a philanthropist.
That's good. that's, uh, that's amazing, man.

Speaker 1 Who doesn't love a free chicken? He is the league leader in chicken eligible conversion rate. No one has given the NBA more free chicken in that way than your brother.
He is the Robin Hood

Speaker 1 of free chicken. Wow.
That's good. I'm going to tell him that.
I'm going to tell him. Tell him that.
But, you know, I'm afraid if I tell him, he's going to not miss now.

Speaker 1 He's going to think about it and not give no more free chicken. So I'm not going to say anything.
I'm just going to let it rock. I'm just just going to let it rock.

Speaker 1 What's just funny is that, like, the love you get, though, like the, so we went through and just watched what it's like when you miss the second free throw and you, and you do, when your brother does what you refuse to do because you sank that second one.

Speaker 1 Man, it is like they would have voted him for president. Yeah.
It's just, it's an amazing thing. Even though he's not American.
It was no, like, it was just crazy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're, we, we can get, we're living in crazy times, man. That doesn't really matter anymore.
We can do whatever we want.

Speaker 1 But here's, here's, here's the funny thing. I am now curious.
Do you think there's any part

Speaker 1 of your brother in his mind, deep in his brain, that is hearing the applause and is thinking to himself,

Speaker 1 maybe I should just miss the second one? No, I don't think he's just like me. No, he's not missing anyone.
I'm not going to lie to you. He's just like me.
I don't think he thinks that.

Speaker 1 He's so zero dean. And when I say zero, he's so laser-focused that he's thinking, like, I'm going to make two figures, and it is what it is.
I'm going to do my best of my ability to make him.

Speaker 1 The statistic I have to follow up on that, though, to

Speaker 1 continue this investigation is that we also tracked Giannis's free throw percentage when it came to other types of food that were on the line in promotions. Okay.
So, the non-chicken foods, okay,

Speaker 1 non-chicken food eligible free throws over the past two seasons. Yeah.
With non-chicken eligible shots, he made five of eight. Five of eight.
He doesn't want to give people bad product.

Speaker 1 He only wants to give them

Speaker 1 what they want the most. They want chicken.
That's what they want.

Speaker 1 I don't think there's a bigger truth you could tell, Thanassis, than

Speaker 1 what you just said.

Speaker 1 That people want chicken, and we got to give the people what they want. That's how you build your legend.
That's how you become this female. Just give people what they want.

Speaker 1 Thanassus, Ada Dakumbo, a true truth teller. thank you for solving a mystery that I can now finally have some peace about.
Put the rest, okay.

Speaker 1 Man, thank you so much, Mama. Thank you.
Thank you, brother. Thank you.
Anytime.

Speaker 1 And at this point, there was only one thing for us left to do.

Speaker 1 It was time to summon our intrepid correspondent back into our studio

Speaker 1 for a piece of something else.

Speaker 1 So, Minal Hassan,

Speaker 1 I just have one last thing to tell you, which is that thank you for not bricking this assignment.

Speaker 1 And as your reward,

Speaker 1 we got chicken.

Speaker 20 Okay, all right. So, this is the part where I have to admit: it's not just Giannis who's crazy about chicken and free chicken giveaways.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the least shocking twist of this story is that both of us honestly are starving. Bonus?

Speaker 1 Woo!

Speaker 1 Honestly.

Speaker 1 Flavorful.

Speaker 1 I get it.

Speaker 1 I get it.

Speaker 20 Be honest. I don't know if you're doing it on purpose or not, but it's worth it.

Speaker 1 Sometimes all we got to do is say thanks.

Speaker 20 We have any hot sauce.

Speaker 1 This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark media production.

Speaker 1 And I'll talk to you next time.

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