The Big Suey: Who Killed The Montreal Expos? (Starring David Samson)

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Speaker 5 Welcome to the Big Sue,

Speaker 2 presented by DraftKings.

Speaker 7 Why are you listening to this show? It's a podcast that seems very similar to the other Dan Lebetard podcast.

Speaker 8 I'm sorry, I'm not going to apologize for that.

Speaker 7 In fact, the only difference seems to be this imaging. I have been tempted in restaurants just walking past tables to grab somebody's prize that if they're just there.

Speaker 7 If that hasn't happened to you guys, I've done it. And now, here's the marching man to nowhere, fat face, and the habitual liar.

Speaker 7 As I mentioned,

Speaker 7 David Sampson and Amin El Hassan have been very helpful to Pablo Torre in helping contextualize what is a thicket of complicated subject matter. And David Sampson joins us now.

Speaker 7 His podcast, Nothing Personal, as I've told you many times, covers terrain by himself that a whole lot of people are not covering. Pablo is way out in front of this story.

Speaker 7 And David, you have familiarity with PR crisis.

Speaker 7 You have a familiarity with scandal and how businesses can handle scandal.

Speaker 7 Have you ever seen your entire history in sports, the documentation that Pablo has that can come this close to feeling like the most damning of circumstantial evidence on proving something is a rule break by a really powerful, rich person and organization?

Speaker 7 Because I just cannot believe the amount of information that Pablo has that has everyone saying by consensus, I miss this kind of journalism. I can't believe how locked down he has this story.

Speaker 11 Well, he's got the sources inside Aspiration and inside the finance department of aspiration. And what the finance department has are documents like bank statements, like investor agreements.

Speaker 11 And what Pablo did, and this is, I took issue with this with Pablo, I don't like going into these tapings and I don't know what he wants to talk about. So I don't have time to prepare anything.

Speaker 11 And Amin and I are just looking at each other with a folder of documents that we can't look at. And then all of a sudden he's rolling and that becomes an episode.

Speaker 11 And so what he enjoys is that mystery box. Hey, look at the surprise of Samson and Amin.

Speaker 11 But what's in those folders, what you're seeing in the episode is my actual reaction to it because we didn't know that it was Dennis Wong who had put $2 million in or 1.99 in December of 22.

Speaker 11 We didn't know the payment that went to Kawhi quarterly for his $28 million four-year no-show contract with Aspiration. And all of a sudden you see it.

Speaker 11 And in real time, you're trying to seem smart while you're live to tape.

Speaker 11 And you're looking at something saying, Adam Silver just met the media saying that the burden of proof is on the NBA and that the public doesn't know what it's talking about.

Speaker 11 And by the way, I've never heard of aspiration. And I'm thinking to myself, God, is he getting bad advice? I can't believe this is what Silver's doing.
And now we've got this information.

Speaker 11 It's game set match to me when it comes to the investigation, but I've seen leagues contort themselves to make a result they want very often, like with steroids.

Speaker 11 So I do believe that there's still an opportunity for the NBA and the Clippers to get through this because they'll just pretend that what Pablo did is not real.

Speaker 7 Okay, I think that's going to be hard to do given what it is that we're about to play for the audience. But before I play more modulated voices, you mentioned Adam Silver.

Speaker 7 I didn't think he had a great week this week in a couple of different places.

Speaker 7 One, the way that he talked about streaming services and that the customer is going to get screwed and the customer's got to deal with it, but also how he handled the Pablo investigation.

Speaker 7 Hold on, David, you'll be able to correct me in a second. Let's get to the Adam Silver sound where he's reacting to not even today's Pablo report, because that was today at 5 a.m.

Speaker 7 And it's more damning. This is before the damning of today's 5 a.m.
report.

Speaker 13 The podcast came out. It was news to me.
I'd, frankly, never heard of the company aspiration before, and I'd never heard a whiff of anything around

Speaker 13 an endorsement deal with Kawhi or anything around engagement with the Los Angeles Clippers. So it was all new to me.
I heard it. I saw some of the follow-up information.
We spoke internally.

Speaker 13 Rick Buchanan, our general counsel, is here who oversees any investigations.

Speaker 13 Rick had a conversation with Steve Balmer, and we quickly concluded this was something that rose to the level that necessitates an investigation. In fact, one that's done outside of our office.

Speaker 13 And again, I would also say I've been around the league long enough in different permutations of allegations and accusations that

Speaker 13 I'm a big believer in due process and fairness, and you need to now let the investigation run its course.

Speaker 7 David went from smiling to laughing. What are you doing?

Speaker 11 I've just, I've heard that clip so many times. I watched it and I talked about it on nothing personal.
It just, it's not credible to me for him to say he's never heard of Aspiration.

Speaker 11 They were on the seat backs of a Clippers game in 2022 at crypto.com arena, number one, number two.

Speaker 11 When there's a $300 million sponsor of a club, which is what Aspiration was, they sponsored the Clippers for over $300 million.

Speaker 11 What the league does in that case is they call on the company and say, hey, you got any more for us? We'd like to do a national deal.

Speaker 11 So there is so much cross-pollination when it comes to the commissioner's office and the teams, when it comes to sponsors and companies, that for Adam to say he's never heard of Aspiration, it just doesn't make sense.

Speaker 11 It would have been smarter of him to say nothing, to say, Wachtell Lipton's investigating. See you later.
Let's talk about the heave rule. Let's talk about the fact that we're a highlight league.

Speaker 11 But instead, he kept going and I don't understand why. And now he's got to wake up this morning and the bat phone's going to ring and it's going to be Dennis Wong putting $2 million in.

Speaker 11 And there is no denying this. This is a fact.
Dennis Wong put $2 million into aspiration and that money was used to pay Kawai Lena.

Speaker 7 When it was collapsing, he couldn't pay the rent. When it was collapsing, he put $2 million in.

Speaker 11 You know, if you want to make a bad investment and throw good money after bad, okay. Dennis Wong had never invested in this company before.
It was Ballmer who had invested 50 million before.

Speaker 11 So Dennis Wong comes in and an LLP and Limited Liability Partnership. Tony, way to go.
But that just means it's named DEA. You want to find something out?

Speaker 11 Could you find out if the E and A in DEA 88 is maybe his wife's first initial and his daughter's first initial?

Speaker 11 Not very original to name your LLP that, but if you look at his family, maybe you'll find what DEA is.

Speaker 11 But it's Dennis Wong, a minority owner of the Clippers, the minority owner who puts $2 million in to a company that has no money.

Speaker 11 And then nine days later, 1.75 of that goes to Kawhi Leonard for a quarterly payment that was late. How does the NBA ignore that, forget what Adam says about burden of proof?

Speaker 11 I think that Adam's going to have to change his mind, and you'll see it happen.

Speaker 7 I don't think you answered directly my question. Have you ever seen in a rule-breaking type of environment, this kind of

Speaker 7 documentation produced by a journalist that is more information that the league has, more information than any of us have, and it's all there in paperwork you can see?

Speaker 11 All there that would be available in public through the bankruptcy filing and then through a source no we were looking for papers like this in baseball a quick marlin story we tried to find out uh with the shohei otani signing we would always try to find out what the angels had promised otani that would have been against the rules we tried to find stuff out on the yankees and the red socks who were doing things with their reporting of revenue so we'd go to games and look around for sponsors that they may not have reported or try to get to the bottom of things, but we could never get things in writing.

Speaker 11 And there were committees who were formed for the sole purpose of trying to make sure teams were being honest. And the NBA has one of those also.
And Steve Ballmer is on it.

Speaker 11 Steve Ballmer is on the audit committee in the NBA, which is responsible for the financial reporting of the teams. So there's great irony.

Speaker 11 But man, I spent a lot of time searching, but Pablo is not my employee, so we never found it.

Speaker 14 David, we're obviously not in a court of law. So the rules are different with the NBA and what they need to do and what they have to do or what they will do.

Speaker 14 But if we were in a court of law and these documents are presented,

Speaker 14 this case is over, right?

Speaker 11 Well, no, there's rules of evidence when you have to go back to who, where these documents came from, how were they secured.

Speaker 11 So there's a chain of custody of evidence, and then there is someone who has to, it can't be Pablo reading this and putting into the record that which his reading of that document is it has to be someone who prepared the document or someone who can speak to the truth truthfulness of that underlying document so there's a lot different rules when you're in real court versus podcast court but man did we have fun in podcast court on pablo show this morning What else was interesting to you about the episode?

Speaker 7 Let's get to the voice modulations here real quick. Please,

Speaker 15 these are also damning.

Speaker 7 He's got seven sources inside of Aspiration. And the way they talk about this, David, my God, it's just such an obvious open secret that everyone knew about.
Here is one of the modulated sources.

Speaker 16 But between those months, when all of this is missing, so September, October, November, and leading up to December, the actual certainty of the company even existing is

Speaker 16 up for grabs at that point. Are we going to get paid as employees? Why does Uncle Dennis keep calling us? We have such bigger concerns that we're thinking about, which is our own salaries.

Speaker 16 Are we going to have to go through layoffs? Where is the money going to come from?

Speaker 16 But lo and behold, Uncle Dennis gets paid.

Speaker 17 So this payment was made December 15th, 2022.

Speaker 17 When was the 20% of the staff laid off?

Speaker 16 The same day.

Speaker 7 Pablo has documentation that just shows that the payment to Kawhi from this bogus tree planting company, it just says right next to it, critical.

Speaker 7 The payment to Uncle Dennis is critical. Let's play the longer sound that offers some of the context around what was going on at this company and just how clear-cut some of this stuff is.

Speaker 16 I knew the name Dennis Wong

Speaker 16 because I got two texts from this very senior,

Speaker 16 this very senior executive at the firm regarding Dennis Wong.

Speaker 17 So inside of Aspiration, Dennis Wong's investment was identified as an investment with the clippers clearly attached as part of the identification.

Speaker 16 Yeah, and I do have another text as well. This is from November 13th, 2022.

Speaker 16 And it says, Wong is Balmer Partner.

Speaker 17 How surprising is it that a new investor would put money in?

Speaker 17 in December 2022 who had not already clearly been deeply invested into the company.

Speaker 16 So it is beyond shocking.

Speaker 16 And I will tell you, I knew that the board, which is Ibrahim Al-Husseini, who's been indicted, and Joe Sandberg, who's been indicted, I knew that they had put money in in December to make payroll and make rent and all that material.

Speaker 16 It is not a rational investment that someone would make.

Speaker 16 So it is very shocking to me that $2 million was made as an investment by Dennis Wong, who in my text is identified as the Clippers, Steve Bomber's partner,

Speaker 16 a week before $1.75 million was paid to Kwan.

Speaker 9 David?

Speaker 11 I think it's important to understand two things with what we just heard.

Speaker 11 One, when you associate Dennis Wong and the Clippers, I'm not using the fact that he got information, this source, she, they, whoever it was, we heard the modulated voice also during the show, was that it said Wong open parens clippers close parens.

Speaker 11 As I've told you, I have in my phone Steve dry cleaner. So I would not be surprised if it was associated.
So people just knew Dennis Wong Clippers. So that's not evidence to me.

Speaker 11 What's evidence is the relationship between Steve Ballmer and Dennis Wong.

Speaker 11 The close relationship that exists when they were roommates back in Harvard, when they are with the Clippers together, building into a dome together, going to games together.

Speaker 11 There is no way with Dennis Wong's daughter working at at the firm. The question is, would he put $2 million in to save his daughter's job?

Speaker 11 Would he put $2 million in because he thought he would save trees? Would he put $2 million in because he was asked to by Steve Ballmer or by his daughter or by Joe Sandberg? All of those are possible.

Speaker 11 But for the NBA's point of view and the investigation,

Speaker 11 The timing of the 2 million that comes in and then goes out to Kawai, that's what's going to interest Wachtell Lipton, the investigators. Why did you put in $2 million at that point?

Speaker 11 And the burden is on Dennis Wong, who could end up being like Ipe, could end up being the fall guy here for this version of Otani.

Speaker 11 He's going to have to say to Wachtel Lipton, I believed in this investment. I believed in helping out my friends, a company that was in need.

Speaker 11 And then it's going to be up to the NBA to decide whether that is rational and credible, because rational is what you need to prove to not have salary cap circumvention.

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Speaker 8 Dan Levatard.

Speaker 11 Tetas.

Speaker 8 Stugats.

Speaker 11 Tetas.

Speaker 8 This is the Dan Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

Speaker 7 I have a number of different questions and I will continue to tell the audience a couple of different things. First of all, Nothing Personal is growing at a very, very fast pace.

Speaker 7 And it is a perfect lead-in to what it is that we're doing. Your timing was terrible, but so was the audio.
So good work by you, Chris. David Sampson's Nothing Personal is

Speaker 7 getting more and more popular, and he's in the middle of this Pablo Torrey Finds Out episode that a lot of people are saying is even more damning than the first one.

Speaker 7 So, I've got a handful of questions. First of all,

Speaker 7 for you, more damning incrimination, that Dennis Wong is a 1% owner and the only other percentage owner of the Clippers with Ballmer's 99% ownership, or the fact that he was Ballmer's college roommate in 1975.

Speaker 7 Which of those two things do you take, which is more damning in terms of what this relationship is and how hard it's going to be for Ballmer to say, I didn't know anything about this?

Speaker 11 E, none of the above.

Speaker 11 The fact that he's the alternate governor, the fact that he's the vice chairman of the Clippers, that means way more to me than whether he owns a percent or not or whether he is his college roommate or not.

Speaker 11 He is a part of the Clippers organization. Definitionally has a relationship with Steve Ballmer.
That proves it more than college roommates. Some people may not even like their college roommate.

Speaker 7 Let me

Speaker 7 say this about the scandal.

Speaker 24 You

Speaker 7 find yourself in the position where you have to handle this today on behalf of the Clippers. You are in charge of doing what's next.
What's the lie you're going to tell?

Speaker 11 I'm going to make sure that media, I'm not letting Steve Ballmer do an interview, and I am deciding I'm going up to Steve Ballmer as his head of Crisis PR and asking whether he is willing to let Dennis Wong wear this.

Speaker 11 Because if he is, then I'm going to the NBA with a settlement offer, which is I put money in and I got duped and conned. No question.
You're not going to get anything more on me on that issue.

Speaker 11 You're not going to get whether or not Kawhi's $28 million was above market or below market. But this Dennis Wong thing, oi, I don't know how to get through that.

Speaker 11 How about if we suspend Dennis Wong for a year?

Speaker 11 How about if you fine the Clippers the maximum amount for appearance of impropriety and you can take away our first first-round draft pick in four years because that's the first one we have.

Speaker 11 And I don't know, Tony, when the next first-round pick is. They traded so many of them to OKC, but I would start negotiating the punishment once Steve Bomber agrees to let Dennis Wong wear it.

Speaker 11 Because the problem is,

Speaker 11 what if Pablo's not finished? What if Pablo has another episode ready to go?

Speaker 15 I didn't even consider that.

Speaker 11 What if he has more and he is doing a torturous release of information for maximum detriment against the NBA and the Clippers and Bomber?

Speaker 11 The only way to stop this from happening is to have a punishment that satisfies Pablo. Is he satisfied today? No.
Does that mean he has more to find out?

Speaker 11 We're going to wait to see, but I would bet he does.

Speaker 25 David, there's two subsequent investigations going on in this studio regarding the investigation into Kawhi Leonard.

Speaker 7 I've texted Ramona.

Speaker 25 One of them Tony is conducting because he thinks he has the motive behind Pablo's investigation.

Speaker 25 And the other is whether or not Steve Ballmer and Ramona Shelburne's interview was actually, in fact, in Bristol or whether or not it was in Los Angeles.

Speaker 25 If we find out that it was not in Bristol, that was in fact in Los Angeles, does that undercut all of Pablo's reporting?

Speaker 11 No, it's just he said it was in Bristol and I happen to know that it was in Bristol, but I'm interested to hear what Ramona says.

Speaker 11 And if you're thinking that Steve Ballmer, Ballmer happened to be a new person,

Speaker 12 wait a minute.

Speaker 7 Are you reporting that you happen to know? Did you report? Did you report it a happen to know?

Speaker 3 There's no way you're going to be.

Speaker 11 Are you reporting that I happen to know that Steve Ballmer did not fly across country, that he may have already been in the Northeast when he went to Bristol?

Speaker 7 Brian's the king of happen to know. Are you alleging that you have a happen-to-know? You are reporting this as a happen-to-know?

Speaker 26 Yes, I am.

Speaker 5 Oh my god, he knows.

Speaker 16 He happens to know.

Speaker 5 Come, everyone. Come and listen.

Speaker 7 He happens to know.

Speaker 11 Well informed.

Speaker 25 Now, I will say this.

Speaker 25 David said that he happened to know that Steve Ballmer was already in the Northeast, which also goes against the reporting that Steve Ballmer flew across the country for the interview.

Speaker 10 Get out of here.

Speaker 25 So I will say that there has been questionable reporting of the situation.

Speaker 7 I have now heard back from Ramona Shelburne.

Speaker 3 Nice. Wow, it's early.

Speaker 18 It is early.

Speaker 7 It is early for her, but Pablo's dropping these episodes at 5 a.m. and making everybody scamper.

Speaker 21 Lord's time zone needs to happen.

Speaker 14 I'm saying.

Speaker 7 Ramona reports that the interview that she did with Ballmer was in Bristol because they were all there for the Hall of Fame. They were all in the Northeast for the Hall of Fame.

Speaker 25 So he didn't make Steve Ballmer.

Speaker 7 Well, but the Hall of Fame is not in Bristol.

Speaker 25 So it's essentially.

Speaker 26 Pablo did specifically say, I made him fly across the country. Wow.

Speaker 11 Which kind of. I would have preferred him not to have said that part because he was already in the Northeast, but it doesn't take away from the show in any way.

Speaker 27 It somewhat discredits him.

Speaker 7 He does take a bit of a credibility hit, but not quite as much as the Clippers are today.

Speaker 7 Because honest to God,

Speaker 7 I want people to understand your level of shock when you processed live on camera the idea of, holy shit, he's got a minority owner here who is really close to Ballmer that makes it impossible to think that Ballmer didn't know what was happening here.

Speaker 25 Should you believe the credibility of the reporter, which now is in question?

Speaker 11 Slightly. So it's the big thing here, Billy, which is when I'm sitting there, I am tempted to not want to, remember my background with Teams.
I don't want to believe the media knows more than I do.

Speaker 11 I don't want to believe the media is smarter than I am. And so I'm sitting across from Pablo and I'm not wearing my nothing personal hat.

Speaker 11 I was wearing my executive hat and I was trying to discredit everything he's been saying.

Speaker 11 That's been sort of my de facto position during the course of recording these episodes because that's how i that's my experience 18 years of no-no you don't know

Speaker 11 so what did i do i opened this document and in real time i'm trying to come up with a possible explanation what can i say that will be credible is the reason that dennis wong put two million dollars in in december of 22 into a company that no one would have invested money in unless it was the two guys who were indicted and i came up with nothing this was in real time.

Speaker 25 Wanted to keep his daughter's job safe.

Speaker 1 His daughter worked there.

Speaker 11 I thought about that. There were tons of layoffs happening, and he knew very well.
Did we find out whether she's the A in D E A? Do we know the name of the family?

Speaker 12 Tony's still watching it up.

Speaker 7 I know you want Tony finds out. It's an important thing that he's trying to get to the bottom of, but we don't have that answer right now.

Speaker 25 David, are you about to be a villain in this Expo's doc that's coming out?

Speaker 11 Oh, that's a funny one. I got notified,

Speaker 11 this is over a year ago. I was called by someone in Montreal and had a conversation in French with one of the producers whether I'd be willing to do an interview about the Expos.
And I said, sure.

Speaker 11 And then when they said, hey, we'll come to your house, I thought to myself, hmm, they're going to travel to me? All right, that sounds good. Then it was nine hours long.
And I thought to myself,

Speaker 11 what's this about again? And I didn't know the title until yesterday. And it's called, Who Killed the Montreal Expos?

Speaker 19 I was like, oh, no. That's a bad sign.

Speaker 11 So I had to call my agent. I had to call my lawyer.
I had to call my kids. And I said, I may have made a small mistake.

Speaker 7 A nine-hour mistake.

Speaker 11 Sitting there just talking about the expos and, you know, the guys and stories, et cetera. And then there's a release from Netflix Canada.

Speaker 11 And I was on to something with strange when I may have gotten an email from Netflix saying, and I thought it was a form letter, but it was an email that said, Dear David, would you be interested in doing media and potentially attending the premiere of a new movie about the Montreal Expos?

Speaker 11 Yeah, why not? I thought that it was from my time in Montreal. I did not even put it together until I saw the release of the name of the movie.
And I said, oh my God, that's what I did.

Speaker 11 Shite.

Speaker 14 So my family is from and still lives in Montreal.

Speaker 11 They

Speaker 14 are huge. I didn't say I lived there, David.
They are huge Expos fans or were huge Expos fans. Dan, whenever my family sees David here on screen with me, they text me vomit emojis.

Speaker 11 Oh, come on.

Speaker 12 Yeah, they do.

Speaker 11 It's 20 years ago. Tell them to get over it.
Wait a minute.

Speaker 7 There's a movie coming out. Who killed the Expos that you're starring in?

Speaker 3 What do you mean? Get over it.

Speaker 7 If they interviewed you for nine hours, I'm sorry. I've got the answer.

Speaker 15 Look, spoiler alert.

Speaker 7 Who killed the Expos? This guy did. Like, spoiler al- If they interviewed you for nine hours, they're blaming you for it.

Speaker 11 This is a potential problem.

Speaker 11 I absolutely get what you're saying. However, I still could end up on the edit room floor.

Speaker 14 Is it not so insulting that

Speaker 14 we're having this conversation about who killed the expos and David's just, like, he's cackling.

Speaker 15 No,

Speaker 7 I assure you, he's the star of this movie.

Speaker 14 It's so insulting, no?

Speaker 25 Star, I don't know.

Speaker 26 But the opening scene of this thing is going to be David sitting down at the seat.

Speaker 7 Yeah, with one of those clacking things.

Speaker 11 I must tell you that I was doing the interview thinking to myself while it was going on, man, I'm doing great.

Speaker 11 And it's sort of like you thought on Survivor when you're doing those confessionals that take a really long time and then they're edited into the show to be like 10 seconds.

Speaker 11 And you're like, wait a minute, I said way more cool stuff, but they only took what I said about this or about that that makes me look like a brain or an idiot or a first guy to be voted out.

Speaker 11 So I'm slightly concerned with how the edit's going to go, but I'll keep in touch. I don't think anyone's going to hear about this movie until just now.

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Speaker 8 Don Lebatard.

Speaker 28 Oh, I like firing people.

Speaker 28 So I take the opportunity to fire whenever I possibly can because I can use it as a learning experience for them and try to help them out and try to point out what they did wrong. But in this case,

Speaker 28 the employee was enough levels below where I was that I did not do the firing, but I had it done within moments of discovery.

Speaker 16 I'm just

Speaker 29 like firing people.

Speaker 29 It's just absurd. It's absurd.

Speaker 8 Stugats.

Speaker 28 I'm talking about people who I fire who deserve it, who have done something that actively requires me to fire them. It is my unadulterated pleasure to do so.

Speaker 8 This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

Speaker 7 Mark Cuban was one of the Pablo Torre

Speaker 7 finds out episodes, and I found interesting the other day that all of a sudden he was being quoted as saying, I had no power when it came to the Luca trade. What did you make of those comments?

Speaker 11 Well, listeners of nothing personal know that we said it the minute the deal was announced, Mark Cuban was rumored that he's going to keep running basketball and he's going to keep being the governor after selling the team to Miriam Adelson's son-in-law.

Speaker 11 Well, really, Miriam Adelson. And I said at the time, there's no way that he can do that.
When you sell the team, you're gone.

Speaker 11 Even these step transactions that we pretend happen, like with the Celtics, in real life, like Wick at the Celtics, see you later. Mark Cuban, done.

Speaker 11 And he wanted people to think he had the power just in case maybe the Mavericks were good. But then the minute they traded Luca, he comes out and says, oh man, I had nothing to do with that.

Speaker 11 And I wanted power, but Nico didn't want me to have power. That's pathetic.
The GM has zero say in a purchase agreement. Zero.

Speaker 11 And in the purchase agreement for the Mavericks, it outlines exactly what the powers will be of Mark Cuban and his retained 27%.

Speaker 11 And it's about as much power as you have, Dan, with the Mavericks. Nico, it's like saying that Mike Hill would have been involved in the sale of the team to Derek Jeter.

Speaker 11 He had nothing to do with it at all.

Speaker 7 I want to play this silver sound that you were making faces, how I framed it earlier, and I want to get your correction on me after I've played the sound for the audience.

Speaker 7 On it feels like Adam Silver saying, you know, tough customer. We're going streaming.
We're going to grab all the dollars and it doesn't matter. The customer doesn't matter.

Speaker 13 There's a huge amount of our content that people can essentially consume for free. I mean, this is very much a highlights-based sport.
You know, so

Speaker 13 Instagram, TikTok, you know, Twitter, you name it, any service, you know, the New York Times for that matter, to the extent that your content is not behind a paid firewall.

Speaker 13 There's an enormous amount of content out there. YouTube, another example that people, that is advertising-based, that consumers can consume.

Speaker 11 You're not allowed to have highlights on YouTube. It gets taken down unless you pay the league for highlight rights.

Speaker 11 For crying out loud, what Adam was trying to respond to was someone asking hey is it really too expensive to watch nba games and his only answer was yeah but let's talk about the fact that you get highlights for free like by watching sports center and highlights are what people are interested in anyway we're a highlight league Boy, season ticket sales people are super excited to have him say that.

Speaker 11 People who work in in-game entertainment, people trying to advertise like Aspiration in the Intuit Dome, trying to say, oh, oh people love going to games adam say no no we just engage with highlights i found that to be again are his pr people like asleep at the switch what is going on so in a sport that is having a lot of trouble over the years in defending the importance of their regular season adam silver sold me on it there you know

Speaker 7 it's uh yeah just watch highlights look samson loves when the commissioners of the leagues don't care at all about the customers and just say so out loud

Speaker 11 you can do it in such a nicer way. You know, they got billions of dollars for their broadcast rights and a deal that's starting.
Their franchise valuations are going up.

Speaker 11 I think what you say there, if you're Adam Silver, is we're trying to make it as easy as possible for you, the fan, to access our games, which is why there's so many more national games and more nights that you can access our games and all the other great content on these streaming services.

Speaker 11 We're doing this for you, the fans. I would rather you've gone that direction than the, hey, we're a highlight league.

Speaker 7 Give Give us your review. We haven't had time for these because there's been so much news in all of your segments that we've been doing recently.
And again, I urge the audience to listen to both.

Speaker 7 Nothing personal, which is growing at a very high rate of speed. And Pablo Torre finds out where they are using some of David's work to accentuate his expertise.

Speaker 7 What are you reviewing for us today in the way of a movie?

Speaker 11 Please tell me that some of you, any of you, have watched Nobody 2.

Speaker 7 Oh, I saw the first one. I saw Odin Kirk is one of the most offensive of the older than 50 action stars, but they're doing it tongue-in-cheek.

Speaker 7 Is Jim from Taxi still in that? Is Dr. Brown from Back to the Future in Nobody 2?

Speaker 11 Did you forget Emmett just now?

Speaker 7 I'm forgetting the name of Christopher Lloyd. Thank you.
I forgot the name of Christopher Lloyd. Yes.
Did we see him?

Speaker 11 And you may have also forgotten Emmett. Dr.
Emmett Brown. Yes, he is, but his part is very small in Nobody 2.
It is so ridiculous. And I'm not an ageist.

Speaker 11 It's not that I think he's too too old or that I don't believe that Saul would in any way engage in this sort of funny action stuff. The problem is they had no story.
And the script is so weak.

Speaker 11 The premise is so bad that really it was Hollywood saying, hey, slap a numeric number two on nobody. Get Odin Kirk here from Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross on Broadway, and let's make a movie.

Speaker 11 It looks like it was shot in like 30 days. And it just looks like they didn't care.

Speaker 11 They were totally mailing it in, and it crushed me because I really thought nobody part one or the first movie, I was totally entertained. It was funny to see Odin Kirk that way by nobody 2.

Speaker 11 I was despondent that I had to watch the whole thing. I just saved you an hour and a half of your life, Dan.

Speaker 7 It's got very good ratings here. It's got

Speaker 7 the Rotten Tomato says it's 78% and 89%.

Speaker 7 People like this movie.

Speaker 11 People like a lot of things that aren't good.

Speaker 7 Okay, but you are taking an unpopular stance on a popular franchise ladies and gentlemen now starring in who killed the expos david sampson uh uh coming shortly uh in documentary form to wherever it is you get your documentaries thank you david see ya uh do you guys know that uh greg cody's anger yesterday was real that Greg Cody

Speaker 7 was prideful and mad about losing soup of the day, at least in part, because you remember he had a a segment. He prides himself on very few things.
Cooking and knowing soup are two of the things.

Speaker 7 Chris,

Speaker 7 how did you feel with your father? He left here on his birthday seething.

Speaker 7 He was not happy how yesterday's show went.

Speaker 26 Yeah, I didn't feel great about it, especially because it was his birthday, and we talked after, and he did, I was expecting to talk to him after, and, you know,

Speaker 26 it stuck with him.

Speaker 1 It was really bad.

Speaker 9 He totally shut down.

Speaker 18 He totally shut down on the show after he lost.

Speaker 21 Fair and square, I might add.

Speaker 15 Wow.

Speaker 26 We had like our Greg Cody show weekly meeting, and his tone was just like, I've had a bad. I'm like, Dad, this is your birthday.
Please don't let this sit with you.

Speaker 6 It's a soup competition.

Speaker 7 Billy, are you with Greg? Do you think we mistreated him? And I don't think Billy thought it was fair and square.

Speaker 25 It was not fair and square. It was the most obvious thing in the world that he was going to lose that soup competition.

Speaker 7 But his soup wasn't as good.

Speaker 22 Because he had the worst soup.

Speaker 9 What are you doing?

Speaker 15 What are you doing?

Speaker 21 Yeah, me, ultra-popular figure on the Dan Lebatard show, show, upsetting Greg Cody. Yeah, the fix was in, Billy Gilles.

Speaker 25 Well, Dan had the deciding vote between you and Greg. It was decided.

Speaker 14 My wife said to me when I got home yesterday and I told her what happened, she said,

Speaker 10 why did you make that sweet old man angry?

Speaker 25 It's a good question. I will also say this.
Chris Cody was on this chain. There was a text chain that was sent.
A tipster sent us a tip. that accused Mike of using HelloFresh in the soup.

Speaker 26 Someone sent me a photo of a HelloFresh recipe that looked exactly like like Mike's soup.

Speaker 21 No, I use a lot of different things. I'm familiar with it.
That's where I was like, ooh, oftentimes I do use that as my source material to see if I like this.

Speaker 22 And then I save the recipes.

Speaker 5 I'm like, let me build this thing out and add to it.

Speaker 26 And my dad defended you in saying there's nothing wrong with using a recipe, but he still went back to the coconut thing. He's like, he can use a recipe, but I didn't taste the coconut.
He was,

Speaker 26 he could not let it.

Speaker 21 He couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that

Speaker 21 this is a different soup.

Speaker 15 It's a subtle taste. Yeah,

Speaker 22 coconut is but a layer of the beautiful soup that I put together.

Speaker 25 So this was worse than the turkey cookoff, huh?

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 26 In terms of his anger, yeah, because I think he actually felt he felt like you beat him that day. He felt like he won yesterday, even though I don't think anyone also agrees.

Speaker 21 He likes you. Like, I got this weird adversarial thing with Greg Cody that's honestly one way.

Speaker 21 I love the man, but it felt like losing to me in particular, especially when he's the soup guy and I've never actually engaged in any of these. I'm Better Than You contests.

Speaker 21 It felt like me beating him felt like it stung him more.

Speaker 14 It felt like he was mad at me too. I don't know if you're aware.

Speaker 3 There's a lot going on there.

Speaker 14 I don't know that he likes me so much. I don't know if you're aware about that.
And I feel like

Speaker 14 it's kind of bullshit, the position that you put me in yesterday, Dan. Like, why did you vote before me? Yeah.

Speaker 26 Because Dan was giving away his vote. It was so clear how Dan was going to vote.

Speaker 14 He was totally putting it on me.

Speaker 21 Yeah, it was obvious that Dan liked one soup more than

Speaker 26 you hadn't really given away. So I was like, let's at least end with.
You know what?

Speaker 21 Have you ever thought about how this makes me feel?

Speaker 9 Have you?

Speaker 18 Have you? Like,

Speaker 21 I knocked that shit out the park.

Speaker 24 In fact, the lime zest wasn't even on the soup.

Speaker 21 And after you guys added the lime zest, afterwards, you're like, holy cow. Yeah, no, this adds another layer to it.

Speaker 21 This goes to another level. You guys are over here trying to taint my hard-earned victory.

Speaker 10 I'm not, you know what?

Speaker 21 There's no incentive for me to continue indulging this show in these activations. You have made me feel bad.

Speaker 15 I love you, Super.

Speaker 1 Oh, no.

Speaker 25 Greg feels great typically after these, so I'm sorry to hear that you feel bad.

Speaker 1 I do.

Speaker 15 I do.

Speaker 24 What you're doing right now is hurtful to me because I worked hard. All right.

Speaker 15 I went to Whole Foods. I was scanning the aisles.

Speaker 24 I was like, no, no, no.

Speaker 15 Let me upscale every ingredient that I can.

Speaker 21 Let me get this to be so quality. I am attaching my name to this.
Let me pour my heart and soul into this. And you know what my extra ingredient was, Billy? Despite your intentions right now?

Speaker 24 Love.

Speaker 10 I wanted you to love that soup.

Speaker 3 I'm going to bring up this conversation.

Speaker 19 Games Najee. Love.

Speaker 6 that soup. It was a damn good soup.

Speaker 25 I will also say this. One of the voters in

Speaker 25 yesterday's contest said after the fact, and I'm trying to remember whether or not spoiler order comes out on Mystery Crate or not, but one of the voters said that they were very much intimidated by Dan and trying to get their vote the way that they thought Dan wanted the vote to go.

Speaker 25 It was Jan. So that's why they voted for Greg.

Speaker 22 Well, I actually think you voted for Greg just because you like Greg.

Speaker 15 That's what I think.

Speaker 21 And forget the votes, Greg continued to perpetuate this lie on the air that he made more soup than me. He did not.

Speaker 21 I made way more soup than he did.

Speaker 25 There was more soup at the end of Greg's.

Speaker 1 That's right.

Speaker 25 That maybe he made more than you.

Speaker 21 No, it meant that people liked my soup more. You continue to do this.

Speaker 14 Why are you so divisive, Billy?

Speaker 1 I'm not. I'm sorry.

Speaker 19 You know what I mean here?

Speaker 21 You make the soup the next time.

Speaker 7 Chris, Billy,

Speaker 7 you...

Speaker 7 Greg Cody's now winless in these competitions.

Speaker 25 Which was mentioned many times before the vote.

Speaker 26 That's what he tried to tell me, my dad, yesterday. He's like, when do I get to win? I'm like, dad, and this show, you're probably 745 and four.

Speaker 6 The only lose, like losses you get around here are these competitions.

Speaker 21 Again, people hate me on this show.

Speaker 19 People love him.

Speaker 21 There's nothing sinister at play here.

Speaker 7 I disagree with you only here. The sinister thing in the fraud in the voting, Chris voted for his dad.

Speaker 4 Chris was lying.

Speaker 7 Chris saw. Chris saw how wounded and pride was.

Speaker 15 Chris wanted a good competition. Chris? Jeremy started voting for Mike.

Speaker 7 Chris, whose soup was better?

Speaker 25 They were both really good. Chris,

Speaker 25 they were different good. Chris?

Speaker 3 You guys are so full of it, man.

Speaker 7 Chris, whose soup was better?

Speaker 15 I liked my dad's soup. I liked both.

Speaker 15 I'm not going to do this.

Speaker 4 I'm not going to let you do this.

Speaker 3 You're trying to vote for my dad. I'm not going to die on other voters.

Speaker 26 Now, if Jeremy had voted for my dad, might I have voted for Mike? Maybe.

Speaker 21 Hey, listeners, it's Mike. Hey, Billy Gill.

Speaker 9 Hey.

Speaker 21 Hey, Billy, as a proud member of your inner circle. Remember when we were hanging out last weekend?

Speaker 25 Oh, yeah, fishtail palms.

Speaker 21 Fishtail palms, great memories we made, kids playing in the pool, and in our hands, a nice ice-cold can of Miller Light.

Speaker 5 It was so hot out.

Speaker 27 I know, but it was so cold in my hand.

Speaker 21 We took that first sip. It was crisp.
It was refreshing. Oh, man, there is nothing like cracking open a Miller Light with your crew and your inner circle bones.

Speaker 27 Hell yeah.

Speaker 21 We fist bumped.

Speaker 9 Whether it's, we actually really did. Whether it's that touchdown.

Speaker 25 It didn't make a sound, but it just started.

Speaker 3 Bam! Boom.

Speaker 21 Whether it's that touchdown you you didn't see coming or just arguing about fantasy lineups, you and I did plenty of that. Miller Light has been the taste that you can depend on for 50 years.

Speaker 1 Brewed for flavor.

Speaker 21 With simple ingredients, rich toffee notes, and that iconic golden color. And here's a kicker, Billy.

Speaker 9 What?

Speaker 18 It's just 96 calories. What?

Speaker 9 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.

Speaker 21 The original light beer since 1975 and still hitting different five decades later. Miller Light, grape taste, 96 calories.

Speaker 21 Go to millerlight.com slash Dan to find delivery options near you, or you can pick up some Miller Light pretty much anywhere they sell beer. It's Miller time.
Celebrate responsibly.

Speaker 21 Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces.