Very classic story

... personal life.

Yeah.

And that's, I think that's a lot of the value of a sports team is someone who's just genuinely not cool.

Paul Allen could not be less cool, but he-- I went to a Blazer game and he was there with Geena Davis.

That was his date for the night.

That doesn't exist anymore because now we just have trustee, manager trustees like Kushner and Iger, who are actually just sort of occupying, um, successive command positions in these, like, increasingly integrated capital formations, where their job isn't actually to be, you know, you-- kind of like a face of something, but also you're just, you know, coordinating stability and reproduction of an entire, uh, accumulation system so that it can just continue to grow and appreciate infinitely, rather than having a fingerprint on anything that has to do with the team or its image or its quality.

Yeah, maybe.

Let's actually get into, uh, investigating whether Tim Donaghy was in your casino playing cards or gambling or whatnot.

Yeah, I don't think it's a truth-seeking body, right? It's like I used to work at a resort, and they had resort police, and nobody really knew...

I mean, I was a college student.

I didn't, like, look into it deeply, but it was like, is it a real police force? Do they have, like, paid by taxes or are they paid for by the resort? Like, so the resort police would show up if you had a party or if you were, like, you know, sleeping outside or...

And something that would, like, hurt the property values, right? But did they have any actual authority to do anything? Like, I, I don't think so, but they just had to look authoritative enough that they would...

could have a reason to continue existing, right? What they could do is they could exonerate you or they could keep the bad stuff from getting to the newspaper, right? They just make the resort more valuable.

So to me, like, this is the... sports investigations are resort police.

But at what expense? Like, uh, does it feel like the business of the NBA is as good as it's ever been? Or does it feel like, man, we're on the precipice of something?

That's to go to the arbitrator.

That's just Wachtell saying, "Here you are," and then they gotta read this stuff, and then after that it has to go to an arbitrator, and the league has to make its case as to why the punishment needs to be what it is, and the arbitration has to hear from the Players Association, the defense like, "Hey, that's too harsh." And then the arbitrar- like even if we come back with a decision today, we're still probably weeks away from actually finding out what happens to Kawhi Leonard, and I, I just...

I wanna say, man, they've mismanaged this horribly, but I, I also hold in mind that, A, that's partially my fault.

You know, me and Pablo [laughs] like, and David by, by continuing to reveal things on a timeline that they didn't get to set.

[laughs]

... to be like, "Oh, my God, it's..." But to be wealthy despite not really either, A, moving the needle commercially, tickets sold, jerseys sold, merch, whatever, or B, being imminently replaceable in a basketball sense, that's a, that's like a, it's a, a, a, a, a great place to be.

Like, "Hey, I have a job where they could replace me at any time, but I'm still making a lot of money doing it." Or do we want to give the biggest credit to the people most responsible for it? In which case, get rid of the max, and now you're paying these guys what they're worth.

You don't have to worry about all these other things.

But when you see people running around the world and making deals behind the politics, you got to think they're from those top two classes right there.

Yeah, and I think that's right, but I also think, don't give them too much credit.

To the extent that I've had any exposure, they're not super wizards, they're not super villains, they're not movie, they're douchebags.

They're getting away with it because they're, appointed and chosen representatives, like, because we fall for it.

So that's why I think, like, what you're doing is kind of, this is the front line of this battle for America or whatever, right here, right now, because...

Look at us, Steve.

Yeah, it's you guys.

this is the early, late 20s, early 30s? Yeah, this is

So how did that focus land on Marcus Elliott?

I was in this very room, the attic of our home for the pandemic writ large, including, like, when I was infected, I was, like, locked up here, and I just...

Everything was a bummer.

It was, like, just not fun enough.

I...

Writing about the NBA when there was no NBA, I was like, "What am I doing?" And I was doing a little dirty money research and that was, like, the worst thing to fall asleep thinking about.

Um, and I was like, I just want it...

Yeah.