What was the justification? What did the city give as justification for giving that amount for a lease?

Well, this is the explanation I received from a number of people.

Certainly the former city manager, Jack McGrory, who is now the board president of Youth Tennis San Diego, his position is that, you know, the city wasn't using this property.

It was basically just sand.

The entity took on all the risk and all the capital.

to build the tennis courts, and they've been operating it and constructing it and maintaining it for decades now, and that the city wasn't interested in, I don't want to say profiteering, but in making a profit off the property.

They thought the benefit at the time was the public benefit of having a tennis center at no city expense was worth giving up the land for.

Now, were you able to speak with the owners of the Barnes Tennis Center or the nonprofit Youth Tennis San Diego for this story?

Yeah.

Like, that's, that's pretty much where we're at.

And, you know, you, you see the logic in it.

You, you don't wanna mess with a good thing.

You don't wanna mess with the, um, the chemistry.

You don't wanna, uh, crowd the runway for some of those younger players, such as Dylan Harper and still Stephon Castle, um, to, to develop and take their next step.

And, uh, but you did wanna address kinda w- the one glaring hole there at the power forward position, and I think Tobias Harris, um, you know, fills that at a, at a, at a price that, that, that looks good, that works.

Yeah.

How do you explain or encapsulate verbally what has happened post-COVID to this experiential thing that we all seem to be on? It doesn't matter what it costs to get on a plane, we will do it, are doing it, and seemingly will do it forever.

Yeah.

I, I-- that's exactly it.

I think, you know, we all talk about this, that, um, COVID taught us that, you know, things can change, and I, I think there's been a sort of a, a revenge or rebound tourism that's gone on.

Um, uh, New Zealand's always been an attractive destination.

The other thing that's happened, I think, is, you know, is that the government has, has loosened, um, the strings in terms of visas to Australia for certain nationalities, and it's made it easier for them to come to Australia and then on to New Zealand.

So Queenstown's certainly benefited from that.

Heard that, heard that story before, but, I mean, how do you stop them? What, do you stand at the gate at the airport and say, "Sorry, you can't come in"? No one's doing that, are they?

Y- yes.

They're back in the series, I guess.

I mean, you know, it's still, it's still an uphill haul after winning game three.

Like, there's a reason, and we've all written it and said it a million times in the past f- you know, 72 hours, no team in NBA history has lost two finals games at home to start the series and gone on to win the series, and that's still in play.

Like, there's no, there's, there's a reason it's hard.

But you can't get back in the series if you lose game three.

You have to win that game to give yourself a chance, and now they've got it, got it to 2-1, and you can start playing the game, "Well, now if they just do it again on, uh, on game four," and it's even Steven.

... for the San Antonio Express-

Uh-huh.

But this is the third, this is the third time [laughs] in the series where I thought, "Oh, this is over," when Team A has figured out Team B, and it's over.

And it's, it's not over.

But, um, yeah, the Spurs punching back last night was, was really, um, a sight to behold.

And going to that Victor, going back to that Victor shot, um, it's hard to make too big a deal about three points in a 21-point win, but, uh, it, it did kinda feel like things were getting a little shaky there.

The Spurs had had, uh, had had like a, a, an 18-0 run.

They had gotten out to a lead that I think was like 18 points there in the second quarter.

So yeah, the, like I said, the injury doom and gloom has shifted also.

'95.

'95.

Um, and, and it almost felt like we were going too far in that direction.

You know, it seemed like the easy narrative.

Like the, it's the ...

But that's exactly what happened.

I mean, Victor watched Shay hoist the trophy that he thought was his.

Calling it early

Tom, how did you think the guys, uh, around Victor responded down the stretch in the, in that game?

Really well, and, and it was no surprise considering they've played a lot without him.

They've played a lot witho- without a lot of guys this year.

They've always responded well with that tried and true next man up mantra.

But, um, you know, Cassell, uh, Harper, uh, Mr.

Fox, all 20-plus points.

Uh, Cornet came in and played well.

A lot of those guys had never faced a situation like that before, and you wondered how they were gonna respond to that, and that seems like ancient history, doesn't it?

It's been a little longer since Julian Champagny missed a

shot.

So you don't want to be prisoner of the moment, and you also don't want to succumb to confirmation bias.

But yes, this is what we were talking about when we said it's hard for an inexperienced team to navigate the playoffs against teams that have been there and done that before.

And I think my takeaway from last night is both of these teams are really great defensive teams.

And they beat up on each other.

They make it hard to score.

all that was asked to him uh not only in his minutes but the the the cumulative total of his minutes um a lot was asked to him and uh he did not he was not the offensive force that we were used to seeing from him for most of the season and when he's not the offensive when he's not the offensive force and dearon fox isn't that leads to some issues

You need to give me refreshers on all this.

But yeah, coming back from, um ...

You know, when they, when they boarded the flight to Portland, um, you know, in a tied series a few days ago, they really came here with, with, like, two, two jobs on the to-do list.

One was to get one win somehow.

Just, you had to win one game in Portland to get home court advantage back on your side.

And the second box to check was just come back with Victor Wembanyama healthy and cleared, and, um, ready to rejoin the series.

And they accomplished both those things.

Even though these are rookies now, even though these are, these are playoff neophytes, it seems like they, they, they're playing like they've been here before.