Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another edition of Nerdificent. I am
Speaker 1: one half of your host Danny Fernandez, sitting across the
Speaker 1: virtual space for me as always, if you want to
Speaker 1: Wayne coming through here. We're still figuring out. I swear
Speaker 1: to God. My team every week is like, Danny, how
Speaker 1: can we make it sound like you're not calling us
Speaker 1: from a pay phone. We did it this week, though
Speaker 1: you'd be surprised. I'm recording on an iMac I have.
Speaker 1: It's not like I I don't know what's with me
Speaker 1: in technology. I have an Apple, I have a MacBook
Speaker 1: Air and I Mac. I have the newest generation of
Speaker 1: the uh iPhone. But apparently my insta was still like
Speaker 1: everyone was like this girl has boost Mobile. It was
Speaker 1: like not working well. I don't know. I swear to God.
Speaker 1: If I could pay more money for better things, I would.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. What I'm doing tech is not.
Speaker 1: I'm trusting the Apple to just do the things. But
Speaker 1: apparently I don't know. Yeah now, yeah, I'm running off
Speaker 1: of the I nine K. You know. I got that
Speaker 1: t I graphics card, thirty two gigabytes of RAM like
Speaker 1: your boy mess and with a monster. Uh don't come
Speaker 1: from me. I don't know I have. Is there something
Speaker 1: higher than five G? That's what I have? No, No,
Speaker 1: you your your your phone is fine. It's just you you're, you're.
Speaker 1: It's just like just latency. And I think just naturally Instagram,
Speaker 1: the way that they kind of take the data in
Speaker 1: the speeds, it's gonna be hard to do it. You
Speaker 1: used to be back before, you know, before these times,
Speaker 1: you used to be able to like rig it up
Speaker 1: and start doing like lives and stuff from a desktop.
Speaker 1: But they've created workarounds and stuff, which I'm like that
Speaker 1: would have come in handy now, you know. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: someone else, perfect segue, that's been doing a lot of lives,
Speaker 1: a lot of streams. Our friend who's a guest on
Speaker 1: the pod today, comedian writer host um Dog Lover that
Speaker 1: is Mr Mark ellis what and honor is? This is
Speaker 1: my third time on the show. I think, so I'm
Speaker 1: like getting close to that Tom Hanks five time host
Speaker 1: SNL Club. Oh yeah, oh yeah, you're you're, you're you're
Speaker 1: up there. I mean, you're you're still trailing I think
Speaker 1: behind Hector Navarro. Hector Navarro is he's putting in the
Speaker 1: mileage the time, but you're definitely a close second. You're
Speaker 1: I guess you'd be more who Who's Who's after Tom Hanks.
Speaker 1: I think it might be like then I might be
Speaker 1: like a Steve Martin or Alec Baldwin. I mean that's
Speaker 1: not bad, it's it's it's good company to be in.
Speaker 1: And this one, I was a little hesitant to come
Speaker 1: back on the show because I'm like, Okay, well, I've
Speaker 1: already exhausted my matching the gathering now which with you
Speaker 1: all my comic book movies, my star Wars, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything else about nerdy stuff that much.
Speaker 1: And then, just like a bolt of lightning, like Travis
Speaker 1: Walton and Fire in the Sky, Danny Fernandez hit me
Speaker 1: up and she's like, well, how about the last dance?
Speaker 1: And I was like, can your podcast be nine hours?
Speaker 1: Because I have so much to talk about. Well, it
Speaker 1: was so funny. We were talking to our super producer,
Speaker 1: Joel Monique and uh I was telling her that you.
Speaker 1: She was like, man, this guy can contains multitudes because
Speaker 1: you are a what I call a sports nerd. You
Speaker 1: can rattle off stats and baseball stats, football and basketball stats,
Speaker 1: even golf, which I think you're the nerdiest person for
Speaker 1: being into but you can rattle off so many stats.
Speaker 1: When I am with you, you're always like, oh, this
Speaker 1: reminds me of super Bowl fifty five or no, what
Speaker 1: super Bowl yet? Now we're well into the fifties, Danny,
Speaker 1: and okay, but you'll be like, this reminds me of
Speaker 1: super Bowl thirty five when they were down by blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, and then like you just rattle that stuff off,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, this is very nerdy. We
Speaker 1: should go into sports nerds. Um, yeah, this is interesting
Speaker 1: because I think that, well, at least for golf, golf
Speaker 1: is where the intersection of sports nerds and old person meets.
Speaker 1: And I've gradually becoming that, But before I totally commit
Speaker 1: to just playing week golf and drinking corpse light all day,
Speaker 1: there is a little bit of athleticism still in me.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I grew up playing sports, but I
Speaker 1: also grew up being into nerds stuff. And I think
Speaker 1: that when you're at both of those seemingly different worlds,
Speaker 1: you actually realize that they are one and the same.
Speaker 1: Because it's usually something that hooks you when you're a kid.
Speaker 1: It's something that you manifest into reality. In a way
Speaker 1: that either you believe Luke Skywalker's real or you think
Speaker 1: that Michael Jordan actually cares about your opinion, you know,
Speaker 1: or you think for me, it's like I really believe
Speaker 1: that the Washington Men's professional football franchise actually thinks that
Speaker 1: they that I can hear them and they can hear
Speaker 1: me when I'm cheering for them, like I actually feel,
Speaker 1: from three thousand miles away, I'm having an effect on
Speaker 1: that team. And if you've been paying attention to the
Speaker 1: last twenty five years, you know I could be doing better.
Speaker 1: But it's just one of those things where we just
Speaker 1: it's I think being a nerd is caring about something
Speaker 1: and sometimes that's just knowing a lot, is being able
Speaker 1: to quantify in numbers or some other way. But the
Speaker 1: bottom line is it's something that you really invest a
Speaker 1: lot of time and energy and love in and for me,
Speaker 1: sports has always been there. Well, I you know, got
Speaker 1: fascinated because it felt like everybody was tweeting in film, Twitter,
Speaker 1: in um all aspects of Twitter, sports, Twitter, nerd Twitter.
Speaker 1: Everyone was tweeting about this documentary The Last Dance, And
Speaker 1: it was so cool because it felt like the Super
Speaker 1: Bowl or like when a live event happens that everybody
Speaker 1: starts tweeting about and it was all over my Twitter,
Speaker 1: and for people that don't know it was a documentary,
Speaker 1: it's still coming out every weekend, uh too mini series
Speaker 1: by ESPN that covers the final season of the iconic
Speaker 1: Chicago Bowls what was essentially their last dance that Phil
Speaker 1: Jackson turn coined or named and I just thought like
Speaker 1: it had a bunch of never before seeing footage and interviews,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this is just so even the stats,
Speaker 1: like the stats that will get into on Scottie Pippen.
Speaker 1: But even if you aren't a sports person, I still
Speaker 1: heavily recommend checking this out. It's the same thing I
Speaker 1: feel about with rock and roll documentaries that I'm not
Speaker 1: super into that, but I find all the behind the
Speaker 1: scenes drama incredibly fascinating because I'm also very petty, and
Speaker 1: so heavily recommend watching this again, even if you're not
Speaker 1: a sports person, should just learn about the lore and
Speaker 1: the legacy behind this team. Yeah, go ahead of you.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what makes it so fun to
Speaker 1: talk about on this episode, because yeah, I just only
Speaker 1: i'd say, recently started caring about sports been a nerd
Speaker 1: most of my life, and my sports knowledge has been
Speaker 1: like is my l a team winning then, and I'm
Speaker 1: that I'm in, you know, i'd show up and now
Speaker 1: I just kind of wanted to have like a more
Speaker 1: in depth look. And when you start to look beyond
Speaker 1: just like who's winning and losing, especially in basketball, you'd
Speaker 1: noticed the kind of like chess match that front office
Speaker 1: can be in sports. And if for for for people
Speaker 1: who are like, what what what did you say? So
Speaker 1: the UH and and Mark, you can correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, if I'm wrong, because I might be getting
Speaker 1: some of these terms wrong. But front office is pretty
Speaker 1: much like the organization of these UH sports teams and
Speaker 1: the wheeling and dealing and how they how they kind
Speaker 1: of help the team both build and you know, make
Speaker 1: trades and deals. And that was actually a big portion
Speaker 1: of the first part of this doc was that debate
Speaker 1: of who wins championships? Is it the players themselves? Is
Speaker 1: it the organization? If you went on Twitter, it seems
Speaker 1: like everyone agreed it's both parts equally. But the big
Speaker 1: kind of tug of war was kind of Michael Jorge
Speaker 1: being in his bag and being like, no, y'all not
Speaker 1: gonna run this team after I just did all this
Speaker 1: work for you. And it's so interesting because people have
Speaker 1: been comparing that to Lebron right now with the Lakers,
Speaker 1: which was very important to me because at this time
Speaker 1: everyone was a Michael Jordan fan. I don't care what
Speaker 1: anyone says, at this time in your life, you were
Speaker 1: a Michael Jordan fan. And all these people being like
Speaker 1: people not knowing about Scottie Pippen, I'm like, shut up.
Speaker 1: I had a Scottie Pippen poster in my room of
Speaker 1: him Duncan. Yes, it was because I couldn't get a
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan's one, but I still had the Scottie Pippen poster,
Speaker 1: and Piven was just as important, just as intact role
Speaker 1: to me. So that's what was interesting about this doc
Speaker 1: and what really, uh, I think warranted this episode one
Speaker 1: just so it could be a breather. We don't have
Speaker 1: to talk about just superheroes all the time, and this
Speaker 1: is kind of like the biggest pop culture thing happening
Speaker 1: right now besides Final Fantasy seven when you make an
Speaker 1: animal crossing, but we can do that later. Thank god,
Speaker 1: I don't have to talk about Final Fantasy. I remember
Speaker 1: I remember my buddy getting Final Fantasy for Super Nintendo
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, and and and it was
Speaker 1: like three days later and I called him and I
Speaker 1: was like, hey, How's Final Fantasy is a good And
Speaker 1: He's like, I haven't finished reading the instruction book like yet,
Speaker 1: so I haven't started the game. I'm wait, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about. I'm just probably went outside and playing
Speaker 1: basketball instead. Stop talking to that guy. But like when
Speaker 1: when when you talk about the Last Dance and what
Speaker 1: kind of a phenomenon has been, it's partially due to
Speaker 1: the fact that we're all kind of, you know, staying
Speaker 1: inside and staying distant, and we need outlets, we need
Speaker 1: new things to talk about online, and it certainly feels
Speaker 1: that void. But I think that the effect that the
Speaker 1: Last Dance is having on so many different demographics, if
Speaker 1: you will, is the same effect that the nineties Chicago
Speaker 1: Bulls had, Because with the Last Dance, you have people who,
Speaker 1: like Danny said, our film nerds are people who are
Speaker 1: looking at from the documentary the making of Standpoint. You
Speaker 1: have sports nerds like me, you have stats nerds. You
Speaker 1: have people who just want to get into this thing
Speaker 1: for the first time or walk down memory lane. Like
Speaker 1: I was talking with super producer Joel about it before
Speaker 1: we went to live, and I was thinking about her
Speaker 1: old man watching this because she's from Chicago. Her dad
Speaker 1: was such a Bulls fan, and so he's watching this
Speaker 1: and it's just like a kid in a candy store,
Speaker 1: I imagine. And for me, it's like the nineties Chicago
Speaker 1: Bulls were like that too, because you did not have
Speaker 1: to be a big sports fan to know who the
Speaker 1: Bulls were, to especially know who Michael Jordan's and for
Speaker 1: the most part, who Scottie Pippen was and if he to.
Speaker 1: To bring it back to the front office, when we
Speaker 1: talk about a front office in terms of sports, you're
Speaker 1: generally referring to two people, the general manager and the
Speaker 1: owner of the team. The owner of the team obviously
Speaker 1: is the person who owns and has the final say
Speaker 1: on everything, but usually they see a lot of the
Speaker 1: team responsibilities and the team finals. Say to the general manager,
Speaker 1: who is the person responsible for putting together a collection
Speaker 1: of talent on the field or in this case, on
Speaker 1: the court that's gonna win you a championship. And you
Speaker 1: can look at teams throughout history, I would say that
Speaker 1: you take a team like my favorite basketball team is
Speaker 1: the San Antonio Spurs, And you can look at that
Speaker 1: and you can say, okay, well, Tim Duncan is an
Speaker 1: all time player, Tony Parker and Montage Nobody were really good.
Speaker 1: But how much did the front office take a responsibility
Speaker 1: and have a hand and then winning five championships? I
Speaker 1: think a great deal. And when you come to the
Speaker 1: Chicago Bulls, I think that Jerry Krauss, who was the
Speaker 1: GM of the Chicago Bulls during their run, wanted more
Speaker 1: credit than he was getting. But I tend to agree
Speaker 1: with Michael Jordan's where this is not a normal team
Speaker 1: that you put together. Sure they had to add pieces
Speaker 1: like Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant b j Armstrong, but
Speaker 1: you had Michael Jeffrey Jordan's on the court, you always
Speaker 1: had a chance to win a championship. And that's never
Speaker 1: been lost on fans. And I think that that's why
Speaker 1: a lot of this narrative that is in the first
Speaker 1: two episodes of The Last Dance, which is what we've
Speaker 1: seen so far, is anti Jerry Krauss, just because he
Speaker 1: just could not get out of his own egos way
Speaker 1: well something, oh something, I was gonna say to Mark,
Speaker 1: is uh, we were talking about this that essentially, to me,
Speaker 1: it's so fascinating to have a GM that wants so
Speaker 1: much credit to meet. I was saying that it reminds
Speaker 1: me of a producer for a film. Now. Normally, when
Speaker 1: if we look at something like Endgame, you know the
Speaker 1: big time actors that got people to the movie, and
Speaker 1: you know the directors, the Russo brothers, but you don't
Speaker 1: really pay attention to the producers. Now, they make millions
Speaker 1: of dollars, but they know what they're getting into when
Speaker 1: they choose to be behind the scenes. You are not
Speaker 1: the all Star. You're not the Phil Jackson, the Michael Jordan's,
Speaker 1: the Scottie Pippen. So no, people aren't like rushing up
Speaker 1: to you, and you're not getting all of the credit,
Speaker 1: but you kind of know that. And on the back end,
Speaker 1: you're still making millions of dollars and that's what you
Speaker 1: get into it for. That's and and and look, everybody
Speaker 1: grows up. If you're a sports fanily you grow up
Speaker 1: and you have dreams of playing the sport that you
Speaker 1: love professionally. I have not given up on those dreams
Speaker 1: just yet, but I think that gms and owners, they
Speaker 1: probably grew up loving this stuff. When you realize that
Speaker 1: you just were not blessed with a body that's going
Speaker 1: to be able to handle the rigors of playing a
Speaker 1: professional sport, you tend to look for the ways that
Speaker 1: you can get involved in it. And for a good
Speaker 1: Nerd comparison, the front office of a basketball team is
Speaker 1: a lot like what the role Kevin Figi serves in
Speaker 1: the Marvel Cinematic universe, or who Kathleen Kennedy is now
Speaker 1: in the world of Star Wars taking over for George Lucas,
Speaker 1: where they have the final say. But you're not necessarily
Speaker 1: paying the money for a ticket to go see Kevin fight.
Speaker 1: You're Kathleen Kennedy. You're going to see the product that
Speaker 1: they put before you, which has been great in both
Speaker 1: those cases and was certainly possibly the best ever with
Speaker 1: the nineties Bulls. I know, it does feel like it's
Speaker 1: one of those things to use the same analogy that
Speaker 1: it's like if you're in the know, you're in the know,
Speaker 1: and then if you're phenomenal, then people will know you know,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's not common knowledge for someone to be
Speaker 1: thrown around a name Lake Figy as much as people
Speaker 1: do with the m c U. But it's because at
Speaker 1: at certain point you know it's one thing too. And
Speaker 1: I think to use that same analogy bringing butts in
Speaker 1: the sea eats. But when you can sit back and
Speaker 1: look at the way I fight, you was able to
Speaker 1: build this like multi movie arc and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's when. That's beyond the writer, that's beyond the director.
Speaker 1: That's the person behind the scenes being able to communicate
Speaker 1: with all these moving moving parts and make it happen.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those things where I think it
Speaker 1: just comes to have the ego argument where it's like,
Speaker 1: if you just keep doing good work, people will notice
Speaker 1: you don't have to argue what your star player. You
Speaker 1: don't have to get in their face and and try
Speaker 1: and like you know, almost destroy your own team just
Speaker 1: because you need notoriety that bad And oftentimes the ones
Speaker 1: who are looking for it the most are the ones
Speaker 1: who Loki don't deserve it. I think that Jordan's is
Speaker 1: such a rare case too, because he had the talent
Speaker 1: on court, but then also off the court. He was
Speaker 1: such a transcendent figure that he could lead and he's
Speaker 1: the owner of the Charlotte franchise now, and so you
Speaker 1: know that he had those aspirations, but he I would
Speaker 1: impair him to Darth Vader because Darth Vader was such
Speaker 1: a badass in the galaxy far far away. He could
Speaker 1: pull out a lightsaber and defeat anyone in his prime.
Speaker 1: But he was also part of the front office of
Speaker 1: the Empire. He was making decisions, he was calling some shots,
Speaker 1: and so that's what a leader on your team is.
Speaker 1: And there's different ways to do it. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can be Michael Jordan's kind of oversee everything and and
Speaker 1: tell the front office, hey, I'm not playing for a
Speaker 1: coach other than Phil Jackson. Or you can do more
Speaker 1: of the Tim Duncan model, which is speaks softly to
Speaker 1: carry a big stick. Both great leaders of men on
Speaker 1: the court, but Jordans really transcended what he was doing
Speaker 1: on the court to off it. And I think that
Speaker 1: when you have a player of his caliber that comes
Speaker 1: up and starts ruffling feathers are looking into GM in
Speaker 1: the eye, so to speak. I think that some gms
Speaker 1: would get very squirreling, and that's certainly what happened with
Speaker 1: Jerry Krauss. But look I'll also defend Jerry Krauss on
Speaker 1: a couple of different fronts here, because Jerry Krauss did
Speaker 1: have a huge hand and putting this championship team team together,
Speaker 1: and he also made some decisions that may not have
Speaker 1: been popular at the time or even now, but I
Speaker 1: think we're necessary. Case in point is when Michael Jordan
Speaker 1: broke his foot early in the second season. He was
Speaker 1: held out, even though he felt ready to come back
Speaker 1: and play. He was held out because there was the
Speaker 1: small risk that if he breaks this thing again, he's
Speaker 1: his career is over. And that's what you see in
Speaker 1: sports now is how cautious teams are with allowing players
Speaker 1: to come back from injury. The team has the final
Speaker 1: say so. In baseball, if you're a pitcher and you
Speaker 1: just have Tommy John surge and you're coming back, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if you're throwing a no hitter into the
Speaker 1: seventh inning. If you have hit your pitch count, you're
Speaker 1: going out of the game. You see the same thing,
Speaker 1: and the risk reward was evident as early as a
Speaker 1: couple of seasons ago when Kevin Durant got hurt, came
Speaker 1: back to early and then got hurt again. In the
Speaker 1: playoffs and then had to sit out this entire season.
Speaker 1: So I think that they were a little ahead of
Speaker 1: the curve and telling the athlete, we know you want
Speaker 1: to play, but you have to sit down and you
Speaker 1: have to let us tell you when and the doctors
Speaker 1: tell you when it's safe for you to come back
Speaker 1: and play. Mark, I was going to say, before we
Speaker 1: dive in further, can you explain to people as best
Speaker 1: you can of as far as how this team came together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I was just gonna say, you can really tell
Speaker 1: how much I love this stuff because I haven't like
Speaker 1: tried to crack a joker, be funny at all. It's
Speaker 1: so serious and anybody who knows me knows that I
Speaker 1: can crack jokes about sports, but like, I get into
Speaker 1: this stuff. So if you came here for comedy, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I'm failing everyone, but sorry, Danny. Continue now give everyone
Speaker 1: a shorthand essentially of how we got to uh when
Speaker 1: with Jordan's joining in eight four, kind of what that
Speaker 1: looked like, and then when they finally got the team
Speaker 1: to be the iconic nineties Bowls. The NBA was not
Speaker 1: always the huge international cash count. Social media lightning rod
Speaker 1: that it is now. It's popularity really took a big
Speaker 1: shot in the arm when Larry Burden, Magic Johnson entered
Speaker 1: the league going into the decade of the eighties, and
Speaker 1: so now you had stars to root for. And what
Speaker 1: that really proved and shot at light on is that
Speaker 1: there's teams with young players that are hungry to win championships,
Speaker 1: and then there's also teams with players who are letting
Speaker 1: the little amount of fame that they have derailed them
Speaker 1: and get them into bad situations. There the drugs and
Speaker 1: alcohol that were being abused by players in the NBA
Speaker 1: in the late seventies early eighties was so it would
Speaker 1: like it's it's hard to quantify how much of an
Speaker 1: effect that actually had on the game play, on the
Speaker 1: flow back in that day. And then Larry Burton Mackew
Speaker 1: Johnson come along, and these are clean guys who just
Speaker 1: want to form a team and win championships, and so
Speaker 1: that's what they were doing for most of the eighties. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan's who's had a chip on his shoulder since
Speaker 1: tenth grade when he got cut from the varsity high
Speaker 1: school basketball team. He gets to u n C. He
Speaker 1: hits a game winning shot to win the national Championship
Speaker 1: as a freshman, and then he becomes one of the
Speaker 1: best college players in the country. Once he goes into
Speaker 1: the NBA draft in the mid eighties, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a different league, but there's still a lot
Speaker 1: of leftover from the drug and alcohol abuse that I've mentioned,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that was happening with the Chicago
Speaker 1: Bulls team that he got drafted too. And so, as
Speaker 1: he mentioned in the documentary, he was never really a
Speaker 1: part of that scene. He just wanted to play basketball,
Speaker 1: sleep and wake up and play more basketball. And so
Speaker 1: kind of cleansing that palette in Chicago and in the
Speaker 1: NBA is something that Magic, Larry and then Michael coming
Speaker 1: along really had a saying, because if you wanted to
Speaker 1: compete with these guys and you wanted to break the
Speaker 1: Celtics Lakers run of winning championships, you had to step
Speaker 1: up and run a clean program. And then the Bad
Speaker 1: Boys Pistons came along, the Detroit Pistons in the late
Speaker 1: eighties finally unseeded both the Celtics in the Eastern Conference
Speaker 1: and then the Lakers in the Western Conference to win
Speaker 1: two championships, and they were the bullies on the block
Speaker 1: that the Bulls could just never get passed. It was
Speaker 1: Isaiah Thomas and Dennis Rodman who used to play for
Speaker 1: the Pistons, Joe Dumars, Bill Lamb Bireau, such great cast
Speaker 1: of great players and thugs. It was a good mix
Speaker 1: of two. Bill Lamb Beer was the biggest thug you'd
Speaker 1: ever want to come across, and the Bulls just could
Speaker 1: not get past them. And the NBA is littered with
Speaker 1: a history of a young, upstart team keeping trying to
Speaker 1: keep pace with the champion, and eventually the David the
Speaker 1: Chicago Bulls in this case, becomes the goliath. Once you
Speaker 1: unsee the current champion, then you can have your run.
Speaker 1: And that's what the Bulls did to a level that
Speaker 1: we had not seen since the Boston Celtics of the sixties.
Speaker 1: We have to take a break right now. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: my Rampa. Now, that was the perfect thing, I will say.
Speaker 1: When I was listening to that, because I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I'm I'm you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: nerd purist. I was like, oh no, no, how these
Speaker 1: how how these nerds are going to take to the
Speaker 1: Bulls episode. But hearing you geek out about the Bulls
Speaker 1: in a way that only a nerd cam is is
Speaker 1: like where I'm like, if you have complaint, So you
Speaker 1: just need to listen to that rant because that's enough
Speaker 1: because I don't. I don't even like old basketball sets.
Speaker 1: I'm like whatever, but hearing that I got way too hyped,
Speaker 1: especially here in my team Lakers, back in back, getting that,
Speaker 1: getting that that shine and the origin of this Lakers v.
Speaker 1: Boston rivalry. But we do have to take a break,
Speaker 1: and when we get back, we're gonna dive deeper into
Speaker 1: the Bulls, talk more about it, and don't worry for
Speaker 1: all our even though I want to also apologize every time.
Speaker 1: I'm like our nerves because truly, uh nerds and sports
Speaker 1: nerds are one and the same. Like there, I think
Speaker 1: that's a myth. There's so many people even in the
Speaker 1: discord who always want to talk sports and stuff, so
Speaker 1: it's there. It's no such thing. They're just people who
Speaker 1: are who are usually into the thing. If you're nerdy
Speaker 1: about one thing, it's usually I I think I've set
Speaker 1: this either on this pot or another pod before. But
Speaker 1: nerd is a personality trait, and I think that if
Speaker 1: you're nerdy about like a video games or magic, you're there,
Speaker 1: you have the capacity to be just as nerdy about
Speaker 1: sports because it's more of a personality trait than like
Speaker 1: a one one like a thing that you do. And
Speaker 1: if you don't believe if he, then just come join
Speaker 1: us at any fantasy football draft and you're just gonna
Speaker 1: see nerds. I just know. Look, you put fantasy in
Speaker 1: the title. I'm in it, and I'm not that into sports,
Speaker 1: but I will play the hell out of a fantasy
Speaker 1: sport because now you're in my lane. We're talking numbers
Speaker 1: and and and and building team. We're in. But we'll
Speaker 1: be right back after these messages, and we are back
Speaker 1: still talking to Mark Ellis about the nineties Chicago Bowls
Speaker 1: team and the Last Dance documentary that is still dropping
Speaker 1: every weekend on ESPN. So Mark, what we're so we
Speaker 1: have we have Michael who's being added. Now they had
Speaker 1: to switch out some players in order to build him
Speaker 1: the ultimate team. Can you talk us through that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was such a running dialogue, I know in Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan's own mind. And then it became something of national
Speaker 1: fanfare that Michael Jordan was this great individual talent, but
Speaker 1: could he ever lead a team to a championship. Because
Speaker 1: you have to remember back when Michael Jordan was drafted,
Speaker 1: the rage in the NBA was the inside game was
Speaker 1: who has the tallest, most dominant player, which is why
Speaker 1: you had guys like Moses Malone, who was a great rebound,
Speaker 1: who was the first person to go right from high
Speaker 1: school into the league when that was never done. And
Speaker 1: then you had guys who were hakimla Juan was drafted
Speaker 1: before Michael Jordan was because he's a great center and
Speaker 1: that was the centerpiece of your team. And then Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan's is this guy who was just so competitive, has
Speaker 1: such a fire that realizes that he has everything within
Speaker 1: himself to win. He has the ability, as we saw
Speaker 1: when he dropped sixty three points on the Celtics, which
Speaker 1: is still an NBA playoff record for a single game,
Speaker 1: but he didn't have the surrounding pieces necessary to get
Speaker 1: him to the next level. And so then, partially in
Speaker 1: thanks to the front office Jerry Ryan Storf and Jerry Krause,
Speaker 1: they got Scottie Pippen Uh They drafted him out of
Speaker 1: Central Arkansas. He actually got came to the Bulls on
Speaker 1: a draft night trade with the SuperSonics. They also picked
Speaker 1: up very valuable, underrated point guard in my opinion, b
Speaker 1: j Armstrong, Horace Grant, Bill Wennington. These are this not
Speaker 1: necessarily the centerpieces of the team, but their cogs that
Speaker 1: are vital in the machine in order to win a championship.
Speaker 1: And then you go through some other Jordan highlights is
Speaker 1: that there's this famous shot at Michael Jordan hitting a
Speaker 1: game winning shot over the Cleveland Cavaliers Craig Elo in
Speaker 1: the playoffs, and Jordan hits the shot and he pumps
Speaker 1: his fist three times and almost looks like in the
Speaker 1: shot from the angle that he kicks Craig Giggle in
Speaker 1: the face. He did not kick Craig Giggle in the face.
Speaker 1: It's just Craig Giggle was very close and it looked
Speaker 1: like that. However, people get that confused because that team
Speaker 1: did not win a championship. That team ultimately lost to
Speaker 1: the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference finals. And then
Speaker 1: they finally knew that they could beat the Pistons when
Speaker 1: they had all the pieces in place, once Phil Jackson
Speaker 1: became the coach and they learned, oh you know what
Speaker 1: they're gonna try to outmuscle us. We need to all
Speaker 1: get bigger, and Jordan had a huge change in his body,
Speaker 1: as it's Scottie Pippen. From the time they got into
Speaker 1: the league until which is when they won their first championship,
Speaker 1: they got bigger, they got stronger, they got tougher physically
Speaker 1: and mentally, and that's what you need to win a championship.
Speaker 1: In What better way to win your first championship than
Speaker 1: to knock out the Pistons in the Eastern Conference playoffs
Speaker 1: and then when you get to the finals, you run
Speaker 1: into Magic Johnson and the Showtime Lakers trying to get
Speaker 1: one more championship out of their Grade eighties run with
Speaker 1: head coach pat Riley, and they just could not get
Speaker 1: past the Chicago Bulls. There's an iconic Jordan's layup where
Speaker 1: he switched his hands, maybe unnecessarily so, but it's a
Speaker 1: great highlight, and that is from that first championship game
Speaker 1: that they were able to pull off the Bulls. Ever
Speaker 1: since then have been this iconic franchise that we talk
Speaker 1: about when we talk about the greatest teams in sports history. Well, Mark,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say it was crazy scene Magic in
Speaker 1: that documentary being like Michael Jordan's this is back, you know,
Speaker 1: back then, being Michael Jordan's is the best player in
Speaker 1: this league, Like you're talking about yourself, You're talking about
Speaker 1: all the other players and your teammates. And I just
Speaker 1: think that takes that's such a level of respect to
Speaker 1: have other players be like, this is the best player.
Speaker 1: It's cool because Magic and Larry knew that Jordan did
Speaker 1: not have the pieces around him to win a championship.
Speaker 1: So maybe it's a little bit easier to be that
Speaker 1: effusive with your praise when you know that this guy
Speaker 1: is not gonna be able to beat you in the
Speaker 1: playoffs when it's team versus team. But I think that
Speaker 1: they had to look at the writing on the wall
Speaker 1: because Larry was playing for the Celtics and Jordan dropped
Speaker 1: forty nine and sixty three on them in his second season,
Speaker 1: and Magic Johnson is watching this young kid do things
Speaker 1: that have never been done before. And Magic had a
Speaker 1: unique insight into the competitiveness of Michael Jordan's because Magic
Speaker 1: Johnson's teammate on those Showtime Lakers was James Worthy. James
Speaker 1: Worthy was the Scottie Pippen to Magic Johnson's Michael Jordan's
Speaker 1: on the Lakers. James Worthy played with Michael Jordan's at
Speaker 1: the University of North Carolina. He was the big star
Speaker 1: on the team that you're Jordan was a freshman, and
Speaker 1: they went on to win the championship. So James Worthy,
Speaker 1: as he's quoted the documentary, he knew from the first
Speaker 1: month that Jordan was on campus that this is gonna
Speaker 1: be the best basketball player on this team. And I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of that transcended into the NBA
Speaker 1: and NBA guys started to take note and like, look,
Speaker 1: our team might be able to beat his team, but
Speaker 1: one on one, nobody's touching this guy. Um. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say another thing that Michael Jordan's said in the documentary.
Speaker 1: He said, whenever they speak Michael Jordan, they should speak
Speaker 1: Scottie Pippen. Why do you think that Scotty doesn't get
Speaker 1: the same amount of praise. I think that Michael Jordan's
Speaker 1: was such a huge overshadowing figure, not just in terms
Speaker 1: of what he could do on the court, but also
Speaker 1: all the marketing and endorsements. City had his shoe brand
Speaker 1: to this day, and he's been retired for almost twenty years,
Speaker 1: the Air Jordan brand of shoe still out sells every
Speaker 1: other basketball player's shoe line combined, and it's not even close.
Speaker 1: He had the endorsement with Gatorade, with McDonald's, with all
Speaker 1: these different brands, with Haynes, and he was the star
Speaker 1: of the team for that reason. And I think it
Speaker 1: also helps Jordan's cause that he just got the Chicago
Speaker 1: a couple of years before Scottie Pippen did. And you
Speaker 1: always need that complimentary player though, You always need that
Speaker 1: person riding in the sidecar while you're driving the motorcycle.
Speaker 1: And Scottie Pippen is so well cut out for that
Speaker 1: role because he is a little soft spoken. He he
Speaker 1: is somebody who doesn't necessarily have to be an alpha
Speaker 1: male in order to be a dominant presence on the court.
Speaker 1: Scottie Pippen is one of the best two way players
Speaker 1: in basketball history. As as talented as he was offensively,
Speaker 1: he was a lockdown defender. And so I think that
Speaker 1: it's fair for people to say that when you mentioned
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan, you should also bring up Scottie Pippen. But
Speaker 1: I don't think it's necessary because I think that Jordan
Speaker 1: would have found a way to win at least a
Speaker 1: couple of championships without Scottie, but those six championships that
Speaker 1: they won, there's no way that that happens without Scottie Pippen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's just the way things are.
Speaker 1: Just remember, you know, you're you know, everyone's everyone. You know,
Speaker 1: everyone's gonna forget about Ringo every now and then. And
Speaker 1: not to compare Scottie to Ringo, but like you know,
Speaker 1: there is a beat there, there's the Beatles as a whole,
Speaker 1: but then everyone remembers John Lennon the most. And that's
Speaker 1: just how um to just fandom works. And I think
Speaker 1: that's why, and that's luckily for most people that that
Speaker 1: can make or break you. I mean, just to go
Speaker 1: back to what we were talking about earlier with the
Speaker 1: front office like that, I think that is what got
Speaker 1: to them is how people were saying, like Jordan's he's
Speaker 1: he's making you know, they like they almost made Jordan's
Speaker 1: his his praise go beyond just him on the court,
Speaker 1: but him off the court. And I think that's when
Speaker 1: it started rubbing them the wrong way. And people want it,
Speaker 1: They're like just do and be like, well if we're
Speaker 1: talking about front office, don't forget me. And and I
Speaker 1: think that happens where if you're just confident in yourself
Speaker 1: and the numbers on the board, then you know, the
Speaker 1: people who know will know and you can keep getting
Speaker 1: those rings, you know, because I think we're seeing we
Speaker 1: see we saw a little bit of that. If we
Speaker 1: talked about recent teams in the Warriors, how you know,
Speaker 1: people were starting to get in their feelings because it
Speaker 1: was Curry that Curry that the Clay never worried about it,
Speaker 1: and of course they got talked about together with the
Speaker 1: Splash brothers, but mostly it was Curry m clay was
Speaker 1: confident in himself. But you have people like k d
Speaker 1: getting started starting to getting his feelings using burner accounts
Speaker 1: to talk smack uh you know, and and that's all ego. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say for people that don't know what
Speaker 1: if he is talking about Kevin Durant was caught having
Speaker 1: a burner account as many honestly many of them have
Speaker 1: where he was like responding to someone and forgot to
Speaker 1: close out of his Kevin Durant official account. Um wild Mark.
Speaker 1: I wanted to say before we move off of uh,
Speaker 1: Scottie and getting paid. I know the second episode in
Speaker 1: the documentary really talked about how he was almost embarrassingly
Speaker 1: underpaid for how great of a player he is. However,
Speaker 1: um our friend Jack Moore, who's a showrunner of Dear
Speaker 1: White People, a great guy. He tweeted this. Scotty was
Speaker 1: definitely underpaid for most of his Bull's years, but he
Speaker 1: did make over one million for his career. Now, Mark,
Speaker 1: you and I were talking before this, and that was
Speaker 1: also had to do with a change in the NBA
Speaker 1: regarding TV appearance money. Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, TV rights are really what fuels a
Speaker 1: economic boom in any sort of league, whether it's the
Speaker 1: NFL or the NBA. Is that once you have a
Speaker 1: collective bargaining agreement, which is where the owners and the
Speaker 1: players come to an agreement each union says, okay, this
Speaker 1: is a fair share of our pie going forward, a
Speaker 1: lot of that is fueled by what the TV rights are.
Speaker 1: How much money is being poured into this league from
Speaker 1: TV who wants to broadcast your games? And so that
Speaker 1: TV boom for the NBA didn't really happen when Scottie
Speaker 1: Pippen was signing that contract. He just didn't have the
Speaker 1: foresight and even blame Scott I think his agent didn't
Speaker 1: have the foresight to say, look, you're locking into a
Speaker 1: deal that is eighteen million dollars with a lot of money. Okay,
Speaker 1: but he locked into a seven year contract that he
Speaker 1: signed and so the owner Jerry Ryan Store from the
Speaker 1: GM Krause were not inclined to change that because they
Speaker 1: had Scottie Pippen committed for seven years. Now towards the
Speaker 1: end of that, once the TV money had come in,
Speaker 1: I think it would have been very fair of the
Speaker 1: front office to say, hey, Scotty, we know how valuable
Speaker 1: you are. You've won three championships with us, especially because
Speaker 1: George had left, and so it's like, well, now Scotty's
Speaker 1: the guy, so we want to reward you. But it's
Speaker 1: just not the way business was done back then. We
Speaker 1: we are inundated with player mobility and players being able
Speaker 1: to choose their destiny in and that just was not
Speaker 1: the case that you weren't able to be a free
Speaker 1: agent like what Lebron did in two thousand nine with
Speaker 1: a decision, or what Kevin Durant died when he went
Speaker 1: to the Warriors, or when he left the Warriors. Players
Speaker 1: now will go to a new team that they choose
Speaker 1: and they'll sign a one or max two year contract.
Speaker 1: And the reason why they do that it's twofold one
Speaker 1: because after that period, if they don't like where they are,
Speaker 1: they can go somewhere else. Also, after that time period,
Speaker 1: the TV right money is going to come in again,
Speaker 1: and they're probably gonna be making a lot more money
Speaker 1: because the max contract you can sign for has been elevated.
Speaker 1: So I love that players have the freedom and the
Speaker 1: ability to take their own career into their own hands.
Speaker 1: That was not the case back in the nineties when
Speaker 1: Scotty and Michael were coming about. I do blame Scotty's agent.
Speaker 1: I blamed the front office for not being more forward
Speaker 1: with just wanting to renegotiate his contract and keeping a
Speaker 1: star player happy. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: the business was different in the nineties and Scotty's team
Speaker 1: just did not have the foresight to see where the
Speaker 1: NBA was going. If you, I don't know if this
Speaker 1: bothers you, but I see a lot of you should
Speaker 1: have read the contract. Twitter is what I'll call them,
Speaker 1: and I feel they have such little empathy for where
Speaker 1: these artists and athletes are in their lives. Scotty was
Speaker 1: talking about how his brother was in a wheelchair, his
Speaker 1: dad had a stroke and was also in a wheelchair.
Speaker 1: I forgot how many brothers and sisters he had, and
Speaker 1: he just wanted to make sure that if he got injured,
Speaker 1: which he could, which he did actually get injured and
Speaker 1: set out for a little bit. But if he got injured,
Speaker 1: he would be able to cover his family for life
Speaker 1: and so but I don't know, I know you see
Speaker 1: a lot of that if he too. When it comes
Speaker 1: to a lot of artists and hip hop artists, that
Speaker 1: people have no empathy for them for signing the contract,
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I I um. I call them just a
Speaker 1: subset of rules Twitter, which are just a bunch of
Speaker 1: people on Twitter who who who people who aren't them
Speaker 1: should follow the rules is generally how they tend to act,
Speaker 1: and it really comes the lack of empathy comes from
Speaker 1: just pure jealousy. That's what it is. Is they see
Speaker 1: this person at an opportunity for a lot of money,
Speaker 1: and even though they got screwed out of way more money,
Speaker 1: the fact that they've reached that much money has caused
Speaker 1: them to not have any empathy and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: well you should have did this, you should have did this,
Speaker 1: and have this feeling of of how how much better
Speaker 1: they would have did Now. We don't even want to
Speaker 1: get into the fact that these are the same group
Speaker 1: of people that if they're late to McDonald's breakfast, they're
Speaker 1: going to complain about how it should be longer than
Speaker 1: ten thirty they're gonna complain about I mean, and I
Speaker 1: think that's just, uh, we're seeing that a lot not
Speaker 1: I know, some people are like, oh, this is an escape,
Speaker 1: but this is an actual ample comparison and something to
Speaker 1: think about it. It's just watch is watching the people
Speaker 1: who are complaining and protesting about wanting to open up
Speaker 1: the states. But all this time has been talking about
Speaker 1: how people who who are arrested for way too long
Speaker 1: for selling wheat that is now legal, should have just
Speaker 1: followed the rules. Why are they doing it? How um,
Speaker 1: how black people were killed by the cops when honestly
Speaker 1: they didn't do anything. They should have just followed the rules.
Speaker 1: And it kind of has opened my eyes of these
Speaker 1: like rule people, they don't actually care about the rules.
Speaker 1: That's just that's just an excuse that allows them because
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I feel like everyone
Speaker 1: is human and to get to a point to have
Speaker 1: that complete lack of empathy, you need some kind of
Speaker 1: ground and you need a way to justify it. And
Speaker 1: rule in these fake rules that don't really that they
Speaker 1: never believe applied to them is how they get there. Uh.
Speaker 1: And rules and and and rules. Uh. Rules Like whenever
Speaker 1: you anybody who is that beholden to rules, just lets
Speaker 1: me know. They have no memory of history. They don't
Speaker 1: know how the world works. They just want people making
Speaker 1: decisions for them. Because all of our history and all
Speaker 1: freedom we've achieved has been by breaking the rules. The
Speaker 1: rules used to say that black and white people couldn't
Speaker 1: get married, the rules used to say that people can
Speaker 1: hold own slaves. The rules you know have been have
Speaker 1: been in place. So now next time you want to
Speaker 1: uphold rules, just think about who places them rules and
Speaker 1: who those rules actually benefit and protect and from. For
Speaker 1: most of the sports history, the rules have been in
Speaker 1: favor of ownership of the front office and because players
Speaker 1: were basically treated as commodities. Now you might have a
Speaker 1: nice personal relationship with a couple of your players and
Speaker 1: go fishing or something, But when it came down to
Speaker 1: business that you were on a team and that was
Speaker 1: the team you played for until you're retired for the
Speaker 1: most part, until they didn't think you were good anymore,
Speaker 1: and then they either cut you, you retire, or they
Speaker 1: trade you to something. Somebody was probably somebody younger if
Speaker 1: they're if they're smart. And then in the nineties that
Speaker 1: started to change, largely because of the popularity of the NBA,
Speaker 1: largely thanks to somebody like Michael Jordan's and so now
Speaker 1: you have players who all should be thanking people like
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan's and like Scottie Pippen who were in the
Speaker 1: NBA at that crucial time when the they had the
Speaker 1: NBA and NBC music, and you had Bob Costas doing
Speaker 1: the games, and it just became this bigger and bigger thing.
Speaker 1: And then ESPN had Sports Center all the time, they
Speaker 1: started putting NBA games on it. It just became this
Speaker 1: national thing. Do you know that in the early eighties,
Speaker 1: even when the Boston Celtics were beginning their championship run,
Speaker 1: the NBA finals were on tape delay on the West coast,
Speaker 1: so it would air live on the East coast and
Speaker 1: it would be a three hour delay on the West coast,
Speaker 1: so you did not know when the East coast knew
Speaker 1: who was the champion of the NBA. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: that going on today? I mean people with Twitter, Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, people will be cussing people with sport. You
Speaker 1: think it's bad if you if you found out that
Speaker 1: that Han Solo doesn't make it out of the Force
Speaker 1: awakens before he saw the movie, imagining hearing that magic,
Speaker 1: Johnson started as center and then hit a hook shot
Speaker 1: to win a game in the final. I mean, it's nuts.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I was gonna say, because we were
Speaker 1: talking about Scottie's awful agent, but Jordan's agent, David Fulk,
Speaker 1: he actually had. I find this really fascinating the entirety
Speaker 1: of his career from start to finish, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: how often does that happen? That's crazy that he really
Speaker 1: his agent really looked out for him and rode that
Speaker 1: wave all the way until he became who he was
Speaker 1: when he retired. Yeah, I mean, you're you're talking to
Speaker 1: a guy who has had like what six seven agents
Speaker 1: already in my career doing stand up, so it is
Speaker 1: very rare to have that kind of relationship. But look,
Speaker 1: when when your client is Michael Jordan's, you you take
Speaker 1: the phone call at three am, doesn't matter. You take
Speaker 1: the phone call and you build that relationship because you
Speaker 1: know how valuable that client is. Both it's your bank account.
Speaker 1: Then you also know, if you're David Fowk, that what
Speaker 1: you can do for Mike. And so you saw Mike's
Speaker 1: face on on all these billboards all over the place,
Speaker 1: on TV and commercials, late night appearances. He was just
Speaker 1: he was such a transcendent personality. I mean, the ad
Speaker 1: campaigns that came along with him just they just stuck
Speaker 1: in your head. Is still to this day, people know
Speaker 1: be like Mike. You know that it's just something that
Speaker 1: that hit culture at the right point that it was
Speaker 1: a super talented guy who we initially fell in love
Speaker 1: with because of how athletic he was. You know, he
Speaker 1: he was winning dunk contests and jumping from the free
Speaker 1: throw line and having all these insane things. But then
Speaker 1: when he started winning ampionships and changing his game, it
Speaker 1: also changed his image a little bit and he became
Speaker 1: everybody's best friend, even if that wasn't who he was
Speaker 1: behind closed doors. Necessarily, he had such a great charisma
Speaker 1: when he wanted to turn it on. And that's what
Speaker 1: the world fell in love with, I wanted to say.
Speaker 1: Besides Michael Jordan, David Falk has represented more than one
Speaker 1: hundred other NBA players, and it's generally considered to be
Speaker 1: the most influential influential player agent the NBA has ever seen.
Speaker 1: Wild He's he's the you know, um, he'd be the
Speaker 1: Jerry McGuire, I guess of of the NBA. And then
Speaker 1: you have agents who represent NFL players. You have people
Speaker 1: like like Lee Steinberg and and and those kind of
Speaker 1: guys that that also pushed forward. They pushed the envelope
Speaker 1: when it comes to player freedom, player contracts, and what
Speaker 1: players are are allowed to do as far as endorsements goes.
Speaker 1: So it all goes hand in hand with with the
Speaker 1: audience being there, and we all showed up for it,
Speaker 1: and we're still showing up for it. As the numbers,
Speaker 1: I'm sure the ratings for the last dance are insane,
Speaker 1: and it's just when you get waiting in a bottle
Speaker 1: like that, you want to take advantage of it. We
Speaker 1: have to take another really quick break and then we're
Speaker 1: going to hop back into more of the nineties bulls
Speaker 1: right after this and we're back. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: those messages, but it's time it's more nerd difficent here
Speaker 1: with Danny Fernandez Mark Ellis. We're talking about the Last
Speaker 1: Dance and those you know, Chicago Bulls. It's just such
Speaker 1: a to think about. And I smile when when I
Speaker 1: think about the term the last Dance, which is what
Speaker 1: Phil Jackson coined their final championship run in. But leading
Speaker 1: up to that, I mean, they had won five championships,
Speaker 1: and they had a different core for three championships and
Speaker 1: then for the next three championships because when they started winning,
Speaker 1: when they beat the Lakers, like I said, and then
Speaker 1: they the next year they beat the Portland Trail Boys,
Speaker 1: was in finals, and that's where you see that Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan hitting five threes in the first half of I
Speaker 1: think it was Game two, and he just does that
Speaker 1: shrug to Clifford Robinson world, I don't know why I'm
Speaker 1: this good, but I am this good. And then you
Speaker 1: go to them beating uh in the third championship, they'd
Speaker 1: beat Charles Barkley and the Phoenix Suns, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: there's so many great moments in that but John Paxson,
Speaker 1: who was a role player sharp shooter for the Bulls.
Speaker 1: He hit the game ceiling shot to defeat the Sons.
Speaker 1: And then when you go to the next three championships,
Speaker 1: you have still Michael and you still have Scottie, but
Speaker 1: Horace Grant was no longer there. B J. Armstrong was
Speaker 1: no longer there. They add in Ron Harper who came
Speaker 1: over from the Clippers, who had a lot of talent.
Speaker 1: You add Steve Kerr, who is now the head coach
Speaker 1: of the Warriors, but he was kind of the John
Speaker 1: Paxson role playing the sharpshooter. And then you had this
Speaker 1: rebounder who had already had two championships and he went
Speaker 1: by the name of the Worm, Dennis um. So with
Speaker 1: Robin though, I feel like I was going to say,
Speaker 1: I know, and the thing it was like kind of
Speaker 1: like taking the risks that they were willing to take.
Speaker 1: How did he fare in the team? How long was
Speaker 1: he there for? He was there for all three championships
Speaker 1: that they won. When Michael Jordans came back from playing baseball,
Speaker 1: which we can getting into that in a little second
Speaker 1: to but Dennis Rodman when he was playing for the
Speaker 1: for the Pistons. He was not known as this like
Speaker 1: larger than life personality, weird kind of maybe headcase, locker
Speaker 1: room cancer. He was just known as a hard working,
Speaker 1: blue collar great rebounder. And then he got a couple
Speaker 1: of championships, and I think that he struggled, as he
Speaker 1: has openly admitted to with some mental health issues. And
Speaker 1: so once the Pistons disbanded and they broke up, I
Speaker 1: think it broke his heart. I think that he wanted
Speaker 1: to play on the Bad Boys Pistons forever for his
Speaker 1: entire career. And then you figure out that the NBA
Speaker 1: is a business, and Isaiah and Lamb Beer and these
Speaker 1: guys are going to retire before you do. And so
Speaker 1: then Rodman started to act a little more outland. Edition
Speaker 1: started to be more about himself and than his personality,
Speaker 1: and he would have all these crazy outfits and dye
Speaker 1: his hair and all this stuff that was very controversial.
Speaker 1: In the mid nineties, he went to the San Antonio
Speaker 1: Spurs and it wasn't a great fit because David Robinson
Speaker 1: was their leader. And David Robinson literally went to the
Speaker 1: Naval Academy. His nickname is the Admiral and He's an
Speaker 1: all star m v P caliber of talent, and so
Speaker 1: him and Dennis Rodman would clash often in the locker room,
Speaker 1: and at that point it was like, Okay, well who
Speaker 1: can Dennis play for. That's gonna be able to maximize
Speaker 1: his talents while limiting the off the court antics. And
Speaker 1: then you say, oh, of course the Chicago Bulls can
Speaker 1: take this chance because they have Michael Jordan. That's another
Speaker 1: reason why if you're Jerry Cross, you have to realize
Speaker 1: that Michael is not a normal star. He is the
Speaker 1: rare kind of player that can put any other player
Speaker 1: on his team in their place, even somebody as dominant
Speaker 1: of an alpha as Dennis Robin was. He knew that
Speaker 1: when Michael Jordan's speaks, you have to listen, and so
Speaker 1: Jordan being able to harness Robin's personality and channel it
Speaker 1: into just hard working. There were still the answers, there
Speaker 1: were still the distractions, but on the court, it was
Speaker 1: all business for Rodman. It didn't matter if he was
Speaker 1: out in Vegas all night the night before partying and
Speaker 1: he got to practice five minutes before they started and
Speaker 1: he was hungover, he still would give an a effort
Speaker 1: on the court. And that showed. I mean, he was
Speaker 1: the leading rebounder for the team all three seasons and
Speaker 1: he's in the Hall of Fame because of his rebounding ability.
Speaker 1: Can you tell the people about speaking of how Michael
Speaker 1: likes to put people in their place, the story that
Speaker 1: happened between him and Corey Robinson. This is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite, uh mythological tall tales and actually there's a
Speaker 1: couple of YouTube videos documenting it. So, uh, Corey was
Speaker 1: his kid out of Oregon State who the Bulls drafted,
Speaker 1: and he was a pretty good scorer in college. And
Speaker 1: he was playing in the season following Michael Jordan retiring,
Speaker 1: and he was talking to Randy Brown, who was still
Speaker 1: on the Bulls. He was a teammate in one Champion
Speaker 1: Ships with Michael and he was talking with Randy Brown.
Speaker 1: He said that he could beat anybody one on one.
Speaker 1: He said he could even beat Michael Jordan one on one.
Speaker 1: And Randy Brown was hanging out with Jordan one time,
Speaker 1: telling him about this cocky kid who said he could
Speaker 1: take Jordan one on one. So Michael Jordan's this is
Speaker 1: a full year and a half after he retired. During
Speaker 1: the next Bulls training camp, just shows up at the
Speaker 1: Chicago Bulls facility, shows up in his sweats that adorn
Speaker 1: his name, and he figures out which one is Corey,
Speaker 1: and he says, come here, I want I want to
Speaker 1: teach you something. And he says we're playing one on
Speaker 1: one right now, and Corey doesn't really know what's happening.
Speaker 1: All the other players kind of gather around and Jordans
Speaker 1: takes him to school. He does every movie. He tells
Speaker 1: him what he's gonna do before he does it, and
Speaker 1: he still does it. And he basically embarrasses this kid
Speaker 1: nine different ways and puts him in his place. And
Speaker 1: that's the competitive drive of Michael Jordan is that you
Speaker 1: do not cross Mike. And there's so many different moments
Speaker 1: like that that you can YouTube. Some of them you
Speaker 1: can just hear the tall tales and other ones. There's
Speaker 1: another one where he was just kind of going through
Speaker 1: the team was going through the motions. Mike never went
Speaker 1: through the motions. But Mike was struggling a little bit
Speaker 1: in a game against the Grizzlies, and it didn't matter
Speaker 1: at all. Who cares about the at that time, Vancouver Grizzlies.
Speaker 1: Someone on the Vancouver Grizzlies bench made the mistake late
Speaker 1: in the third quarter of saying something and letting Mike
Speaker 1: hear it. Mike went off in the fourth quarter, brought
Speaker 1: the team back from like ten down. They ended up
Speaker 1: winning by ten, and he just once he got that, look,
Speaker 1: you better get out of his way. And I love
Speaker 1: the competitive drive that that guy brought each and every
Speaker 1: night because he had that that philosophy that yeah, he's
Speaker 1: he's an insane competitor, he's got a psychopathic desire to win.
Speaker 1: But he also knew that there's probably some kid that
Speaker 1: it worked hard or his parents worked hard to get
Speaker 1: him a ticket to the game. And this kid, it's
Speaker 1: his first and maybe last time getting to see Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan's in person, and you cannot let that kid down.
Speaker 1: And I love that about Mike wanted everything the kid thing. Wait,
Speaker 1: what Michael John don't care about no kid? Well, it
Speaker 1: was fascinating because I think they might have talked about that,
Speaker 1: or maybe we talked about that mark that like I
Speaker 1: think it wasn't necessarily kids, but like kind of what
Speaker 1: you said, that it might be that person's first time
Speaker 1: ever seen him, and he wanted to always show out
Speaker 1: and show up. Yeah, it's he's He was definitely cognizant
Speaker 1: of his own legacy, and I think that that legacy
Speaker 1: took a little bit of a bruise in some people's
Speaker 1: eyes when he retired the first time he retired, and
Speaker 1: he retired shortly after his father was murdered. His father
Speaker 1: was found dead and it was shooting, and people to
Speaker 1: this day don't really know what happened. They don't know
Speaker 1: if there was a random drive by, if there was
Speaker 1: a target. And Michael Jordan's always was would cite his
Speaker 1: dad is such a huge influence and inspiration in his life.
Speaker 1: And I think that when he decided to retire from
Speaker 1: the NBA and try to go play Major League baseball,
Speaker 1: a lot of us because baseball was just adds first
Speaker 1: of lof and Michael Jordan used to play baseball, And
Speaker 1: I think that that's a little bit of that is
Speaker 1: is winning your father's approval, even posthumously. And there's the
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory that the commission in the NBA, David stern Uh,
Speaker 1: forced Michael Jordan to retire because there was some sort
Speaker 1: of unpaid gambling debts that Jordan's racked up and the
Speaker 1: only way to clean this thing up is to have
Speaker 1: Jordan leave the league. And I just don't buy any
Speaker 1: of that because if there's, if there's any sort of
Speaker 1: gambling debt that Michael Jordan had racked up, the best
Speaker 1: way to pay that off is to have Michael Jordan's
Speaker 1: keep playing basketball because that is where the money is.
Speaker 1: So I can people imagine that Mark people have tagged
Speaker 1: me in that um like I'll do stuff on Instagram
Speaker 1: like tell me a secret, and people will tell me
Speaker 1: that secret. But they don't say that he racked up debt.
Speaker 1: It was more that it was just illegal gambling and
Speaker 1: they had to reprimand him in some way and made
Speaker 1: him sit out, and that's why he went to play.
Speaker 1: It's wild, but there's like a whole set of people
Speaker 1: that believe that theory. It is, yeah, And and I
Speaker 1: would give more credence to the theory that you know
Speaker 1: that as you know, as tough as it is to
Speaker 1: speculate on something that's a tragedy in your family, that
Speaker 1: it was James Jordan's murder is is somehow related to
Speaker 1: Michael and his gambling debts. And I, again, I don't
Speaker 1: put a lot of stock in that, but it is
Speaker 1: I am a conspiracy theorist when it comes to certain things.
Speaker 1: If you want to do a nerd Ever sent on
Speaker 1: who killed JFK, I'm happy to give you four hours
Speaker 1: of my time. But with this one, it's just it's
Speaker 1: so murky to try to differentiate. And and Jordans really
Speaker 1: did have a desire to prove to the world that
Speaker 1: he could play Major League baseball. And so if if
Speaker 1: somebody tells you to, hey, you need to sit a
Speaker 1: year out, I don't think that you put the level
Speaker 1: of commitment that Jordan did into playing baseball, because he
Speaker 1: really really wanted it. I think something else. I mean,
Speaker 1: this man has dealt with tremendous loss because you were
Speaker 1: telling me that even before his dad passed away, before
Speaker 1: he won the championship in college, his girlfriend passed away. Yes,
Speaker 1: girlfriend round, Um it was either the summer before I
Speaker 1: think it might have been the summer um after he
Speaker 1: won the championship, when he was a freshman at Carolina.
Speaker 1: There's a raging waters that were kind of out of
Speaker 1: control in him and his girlfriend. Um, she fell in
Speaker 1: and and even you know the athlete that Michael Jordan is,
Speaker 1: you just if somebody's getting swept away by by raging
Speaker 1: waters in a river. There's just there's nothing you can do.
Speaker 1: And so he has been through tragedy. He has been
Speaker 1: through things like that, and and and Michael Jordan has
Speaker 1: always been a guy that will use anything and everything
Speaker 1: to fuel his competitiveness and his drive to win. Whether
Speaker 1: that is something as real and as visceral as losing
Speaker 1: someone close to you, or it's just somebody said something
Speaker 1: that piste you off, or it's even something that's not
Speaker 1: real that you can manufacture in your head to think
Speaker 1: that somebody's doubting you. I mean, he Michael Jordan is
Speaker 1: the ultimate bulletin board material competitor because if you say
Speaker 1: anything negative about Jordan's, He's going to know, and he's
Speaker 1: going to use it personally too. As Mike Tyson would say,
Speaker 1: eat your children. I mean, that's how bad he wanted
Speaker 1: to win. Michael Jordan's is a brew had it here. Um.
Speaker 1: I know that we could talk about this franchise forever,
Speaker 1: and there's so much. I mean, luckily, that's why they
Speaker 1: have hours worth of a documentary. But um, I guess
Speaker 1: to kind of wrap up things, can you talk about
Speaker 1: Phil Jackson because he's kind of like one of the
Speaker 1: most iconic characters in all of this. Yeah, he's you know,
Speaker 1: known as the zen Master. He had a different kind
Speaker 1: of approach as far back as when he was a
Speaker 1: player and winning championships with the Knicks in the early seventies.
Speaker 1: There's the the iconic Willis read moment when Willis Reid
Speaker 1: was hurt. He had a badly damaged leg and he
Speaker 1: still managed to limp out and play in Game seven
Speaker 1: of the finals that year, Willis Reid made two shots.
Speaker 1: But Phil Jackson was also on that team and won
Speaker 1: the championship with the New York Knicks, and Phil went
Speaker 1: on to be a head coach, and when he got
Speaker 1: to the Bulls, he was just this curious kind of
Speaker 1: aloof presence that had a different way about going about
Speaker 1: handling players and and trying to enlighten players and giving
Speaker 1: them books about yoga and meditation and these new age
Speaker 1: things that were not really prevalent in the NBA. And
Speaker 1: he also brought this offensive scheme called the triangle, which
Speaker 1: was designed to get Michael Jordan's the ball, but also
Speaker 1: confused defenses as to win and how he was going
Speaker 1: to get the ball. And so the triangle offense is
Speaker 1: something that he employed with the Chicago Bulls to great effect,
Speaker 1: but also would later use with the Los Angeles Lakers.
Speaker 1: After he left the Bulls, he became the coach of
Speaker 1: the l A Lakers, right as Shock and Kobe were
Speaker 1: together and coming into their prime. And so he won
Speaker 1: three more championships with the l A Lakers. And so
Speaker 1: the real thing that we missed out with with this
Speaker 1: this Bulls dynasty breaking up perhaps too early, with upper
Speaker 1: management trying to you know, flex their muscle and get
Speaker 1: rid of Jordan and kick fill out, is that if
Speaker 1: they had kept everything together and the Bulls met the
Speaker 1: Lakers in the finals either ninety nine or in two
Speaker 1: thousand and, you would have had this old guard team
Speaker 1: looking for their seventh or eighth championships, starring Michael Jordan's
Speaker 1: versus a young but hungry and talented player named Kobe
Speaker 1: Bryant and the most dominant force the league had seen
Speaker 1: since Mike Shaquille O'Neil. What a finals that would have been.
Speaker 1: But if that was the case, Phil Jackson would still
Speaker 1: be coaching the Chicago Bulls. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: probably the X factor, because I don't know who the
Speaker 1: Lakers going to trot out. I don't know they're gonna
Speaker 1: try it out Del Harris or who they're gonna in
Speaker 1: their coaching history, but it ain't gonna be Phil Jackson.
Speaker 1: So I think the Bulls still win. That I had
Speaker 1: an unless you have other Do you have any other questions?
Speaker 1: If no, I think that's a good good one to
Speaker 1: end on. You talk about this, and I just have
Speaker 1: to I just had two questions. Well, one, I wanted
Speaker 1: to bring up a tweet that someone said after the
Speaker 1: after this quarantine started. I don't know who tweeted it,
Speaker 1: but it was now Michael's flu game just seems irresponsible.
Speaker 1: Michael had it. Do you remember what game that was
Speaker 1: mark off the top of your head that Michael had
Speaker 1: his famous flu he played even though he had the flu. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was Game five of the Finals, and um, he
Speaker 1: didn't actually have the flu. They called the flu game
Speaker 1: because he was experiencing flu like symptoms, but what the
Speaker 1: actual problem was that he wasn't feeling well, So I
Speaker 1: think he had a cold and he was getting a
Speaker 1: lot of intervened his fluids. But at halftime he drank
Speaker 1: what he thought was gatorade, but it actually ended up
Speaker 1: being Gator Load, which was this like carb heavy kind
Speaker 1: of drink that you're supposed to drink if you if
Speaker 1: you're if you're weightlifting, your training for something like that,
Speaker 1: but it was not meant for physical competition the way
Speaker 1: that you engage in during a basketball contest. And Mike
Speaker 1: got such bad stomach cramps from drinking the wrong beverage
Speaker 1: that he could barely stand, he could barely walk, and
Speaker 1: it looked like he had a bad case of the
Speaker 1: flu towards the end of the game, but in classic
Speaker 1: toward fashion, he still managed to hit a game ceiling three,
Speaker 1: and then you have that all time image of Scottie
Speaker 1: Pippen help thing Michael off the court. And so the
Speaker 1: Flu game lives on in in our lower and ESPN
Speaker 1: Classic runs it every year on the anniversary, and it's
Speaker 1: just it's one of those things where it's either that
Speaker 1: or it's Pete Sampras puking in between sets at the
Speaker 1: ninety three U S Open, or Walter Payton setting a
Speaker 1: new NFL rushing record while he had the flu and
Speaker 1: seventy eight. It's just these things that you idiots like
Speaker 1: me will use when we're going to the gym and
Speaker 1: we don't feel like we're up to it. And it's
Speaker 1: what probably a lot of people who were dealing with
Speaker 1: COVID we're thinking like, oh, this isn't gonna affect me.
Speaker 1: Even if it does, I'll shake it off. And it's like, now,
Speaker 1: sometimes you do have to use your brains more than
Speaker 1: your braun. And so nobody right now should be having
Speaker 1: a sick game. Just just sit it out. One thing
Speaker 1: I did want to mention, and I almost messed up,
Speaker 1: is we were talking about the sneaker stuff, and of
Speaker 1: course I had to cut in and because you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people might accredit, you know, the success
Speaker 1: of Jordan's standing up until this time being like a trend,
Speaker 1: a fashion trend, and because it's it's popular, and I say,
Speaker 1: that's not true because as a sneaker head, everyone knows
Speaker 1: that the highest, the ones that are the you have
Speaker 1: to cop because they're gonna sell out, are sneakers that
Speaker 1: follow the criteria of shoes he's worn before. Uh, if
Speaker 1: he's worn it on set, they're gonna sell If he's
Speaker 1: worn it in a game, it's gonna sell out. And
Speaker 1: distance between the last time it's been released, which means
Speaker 1: rarity plus Michael actually wearing it, but all these color
Speaker 1: ways that come out that has never been worn by
Speaker 1: him will not sell the same way as the ones
Speaker 1: worn actually buy it, So it actually is Michael Jordan
Speaker 1: himself being the reason that these sneakers selling kids. That's
Speaker 1: a man speaking right there who has nineties seven thousand
Speaker 1: pairs of Jordan's in his closet. I've seen the Instagram picks.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's to no end my my jealousy. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm jealous of how much he can bench, but more
Speaker 1: so than that, it's a ship collection. It's pretty damn impressive.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to decize thirty because ironically basketball shoes
Speaker 1: they don't make as many size thirteens as they do
Speaker 1: a size ten twelve eight, you know, And it makes
Speaker 1: me mad because I'm like, that's like the starting size
Speaker 1: of basketball players. That's right, it's all these it's all
Speaker 1: these kids look like me and Steph Curry that that
Speaker 1: are size and nine that are buying up all the Jordan's.
Speaker 1: But that that's another fun angle, is the collectible memorability
Speaker 1: thing that also is a nerdy trait that we we
Speaker 1: you know, we buy Star Wars figures and and comic
Speaker 1: books and all that stuff. But then also, Danny, getting
Speaker 1: back to to your previous question, it's like when we
Speaker 1: have these kind of fantasy matchups in our head, like
Speaker 1: who would have won and if it was two thousand
Speaker 1: and you have that Bulls team versus the l A Lakers,
Speaker 1: or how would the nineties Bulls have fared against Gregg
Speaker 1: Popovitch's Spurs or Steve Kerr's Warriors. It's one of those
Speaker 1: unanswered questions that we're never going to get the answer too,
Speaker 1: but it is endlessly debated, the biggest of which is
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan the greatest player of all time? Or is
Speaker 1: there more credence to the Lebron argument? Well, it's so
Speaker 1: funny because there are like the stands are so separated,
Speaker 1: and they were. That's what made it so fun going
Speaker 1: into Last Dance, because all the different camps were already
Speaker 1: talking smack because you have Kobe greatest player, Michael Jordan's
Speaker 1: greatest player, and Lebron greatest player, the three main camps
Speaker 1: on basketball Twitter, who will fight till the end of
Speaker 1: time using the most obscure stats in the stat lineup
Speaker 1: where it's like like I saw one that was like
Speaker 1: clutch game percentage? What what? Status? That? What? That is
Speaker 1: not a real stat? You made up a stat for
Speaker 1: this list. Well, I have something for Nerdificent fans since
Speaker 1: we're wrapping up tweet at Nertificent and Iffie and I
Speaker 1: and Mark, because I want to know who you think
Speaker 1: the greatest team ever is. So Scottie Pippen said they
Speaker 1: thought that they were the greatest team ever. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of people think that about this particular era
Speaker 1: of the Bulls. Who in your mind is the greatest
Speaker 1: NBA team ever? Fascinated to read what you all think.
Speaker 1: I love this question so much because the style of basketball,
Speaker 1: even since the nineties in the heyday the Bulls, has
Speaker 1: changed so much to favor outside shooting, and so many
Speaker 1: more threes are taken per game, and the three pointers
Speaker 1: just become such a weapon, as has advanced metrics and
Speaker 1: the way that you kind of calculate how to put
Speaker 1: a basketball team together that you can't truly compare eras
Speaker 1: and it's a little unfair to do so, but God,
Speaker 1: what a matchup that would be if if you could
Speaker 1: have the rules that would favor the Chicago Bulls. Whereas
Speaker 1: a more physical brand of basketball back then. But I
Speaker 1: I still say it's tough for anybody to get past
Speaker 1: the Warriors or the Spurs and of the last twenty
Speaker 1: years that we've seen. But if there's a team that
Speaker 1: could do it, might be the nineties Bulls, might be
Speaker 1: the eighties Lakers, might be the eighties Celtics. Just they
Speaker 1: were the way that they played. They all had their hallmarks,
Speaker 1: they all had their traits what made them unique. But
Speaker 1: if I am watching in a basketball game and the
Speaker 1: team's rake the huddles and start walking to the center
Speaker 1: court for a jump ball, and I see Michael Jordan
Speaker 1: on a team, very tough for me to pick the
Speaker 1: other team. Mark, thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 1: and geeking out about the Chicago Bowls with us. Where
Speaker 1: can everyone catch you? Oh man? This was so much fun.
Speaker 1: I just I and and Danny. You know, particularly how
Speaker 1: many times off air I will try to engage you
Speaker 1: in conversations like this, So thank you, thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you for for not just humoring me, for actually like
Speaker 1: even when when you and I were talking about doing
Speaker 1: the Last Dance podcast last night, you were saying all
Speaker 1: these like great insightful things, and I was like, this
Speaker 1: is i've i've, she's done it. She did it. This
Speaker 1: is the this is the person. And you know, it
Speaker 1: was so much fun for me to geek out about
Speaker 1: this with with you all and to have this kind
Speaker 1: of conversation. So thank you guys so much. You can
Speaker 1: find me at mark Ellis Live on all social media
Speaker 1: and as soon as I can get back on a
Speaker 1: stage in front of a crowd again, I'm taking every
Speaker 1: possible opportunity I can be is you never know when
Speaker 1: something like this is gonna hit. There's some kit that's
Speaker 1: twenty one and over that has had two drinks that
Speaker 1: is seeing me to stand up for the first time,
Speaker 1: and I want to make their their night memorable. So
Speaker 1: I'm trying to apply the skills that Michael Jordan taught
Speaker 1: me as best I can. I am at miss Dandy
Speaker 1: Fernandez and all the things. Thank you so much to
Speaker 1: our super producer Joel Moune, our engineers Zach McKeever who
Speaker 1: make sure that we sound good and nice and has
Speaker 1: to deal with my but not being able to know
Speaker 1: how to record anything. Um, if you do you have
Speaker 1: anything you want to plug this week? Uh yeah, just
Speaker 1: keep checking out that stream Twitch dot tv Forward slash
Speaker 1: if d's were doing lots of fun stuff. I was
Speaker 1: talking to Mark off the Air about some new concepts
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be working with. I have a new show
Speaker 1: over at Rooster Teeth called uh Effing Around with if
Speaker 1: You and Fiona, Me and Fiona Nova just uh just
Speaker 1: doing whatever we want. Honestly, it's real fun. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: did follow me on Twitter, if you waddiway Instagram to
Speaker 1: to stay up on all those fun teams. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I always got something cook up. And of course the
Speaker 1: Discord Discord dot g g Ford slash Salt Squad in there.
Speaker 1: Hell active. We just had a fight night last night
Speaker 1: where we just we're all playing dragon Ball fighter Z.
Speaker 1: Jeff Trammel came through, Cody Zig came through, and we
Speaker 1: just all had a good time thrown down so and
Speaker 1: everyone enjoyed it. So it's going to be a pretty
Speaker 1: regular thing. So and like we always say, stay nerdy,