Speaker 1: I mean, one of these days, you and I are
Speaker 1: going to have a not a three point shooting contest,
Speaker 1: but a free throw shooting contest, all right, because let
Speaker 1: me just say this, I can shoot the rock. I
Speaker 1: can shoot I can shoot the rock. In case you're
Speaker 1: not aware, I know, I know you're a basketball fan.
Speaker 1: I I don't know your level of skill, but you
Speaker 1: are saying you want to challenge the ninth best free
Speaker 1: throw shoot of all time. I just want to put
Speaker 1: that out there. I just want to know. I want
Speaker 1: you to know what you're getting into here. Brian, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is JJ Reddick, fifteen year NBA vett, former Duke player,
Speaker 1: host of The Old Man in the Three podcast. I
Speaker 1: go on TV sometimes to talk about basketball, and I'm
Speaker 1: here to tear the show up. Hello everybody, and welcome
Speaker 1: back to Off the Beat, another sports edition today with
Speaker 1: me your host, Brian Baumgartner. Today's guest, as you just heard,
Speaker 1: is none other than professional baller, sportscaster and podcaster extraordinaire
Speaker 1: J J. Reddick. Now. JJ started his unbelievable career at Duke,
Speaker 1: where to this day he is the all time leading scorer,
Speaker 1: and when he graduated, he went on to play in
Speaker 1: the n b A for the Orlando Magic, the l
Speaker 1: A Clippers, the seventies Sixers, among others, for an insane
Speaker 1: fIF teen seasons. He's a true A C C legend,
Speaker 1: and during his career, he even broke the record for
Speaker 1: most points in the conference. Now, funny enough, j J
Speaker 1: and I have something else in common. I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about just our basketball skills. During JJ's playing years in
Speaker 1: the NBA to this day, he has hosted his own
Speaker 1: podcast called The Old Man and the Three, all about
Speaker 1: the NBA. He's also an analyst for ESPN, and so today,
Speaker 1: well I'm going to help the sports analyst analyze himself.
Speaker 1: Might as well get started. Everybody here. He is the
Speaker 1: very funny and always insightful j J. Reddick, Bubble and Squeak.
Speaker 1: I love it Bubble and Squeak, Bubble and Squeaker cooking
Speaker 1: at every month, left over from the nut before. J J,
Speaker 1: how are you? I'm great. I had a it was
Speaker 1: a rainy day here in sag Harbor, but I had
Speaker 1: a great golf lesson this morning and then beat some
Speaker 1: balls for about forty five minutes afterwards. So now, but
Speaker 1: I just worked with with one of your people here
Speaker 1: on a project in Los Angeles. And I understand you
Speaker 1: were taking up golfing. This has become a new, a new,
Speaker 1: fairly new passion for you, right yeah. I mean I
Speaker 1: had golfed, I had played, I had played rounds of
Speaker 1: golf prior to last summer. But I got into it
Speaker 1: shortly after my last season ended. I started taking lessons
Speaker 1: and I knew that it was going to be the
Speaker 1: thing in retirement. Like I I got bit and I'm
Speaker 1: an obsessive person. I like to deep dive on everything.
Speaker 1: And I mean, we can talk about golf for an
Speaker 1: hour and a half here if you want. But but
Speaker 1: it is you have to understand I I spent so
Speaker 1: much time in gymnasiums and hotel rooms and planes and
Speaker 1: buses for the last twenty years of my life, and
Speaker 1: so for me to be able to go walk for
Speaker 1: four and a half hours outside, it's it's a spirit
Speaker 1: chill experience. I I just there's nothing I mean other
Speaker 1: than you know, bad shots, But there's nothing I I
Speaker 1: don't enjoy about about the game. It's it's just incredible. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to hear you say that. I haven't specifically
Speaker 1: ever heard someone say that in the same way that
Speaker 1: I do. I started very similarly. I was doing theater
Speaker 1: at the time, right, so in dark rooms with no windows,
Speaker 1: you know, either rehearsing or performing at night. And yeah,
Speaker 1: for me, it was a reason, an ability to get
Speaker 1: outside and just smell the grass and be outside and
Speaker 1: walk and and try to compete with myself in a
Speaker 1: new way. And that's how I fell in love with
Speaker 1: it too. So that's interesting. You you don't really think about,
Speaker 1: you know, you as a as a college and professional athlete,
Speaker 1: not getting to be outside. But I guess basketball is
Speaker 1: kind of the same play, Yeah it is. And and
Speaker 1: even in the off season, I I just was so
Speaker 1: regimented and so diligent about my work that most of
Speaker 1: my day, you know, I was I was. I was
Speaker 1: a Monday to Friday, Saturday off, Sunday. Back in the gym.
Speaker 1: I didn't like to take more than a day off
Speaker 1: at a time. So even in the off season, so
Speaker 1: much of my day was spent inside. And I would
Speaker 1: mix it up in the in the summers, I'd go
Speaker 1: find a turf field and do conditioning, or I'd go
Speaker 1: to a high school track. But you know, by and large,
Speaker 1: I'm working inside a gymnasium. I'm working inside a weight room,
Speaker 1: hours and hours and hours of doing that. And so
Speaker 1: when I got done with that, I didn't have I
Speaker 1: didn't have four hours to go play around a golf
Speaker 1: I wanted to spend that time with my wife and
Speaker 1: my kids, and it just all of a sudden, this
Speaker 1: new world opened up for me where I had I
Speaker 1: had time to actually and by the way that this
Speaker 1: this summer, I've actually gone to the driving range, which
Speaker 1: is a new thing as well, because last summer getting
Speaker 1: into the game, it was more just I want to
Speaker 1: play as much as possible, and I got some incredible
Speaker 1: invites that I got to play some great courses, but
Speaker 1: it was more about just playing. And now it's like
Speaker 1: it's back to the mentality I had as a player,
Speaker 1: where you're trying to master a craft, and so I
Speaker 1: really really enjoyed just days like today where you don't
Speaker 1: play around and you go you take a lesson and
Speaker 1: then you go work on a specific thing for forty
Speaker 1: five minutes or an hour. That's interesting. I just like
Speaker 1: to play, I'll be honest with you. I'd just like
Speaker 1: to play. I'll figure it out out there. But I, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I love it Now? Are you still you're you're
Speaker 1: retired now? I mean we're starting at the end. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go back in a second. But are you still
Speaker 1: working out? Are you still going to the gym? Are
Speaker 1: you still shooting shots on Sundays? Are you you're really
Speaker 1: you're relaxing that a little bit. I made it a
Speaker 1: point to give myself a break over the last year,
Speaker 1: and it's been liberating to not feel obligated, like I
Speaker 1: have something hanging over my head every day that I've
Speaker 1: got to be in the gym. So I've I've not
Speaker 1: gained any weight, but I've lost a lot of muscle tone,
Speaker 1: if you know what I mean. I actually my wife,
Speaker 1: my wife, I've I've done pilates. Plot is the one
Speaker 1: thing that I've been consistent about because I started doing
Speaker 1: that when I was in college and I maintained that
Speaker 1: throughout my career. But I went and did a reformer
Speaker 1: class with my wife, and I generally do classical pilates,
Speaker 1: but this was like a very ab intensive, lunge intensive
Speaker 1: reformer class on Saturday morning with my wife and my
Speaker 1: two sisters. And I'm still very sore from that because
Speaker 1: I have not activated those muscles in quite some time. Well,
Speaker 1: good for you. Just you and the ladies working out now. No,
Speaker 1: there's no more testosterone. It's just you and the ladies
Speaker 1: doing reformer pilates. We should mention. I just want to mention.
Speaker 1: I want to get this out of the way at
Speaker 1: the top, so that the colleague of mine that you,
Speaker 1: uh you mentioned a few minutes ago that that was
Speaker 1: Jason Gallagher, who worked with you on I believe a
Speaker 1: commercial you had just shot in Santa Monica. And you know,
Speaker 1: we call it we call we call them, we call
Speaker 1: them branded shoots. We don't call them commercials. We call
Speaker 1: them branded shoots. It sounds yeah, that's fine, that's fine.
Speaker 1: So my colleague was doing a branded shoot with you
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago, Jason Gallagher, who is our
Speaker 1: head of production at our at our company, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if he conveyed this to you, but he is.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you get this all the time. He is
Speaker 1: the biggest office fan in the world, and it was
Speaker 1: it was such a thrill for him. I was just
Speaker 1: with in Vegas last week. We were shooting some stuff
Speaker 1: while I was at Summer League, and it was just
Speaker 1: such a thrill for him to work with you, so
Speaker 1: hopefully he did all right, hopefully, Well, thank you know.
Speaker 1: He was great. It was I could not have been easier.
Speaker 1: In fact, having a branded shoot and an hour early
Speaker 1: is something that is very rare and that happened. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I was very I was very happy with it. He
Speaker 1: was a great guy, was great, and I think I
Speaker 1: think the spot is gonna be great. But I'm not
Speaker 1: going to talk about right now what it was war,
Speaker 1: all right, j J. Let's go back. You were born
Speaker 1: in the great state of Tennessee, moved shortly thereafter to Virginia,
Speaker 1: So you grew up in Virginia. You were a big
Speaker 1: baseball fan, I understand, and a baseball player. In fact,
Speaker 1: you baseball was your first love. Is that right? It was?
Speaker 1: And and some of that has to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that I have older twin sisters and I basically
Speaker 1: did whatever they did. And so one of them, Katie
Speaker 1: was was with me this past weekend in sag Harbor,
Speaker 1: and we had this long conversation on Thursday night at
Speaker 1: dinner about just our childhood in general. And it's so
Speaker 1: funny because so my sisters rode horses, they competed, they
Speaker 1: you know, in equestrian or whatever the sport is called.
Speaker 1: And so I learned how to ride a horse because
Speaker 1: they rode horses, and they saved up. They'd work summer jobs.
Speaker 1: They were a little bit of entrepreneurs. They worked summer
Speaker 1: jobs from like eight years old, bond so they could
Speaker 1: save up and buy a horse. And we bought a horse,
Speaker 1: and for all of us, all the kids on one
Speaker 1: of five, we all were faced with a decision around
Speaker 1: the age of twelve or thirteen, where our parents came
Speaker 1: to us and they were like, choose something. You can't
Speaker 1: do everything. There's too many kids, so every kid can't
Speaker 1: play three sports, so choose something. And I didn't know this,
Speaker 1: but my I knew. My dad came to me when
Speaker 1: I was going into seventh grade and said, you gotta
Speaker 1: choose between baseball and basketball. But he said the same
Speaker 1: thing to my sisters. You gotta choose. You gotta choose
Speaker 1: between softball, which is why I started playing baseball. You
Speaker 1: gotta choose between softball, basketball or horse riding. And they
Speaker 1: chose basketball. Had they chose something else, my life path
Speaker 1: may have been very different. I'm going to be completely
Speaker 1: frank with you. I was. I was decent at basketball,
Speaker 1: but I very much wanted to play because they played,
Speaker 1: and I want to do everything they did, and and
Speaker 1: you know, we would go play games of twenty one
Speaker 1: out in the backyard and they would beat the ship
Speaker 1: out of me. But I was always like, I gotta
Speaker 1: get to the point where I can beat my sisters.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, for me, that came at a
Speaker 1: pretty early age. But you know, they they were they
Speaker 1: were like my role models. And so some of the
Speaker 1: baseball stuff was just because they started playing softball and
Speaker 1: I got into trading cards. That was my very first obsession.
Speaker 1: I talked about obsessions a few minutes ago, but that
Speaker 1: was my very first obsession was baseball trading cards, and
Speaker 1: that that's what really got me to the sport, was
Speaker 1: them and being able to collect. Right, how much older
Speaker 1: were they than you? I like to joke that they're
Speaker 1: five years older, but they they they really are four
Speaker 1: and a half years older. If you're being technical technical, Okay,
Speaker 1: well that makes sense. So they're so you're like kind
Speaker 1: of a whole high school behind them, right, so that
Speaker 1: you would look up to them and think that they
Speaker 1: were cool and that their friends were cool, and that
Speaker 1: makes sense. So they chose basketball, and so then you
Speaker 1: chose basketball, and then baseball was everything else was done.
Speaker 1: Dad made you choose. Yeah, I mean, and I did
Speaker 1: think they're cool. Their friends were cool. They came back
Speaker 1: for fall break their freshman year and I was in
Speaker 1: eighth grade, and that was the first time I was
Speaker 1: ever served a beer, and and their friends came over
Speaker 1: and we had a few, a few pops, and I was,
Speaker 1: I was, I couldn't believe that I was having a
Speaker 1: beer with you know, Lauren and Robin. I thought they
Speaker 1: were the coolest kids in the world. You know, they're friends,
Speaker 1: So I think I just don't the whole sense was,
Speaker 1: you know, I was just like I idolized my sisters
Speaker 1: and and I don't know if you know the background,
Speaker 1: but I don't have initials that equal JJ. It's Jonathan Clay.
Speaker 1: So they said everything at the same time as kids,
Speaker 1: and so everything came out j J. What's his name?
Speaker 1: J J? Who's your brother? J J? Hey? J J.
Speaker 1: And that's really what stuck my summer. Before my seventh grade,
Speaker 1: I was a really good baseball player. I was a pitcher,
Speaker 1: and that was the first year my my local AU
Speaker 1: team had qualified for the National AU tournament. So we
Speaker 1: flew out to Salt Lake City for two weeks we
Speaker 1: competed out there. I flew back on Sunday, and I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know how knowing me, I don't
Speaker 1: know how I forgot this. But my baseball team, my
Speaker 1: literal leagal star team, was in the middle of the
Speaker 1: state tournament. And so I flew back Sunday and my
Speaker 1: Dad's like, your coach's daughter is going to drive you
Speaker 1: out across the state four and a half hours to
Speaker 1: Portsmith to play. And I was like, okay, whatever. So
Speaker 1: we drove through the night. I get there at three
Speaker 1: am in the morning, and um, luckily we had a
Speaker 1: rain out the next day. I pitched Tuesday morning. I
Speaker 1: had thirteen strikeouts. We went extra innings. I had to
Speaker 1: I had to pitch the extra two extra innings. We
Speaker 1: won the game. And I got back from that tournament
Speaker 1: and I was just exhausted, and my dad was gave me.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an ultimatum. It was just like, Hey, here's
Speaker 1: the situation with our family, and I don't think it's
Speaker 1: fair to your teammates in basketball or your teammates in baseball.
Speaker 1: You're good at both, but I don't think it's fair
Speaker 1: for you to just basically be distracted and not be
Speaker 1: all in on one or the other. So please choose.
Speaker 1: And to be honest, it was a fairly easy decision,
Speaker 1: and I did yet to hit my growth spurt. I
Speaker 1: was about five six at the time, But I often think,
Speaker 1: you know me now at thirty eight years old, what
Speaker 1: it would have looked had looked like had I stuck
Speaker 1: with baseball. Would I have crapped out in single A
Speaker 1: but I've made the big leagues? Would I be working
Speaker 1: on my third Tommy John surgery. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know your life path. Your life's path could go
Speaker 1: in so many different directions based on one decision that
Speaker 1: you make as a as a twelve or thirteen year old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is so fascinating. It's like that movie. I've talked
Speaker 1: about it a couple of times, and I think I
Speaker 1: need to go back and watch this movie because I
Speaker 1: keep referring to it. You ever see the movie Sliding Doors.
Speaker 1: I mean I've seen it, it's been a long time,
Speaker 1: but that that the idea of it refers to my
Speaker 1: recollection is is like the sliding doors of a subway,
Speaker 1: and what might happen to your life if you if
Speaker 1: you made it through before the doors closed, or if
Speaker 1: you're still stuck right there, and that those little decisions
Speaker 1: how they impact you. Now, I think for most people
Speaker 1: those decisions in terms of their life and career might
Speaker 1: not be quite as catastrophic. So you go all in
Speaker 1: in basketball. Now, I'm gonna tell you a story I was, um.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of these days you and I are
Speaker 1: going to have a not a three point shooting contest,
Speaker 1: but a free throw shooting contest, all right, because let
Speaker 1: me just say this, I can shoot the rock. I
Speaker 1: can shoot I can shoot the rock. In case you're
Speaker 1: not aware, I know, I know you're a basketball fan.
Speaker 1: I I don't know your level of skill, but you
Speaker 1: are saying you want to challenge the ninth best free
Speaker 1: throw shoot of all time. I just want to put
Speaker 1: that out there. I just want to know. I want
Speaker 1: you to know what you're getting into here. Brian one
Speaker 1: one take thirteen in a row free throw line extended
Speaker 1: wearing work shoes and a sport coat on national television.
Speaker 1: That's even more impressive. Now, let me just say I
Speaker 1: I don't think you can do it. I don't think
Speaker 1: you could do it one take thirteen in a row.
Speaker 1: We're gonna try. One of these days. We're gonna try.
Speaker 1: That's my challenge to you. So back in in my
Speaker 1: younger days, when I was focused on basketball, and I
Speaker 1: read a story about the hoop that you had in
Speaker 1: your yard and it's not the grounds, not always even,
Speaker 1: and there's trees in the way. And I remember for
Speaker 1: myself one summer between years of playing basketball, I dedicated
Speaker 1: myself to it. And I remember those nights being out
Speaker 1: getting called in for dinner and it's basically dark outside,
Speaker 1: and I'm still trying to hit shots. I'm still trying
Speaker 1: to work on stuff. I can only imagine for you
Speaker 1: the time and effort in dedication it put in. Was
Speaker 1: that fairly instantaneous once you make the choice that it's basketball,
Speaker 1: that you give yourself fully to basketball. It was, but
Speaker 1: it also had more to do with love. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just about something I was good at. And I I
Speaker 1: think we all have talents, and some talents we don't nurture,
Speaker 1: and maybe some of the reason we don't nurture them
Speaker 1: is because we don't love it as much. And basketball
Speaker 1: and baseball even because We had a little shed in
Speaker 1: the backyard, and I painted a square at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the shed where the concrete was, and the hill
Speaker 1: adjacent to the shed naturally rose like a mound. So
Speaker 1: I could go out there by myself and try to
Speaker 1: throw strikes. I can go out and shoot a basketball
Speaker 1: by myself. I I I've always enjoyed autonomy. I've always
Speaker 1: been self motivated to do things. And so basketball in
Speaker 1: the backyard was very much like a singular personal pursuit.
Speaker 1: And and because of the love the dopamine hit you
Speaker 1: get from watching you know this, watching you watch the
Speaker 1: ball switched through the net, and you get a little
Speaker 1: dopamine hit. Now you do that five times in a row,
Speaker 1: ten times in row, fifteen times in a row, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you just you love it. And and
Speaker 1: so for me, it was about the love. And it's
Speaker 1: funny you bring up shooting in the dark, and I
Speaker 1: would go. I would shoot all day in the backyard.
Speaker 1: And I was homeschooled, so a lot of times I
Speaker 1: would get done with my work at eleven or eleven
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning and I'd just go outside for
Speaker 1: hours and shoot. But it didn't matter if there was
Speaker 1: a snow storm and ice storm. The the literally the
Speaker 1: net could literally be frozen where I'd have to knock
Speaker 1: the ball out after every make, and I would go
Speaker 1: put on mits and the mits that I could still
Speaker 1: feel the ball, and I'd go shoot, and i'd go
Speaker 1: out after dinner. We didn't have like floodlights on the court,
Speaker 1: so I would go after dinner. I would take my
Speaker 1: dad's lawnmower and i'd put it at the top of
Speaker 1: the key. And then he had this lamp with a
Speaker 1: with a clamp on it, and I clamped the lamp
Speaker 1: to the top of the lawnmower and i'd shine it
Speaker 1: on the court. And we had an English Springer spaniel, Maggie,
Speaker 1: and she would sit out there with me till ten
Speaker 1: thirty eleven o'clock at night. And if my ball went
Speaker 1: in the trees after a maker miss, you know, she'd
Speaker 1: helped me go find it. So yeah, it was it
Speaker 1: was more about the love. It wasn't like I knew
Speaker 1: right away I was going to be great. It was
Speaker 1: just I I loved playing and the other part part
Speaker 1: of that I loved about it. And I'm curious about
Speaker 1: your own experience as an actor and working on set
Speaker 1: and working with different casts. What I loved about it
Speaker 1: was a camaraderie. It wasn't so I got the autonomy
Speaker 1: of work by myself, but when it came time to performance,
Speaker 1: it was very much a collaborative effort. And the joy
Speaker 1: that I got even as a ten year old, and
Speaker 1: I certainly got that a lot as a thirty six
Speaker 1: year old when I retired. That that experience of going
Speaker 1: through something with friends and people that have the same
Speaker 1: goal as you, that's what I really and really really
Speaker 1: came to love about it, And honestly, it's what I
Speaker 1: missed the most about it. Yeah, no, I very that's
Speaker 1: very similar to me and my experience. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think what what you may not know about me was
Speaker 1: I had decided early on, just like you, I was
Speaker 1: gonna be a professional baseball player. That was that was
Speaker 1: my and very specifically, I was going to be the
Speaker 1: first baseman for the Atlanta Braves. Um that was my
Speaker 1: was my my singular goal. And it's so funny you're
Speaker 1: talking about painting the the strike zone. I wasn't really
Speaker 1: a picture, but I would I would pitch occasionally, and
Speaker 1: I did the same thing as you marked it off
Speaker 1: did the thing again, but mine was against the garage
Speaker 1: and I don't know how old it was, but apparently,
Speaker 1: you know, you get stronger as you get older. And
Speaker 1: one one pitch that went into dented like put a
Speaker 1: hole in the garage. That that was done for me,
Speaker 1: I did. I never was able to do that again.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find another spot. But yeah, that that team.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why I think teams boards specifically is
Speaker 1: so important as a kid to have that experience, that
Speaker 1: collective experience about working together to try to achieve some goal.
Speaker 1: And I think that you know that for sure. As
Speaker 1: I began doing theater, was a part of it. Loved
Speaker 1: the ensemble nature of it, that collective experience, the idea
Speaker 1: of going out and performing in front of other people,
Speaker 1: but but really having each other's back. And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I've said many times for me, the reason
Speaker 1: that The Office became so successful was the nature of
Speaker 1: how the show was shot, which is very similar to
Speaker 1: what you're talking about about being on the basketball court.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was all of us in one room
Speaker 1: by and large for hours and hours and hours together
Speaker 1: and learning quite frankly, just like you know, you know
Speaker 1: where a certain player likes the ball on the blocks
Speaker 1: or on the post. You know, you're throwing it to
Speaker 1: his left hand or his right, and and how he's moving.
Speaker 1: You know that in terms of all the comedy styles
Speaker 1: and all of the specific skills for the people who
Speaker 1: were on the office, for example, just knowing I could
Speaker 1: say something or give a look that was going to
Speaker 1: elicit a certain response that was going to be successful
Speaker 1: from somebody else. I think. I think they're very There
Speaker 1: is very much a correlation between those those two things.
Speaker 1: Idea of teammates. Yeah, the best the best teams I
Speaker 1: was on. You could say things without verbalizing them, that's right,
Speaker 1: whether whether that was body language or nod a wink,
Speaker 1: you know, and and that that when you have that
Speaker 1: level of connection in an arena, that's really special. You know.
Speaker 1: I used to when you have those moments, I used
Speaker 1: to get chills. I'd be on the court and I
Speaker 1: get chills when we would execute something at that high
Speaker 1: of the level. This is a random question. I I
Speaker 1: don't want to date you. Were you were you a
Speaker 1: Sid Bream fan? Were you were you? Think? Well, I
Speaker 1: remember I certainly remember the moment where Sid, Yes, where
Speaker 1: Sid slid across home base traveling at about eight, I
Speaker 1: think rounding third in the playoffs there against the Pirates. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I remember for sure. That was a that was a
Speaker 1: big that was a big sports moment in my childhood.
Speaker 1: I think that was the that was the second year
Speaker 1: they made the world. That was ninety two was like
Speaker 1: all of my first sports memories. So I don't remember
Speaker 1: Jordan's versus the Lakers, but I remember Jordan's versus the Blazers.
Speaker 1: I don't remember Duke beating U N l V in
Speaker 1: the final four and then beating Kansas, but I do
Speaker 1: remember them beating Kentucky and ninety two. So and I
Speaker 1: remember that night actually when Sid Bream slid into home
Speaker 1: plate to beat the Pirates on Francisco Cabrera's single. I
Speaker 1: was told to go to bed and we we We
Speaker 1: lived in a in a in a small house. Again,
Speaker 1: it was seven of us. I think the house is
Speaker 1: about eight square feet, and you could hear anything that
Speaker 1: was going on. And there was one room that had
Speaker 1: the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, and a
Speaker 1: wood stove. Because we didn't have central air, so everything
Speaker 1: came you know, all our heat came from the wood stove,
Speaker 1: so everybody would congregate in that room, and they were
Speaker 1: watching the game that night, and I kept creeping over
Speaker 1: the balcony to look down and listen in because I
Speaker 1: knew it was a close game. And finally, in like
Speaker 1: the eighth inning, my mom and dad said, fuck, just
Speaker 1: come downstairs and finished watching the game. You're already up late.
Speaker 1: So I got to watch that live, and I just
Speaker 1: that's that's one of my earliest sports memories. That it
Speaker 1: you you mentioned first baseman for the Atlanta Braves. That's
Speaker 1: why I bring that up. Yes, well, my dad long
Speaker 1: before you. My dad is a graduate of Duke University,
Speaker 1: and I understand you're one of your first favorite You
Speaker 1: just mentioned it. Later are hitting the shot against Kentucky
Speaker 1: in the Elite eight game to move them to the
Speaker 1: Final four. A big moment for you, A big moment
Speaker 1: for me as well. I had it on tape on
Speaker 1: a v CR tape for many many years and would
Speaker 1: go back and watch the last seven minutes of that game.
Speaker 1: Is just about as good as you can possibly get
Speaker 1: of any basketball game. Ever. I'm told you knew very
Speaker 1: early on that you wanted to go to Duke, and
Speaker 1: in act, when you were sixteen years old before your
Speaker 1: junior season of high school. If this correct, you committed
Speaker 1: to go to Duke to play basketball, that's correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at the time, I was the earliest commitment in Duke
Speaker 1: basketball history. I I turned to my family when Latern
Speaker 1: hit that shot and said I'm gonna play at Duke someday.
Speaker 1: They all thought I was out of my mind, probably,
Speaker 1: and I would get you know, starting in towards the
Speaker 1: end of eighth grade, and you know, definitely by the
Speaker 1: fall of my freshman year in high school, I was
Speaker 1: getting recruited. I would get letters in the mail. My
Speaker 1: first scholarship offer was from Wake Forest University my freshman
Speaker 1: year of high school. But it was always about Duke,
Speaker 1: and you know, the by my sophomore in junior year,
Speaker 1: the FedEx guy and the UPS guy would come up,
Speaker 1: you know, our our dirt road come to the top,
Speaker 1: and I would be waiting for him after school and
Speaker 1: he drop off thirty letters, forty lever letters, whatever it was,
Speaker 1: and I would just immediately sift through them as fast
Speaker 1: as I could, looking for that Duke logo. And Coach
Speaker 1: k has a very specific and recognizable form of handwriting,
Speaker 1: so I knew also the handwritten ones versus the stock ones,
Speaker 1: and I would try to get to those handwritten run
Speaker 1: ones as soon as possible. And I let all the
Speaker 1: schools know. I you know, I was a hometown kid.
Speaker 1: I had a sense of loyalty. I grew up in Roanoke,
Speaker 1: but I also lived in Charlottesville from ages three to seven.
Speaker 1: So I had a sense of loyalty to u v A.
Speaker 1: And my high school coach was obsessed with Billy Donovan.
Speaker 1: We ran a lot of the stuff that Florida ran
Speaker 1: at the time that my my coach, Billy Hicks had
Speaker 1: gotten from Marshall when when Billy Donovan was there, and
Speaker 1: so I was very interested in Florida. I wanted to
Speaker 1: go to UVA, but it was always about Duke. It
Speaker 1: was like, if Duke offered me, how how can I
Speaker 1: turn this down? I could never turn this down. So
Speaker 1: I told all the schools in the fall, before my
Speaker 1: junior year started, I said, I I'm gonna take some
Speaker 1: unofficial visits. You should treat them as official visits. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make my decision before my junior season starts. I
Speaker 1: went to u v A. It was a great visit.
Speaker 1: I go to Duke the next week, Coach K gets
Speaker 1: me in the room. It's a it's a room adjacent
Speaker 1: to the locker room where he basically closes the door,
Speaker 1: no parents, no other coaches, and he lays it out
Speaker 1: for you and he said, you can commit. We're ready
Speaker 1: for you to commit. You have a scholarship. And uh,
Speaker 1: I went home. I thought about it for a couple
Speaker 1: of days. I was supposed to go to floor to
Speaker 1: the following weekend with my sisters who older sisters and
Speaker 1: not my parents, and it was gonna be a good time.
Speaker 1: And and uh, it got to like Tuesday night, Wednesday night,
Speaker 1: and I just I said to my mom and dad,
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, I don't want to waste anybody's time.
Speaker 1: I don't want to waste Billy Donmond's time. I don't
Speaker 1: want to waste their assistant coaches time. I know where,
Speaker 1: I know where I want to go. And it's funny
Speaker 1: thinking back, because we we talked about that decision that
Speaker 1: I made at twelve or thirteen to give up baseball
Speaker 1: and focus on basketball, but even more so the decision
Speaker 1: him to go to Duke For me. At the time,
Speaker 1: it was very much about wanting to play for coach K.
Speaker 1: And wanting to be a Duke basketball player. And now
Speaker 1: that was in two thousands, so twenty two years later.
Speaker 1: I had no idea of the life benefit that I
Speaker 1: would get from making that decision other than marrying my wife.
Speaker 1: Going to Duke University was the best decision that I've
Speaker 1: ever made, bar none. And I made that decision. It's
Speaker 1: sixteen years old. It's fascinating to think about that. When
Speaker 1: talk to me a little bit, you know, I said,
Speaker 1: my dad went to Duke. I grew up in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and our next door neighbors actually the ones the basketball who,
Speaker 1: quite frankly, was theres that I'm sure I annoyed the
Speaker 1: hell out of them, dribbling it late at night. He was.
Speaker 1: He had season tickets to Georgia Tech, but every year
Speaker 1: we would get the Duke tickets when they came into town.
Speaker 1: We saw Duke play quite a bit. I went to
Speaker 1: one of the final four. Is that was before you
Speaker 1: with my dad as well? The first time you meet
Speaker 1: coach k was that in the room? Was that there
Speaker 1: when you did your visit or had you met him
Speaker 1: prior to that? So he he had come to my
Speaker 1: high school that September, And I want to say, my
Speaker 1: uv A visit was around September twenty three, give or take.
Speaker 1: My Duke visit was around September thirty, give or take.
Speaker 1: And I committed in October five. So prior to me
Speaker 1: going to Duke, he had driven up from Durham There's
Speaker 1: about it's about a two and a half hour drive
Speaker 1: with Chris Collins, who I was his first recruit. He
Speaker 1: had played at Duke but was at Seton Hall had
Speaker 1: coached the w n B A and and gotten the
Speaker 1: job that summer, and they came up and my coach
Speaker 1: used to do this thing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Billy
Speaker 1: Hicks used do this thing on Tuesday and Thursdays where
Speaker 1: we would have open gym, but we would start with
Speaker 1: sixteen stations and the stations would be like wall sits
Speaker 1: or defensive slides with the forty pound played on you,
Speaker 1: or you know, thirty seconds of as many rim grabs
Speaker 1: as you can do. So I did that whole workout,
Speaker 1: and then we played open gym, and then coach watched
Speaker 1: me work out individually right after, and there was such
Speaker 1: a buzz in the school because it got out that day.
Speaker 1: So I'm sitting you know, I'm in whatever class I'm
Speaker 1: in at that time. I don't know. I think I
Speaker 1: took physics senior year, so I'm probably in chemistry junior year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: chemistry junior year. Im in chemistry class. And everybody's talking
Speaker 1: about Coach K coming to visit that day. It was
Speaker 1: a big deal, you know, for our high school to
Speaker 1: have Coach K there. And we we chatted briefly at
Speaker 1: the time. I don't know what the rules are now,
Speaker 1: but the time you could basically say hello and that's it.
Speaker 1: And you know, they were very strict back then about
Speaker 1: contact with recruits prior to their senior year. So I
Speaker 1: didn't get a lot of time with him that day,
Speaker 1: but if I was on campus, I could spend time
Speaker 1: with him. So really it was that room because Battier
Speaker 1: and Dunlevy had taken me to the football game that
Speaker 1: Saturday when I went to visit, and then it was
Speaker 1: after the game that I went and got in the room,
Speaker 1: and that was really my first sit down with him.
Speaker 1: And what was so striking about that, and what is
Speaker 1: held up now for twenty two years, is just how
Speaker 1: brutally honest Coach K is. He's He's a truth teller,
Speaker 1: and you need truth tellers in your life, and he's
Speaker 1: always been that to me. He's somebody that, you know,
Speaker 1: outside of my father. Um, he's someone that I've leaned
Speaker 1: on as much as anyone whenever I'm making life decisions.
Speaker 1: You know, when I retired, and there were really two
Speaker 1: people outside of of course, I called my agent and
Speaker 1: I you know, I told my best friend, and I
Speaker 1: told my wife, and I told my kids. But you know,
Speaker 1: outside of those people I called made two phone calls.
Speaker 1: I told Coach k Uh and I told Chris Paul.
Speaker 1: Those are the only two people I told before I announced. Um,
Speaker 1: that's just the level of relationship that I've had with
Speaker 1: him for over two decades now. Yeah, it's unbelievable. I mean,
Speaker 1: his legacy, I don't I don't need to go through
Speaker 1: it is. How shitty is it, though, Brian? How shitty
Speaker 1: is it that I can't you and see fan can't
Speaker 1: Will forever be able to hold this over us. I
Speaker 1: can't because they win his last game in Cameron and
Speaker 1: then they win his last game period. It's just it's disgusting,
Speaker 1: that's what it is. Makes me want to puke. It's disgusting.
Speaker 1: Before you go to Duke. I just heard the story.
Speaker 1: You're playing for the state championship and you're hurt, and
Speaker 1: your doctors say you're about to go to do simmer down,
Speaker 1: young young buck, you need to sit out. You know
Speaker 1: this game, and you don't want to. You go to
Speaker 1: a doctor at Duke. Is this right? Who gives you
Speaker 1: the go ahead to be able to play? It's it's
Speaker 1: partially right. So there there's actually two injuries. So about
Speaker 1: about I don't know. Ten games into my senior year,
Speaker 1: we had played in a bunch of national tournaments where
Speaker 1: we're playing nationally rank high schools. We were a small
Speaker 1: public school in Virginia. So we we get off to
Speaker 1: a slow start. We you know, we're losing against Christ
Speaker 1: the King from Queens and Oxen Hill from Maryland, and
Speaker 1: Mercer Island from Seattle. We're losing against these teams cal
Speaker 1: Poly from Long Beach, and we start winning some district games.
Speaker 1: Once we get back home after January and it's a
Speaker 1: tie game. We're playing Halifax County. We're at Halifax and
Speaker 1: I grabbed the ball on a on a my my
Speaker 1: bottom of my feet have been killing me for weeks.
Speaker 1: I grabbed a loose ball in the corner and I
Speaker 1: turned to run up court and I feel this pop
Speaker 1: in my foot, And initially I thought somebody had thrown
Speaker 1: a battery and hit me in the back of the foot.
Speaker 1: So coach calls time out, draws up a play, and
Speaker 1: I'm in the huddle and I'm realizing what just happened.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, ship, like something just popped in my foot.
Speaker 1: My senior years over. I'm devastated. I wanted to win
Speaker 1: a state championship and we had had a shot the
Speaker 1: year before and and come up short. I'm like basically
Speaker 1: crying in this huddle. Everybody's looking at me like what
Speaker 1: are you? What are you doing? Randomly, I go out
Speaker 1: and I hit a game winning three with like three
Speaker 1: seconds to go and get back on the bus. I
Speaker 1: tell coach what's going on. So I go see a
Speaker 1: doctor in Roanoke and he's like, look, you should boot
Speaker 1: it up. Uh, it's sixty eight week recovery. You've got
Speaker 1: a full tear of the planner fashion was right at
Speaker 1: the literally middle of my bottom of my foot. It's
Speaker 1: full tear. And I'm like, all right, So I think
Speaker 1: my senior season is over. The Duke coaches advised me
Speaker 1: to go see Dr Mormon, a duke. So I go
Speaker 1: down there. He tells me, let's be aggressive with this thing.
Speaker 1: Let's boot it for two weeks, get on some anti inflammatories.
Speaker 1: When you're not in the boot, you should be doing
Speaker 1: manual therapy rolfing, which I didn't know that was a thing,
Speaker 1: and I discovered what rolfing was. I wouldn't recommend it
Speaker 1: to anyone. The most painful thing in the world, especially
Speaker 1: if you have a tear of of of fashional injury.
Speaker 1: So I do that for three weeks, literally three weeks
Speaker 1: to the night I play my senior night, I hit
Speaker 1: nine threes, thirty eight points. Coach ks and house. I
Speaker 1: have a dunk, which I wasn't known for dunking, but
Speaker 1: it was. It was a good night. And we roll
Speaker 1: through the playoffs. I mean, we're we're now like battle tested.
Speaker 1: The team had to play games without me. We had
Speaker 1: played all these nationally rigged teams, and I really feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: we got a chance. So we get to we get
Speaker 1: to the state semifinals that we're playing Hayfield, which is
Speaker 1: from Northern Virginia, their number two team in the state.
Speaker 1: And I'm killing We're up twenty at the end of
Speaker 1: the game and I get a breakaway. I go to
Speaker 1: I go to dunk it. This is off my left foot.
Speaker 1: My right foot had been injuring. I go to dunk it.
Speaker 1: My foot just gives out and I feel this terror
Speaker 1: again in my left foot. And this is at the
Speaker 1: insertion point. So this is on this side of the
Speaker 1: foot where the planner fascia inserts to your ankle bone.
Speaker 1: But that's torn. So I'm limping around after the game.
Speaker 1: I'm limping around the next day. I don't tell any
Speaker 1: of my teammates. The only person knew was coach Hicks.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to put any doubt in my teammates minds,
Speaker 1: like it's okay, we got it this far. JJ's hurt,
Speaker 1: We're not, you know whatever. So I'm just like, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna tell anybody. So I go to our trainer
Speaker 1: for the next twenty four hours and I'm like, let's
Speaker 1: work on some tape jobs. So he figures out a
Speaker 1: way to have this tape job that fully takes all
Speaker 1: the pressure off my planner fascia on that side of
Speaker 1: my foot, so I'm essentially pain free. When that tape
Speaker 1: job is on, so he tapes it up before the
Speaker 1: game and I go out and you know, I had
Speaker 1: the state record at the time at forty three points
Speaker 1: in the state championship. We win the state championship, and
Speaker 1: I was naive to think that storybook endings happen in life.
Speaker 1: But storybook endings apparently do happen in life, because this
Speaker 1: this was about of an incredible experience. I mean, I
Speaker 1: had watched Hoosier's fifty times as a kid, and to
Speaker 1: have that moment at seventeen years old was just it
Speaker 1: was incredible, Brian, it was incredible. That's so awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, forty three points, state championship, go out
Speaker 1: on top? Now, was was this just random? Have you
Speaker 1: had issues since then? So? I think part of part
Speaker 1: of the issue was I was a sneaker head at
Speaker 1: the time before they were sneaker heads, so I was
Speaker 1: changing shoes. I wore the team shoes in the game,
Speaker 1: but I was changing shoes every day in practice. I
Speaker 1: would wear Rebox, I would wear Deeds, I wear Nikes. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: I get ahold of the pair of shoes that were
Speaker 1: a size twelve and I thought they looked cool, so
Speaker 1: I'd wear them in practice, So I think it was
Speaker 1: more about that, and I learned that from that year,
Speaker 1: and then when I was in college in a pro
Speaker 1: I would find one shoe that didn't hurt my feet
Speaker 1: for that year, and I'd order if many pairs of
Speaker 1: shoes as possible, and I just I'd wear those forever.
Speaker 1: So it was more It wasn't random. It was more
Speaker 1: about I think I was just switching shoes too much,
Speaker 1: and so the the the insoles and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: It just it didn't work for me. It didn't work
Speaker 1: for physiology or anatomy or whatever. Yeah, you go to duke.
Speaker 1: You described a little while ago at being the other
Speaker 1: than your wife, the best decision that you you ever
Speaker 1: made your freshman year. In the two thousand and three
Speaker 1: a CC Tournament championship game, you you explode. You explode,
Speaker 1: I mean the signature moment I would say of of
Speaker 1: definitely your first season. You scored twenty plus points in
Speaker 1: the last ten minutes the game, You hit a bunch
Speaker 1: of threes. You end up crushing NC State and winning
Speaker 1: the a c C Tournament. Do you feel like that
Speaker 1: game is what is what really cemented you as as
Speaker 1: well as a duke mainstay. Well, that game was a
Speaker 1: game that you could dream about in the backyard because
Speaker 1: I had played that tournament the backyard. I had played
Speaker 1: the a SEC tournament. I had done three rounds. I've
Speaker 1: been out there for three and a half hours, and
Speaker 1: I'd go through every shot. So I had lived and
Speaker 1: visualized that moment as a fantasy. To have it become
Speaker 1: a reality was really special, and I think it be
Speaker 1: it cemented my status in Duke because it it was
Speaker 1: like a marker on my legacy. You know, to score
Speaker 1: twenty three points, you're you're down fifteen with ten minutes
Speaker 1: to go, and to score twenty three points in the
Speaker 1: last ten minutes of an a CEC championship game against
Speaker 1: a rival, hey, it's it. It It gave me a
Speaker 1: mark on the legacy. And I was by the way
Speaker 1: I was slumping. I mean, I had gotten off to
Speaker 1: a great start my freshman year and had gone through
Speaker 1: probably a four to five weeks stretch before that game
Speaker 1: where I had I had struggled and hadn't played particularly
Speaker 1: well going up to that ten minute mark, and then
Speaker 1: I just I got a couple open looks back to
Speaker 1: back possessions to cut it to nine. I had back
Speaker 1: to back threes, and then it was like the flood.
Speaker 1: The floodgates open, and it was I was hitting ridiculous
Speaker 1: shots and running around the court, probably holding my follow through,
Speaker 1: probably talking shipped to the n C state bands, probably
Speaker 1: head bobbing, you know whatever whatever antics eighteen year olds do, right,
Speaker 1: That's that's what I was doing. Your sophomore year, you
Speaker 1: become well either next in line or at the top
Speaker 1: of the list of of hated duke players. I mean
Speaker 1: I was reading, when I was reading about you, I
Speaker 1: think that my my sense is that Latener would hold
Speaker 1: number one. I guess it's been said you you held
Speaker 1: the number one position there as as being most hated
Speaker 1: duke players. I mean, that's what sports fans, if you're
Speaker 1: not a duke fan, you love to hate duke and
Speaker 1: everybody seems to find a player. Do you think that
Speaker 1: that a c C Championship game is what cemented that
Speaker 1: for you? I didn't want to use the word hater before,
Speaker 1: but do you think that that it was a response
Speaker 1: to that and then your continued success your sophomore season.
Speaker 1: You can you can label it however you want, Brian,
Speaker 1: I've done enough therapy over the other years that I can,
Speaker 1: I can talk about it openly. I actually don't think
Speaker 1: it was that. That is that a Sency Tournament game
Speaker 1: against AC State. No, because you know I I've said
Speaker 1: this before. My freshman year, we played our first ten
Speaker 1: or eleven games either at home or on neutral site.
Speaker 1: So we had played U. C. L A In in
Speaker 1: Indiana for the John Wooden Classic. We had played Ohio
Speaker 1: State in Greensboro for the Big ten A CEC Challenge Challenge.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until we go to Clemson for our first
Speaker 1: road game and I walk out on the court and
Speaker 1: I'm like, what is happening? I did I do something wrong?
Speaker 1: Why is everybody getting on me? And then this is
Speaker 1: my freshman year, and it got worse and worse and worse,
Speaker 1: and then my sophomore year. You know, partially was probably
Speaker 1: the bad haircut. I didn't take particularly good care. I mean,
Speaker 1: I look like a frat kid. I look like a
Speaker 1: fraud saying I look like a frat kid. I acted
Speaker 1: like a frat kid, and I was given I was.
Speaker 1: I was giving people buckets and and people didn't like that.
Speaker 1: And I played for Duke on top of that, which
Speaker 1: made it exponentially worse. My sophomore year was dark. Man,
Speaker 1: it was dark. You know. I I thought about quitting
Speaker 1: in December. I'll put it this way. You see Laterner
Speaker 1: hit that shot against Kentucky. I'm three, three months before
Speaker 1: my eighth birthday. I'm seven years old. I commit to
Speaker 1: Duke at sixteen, I get on campus and for two years,
Speaker 1: everyone hates me. People hated me after that too, Let's
Speaker 1: be clear, but everyone hates me. And I'm like, this
Speaker 1: is not what I signed up for. This is not
Speaker 1: what I envisioned. This is not the joyful competitive thing
Speaker 1: that I wanted for my whole childhood. It's it's a drag,
Speaker 1: It's an energy drainer. I'm not secure enough in my
Speaker 1: own ego at eighteen and nineteen years old to process
Speaker 1: what is happening. So I starting in my sophomore year
Speaker 1: and through the rest of my time in college, and
Speaker 1: I go off and on. I've actually got a call
Speaker 1: with my therapist after this, Brian. I've I've I've sought
Speaker 1: out someone to talk to. And at the time at Duke,
Speaker 1: from my sophomore year on, that was very intensive. You know,
Speaker 1: that summer after my sophomore year, I had hit a
Speaker 1: real low point, and I had told I had gotten
Speaker 1: really bad grades. I didn't go to class. I had
Speaker 1: gotten incomplete in one of my classes, the History of
Speaker 1: New York, which, by the way, I live in New
Speaker 1: York City. If I if I had any sense of
Speaker 1: like normalcy at the time, I would have loved that class.
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? Anyways, I got incomplete in that class.
Speaker 1: So I tell Duke, I'm like, I'm going home to Roanoke.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing summer school. I need a break. I
Speaker 1: tell my parents I'm staying in Durham and going to
Speaker 1: summer school to complete my incomplete. The reality was I
Speaker 1: was hanging out on a buddy's couch for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. This is early May. Finally the team tracked
Speaker 1: me down and they brought me to Coach K's office
Speaker 1: and we had this seminal moment in my life where
Speaker 1: he said, you know, we're gonna get you the help
Speaker 1: you need. You're clearly struggling, and we're gonna put you
Speaker 1: on a plan. We're gonna surround you with people that
Speaker 1: will assist stew We're gonna make it. We're gonna make
Speaker 1: you great. And Coach Collins specifically said something that has
Speaker 1: stuck with me forever, and that's, you know what really sucks.
Speaker 1: We'll never know how good you can be. We'll never
Speaker 1: see the best version of yourself. And that was two
Speaker 1: years into my due career. I played two more years,
Speaker 1: in fifteen years in the n b A. I can
Speaker 1: honestly say, you saw the best version of me. I
Speaker 1: couldn't have been any better than I was. And if
Speaker 1: it wasn't for that conversation, it would never would have happened.
Speaker 1: And so they I still have the sheet. There's a sheet.
Speaker 1: It's in my basement down here. There's a sheet I
Speaker 1: have with my schedule for that summer, hour by hour
Speaker 1: wake up time, check in time, therapy times, class schedule, weights,
Speaker 1: running basketball workouts, dinner, every meal I was. I was
Speaker 1: required to carry a juggle water around at all time.
Speaker 1: I got very serious about my nutrition, about what I
Speaker 1: was doing about my sleep and all that. So I
Speaker 1: end my sophomore year, I'm like two teen. I start
Speaker 1: my junior season at one two and like four percent
Speaker 1: body fat, and I'm winning every conditioning drill. And that
Speaker 1: was the that was the change that made me who
Speaker 1: I am because that carried over into my pro career tenfold.
Speaker 1: I got more I got more strict, I got more regiment,
Speaker 1: I got more detail oriented, and I just became obsessed
Speaker 1: with the process. You know, I was always obsessed with basketball.
Speaker 1: I got obsessed with the process of trying to become great,
Speaker 1: of really putting everything into something. And if it wasn't
Speaker 1: for that summer and for that meeting, whatever would happened.
Speaker 1: And so that's also why I have such a strong
Speaker 1: sense of loyalty and friendship with coach is because in
Speaker 1: my darkest moment, and I had a dark moment my
Speaker 1: last year in the NBA too, being away from my family,
Speaker 1: being essentially quarantined in an apartment in New Orleans by myself,
Speaker 1: hurt and all that. But in my darkest moment, like
Speaker 1: he was there for me. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean
Speaker 1: I can't imagine, as you know, as a young person
Speaker 1: nineteen years old and the experience of being at the
Speaker 1: absolute top level of college sports. But you're still a kid. Man,
Speaker 1: You're still a kid, and you know what you have
Speaker 1: to endure being in that spotlight. Just yeah, it felt
Speaker 1: at the time, it felt like I was in a
Speaker 1: fish bowl. Looking back, duke basketball in this grand scheme
Speaker 1: of things professional sports and the gram scheme of things like,
Speaker 1: there's way more important things, don't get me wrong, But
Speaker 1: at the time, it was so important, and it felt
Speaker 1: like I was being watched and viewed. And again I
Speaker 1: go back to the ego structure. I didn't have a
Speaker 1: healthy ego structure. I didn't know who I was. I
Speaker 1: was comfortable with myself. I was trying to be somebody
Speaker 1: I wasn't and I had to I had to work
Speaker 1: through that. It was tough. Yeah, when you're the guy
Speaker 1: catching the ship right when you're on the villain list,
Speaker 1: Are you talking about that in the locker room? Is
Speaker 1: it a part or is everybody trying to ignore it?
Speaker 1: That's my that's my question, Like is it like I
Speaker 1: don't know the picture, who's got a no hitter going
Speaker 1: and you're not supposed to talk about Like are you
Speaker 1: talking about it? And is it is? Is there banter?
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously it had a deep effect on you,
Speaker 1: which I'm not minimizing that at all. I just wonder
Speaker 1: if it's being acknowledged or if everyone's just trying to
Speaker 1: ignore it. At the time, my teammates and I didn't
Speaker 1: talk about it, and again I, that's not a that's
Speaker 1: on a knock on me not addressing it or them
Speaker 1: not addressing it. It was more so Again, we're eighteen,
Speaker 1: nineteen years old, twenty years old, and we've got our
Speaker 1: own ship going on, and you know, uh, maybe one
Speaker 1: guy's worried about his playing time. I'm maybe another guy's
Speaker 1: worried about his shots. Maybe another guy's worried about going pro,
Speaker 1: Like they're not worried about me. It wasn't until later
Speaker 1: in my career when you get to the n b
Speaker 1: A and you kind of see everything and everything if
Speaker 1: if you're on a good team and you're a good
Speaker 1: locker room, everything gets addressed. Now, Coach k would bring
Speaker 1: it up. He would bring it up. He would bring
Speaker 1: it up in in in team meetings occasionally, and he
Speaker 1: would bring it up with me as well, Like we
Speaker 1: talked about it a ton, but within our team he
Speaker 1: was like, never discussed. And it's funny to think about
Speaker 1: it now. Had I lived through that in an NBA
Speaker 1: locker room, oh my god, the banter on that would
Speaker 1: be fucking hilarious. It would be so good. It would
Speaker 1: be so good because a guy like Blake Griffin. I
Speaker 1: mean guy like Blake Griffin, Like he doesn't let anything go.
Speaker 1: He sees everything, you know, Joel Embiid sees everything. So
Speaker 1: those guys they you'd have to deal with the game
Speaker 1: and the opposing crowd, and then you'd have to deal
Speaker 1: with Joel in the locker room afterwards, you know, because
Speaker 1: he's he's gonna give it to you too. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: you end up when you leave Duke after your four
Speaker 1: years all time leading scorer in Duke history, and just
Speaker 1: I didn't even realize this until I started looking at it.
Speaker 1: Just one year later. You get your jersey hung up
Speaker 1: there in the rafters at Cameron Indoor Stadium. You've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about what Duke means to you in terms
Speaker 1: of your life, but tell me a little bit about
Speaker 1: the experience of going back there and seeing your jersey
Speaker 1: hanging up there next to Latner and Hill and Ferry
Speaker 1: and Dominski and Hurley and Jason Williams all the guys.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit about going back there. You
Speaker 1: have to take it back to when I was seven
Speaker 1: and what Duke basketball meant to me and who meant
Speaker 1: to my life and meant to my family, And I
Speaker 1: remember the first meeting I ever had with coach k
Speaker 1: on campus when I when I matriculated as a as
Speaker 1: an incoming freshman, I started summer school when he met
Speaker 1: with all the freshmen. We talked for an hour. But
Speaker 1: one of the questions he asked me in that meeting
Speaker 1: was what do you hope to accomplish individually at Duke?
Speaker 1: And I said, this is my speech when my when
Speaker 1: I got retired, but I'll say it again. I said
Speaker 1: to him, I want my jersey to hang in the rafters,
Speaker 1: and I want to be the all time leading score
Speaker 1: at Duke. Because in my mind, I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm playing four years here. It wasn't I did it would.
Speaker 1: I had no aspirations at the time to leave earlier
Speaker 1: to play in the NBA. It was a pipe dream
Speaker 1: at the time. And for me to do those two
Speaker 1: things that was individually. Of course, I wanted to win
Speaker 1: national championships and I didn't win one, and that that
Speaker 1: still irks me to this day. But for me to
Speaker 1: do those two things and to see that that jersey
Speaker 1: and the rafters, it's special, man. And I take my
Speaker 1: kids back now. And you know, we we walked through Cameron,
Speaker 1: we see the jersey and the rafters. We go in
Speaker 1: the back hallways up to the practic facility, or by
Speaker 1: the locker room or by coach Ks and you see,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not going to say it's a shrine,
Speaker 1: but you see a shrine for all the great players
Speaker 1: that played at Duke and I'm one of them. It's it.
Speaker 1: It never ceases to amaze me. It's still a pinch
Speaker 1: me moment, and it's it's a pinch me moment when
Speaker 1: I think about my relationship with Coach k. It's a
Speaker 1: pinch me moment to think about the experiences that I
Speaker 1: got to have on a basketball floor in Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Speaker 1: It's really it's really remarkable. Like, you know, I hope
Speaker 1: that you feel the same way in some sense. I
Speaker 1: know you didn't end up being a first baseman for
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Braves, but I hope in some way you
Speaker 1: get the sense like I'm living out my dream. I
Speaker 1: never took that for granted. Thirteen years into my pro career,
Speaker 1: twelve years in fourt whatever, I never took it for granted.
Speaker 1: I always was like, holy shit, this fucking idiot from
Speaker 1: from the holler in tennis, you know, they grew up
Speaker 1: with nothing like I'm doing this right now. It's it
Speaker 1: was always special to me, and and those Duke years
Speaker 1: and the accomplishments that I got to achieve their they
Speaker 1: will always be special to me. And my kids now
Speaker 1: get a sense of that. They just got into basketball.
Speaker 1: They're eight and six, but they really have gotten into
Speaker 1: basketball in the last year and they're starting to appreciate
Speaker 1: who their dad was as a player, and it's so
Speaker 1: it's so cool to me. It's so cool. Were you
Speaker 1: there for Coach K's last game? Unfortunately? Yes, unfortunately did
Speaker 1: you go? Did you I did not go. No, there
Speaker 1: there was an opportunity. I did not go. I was
Speaker 1: traveling at the time. But all of the guys, I mean,
Speaker 1: I was just blown away with how many of the
Speaker 1: guys showed back up for that for that game. That
Speaker 1: was so cool. We uh we We had a room
Speaker 1: in the back, which is basically the players lounge, and
Speaker 1: so they had set up some drinks and waters and
Speaker 1: and snacks before the game back there. We were all
Speaker 1: supposed to meet back there before we went out of
Speaker 1: the court together. There was ninety six of us, and
Speaker 1: so we spent some time together back there. And there's
Speaker 1: different generations. There's the early eighties, the pre Johnny Dawkins teams.
Speaker 1: Then there's you know, the Johnny Dawkins Final four team.
Speaker 1: There's that those teams that had that stretch from eight
Speaker 1: to ninety two where they make five straight final fours.
Speaker 1: Then there's the late nineties guys, the two thousand guys,
Speaker 1: all the one and done guys. Everybody's kind of mingling
Speaker 1: with each other. And we go out on the court
Speaker 1: and we form a line for Coach k and he
Speaker 1: comes out and gets introduced, and we take a picture
Speaker 1: and Woe Joe and I had seats next to each other.
Speaker 1: See Wowsky and I had seats next to each other,
Speaker 1: And we're walking up to our seat, and he's like, man,
Speaker 1: how cool is this that we get to be a
Speaker 1: part of this, were somehow a part of this man's legacy.
Speaker 1: And again, I I hate to use the same word again,
Speaker 1: but there's just such a deep appreciation I have. And
Speaker 1: so while we did lose that game, that entire day,
Speaker 1: that entire experience was so surreal um to be able
Speaker 1: to celebrate coach, of course, but all also all the
Speaker 1: teams and all the players that he has coached. Was
Speaker 1: just it was remarkable, and we have like this. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's a recruiting tool, but you know,
Speaker 1: we call it the brotherhood or whatever. I could honestly
Speaker 1: say it goes back to what I was talking about
Speaker 1: with my decision to go to Duke. I can honestly
Speaker 1: say that that that is real. Like I have a
Speaker 1: great relationship with so many different former players, whether that's
Speaker 1: Quinn Snyder or Billy King, or Shane Batty or Mike
Speaker 1: I didn't play with any of those guys. We have
Speaker 1: this incredible shared experience that that immediately forms a bond,
Speaker 1: and then of course all the other stuff is just
Speaker 1: it's just added. Yeah, you end up getting drafted eleventh
Speaker 1: to the Orlando Magic. There go to NBA finals. I
Speaker 1: think this this status insane to me that for twenty
Speaker 1: one years in a row, from high school to college
Speaker 1: to the NBA, you make the playoffs, and oftentimes in
Speaker 1: the NBA, by the way, with teams that are not
Speaker 1: used to going to the playoffs. Let's be honest, um,
Speaker 1: that is just such an incredible accomplishment. Obviously, you go
Speaker 1: to the finals with Orlando lose to my Lakers. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: about that still, though I don't know why I'm apologizing
Speaker 1: your time in Orlando there early in your career, before
Speaker 1: you leave and startling traveling around a little bit, talk
Speaker 1: to me about the experience there of playing in Orlando. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, at the time, Orlando felt like a very
Speaker 1: big city. I didn't have neighbors growing up, and so
Speaker 1: the first time I ever had a house next to
Speaker 1: the house that I lived in. I mean college, you're
Speaker 1: in a dorm, that doesn't count, but a house next
Speaker 1: to the house I lived in was when I was
Speaker 1: rookie in Orlando. Was the the first time I lived in
Speaker 1: a neighborhood. Um was first time there was like a
Speaker 1: real downtown with restaurants and UH clubs, and I was
Speaker 1: on my own, and you know, I had to navigate
Speaker 1: being a two year old douche bag along with UH,
Speaker 1: along with like everybody I I talked about this with
Speaker 1: Grant Hill in my podcast recently, Like everybody on my
Speaker 1: team hated me because I went to Duke and I
Speaker 1: got there and they gave me ship all the time.
Speaker 1: So it was like it was a hard experience. Early on.
Speaker 1: I think a couple of things happened. I think I
Speaker 1: grew up as a person. That was probably most important.
Speaker 1: I met my wife during that time. We started dating
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, right before my third year started,
Speaker 1: and we've been together, you know, ever since. And and
Speaker 1: then I I just went into survival mode. And I
Speaker 1: always loved the game. I always loved competing, but at
Speaker 1: some point it became about survival and complete ownership of
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do. And so I had to
Speaker 1: cross a barrier. And I talked about this all the time,
Speaker 1: like there are basketball players, and there are basketball fans.
Speaker 1: They're basketball coaches and basket well front office people and
Speaker 1: people that work in the media that talk about basketball,
Speaker 1: and those people are fine, like they do find then
Speaker 1: there's then there's sickos, basketball sickos, true junkies, true psychos.
Speaker 1: And I had to become that to survive. And I'm
Speaker 1: fucking glad I did. Uh. But you know, I look
Speaker 1: back at my sophomore year somewhere between between my sophomore
Speaker 1: of our junior year that it was a very similar
Speaker 1: process between my second year and my third year in
Speaker 1: the NBA, And it didn't pan out right away. My
Speaker 1: third year, I still was in and out of the
Speaker 1: rotation at times I didn't play every night, but it
Speaker 1: was it was like a full commitment. I thought I
Speaker 1: had made a commitment, and then it became no, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take it to the next level. And you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of that was changing my body. A lot
Speaker 1: of that was just all the extra work I did.
Speaker 1: And so those early years in Orlando were about survive there,
Speaker 1: about gaining stand Van Gundy's trust. If I look back
Speaker 1: at the later years in Orlando, I sometimes think specifically
Speaker 1: after my fourth year I signed a contract with the
Speaker 1: Chicago Bulls to be a starter. I would have played
Speaker 1: with Derrick Rose and Joke and Noah and Lull Dang
Speaker 1: and that team that following year after I signed, Orlando
Speaker 1: match my offer. So because I was restricted, so I
Speaker 1: didn't get to go to Chicago, but that team won
Speaker 1: sixty one games, was the number one seed in the East.
Speaker 1: Like to me, I was ready to take that next step.
Speaker 1: And so those later years in Orlando I was. I
Speaker 1: was still coming off the bench. I'd spot start sometimes
Speaker 1: if guys got hurt, but it was kind of like
Speaker 1: two or three wasted years where I was ready to
Speaker 1: take the next jump in my career. And thankfully you know,
Speaker 1: I got to a perfect place for me after my
Speaker 1: seventh year and I signed with the Clippers. I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't become a full time starter un till my
Speaker 1: eighth year in the NBA. I really had I really
Speaker 1: had to work. And it's crazy to think because I was.
Speaker 1: I was twenty nine when I signed with the Clippers,
Speaker 1: and I was hurt a lot of that year because
Speaker 1: I I had gotten pushed out of the air and
Speaker 1: I broke my wrist. I fell on my back out
Speaker 1: of back injury, had to recover from the erist injury.
Speaker 1: So I missed a lot of that year. But my
Speaker 1: best years in the NBA were on the other side
Speaker 1: of thirty and as a six four, what most people
Speaker 1: think is a very unethletic person. To have my best
Speaker 1: years in the n B A on the other side
Speaker 1: of thirty, I think is is pretty It is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: And again that that's because I went into that mode
Speaker 1: of just like, no one's gonna out work me, no
Speaker 1: one's gonna be in better shape with me, no one's
Speaker 1: going to study the game more than me, no one's
Speaker 1: gonna talk more than me, no one's gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: team dynamics like if I have to figure out a
Speaker 1: relationship on a team, if I have to mend something
Speaker 1: between two people, I'm gonna be that guy. And so
Speaker 1: I just I just everything became all consuming, and I
Speaker 1: feel bad at times for my wife, and it's part
Speaker 1: of the reason I retired. It was because it just
Speaker 1: it took up everything. You know, my entire day was
Speaker 1: about bad sketball. And I've told this story before. I remember,
Speaker 1: I think it was my second year in l A.
Speaker 1: Her family came in town, her parents, and it just
Speaker 1: so happened her aunts and uncles were visiting her cousin
Speaker 1: who lived in Newport Beach, and we were in Manhattan Beach.
Speaker 1: So we had a Sunday game nationally televised against the
Speaker 1: Rockets the next day, and we go to this Mexican
Speaker 1: restaurant and I don't think I spoke at the dinner,
Speaker 1: and so we get home and Chelsea's like what the funk? Man, like,
Speaker 1: why why are why are you acting like that at dinner?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, huh, She's like, why are we You
Speaker 1: didn't speak and I was like, oh, sorry, I was
Speaker 1: just thinking about Garden James Harden tomorrow. Oh gosh, I
Speaker 1: killed that was awful. I feel so bad for her,
Speaker 1: but I also totally get it. You talked about your
Speaker 1: relationship with Chris Paul earlier and him being one of
Speaker 1: your calls other than coach k when you decided to retire,
Speaker 1: um talk a little bit about why he's so important
Speaker 1: to you or became so important to you through your
Speaker 1: playing career. We're different people, but we're like minded. Chris
Speaker 1: is a very intense competitor, and I think he's He's
Speaker 1: probably not as abrasive now as he was with the Clippers,
Speaker 1: but as a leader, he could be abrasive. And I
Speaker 1: never had an issue with that because I could see
Speaker 1: what his number one agenda was, and that was to
Speaker 1: win a basketball game. And everything that he did materialized
Speaker 1: out of that agenda. I want to be great and
Speaker 1: I want to win, and so I saw the work
Speaker 1: he put in. I saw his commitment to his family.
Speaker 1: And he had had little Chris prior to me getting there,
Speaker 1: and Cam at the time was was a toddler. But
Speaker 1: you know, when Chelsea got pregnant, he was one of
Speaker 1: the guys that, you know, gave me life advice about
Speaker 1: being a dad. He was so great with Chelsea during
Speaker 1: her pregnancy and so like it was just like this
Speaker 1: this shared experience, but you know, a shared commitment to
Speaker 1: our values, and so we bonded on that. And Chris
Speaker 1: was a guy that I mean, in the middle of
Speaker 1: a game, like I he could motherfuck me and I
Speaker 1: could motherfuck him, and you know what, we were secure
Speaker 1: enough in our relationship to go grab dinner after the game.
Speaker 1: We were secure enough. At the time. There was a
Speaker 1: TV show I think it was a scandal, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: scandal on on ABC, and like I'd go, we'd go,
Speaker 1: Chelsea and I would go to Jada and Chris's house
Speaker 1: every Tuesday night or whatever it was that it aired,
Speaker 1: and we'd watch it together and like it didn't matter.
Speaker 1: The day before we had yelled at each other. I
Speaker 1: didn't care because I knew what he was about. And
Speaker 1: uh I I called him when I retired, and it
Speaker 1: was only only teammate I called, just like, hey, dude,
Speaker 1: I'm retiring. I'm announcing tomorrow. And the reason why is
Speaker 1: I called him because I'm like, I'm like, dude, I
Speaker 1: I'm going through this and thinking about all the teammates
Speaker 1: I had, all the opportunities on great teams to maybe
Speaker 1: win and it never happened. And I know you haven't
Speaker 1: won either, And I just want you to know. If
Speaker 1: I could win a championship, there's one teammate that I
Speaker 1: could win a championship with that I wanted it for
Speaker 1: as bad as I wanted for myself. It would be you.
Speaker 1: That's how I feel about him. So how I feel
Speaker 1: about him, that's awesome. He and I have had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to cross paths a number of times. I have
Speaker 1: nothing but great things to say about him. You hold
Speaker 1: another distinction, I mean, an amazing career, but clippers. Eventually,
Speaker 1: then you you have a few runs there with the
Speaker 1: seventies sixers, but you also become the first NBA player
Speaker 1: with a podcast and the own the podcast that is
Speaker 1: allowed inside the bubble. Once we hit well, once we
Speaker 1: hit the bottom, once the bubble happened because of this
Speaker 1: little thing called the coronavirus that's been going on the
Speaker 1: last few years. Why why did you start the podcast?
Speaker 1: What was your idea about it? Initially I will mention
Speaker 1: called the JJ Reddick Podcast. Now it has morphed into
Speaker 1: The Old Man and the Three. I'm wondering if you're
Speaker 1: the Old Man or the Three now that you've maybe retired.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. It's the old man of the three.
Speaker 1: We should we should change it. Why Why was that
Speaker 1: important to you? What was your idea about starting the podcast?
Speaker 1: I had no idea what I was getting into, if
Speaker 1: I'm being honest. So so Adrian Woodarowski was working at
Speaker 1: Yahoo at the time, and he signed this deal with
Speaker 1: Yahoo and he sort of got his own platform called
Speaker 1: The Vertical and they were gonna they were gonna run
Speaker 1: stuff online, you know, print online, and they're gonna do podcasts,
Speaker 1: and so initially came to me it was very much
Speaker 1: a player's tribune style format. Hey can you write eight
Speaker 1: things during the season, What it's like to be traded
Speaker 1: at the trade deadline, you're on a long road trip,
Speaker 1: what it's like to be on a long road trip,
Speaker 1: stuff like that, And I just I was like, whoas Like,
Speaker 1: I'm getting flashbacks to uh that class of New York history.
Speaker 1: Were like, I don't think I'm gonna be able to
Speaker 1: deliver on this one. So he came back to me
Speaker 1: a couple months later it was like, hey, well you
Speaker 1: do a podcast. You can have your own podcast, And
Speaker 1: at the time was a very novel thing. I think
Speaker 1: there was one other active athlete that had a podcast,
Speaker 1: and there were just a few people in general that
Speaker 1: had podcasts that were there were former athletes, and so
Speaker 1: I was the first active NBA player to have one.
Speaker 1: And at the time it was such a novel thing
Speaker 1: because I was I was peeling back at the curtain,
Speaker 1: you know. It was You're you're gonna fly on the
Speaker 1: wall and you're having a conversation with Kyle Korver about
Speaker 1: shooting mechanics. You're having a conversation with Donald Foil about
Speaker 1: finances when you're a pro athlete, and so we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is new and different. And along the way, I
Speaker 1: got really comfortable asking questions. And I was always curious,
Speaker 1: but I got comfortable asking questions and I developed into
Speaker 1: a better interviewer. And my last year with The Ringer,
Speaker 1: so I did did the Yahoo thing for a year.
Speaker 1: I did Ringer for three years. My last year with
Speaker 1: The Ringer, I had a co host named Tommy Alter,
Speaker 1: who's my business partner now and the old man in
Speaker 1: the three and three or four two productions. But we
Speaker 1: started discussing just ownership, like we why this is around
Speaker 1: the time the Ringers selling to Spotify. Barstool Sports is
Speaker 1: selling to the Churning Group and are out to pen
Speaker 1: Sports and the Turning Groups in their investor. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but uh so all this stuff is happening, We're like,
Speaker 1: why why don't we just own it? Like, you know,
Speaker 1: we shopped it around. Bill made an offer he wouldn't
Speaker 1: let us own it, and and so we we started
Speaker 1: our own thing. And it just so happened that our
Speaker 1: contract with the Ringer ended on August one and Games
Speaker 1: in the Bubble started August one, Like it was just
Speaker 1: dumb luck so that we that we just so happened
Speaker 1: to be the one podcast amongst current players that was
Speaker 1: broadcasting out of the bubble. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: we got really lucky because for our show, uh you know,
Speaker 1: we can operate now we built up a decent audience
Speaker 1: where we can operate just the two of us, or
Speaker 1: we bring in our correspondence like Alex Caruso mckel bridges
Speaker 1: like week to week it's fine, but you know, primarily
Speaker 1: our our show is guest driven, and it just so
Speaker 1: happened that we come out of the gates with Stacy Abrams,
Speaker 1: Damian Lillard, Joel Embi, Jayson Tatum, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Durray,
Speaker 1: and it's like, holy fuck, this is awesome, and so
Speaker 1: we just kind of hit. It was all timing and
Speaker 1: we worked and I work at it, but a lot
Speaker 1: of it was just dumb luck and timing, and so
Speaker 1: we were able to get you know, whether it was
Speaker 1: YouTube or audio. We were able to because we were
Speaker 1: starting from zero because we restarted the podcast. We had
Speaker 1: no RSS feed because we gave it, we gave it
Speaker 1: to the Ringer. We had no YouTube subscribers because everything
Speaker 1: else was on the Ringer, and so we started from zero,
Speaker 1: and within two months we had built an audience. And
Speaker 1: we've worked really hard over the last you know, basically
Speaker 1: two years, uh to to continue to build that audience.
Speaker 1: And I tell people all the time, I'm like, I
Speaker 1: want to put out good content. I want to put
Speaker 1: out great shows and great interviews, and I have a
Speaker 1: built in sort of credibility with my peers and former
Speaker 1: teammates and players I compete Pete against. The only thing
Speaker 1: that matters to me is building audience. Because everything else
Speaker 1: you could ever want from a show. I mean you
Speaker 1: you know this from having worked in theater or television,
Speaker 1: Like if you have an audience, good stuff will happen.
Speaker 1: That's all that matters. No, You're absolutely right. I have
Speaker 1: enjoyed your stuff for quite a long time now. By
Speaker 1: the way, he's been doing this since twenty sixteen, and
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, the first active player to have one.
Speaker 1: Congratulations to you. Thank you for talking to me. You know,
Speaker 1: I am such a duke basketball fan, have always been
Speaker 1: a fan of yours. I appreciate your your form when
Speaker 1: you're out there shooting. I am the challenges live, by
Speaker 1: the way, and I think that's what it needs to be.
Speaker 1: I could have a free throw shooting contest with the
Speaker 1: ninth best free throw shooter in the history of the NBA.
Speaker 1: But I think putting you in a coat and a
Speaker 1: tie and and shoes and work pants thirteen in a row,
Speaker 1: that's what that's that's the challenge. If can you do it,
Speaker 1: I will accept that challenge. My only request, because I
Speaker 1: am a big fan of Eric Anders laying in random
Speaker 1: golf club, Okay, my only request is whether that's on
Speaker 1: his channel or my channel. You and I have some
Speaker 1: sort It could be a nine hole match, could be
Speaker 1: an eighteen hold match, but we have some sort of
Speaker 1: golf match. The shooting contest. You're debt. You're dead in golf.
Speaker 1: You're dead in golf. There's no question about that. I'll
Speaker 1: do that. I'll do that tomorrow. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: Whatever you want, I've heard about your game. I'm ready.
Speaker 1: Let's go. Let's coming. It's coming along, Brian, It's coming along,
Speaker 1: It's coming along. Eric. Eric is a great guy. Always,
Speaker 1: always love those videos with him. This is gonna be fun.
Speaker 1: J J. Thank you so much for talking to me today.
Speaker 1: Good luck in all of your future endeavors. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Challenge accepted. I love it and double Brian,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me on man, I appreciate it. Wow.
Speaker 1: J J. Thank you so much for joining me. This
Speaker 1: was so great. And yes, I cannot wait for our
Speaker 1: free throw competition golf. You have no chance. It's done
Speaker 1: already before we even start. I can't believe it's Thursday already. Listeners,
Speaker 1: I'm going to see you very soon on Tuesday again
Speaker 1: for another episode of Off the Beat. I hope you're
Speaker 1: enjoying these sports interviews as much as I love doing them,
Speaker 1: so be sure to let me know your thoughts on
Speaker 1: our Instagram page at Off the Beat and I Will
Speaker 1: see you on Tuesday. Off the Beat is hosted an
Speaker 1: executive produced by me Brian Baumgartner alongside our executive producer Langley.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Diego Tapia, Liz Hayes, Hannah Harris, and
Speaker 1: Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan Papa Zachary, and
Speaker 1: our intern is Sammy Cats. Our theme song Bubble and Squeak,
Speaker 1: performed by my great friend Creed Bratton, and the episode
Speaker 1: was mixed by Seth O'landskip