19 Burst results for "Second Round"
The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"second round" Discussed on The Crossover NBA Show with Chris Mannix
"This first. And I'm glad you said it from the standpoint of his brother. Because I felt bad. And I don't think it was because we did anything wrong necessarily, but after they were eliminated, we had on this podcast a conversation about what the next logical step for that organization was. And I think all of us pretty much agreed. I don't completely remember what you said, but I think all of us were relatively in agreement that this was the most logical step to make. I don't think any of us ever want to be on here and be like, they should fire this guy. But we also know the rhythms of this league and what like what's available to organizations and what changes you can make and yeah. So I think we're on the same page that if they were going to make a change, he was kind of the obvious. So yeah, so we had that we had that conversation, obviously, without knowledge of what was happening in his personal life, which as we talk about different things, you know, it's very real stuff. For people when you look at performance, when you look like. I kind of want to say more, just but I guess I shouldn't theoretically do it. But people, there's always stuff going on with people, and these are people at the end of the day. And so that stuff is always happening in the background that we don't know about, that when we're asking, wow, this seems really off for this seems like this team's not doing well. Stuff is fluid and stuff changes in people's lives where you're just not having a good day or not having a good year. It's not why this change is being made ultimately. There have been a lot of other shortcomings. I also think he deserves a ton of credit for what you mentioned before, which was raising not raising the floor of the team, but like,
Bloomberg Daybreak Asia
Fresh update on "second round" discussed on Bloomberg Daybreak Asia
"Hong Kong Brian I'm Curtis let's take a look at markets Asian equities are turning slightly lower now earlier U .S. lower stocks moved into the close the rally in global bonds though gained further traction that brought yields down and we saw a pretty big jump to the downside for two -year yields the latest reading their 4 .64 percent the 10 -year yield down to 4 .26 percent in the end the S &P 500 traded off about a tenth of a percent just four points slower but gave up most of the gains that had been seen earlier earlier in the day the Dow finished slightly positive the NASDAQ was down about two -tenths of one percent some of the other numbers the Nikkei just opening now down a quarter of a percent the ASX200 in Sydney is essentially flat and the KOSPI also down a quarter of one percent now it's news the current Israel Hamas pause in fighting nearing is an end talks continue there let's get Ed Baxter in San Francisco with more yeah that that's right Brian the negotiators from Qatar and the US are pressing for agreement to extend Israel is demanding all the remaining hostages released be in US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says continuing the ceasefire is definitely the way to get that its continuation by definition means that more hostages will be coming home more assistance would be getting in so clearly that's something we want i believe it's also something that uh that Israel wants now more hostages we're free today and hope is still for a second uh a second round before the deadline and the US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer today spent 45 minutes on the floor talking about the spike in anti -semitism in the United States many of those marching here in the US do not have any evil intent but when Jewish people chants hear like
The Hockey PDOcast
"second round" Discussed on The Hockey PDOcast
"They need so much more of a bark off. Like he scored the one goal, which was kind of like an empty net tap in against the bruins. He had one primary assist in the series, 8 5 on 5 shots on goal and all of his shares were under 40%. Especially if he's going to go head to head against Matthews. There's a defensive component there, certainly. But he's going to need to produce much more, especially if he's going to turn around the reputation of he hasn't really had that big playoff moment yet, right? This is an opportunity for him certainly, especially with the attention. There's that. Do you want to talk? We can quickly talk about the chuck and the impact he had in round one and him antagonizing leafs fans is going to be absolutely hilarious in this series. He's going to rise to this moment in such a good way. What would you put the percentage of leafs jerseys in games three and four ad? Like 75% of the crowd or hi, hi. But I know that's become like a bit of a story, but it's not a story every league does that. For sure, it's still, it's still a story in terms of people are talking about it. I know, but it's not a unique no, it's not unique thing, but it's the sort of thing that. Hits the ether, hits the zeitgeist. That's going to be effective and prevent leafs fans from being at those games. Yeah. There's too many expats in South Florida. It's too transient. But it's the right call. It's something you have to do everything you can to try and make it as much of a home environment as you can. That game 6 against the bruins was actually a really good home environment. Obviously scoring as many goals as they did and having such a fun game certainly helps cultivate that. But yeah, that was surprising considering what I expected heading into that series.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
Fresh update on "second round" discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"Um, and I think you're going to see that much or more and what the NBA does next. So I think the same way the NFL moved digital and has had a lot of success, I can't imagine the NBA does anything. I think they do that or more, not less. So you're definitely going to see a shift in how these games and, and the other thing is, um, I think one thing that doesn't need to happen is one thing that frustrates the shit out of me as a fan. Is, you know, it's so hard to find out even where to watch a game. And it's like, it's, it's, it's too complicated. This needs to be simplified. Like I want to be able to, to go one place and be able to watch, you know, most of my sports. So, you know, that's obviously the dream we have for fanatics long-term, but we're not even thinking about that today. It's just, you know, it's a, a big bold dream and then you forgot how to make it happen over, you know, many years. The baseball playoffs were tough with that. Where it's like, as soon as it was time for a game, you had to do this basically roulette to see what channel it was on. It's not just, sports are tough for that. It's hard to find where you want to watch games. Is it TBS? Is it, what are, oh, we're on ESPN tonight. And by the way, I owned part of a basketball team before and I can't figure out where to watch a basketball game sometimes and where to watch a, a baseball game sometimes. And so, yeah, it's, it's, I think that's an opportunity as well. And the one thing, if there's one thing that I didn't know enough in the beginning of my career that I really think now is you got to think about the fan first and everything you do, and then back into the business model from that. And that is something that we talk about religiously for next today. That's a different conversation than five years ago. We're just, you know, you got to think about what's in the fan's best interest. And if you start there, I think you have a better business longterm. So you gave up your stake in the Sixers. I did. Is it true that being a minority owner just means that you have season tickets? No, definitely not. I mean, look, I was obviously, you know, this cause you follow this business closely. I was probably, you know, you were pretty hands on for minority owner. Yeah. And that wasn't by design. It's just kind of what happened. You know, look, business is about relationships. And, you know, I suck at a lot of things, but I generally have pretty good relationships. Seems like it. And so I think in the first five or six years, I wasn't that involved. And then as time went on, you know, I kind of got more involved. And look, my relationship with Josh Harris and Dave Blitzer was and is incredible. And I think, you know, we all kind of, you know, do what we do best. But I was very involved in the last couple of years. And, you know, certain things went as planned and certain things didn't go as planned. And I could tell you what didn't go as planned. We never want to have any guesses. Well, we never won a championship and that sucks. And, you know, when you own a basketball team, you own a sports team, you have one job, which is to win a championship. And each year that you don't win a championship, you failed. Right. And you should look at the end of the season and say, we didn't achieve our goal if you didn't win a championship. And so, you know, to me, I was involved with it for 11 years and, you know, we got bounced in the second round of the playoffs. You know, too many times. And so we never achieved our goal. And that's something I look at as a personal failure because I was deeply involved with it. You certainly owned an interesting team. We did. That's the story of my life. I mean, I think I'm used to having... You just spent the Pistons where like nothing happened year after year. Your team was like a soap opera. Yeah, well, I mean, sports has a lot of that that follows it. And I feel like I have a lot that just follows me with that as well. So, yes. Were you trying to mediate the hardened thing at the end or did you know this ship had sailed? Look, it's no secret that I'm incredibly close still with Josh Harris and David Blitzer and the Sixers organization and Daryl and also with James. I thought there could have been a really good solution in it. That didn't come to fruition. At the end of the day, I'm happy now that the Sixers are happy and doing great and James is happy. He got what he wanted. I'm more bullish than you are. I think the Clippers will be better than you just told me the Clippers were going to be. I'm the opposite of bullish. Yeah, you're very negative. So I'm un-bullish. Yeah, so I'm bullish and I'm going to put that out there. Look, James, James, you know, it's very easy. Bearish? What's the opposite of bullish? Bearish. Bearish. Yeah, you're showing the Clippers short. I'm sold already. Yeah, I have all the shorts on it. Okay, perfect. Perfect. Well, I'm more bullish than you are. I think it takes time. If there's one thing I learned that I didn't know in the beginning of the Sixers, to get multiple stars to play well together in jail, that takes time. And something that I think James doesn't get enough credit for is the way he adjusted his game to fit into the Sixers. And, you know, look, Joel is a incredible basketball player. He's, you know, great, not very good. And James came in there and figured out how to change his game to really, you know, support Joel and support the team. And I think that was working pretty well. What would be interesting is to watch, you know, and by the way, to see the way Reese is, you know, stepping up now is a beautiful thing. And he's, you know, he could be one of the best humans in the planet. I mean, that guy is a, you know, he's a born leader. He's always happy. He's always got a smile on his face. He's going to make the All-Star team. And by the way, no one deserves it more than he does. And he's working his ass off. But, you know, it's interesting. You got to get through a season, you know, without injuries or without, you know, season ending injuries. And you got to get through and, you know, shit goes wrong in any season, in just about any team. It's very hard to keep a team healthy for, you know, the key guys healthy for an entire season. So, you know, to me, you know, the measure of success for the Sixers is going to be how do we progress and, you know, not be bouncing the second round of the playoffs. And, you know, I'm rooting for great outcomes for both. I mean, for me, you're out. You're never owning a team again. I'm never owning a team again. I think, you know, fanatics is such a bigger opportunity. I'm fortunate to sit in the middle of sports, technology, the greatest athletes in the planet. I love what I get to do. I learned so much. I'm grateful for the opportunity. I did it from 2011 until 2022. And I'm so happy to not be part of it anymore. It doesn't sound that much fun. I mean, the ego part sounds great. You get sick court side. You get to potentially win the title. Those are the good things. And then the bad things are literally 90 things. The fact that players can become unhappy within six months and now your whole season's upended, or you have a basically 29 and 30 chance of not winning the title year after year. Here's the reality. It's not fun because if you think it's fun, you don't have the responsibility of every night going to bed and every morning waking up saying, how do I win a championship? And the stress and anxiety that goes along with that fans who are just like, they're looking at you, it's like they're doing their job saying, win a championship for me. God damn it. Right. And so, um, you know, I learned so much from it. I think it was actually helpful to me in the early parts of my career and from a development perspective. And by the time, you know, in the later part of it, it was so complicated with Fanatics getting into the online sports betting business with Fanatics, having direct deals with 3000 athletes, which is, you know, violates all the league rules. So it was definitely time for me to move on. It took, I had, in addition to the stress of wanting to win a championship and not succeeding for the city of Philadelphia, then I had the stress that I knew I was violating all these league rules and, you know, what legal letter was coming each day from it. And so it was very clean. It was time for me to move on. And now I'm in the best position in the world because if there's a situation I care about, I can help behind the scenes. And so, you know, my, and my relationship with, you know, I think still I joke around people all the time. People still like, if you were an NBA star, when I owned, you know, when I was the third largest owner of the Sixers in a very visible, you know, part of the organization, people looked at you a little bit sideways. Now, no one looks at you sideways anymore. Everyone just looks at you as neutral, which is the way I need to be as the leader of Fanatics. You occupy such a weird territory in the sports world because you have, you're probably, you could make the case you're the most powerful person in sports because you have the relationships literally with every league, every commissioner, all the, all the famous stars, right? But you, you don't have a lot of the negative responsibility of that, right? It seems like your role is additive in all of these different things. People call you, they ask for advice, or you're trying to help them from a business standpoint. There's, there's nobody quite like you, but I always wondered, like, I wish there was a sports czar that could basically be for the, for the sake of just how sports would run, things that make sense, that could just be like the sounding board for people, but we don't have that job. It doesn't exist. You're kind of like the de facto sports czar, even though you're not the czar. Does that make sense? Um, first, thank you for the kind words. I don't look at myself like that at all. The people that are the most important people in the sports organization are the athletes, these incredible talented athletes that do what they do. We'd have no, but we'd have no, we'd have no, like one thing I'm very aware and humble about without the thousands of incredible athletes that do what they do, we'd have no business. We'd have nothing to do. Okay. We wouldn't have people to buy merchandise from us, to buy collectibles from us, to buy, um, to bet on sports with us. We'd have nothing to do. And without the sports organizations, the leagues, um, we'd have no business either. That's it. I think what is where I'm finally in the right place in my life is I've got rid of conflict and that's a great place to be. You're the only one, everyone else has some sort of conflict. I think, you know, a lot of what I do is the behind the scenes stuff that, you know, we never talk about and that, that, that, and I enjoy that. And I learned from that and I grow from that. And, you know, I, look, I don't think there's a lot of people that have really good relationships with the commissioners and also really good relationships with the people who lead labor. Okay. Cause naturally there's tension, you know, between those organizations a lot of the time. And I think, um, you know, there aren't, you know, I don't have much complexity anymore other than I'm waking up every morning, going to bed every night, you know, focused on one thing, which is how do I better everything that we do for next week? We have so much to be better at. Um, but I think I look at it as a, um, as a opportunity and something that I love doing that so many people come to me and say, Hey, what would you do here? What do you think about this? You know, and, but I learned as much from each person, you know, the way I work and people don't really get this about me. People think I'm just being self deprecated. I'm not, um, I legitimately barely made it out of high school. It's a miracle that I graduate. I went to college. I posted my, you know, my, my 1.87 GPA that I had in the one semester. I'm a little like, I can't read. Like someone just said to me, yes, so you should read my book. And I said, I need to actually, um, without getting into who it was, I'm going to listen to it on audio. And I haven't even done that for, I haven't read a book since ninth grade. The way I learn is by getting great people around me and by they learn from me and I learn from them. So I'm always picking up different data points from people. So that's the way my brain works. You know, get a really differentiated group of people around you that all have different backgrounds and different things they can add and try to help make their lives better and then learn from them. And that's a lot of how the ideas that we get at Fanatics come from. That's how a lot of my growth comes from. But I want to make sure I'm always giving more than I get in every time that I can. Would you call yourself a problem solver? I think it's one of my best skill sets because I'm street smart. It's like, you know, look, look, you obviously, you can't be dyslexic, not be able to read a horrible student barely made it to high school, didn't go to college. And then also, you know, you have to have some positive traits. My positive traits are relationship skills and like common sense and common sense solves problems. So yes, I think I'm generally a very good problem solver. I've also learned you can't solve everyone's problems and you can't fix everything. And that's something where I work on average 18 hours a day, seven days a week. You know, people always see the fun microwave and they see the shit on Instagram. They see, you know, my white party, this Fanatics Super Bowl party. You know, they see me with, you know, some people that are strategically important to me or some good friends of mine. They always think I live a fun life. I'm like, what I love to do is get up, work my ass off and then do it again the next day because that's the one thing I'm good at. I'm not a good, I'm a terrible athlete, I'm a terrible student, but that's the one thing I like doing. And so, but you also learn at the same time, you can't, you know, you can't fix everything. You can't solve everyone's problems. The Vanity Fair just, or Vanity Fair wrote about the white party a couple months ago, which you revived. P. Diddy had it, like he, it stopped in 09 and then there was like a Hamptons white party void and then you stepped in and now this is like the party every, what's it, July 3rd every year? Well, it's your change. It depends on where the holiday falls. But you know, it's funny. I had not even thought about the Diddy had done the party. And obviously he had an amazing party, but it stopped in 2009. And at that point I was just working in my old company, you know, 24 seven. Nobody else did it for 10 years. I don't think so. Look, I bought a house in the Hamptons in 2020 and, um, I just decided to, you know, I think I just picked up from one of my friends said, Hey, Lorne Michaels used to have them in like the seventies. Right. Then you have a, like, there's like a tradition. I can tell you, like, look, it's a great idea. One of the things I love to do is bring people together. Yeah. I like, I actually really enjoy that. Whether it's different pockets of that's exactly where I was going. I love bringing people from different backgrounds together because what happens, you all learn from each other. And whether it's, um, you know, whether it's a dinner that's got, you know, a bunch of athletes from different sports, a bunch of friends, some, you know, really successful business people and some, you know, collectors and we're all learning from each other. Whether it's, you know, the, you know, I remember the first time I introduced Robicraft from Meek Mill together and we flew to Miami for something and they're learning from each other. So, but we, these are always, you know, I think what's a loss is if the really successful people in the relationship aren't always learning from everybody around them. So if you sat with Robicraft and you were on that flight, the first time they introduced them to Meek Mill and they were going and we were going to, um, Miami, I remember just listening to how many questions Robert was asking Meek. And it's like, Meek had all these questions you want to ask Robert, but this went on for two and a half hours. I barely said a word because I knew each of them. So you're just delighted. I was, I loved watching him. It's just like a great conversation. And, you know, Robert's learning about, you know, the culture in the background that Meek comes from and Meek's asking Robert business questions. And it's like, I love stuff like that. And so we do a lot of that. And the white party is really just a big manifestation of that in a lot of ways, because you have so many different people from different backgrounds. You've got some of the best and most iconic business people in the world, some of the best investors in the world and some of the most well-known athletes in the world. And then by the way, people get to have fun as well. And that's a fun thing. What's the single best story that's happened at the party or that you can tell, I guess. Great question. Single best story. There's been one where you're like, I can't believe this. I feel like I'm on Mars. Yeah. I mean, the whole event makes you feel that way, to be honest. I mean, you, when you see so many great people come throughout the world, I mean, I think just, you know, for me, um, I feel really fortunate and lucky that so many people just want to come together and, you know, hang for 12. It's actually a 13 hour party starts at 5 p.m. and goes till 6 a.m. in the morning. And most people go the entire time of it. Um, you know, uh, for me, I just like seeing the relationships get formed from the people told me, I met this person there. Um, you know, funny story. I just, Mo Obama's now in the Sixers. Um, he came the first year. He's now married or engaged the person he met, you know, at the white party. I love that, you know, it's amazing. Um, but I mean, there's so many incredible stories, probably none worse than when, uh, Camille, um, you know, um, fell off. The stage and had to go to the hospital in the middle, middle of the white party. Oh my God. But I knew she was going to be okay. She didn't know that. So I was trying to stay behind and make sure all my friends were having a great time. And, you know, I got, I was told I need to immediately go with her. I would be a bad for the relationship. Yeah. It's seen that way. Your guy, Bob Kraft, the Pats might have a chance to have the worst record in the league here. This is not, not what he's about. This is the worst Patriots year since he's owned the team. I'm a giant Patriots fan. This is part of the process. We knew when Tom Brady left, we knew we were in, we were in the first class of the airplane cabin for 20 years, having a great time with Tom Brady. And then eventually you get moved to the back of the plane. It's part of the process, but he's probably not handling this while I'm guessing. Look, here's what I'll tell you. To do what they did. Robert need to be the glue in a lot of places. And I watched that firsthand. Yeah. Okay. And I can tell you the person that I learned, learned the most from in sports ownership was absolutely Robert. It's not the stuff that people see. That's what happens behind the scenes is how you keep shit together. It's when people want to kill each other and they actually don't kill each other. It's when you stop bad stuff from happening. And so, um, for me, I was, I've always been a big student. Like I study, you know, lots of tricks that Robert has and I've watched lots of things. I can tell you he's a perennial winner. Yes. This has been a horrible season. He will be a perennial winner. Yes. Tom Brady, greatest quarterback, greatest NFL player of all time. There's to me, there's no debate about that, but I think if you asked Tommy, he would say he alone that Robert was, you know, glue and helped, you know, keep everything to where they were able to win six championships together. If it's a six Super Bowls, got to get my vernacular, right? If it's an absentee owner, do Brady and Belichick make it until through 2019? No. When do you think they break up? Um, I don't want to get myself in trouble, but, but far before 2019. It is amazing. But now it's like the big controversy in New England is, well, Brady won the Super Bowls and I, to me it was both of them. I think I give them equal billing in the six Super Bowls. So how about this? I give the three of them. Um, and look, you're going to say fair. The person who had the most responsibility is Tom Brady. I got to tell you something, I'm fortunate enough to really have got to know Tom really well in the last few years. I have never seen someone who, when you spend a ton of time with them, you see why they've got the outcomes that they've got. He's truly extraordinary. And I've seen other athletes that have won, um, a lot of championships. I think they've maybe been more athletically talented than Tom was. Tom did it from an absolute will to win. And I'm not going to fucking give up and I'm going to win that game. And just watching him and his work ethic, um, is truly, uh, extraordinary. And I will tell you, I don't think there's another person that's like from an, from a people who've played sports, he could be the person who motivates me the most. I hear from him the earliest in the morning. Yeah. Okay. There's, you know, there's generally a text before six AM for one of the, one of the two of us, but even in the West Coast, he's always. He's, he's just, and he's always working and pushing and whatever he's doing. And that, that's a, that you realize why he's got that outcome, but that said, he alone, um, would not have done that. I do think that, you know, addition to Bill, that Robert, uh, really, um, added, there's so many things that I know that he did that people will never understand to keep, to get the outcomes they got. Well, I hope at the next quarterback, it's somebody who's super competitive and a freaking maniac. Cause I, I'm convinced that's like 90% of it. For somebody to be great at that level, at that position, it can't just be about the talent. There's, there's these extra pieces that come with it and you can kind of tell when somebody doesn't have it and you can tell by the way people talk about them and their teammates and their coaches. look, the best confirmation of what you just said is what happened when Tom Brady went to Tampa. I mean, this guy went to Tampa. That was a very weird situation. Yeah. And he wins a super ball the first year he's there. With playing with a bunch of guys who he was 20 years older than we had nothing in common with. Yeah. And you watch that and you watch that leadership come through from him. And that's the thing again, like when we started, we do a company meeting once a quarter where we bring our 18,000 employees together and we bring a guest, uh, in front of our, um, you know, in front of the 18,000 employees. Every quarter, my first guest was Tom Brady. Yeah. And I think when Tom came on, people would say like, Hey, you just like trying to showcase, Hey, we have a great relationship with Tom Brady. No. What I want to do was ask Tom, okay, how do you deal with high pressure situations? Could you learn from someone better than Tom Brady on how to deal with high pressure situations? Um, you know, um, how do you, you know, what are the things you do to lead and get better results from getting people work together? What are you doing? People aren't working well together, you know, and his answers were spectacular. I asked him for an hour, all these different questions about leadership, management style, work ethic. And I mean, so many people were side texting me and email me saying that was spectacular listening to him. Um, and that's again, why he got the outcome. Did you ever hear him talk about playing in the Superbowl? How it took him like five or six times to realize that the halftime was longer and it was screwing up his mental whatever. And so then when he went into like the last couple of Superbowls, he figured out how to crest his energy after the halftime because he was too hyped. But for the first half, but then it would dip and then he couldn't get it back. So he like put all this weird mental energy into like, all right, here's what I have to do. And I have to be super calm and then do this. And then third quarter I crest. I didn't, but who else would think like that? But I just heard him tell the story, um, last week about what the different things he went through in his brain when they were down 28-3. Yeah. Against Alana and just listen to math and just listening to how, um, he first didn't want to be embarrassed. Yeah. And then he realized, okay, we can win this game. Let's go. Just we're down 19, six plus two, six plus two, three. We're there. Correct. Correct. And it's just, and just how he knew he was going to win that game. She's an incredible story. Um, since the last time we talked, which was almost two years ago and you were just getting into collectibles back then. Something I've cared about my whole life. But now you're like deep in and it seems like you have the book. I couldn't help. We're at your house. Couldn't help but notice. It's among cuts up. You have some proudly displayed cards, but do you have the bug? Are you in? I absolutely have the bug. I was as a kid, I training cards was my first bit. And I like remember terrible student, terrible athlete. I was the last person being picked on every team. I couldn't do well in school. So business was the only thing I was good at, but the business I loved the most as a kid was buying and selling trading cards to my friend's parents. That was the business. Okay. They had the money. I found the customer with the money and I bought and sold cards like crazy as a kid. I didn't get back into this until three years ago. I can tell you I've never had so much fun. I mean, this is a incredible industry. You know, collectors are the best fans in the world. Like there's nothing I love more than going to collectible shows, talking to, because these are the best fans in the world. You talk about someone. You're a collector. You're definitely buying a lot of sports merchandise. You're, you're investing in, in cards, memorabilia. I might've gambled a couple of times. I mean, this is, this is the fanatics. These are the fanatics most important. I'm your wheelhouse customer. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. So you saw, you must've looked, you saw what everybody who was in the collector thing, and when I was at ESPN, I see the photo essays from the convention and part of the comedy of it was just, you know, it was out in 1973. You really felt like you were in a time machine. There was no woman to be seen. It was the most depressing place in the planet. And yet there's tens of millions of dollars of product in here and some of the best stuff and all these people who they've been waiting the whole year to go. And it's like, why isn't this cooler? What are we doing wrong? Why isn't this better? I've never seen an industry with more passionate collectors that have been so underserved than this business. And to me, that just creates so much opportunity. And we've done, look, we've only, we came up with this idea only three years ago. We only bought tops, January 1st of 2022. It's not even two years that we've owned tops and we've done so much so far. We haven't even got started yet. So you buy tops, everybody goes nuts. Then Panini's involved. Now there's been some battles with Panini, right? Like, how does that, how does that all work out? Different sports, like, is that an obstacle or is that something that eventually works itself out? Yeah, I mean, for me, we're just focused on doing what's in the best interest of the collector. So for us, like, let me tell you what we saw. Okay. When we looked at the business, we saw a business where you had sports properties and players giving the rights to, um, tops, Panini, upper deck. These companies were all selling cards to distributors who then picked where the cards go. And they weren't selling the hobby shops. They weren't serving the breakers. They weren't serving the retailers directly. It made no sense. Like would Nike ever sell to a distributor to sell it a footlocker or just sell it? Well, there were middlemen who used to like, just mark it up. Right. And so they were taking money away from the collector and the hobby shop. So the first thing we saw that we said, this makes no sense. We need to collapse that and service the hobby shops directly, the breakers directly, the retailers directly. I think when we bought tops, they served 300 hobby shops. I think today we service 800 hobby shops or something like that. They're all happy that you did this. Elated. They can't. Yeah. They're the, yeah, they, they want to get product directly from us because they, they need that direct relationship so they can get the allocation of what they need to build their business to best support their collectors. And we'd rather give them the margin. You know, if you'd say there was a big incremental margin to split, most of that margin went to the hobby shops, the breakers, to the collectors, you know, to the industry. It didn't sit with us. We kind of passed it on. So that was very obvious. The players were getting kind of shortchanged too. And now they're making a lot more money because we're paying them on a much higher sales. The second thing, and this was crazy. I didn't know what a redemption was. Okay. Now you're going to laugh at me and if you're not a collector, you know, people are going to bore people here. But, um, you know, everyone kept saying to me, Michael, you need to get rid of redemptions. And so it took me like a, you know, a couple of weeks to figure out what a redemption, which is basically an IOU, you know, I bought, you know, a case of cards, a pack of cards. And you know, in that card came, um, your, um, Joel Embiid year two, Zion, you know, card. And there's an IOU for it because they didn't have the card signed by them. And, um, there were so many redemptions out there that collectors were like maddened by this. So I went to, um, you know, baseball, which is our biggest business today. And I went to the head of the union, Tony Clark, you know, I went to our organization, said, we need to eliminate redemptions. And they're like, okay, explain to me how this works. What do you need to do? You need to have a much better relationship with athletes to give you an example, when we launched tops, you know, Chrome, this is a rough number. But like, you know, a year ago, we probably had 30,000 redemptions. And that means 30,000 I use this year with less than a thousand, we reduced it by 97%. That means when you buy cards and you're not chasing us for cards. It's part of the motto is they were hoping that people wouldn't chase for the card. And then they just got to keep the card. I can't speak to what other people do. What I can tell you is we want to delight our customer. Last thing we want to do is a customer chasing us for card. And by the way, if we need to get them a card, we want to get it to them very quickly. So we've reduced our redemptions as top since we bought the business is much bigger than it's called twice the size. And the absolute amount of redemptions is down by 75, 80%. And in all the new releases, it's down by 95%. So I was just like focusing on our relationship with the athletes to get cards signed more quickly, making it a better experience for the athletes because you're worried about the collector. So that's where your relationships help. And it's where fanatics relationships help. And by the way, we're focused on it because we care so much about the collector. The next thing was like product innovation. There had been no material product innovation. Like I remember this is actually basically just the Chrome cards. And it was what in the late 2000s, 2000s. Well, I'll just give you an, I just give an example of like how entrepreneurial we were. Mike Mahan, who's the CEO of our collectibles business. He called me last December. He said, Hey, I've got a great idea. Every time a baseball player takes the field for the first time, I want to put a debut patch for one game on the Jersey. When they get off of the field, I want to take that debut patch off and put it into a one-on-one card. I said, wow, that's an amazing idea. So what are we doing? He said, well, you know, I spoke to the tops organization. They told me it will never, ever happen. There's no possibility. Like, what do you even waste your time? Wait, you're going to try to put a patch on the uniform and like every rookie that ever played. You think, you think that the, the league's going to be okay with that and the player's going to be okay with that. He said, but I like, it makes complete sense. So I called Rob Manfred. I called Tony Clark that minute. I called Tony. I said, Tony, I got a great idea. I said, I want to put a debut patch on the Jersey for the first time, you know, a player plays their, their, their, their major league game. He said, that sounds like an amazing idea. You make the Jersey's go do it. Then I called Rob. Rob said the same thing. We launched that four months later. Wow. These are the most valuable cards today. There's each year, three to 400 people debut in major league baseball. They play the first game and think about if you got, so it's almost like the jump man card, but it's a debut. Oh, Tony's debut. If you, if you had the only one in the world, if he had a patch from his first game, that patch was in a card. You had that card. Okay. That card is worth millions or tens of millions of dollars more sense to me than when they would just grab, like, it's a piece of dare cheaters Jersey on a card. And by the way, a lot of times they say they're game warm because the guy put the Jersey on his body for one minute in the park. We stopping all that stuff. So look, by the way, do we still screw things up every day? Yes. Cause it's, you know, we've only owned tops for less than two years. And then we bought, there were so many problems just in the manufacturers. We bought the biggest printer of trading cards because there were so many problems. You were having misprinting of cards delays. Like you should watch trading cards. Like you launch a video game launch or shoe launch. Okay. So Nike says this Travis Scott shoe, or this Jordan's launching on this day. And that's an event when we launch cards today, we have a giant launch coming up on 12, 12 with Bowman Chrome and what's going to be Brady day for us. And it's going to be insane. You'll see all this. You're going to actually text me at 12, 12 and say, wow, that was awesome. Okay. Cause we take our launch and we turn them into events. Well, the basketball has been the opposite where it's like, it's coming out soon and you never know. And it's like, can I just get a Zion rookie box? Yeah. Can you just tell me when that's coming out? If you, here's what I would say. If Nike did the same thing every year and they just had evergreen business, the business would fade. Okay. But they keep innovating. So what we need to do is have great product breakthroughs. I'll give you another example. Um, in a base card. Okay. It like in baseball, on the base card, um, there are, you know, many base cards of, of a player. Okay. So, um, you know, our CEO and the team come up with something called the MVP buyback program where the cards used to trade for 50 cents or a dollar for these cards. And we said, Hey, we're going to buy the back. We're going to give the hobby shops a credit of $20 for every MVP each year. So, um, you know, uh, uh, Kuna, um, uh, Tony, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to give, um, last year, Pope, uh, Paul Goldschmidt, we're going to give a, um, you know, $20 credit through the store. So now you're driving all these people into the stores, um, who returning tens of millions of dollars at retail of these cards to get store credits. And what do they do? They buy that much more cards. It wasn't that complicated for, you know, our team to come up with that. But it's been like, if you ask a hobby shop, they'd say it's driving demand like crazy. And then just marketing, like we are marketing collectibles and trading cards for the first time. And so I think overall, this was a sleepy industry with no innovation. We're coming in and saying, we're going to innovate products like crazy. We're going to innovate, um, marketing, we're going to fix the consumer experience, and then we're going to worry about the collector and the hobby shops, uh, and the breakers. And so, you know, for a business that we came up with an idea three years ago, we had our first dollar of revenue less than two years ago. We're making great progress, by the way, there's lots of things to still fix. You know, you know, we bought, you know, this really big company that makes, you know, packages, a lot of cards, you know, we have to keep pushing quality and say, you know, the quality needs to be amazed. I told you a little bit ago, we're going to put a chip in all high end cards going forward with a unique identifier. So you can't counterfeit a card, so you can't steal cards. You know, there's so many things we can do to improve. So the counterfeiting is the biggest issue, which has been the biggest issue for 30 years. It's not the biggest issue, but it's a big, look, if you can't invest in something and know that it's authentic, okay, then why am I invested? So take that example. We created this debut patch and let's say, you know, you had, let's say we did that when Otani or Aaron judge, you know, had their rookie years and you had that debut. Well, that card is going to be worth millions of dollars. So we better put a unique identifier in that card to make sure that no one can, can, you know, come up with a counterfeit version of that card. So we're very focused on doing what's in the collector's best interest. It'll take time, but we are, I mean, we've doubled the team at TOP since we bought the company. Uh, we're, we've invested so many times the capital in, in the manufacturing. We, they, we just moved into a brand new facility to really fix quality, fix timeliness, eliminate theft, eliminate counterfeiting issues. And, you know, we're a lot better than we were, but you know, you still, you wake up certain days, you work up certain days, you're like, can't fucking believe this just happened. Like, you know, shit goes wrong. Cause you know, you've got new companies that you're working to perfect and get right. I told you I was on the TOPs board for a couple of years and I was always surprised. The goal, it seemed like of the entire card industry was just people like this stuff. Let's just keep serving the burgers and fries. Don't get crazy. Let's just keep going out. Let's try to turn a profit. Let's not, let's not think outside the box at all. And that was the case in the eighties, the nineties, the two thousands kind of protect your lead. And now you're, you know, basically throwing a chainsaw in the whirlpool here, but has the response been, have you felt like a little, whoa, whoa, this is too much. You guys are acting too crazy or you feel like everyone's welcomed the innovation? Neither. So I'd say it's been overwhelmingly positive. Yeah. But there's still negativity. First of all, collected, like I look at a collector, like the ultimate sports fan, they care about their hobby and it is their hobby. The same way, you know, you know, for a sports team, it's their team. They care about this more than anything in the world. You almost can't win with them. No, I think you could only lose. I think you can win, but they have really high expectations because they deserve to have, they're investing in this hobby. I think people give you a lot, like we're getting so much credit for the debut patches that we did and how much people love these cards and people love Finax live. The live commerce platform that we launched, people love the marketing that we're doing and, you know, hobby shops told us the MBB buyback program is the best thing that we've ever, that anyone's ever had in the hobby. People love the marketing we're doing. But then when you screw up, they tell you as well. But guess what? Great. That makes us better. You know? So what would I say? Well, one of the things that was the national with me, you would see thousands of people showing appreciation for what we've done, but when we screw something up and we still make mistakes, you know, you know, people tell you and they have the right to tell us. Yeah. One of the things now, and it's not with you guys necessarily, but just like these box breaks, it's a whole thing now about, did they fake, did they fake that one? Oh, how did that person end up with the card in this box? And here's what I'm going to tell you. So how do you, how do you fix that? So let me give you a great example. So, first of all, breaking is a big part of the collectibles industry. If a collector doesn't... A big part of Finax Live. Correct. And if a collector doesn't like that, then they're just not being realistic because you'd say there are three distribution points for primary cards, right? Breakers, hobby shops, and retailers like, you know, a Walmart or a Target. That's been, and before it was hobby shops and the retailers, it wasn't the breakers. The breakers now have a, you know, important, you know, and by the way, it's great marketing. So, you know, for us, we understand the math of you take like, you know, a big break or one guy's doing 15% of the business, they're going to get 15% cards. So what we did, people always question the integrity of what we do. So this year for the first time, we said, Hey, let's take our auditor. I think we hired Deloitte and Touche. It wasn't Deloitte and Touche. One of the auditors, we're going to hire you. I think it is Deloitte and Touche. We're going to hire you. We're going to pay you to audit all the results the same way the NBA audits their draft lottery. That's cool. And we did that this year. Okay. Now we haven't really broadcasted, but we started doing that this past year. We now have Deloitte and Touche coming in, auditing everything to make sure that everything is random as it's advertised. So that was a great thing for us to do. We just added a cost for the authenticity, the hobby. Does everyone know we did that? No. Did we make a big deal out of it? No. But it's important to do things like that. Absolutely. I always say anytime someone has a right, we should listen to it, figure out whether they're right or wrong. If they're right, we should act on it. If they're wrong, we should still hear their perspective. So what do you collect other than James Harden cards? Well, you only saw some of the new displays that we're working on. So you saw my 86 Jordan downstairs in the basement. And, you know, for me, I like to collect things with my friends. So, you know, big Brady collector, you know, obviously Joel, you know, I'm not friends with Jordan, but, you know, you can't be a collector, not have an 86, you know, 10, you know, Jordan card. And for me, what I want to actually collect, honestly, are the really interesting things that we're making for the first time. So we have some Brady cards coming on 1212 that are going to be spectacular. Okay. And we have some, um, you know, some of the innovations that are coming next year, just things that I'm like, I need to own this because they're so cool. Because it's more like, to me, like, you know, look, I've got into art in the last couple of years for the first time in my life. I feel like these are things that make me want to say, I want to own this instead of art because I can display it the right way. It's a piece of history. And that's what I think, you know, is so great about collectibles. Do you have a 2000 Brady yet? Um, I do. Just a couple, couple of good rookie cards that of course I didn't get in the moment. We didn't talk before we go, we got to talk about gambling quick. Cause you got into that too. What have, uh, would have been your, your thoughts as you dive into the business? What, what surprised you? I haven't been surprised to date if I'm being blunt. I think it's a really big industry. I think there's, you know, um, some really good companies and there's certainly FanDuel, DraftKings are, you know, really good at what they do. You know, a lot of respect to, you know, MGM, you know, the different competitors in the space. What I tell you is I think we do have some real competitive advantages. First, our offering to the fan is more rewarding. We give on every bet place. We give 1% on a straight bet up to 5%, depending on the type of bet back of the gross bet back to you in fan cash that you can then go place other bets by merchandise, by trading cards. Um, so we have the most rewarding offering of anyone out there. Cause if you say the rest of the economics are the same, but on every bet you make, you get, you know, you get fan cash, which is essentially cash back to either bet more or, you know, buy other things from the Fanatics ecosystem. I think that's incredible. You know what, look, I knew this was going to be really hard. People, you know, people said to me like, Michael, you know, FanDuel and DraftKings have 80% of the market. You really, I think you have a chance. I'm like, I can read I'm fully aware of it. Yeah, look, we have more than a hundred million customers. Right. Um, you know, we talked to those customers a fair amount of time. Um, we have a lot of relationships in this business and we're in it for the longterm. We want to be, you know, a real player in this longterm. We're going to be, by the spring of this coming year, we'll be in every state that FanDuel's in from an online sports betting perspective. We'll be in every state that, um, from an iGaming perspective. So we're going to have a full, you know, the Fanatics sports book will be out there in the middle of doing transitions now because we bought points, but we're transitioning that over the Fanatics brand. So it's going to take us a little bit of time. I think, um, I have no patience. That's not a strength of mine, but if I'd say, what have I learned? You just have to be a little bit patient, even though I'm not. Well, as you know, I have a giant FanDuel tattoo on my back, but there's room for more than FanDuel. And you were trying to have a Fanatics tattoo and you just somehow ended up with it wrong. You started with the right first letter, but then somehow, you know, it got screwed up after that. You had the first two letters, right? Were you surprised, first three, were you surprised that the, uh, the sports have embraced gambling like this? No. Even when you see it on the NBA, the studio shows? Not the slightest, because every conversation I was having five years early with everybody who mattered was already embracing it. Everyone knew it was coming. Guy gave Adam Silver tremendous credit for going out and being so open about why it made sense to embrace it, but it was the most logical thing on the planet. So it was obvious it was coming. It wasn't a question of if it was a question of when. Everyone knew it was coming, but ESPN. Um, I thought you said that. I had to. It was sitting there. It was a funny joke. It was relatively funny. All right. So you have gambling collectibles merchandise. Is there anything coming that you can't hint at yet? No, what's coming right now is deep focus on being great in each of those businesses. And we have a lot of work to do in each of those businesses. And then over time, when we're ready, when the businesses are more mature and we feel like, you know, right now we have so much to do, we haven't even launched the right shed. If you look in the collectibles business, you know, today we have baseball F1, Bundesliga, UEFA Live, UFC launches. Uh, next year, we still, then we still have to launch WWE. We have to launch, you know, NBA. We have to launch NFL. Uh, so we need to get all of those properties moved over. We need to do a great job. We need to all the product innovations that we've done in baseball. We know baseball when we bought tops was the number three player. Yeah. It's now number one by far and away. Okay. NBA and NFL have dropped quite a lot and baseball has grown tremendously. Um, because of the product innovations, the market innovations, the distribution innovations, the consumer focus, their elimination of, you know, such a high percent of redemption. So we needed that same thing in the, um, in the new sports that we're taking on. So we have so much to do in the three business room. We're not doing anything new for a long time. What do you gamble on? Cause you're, you're prone to a six AM Vegas. Yeah. So are you blackjack? I haven't gambled on sports since 2009. But you're, you're like a cards guy. I like blackjack and Baccarat. Baccarat cause how fast it is. What are you like James Bond? Yeah. It's just so fast. It's the, you get maximum amount of action in the least amount of minutes. And if you ultimately want to get back to work and just do it for a quick change in mental, you know, stress levels for something else. I like Baccarat cause it's the fastest game. But all that, the NBA players are mostly blackjack, right? Yeah. I mean, we, yeah, yes. There's a lot of blackjack and do you have a seat? Are you like a third base guy? Are you middle of the table? Where are you? Um, I generally have to be on, um, that's, that's, I think that's an individual sport. Gambling is an individual sport. So when I'm playing blackjack, I generally like to play on my own. Um, but if I'm, So nobody at the table. Look, I'll, I'll just play differently, more conservatively. I'm going with a big group. So you're one of those guys. I mean, you, you, you want everyone to do whatever they want and don't ever tell someone what to do. But if you're really going for, you know, a lot of action, then you want to, you want to control your destiny versus others. But so when I'm with my friends gambling, I'll probably gamble a little bit differently. And then someone puts too many drinks in me. I might not care and just go all in no matter what.
The Hockey PDOcast
"second round" Discussed on The Hockey PDOcast
"And then you're going to have some really fun matchup stuff here, I think, with, you know, I hope we get to see Bennett and the Bennett chuck line, go head to head against that Tavares, nylander group, because that's too sort of really interesting downhill attacking lines that both want to play an area game. In terms of end zone, I think it'd be a lot of fun if we get to see that matchup and then obviously barkov Matthews. If it breaks down like that is a marquee one between two of the top, 5 or 7 to a centerman in the game. So I'm looking forward to those sort of aspects of the series. A lot of I think this is going to be a pretty high scoring one. We'll see how Florida handles their goalie situation. It looks like Alex Lyon might be starting game one. Based off of what we're hearing or the reports that are coming out of the old air Canada center, Scotiabank arena on Tuesday morning. You know, here's one last thing I'm looking forward to seeing. Do we finally get to watch a leaf series without the undercurrent of psychodrama? That's characterized all of their playoff appearances to this point. Is this an opportunity to kind of see the leafs clearly? Now that the monkey is off their back. And I think if we do, then we're going to see a really talented team with maybe more two way skill up front than people realize. But perhaps a less dynamic backend group than advertised. Yeah. Well, they also, I think they're coming to the series is pretty heavy favorites, right? Yeah. And so I don't think the Panthers will necessarily mind that. But I think that's fair because this is a much better matchup for the leafs than the bruins would have been. I think so too. So the pandemic. I think this is like stylistically the most favorable of the second round. Like, you know, if you were to say, this is a bad matchup for one team in this round. I think the leafs are a bad matchup for Florida and this round. In a way that I don't think I'd say about any of the others. I wouldn't say that the matchup is favorable in the same way in any of the others. I think the Edmonton Oilers are just materially better than Vegas at this point, but that's different. From a stylistic perspective, I really think the leafs have an edge matchup wise in this series that I don't think applies to the other three series. And I think they feel that way as well. And so Panthers was bruins for chick shots and that series if I went 5 or 81 to 41 for Florida. My goodness. The other thing, though, and so it's the best. It's the best at preventing you from exiting cleanly against a leafs team that despite what you said about their blue eyed talent because of how their forwards provided support was the best team in the league in the regular season at exiting cleanly. Now, I don't think they should even try to exit cleanly in this series. I think they should get a neutral zone and just tuck and get into puck retrieval mode. 50 50 pucks because the Panthers are so aggressive. And if they're just going to go full blast on the forecheck and get deep like that, all of a sudden you want to get into these sort of two on twos, one on ones in the neutral zone against their defenders, and they're so aggressive that for all the talk about how all the leafs couldn't create in transition or off the rush against the lightning. Well, this series is going to open up for them. This should be a huge Willy nylander series.
The Hockey PDOcast
"second round" Discussed on The Hockey PDOcast
"No, I think it's definitely some of the monitor. I know Kevin woodley has really been talking about this a lot. And I have just so much confidence in it right now, but I'm very curious. This kraken team does present a unique challenge, not only the fact that they had 15 different goals scorers in round one against Colorado, but the way they create. It's like part of it is good fortune, part of it is also they just, they know what they want to accomplish, like they're very deliberate with their approach and they're very quick and executing it. Like there aren't too many wasted emotions or kind of just waiting around the offensive zone, killing time. It's like everything is point a to point B and then towards the net. And so if you're a bit slow on that or you're unprepared for it, especially out of the gate in a series, I think the kraken could potentially catch them by surprise a little bit. I think as the series goes along, maybe that becomes less of a sort of surprise factor and less of an advantage, but certainly in the first couple of games, especially after a little bit of a break here for Dallas, I think it actually might work in Seattle's favor in that way. So I don't know, we should save the goalie talk for woodley. He knows what he said, much more than what you do. Obviously will be a factor in the series. All right, any other announcements. I love that we're giving I love that we're giving the Maple Leafs Panthers series such short shrift here. But one last thing about how the crack can play. Hacked stall was like two point shot heavy when he was in Philadelphia. It was like a very popular analytics critique of him. One thing to watch for the kraken dude that's super interesting is particularly when done and Larson are on the ice. Don has free reign to just go play rover. He'll be below the goal line.
The Hockey PDOcast
"second round" Discussed on The Hockey PDOcast
"Power play efficiency. They scored 9.3 goals per 60. In round one, they absolutely destroyed. Minnesota, scoring 9 power play goals in 34 minutes and Minnesota's not only lack of discipline, but kind of desperation, realizing they didn't have the skill level to keep up to just try to be overly physical and turn the game into that sort of environment. Wound up costing them, right? In this series, the kraken are just an entirely different team. They're annoying to play against, but they use speed more so than that conventional, just throwing the body around and kind of being aggressive for the sake of being aggressive. And so they don't take penalties. They were only shorthanded 18 times in 7 games against Colorado, and they took the tenth viewers penalties in the regular season. And so if they can stay out of the box, you're right. At 5 one 5, I think this might be much more evenly matched than you would think kind of just at first glance. And the kraken are actually positioned to stay out of the box as opposed to what Minnesota wound up doing. It's a really good point. What? They only allowed one power play goal, like they were scored on more shorthanded than they were on the power play. If they can neuter that advantage, the Dallas should have in this series that'll go a long way toward extending it and giving them a chance to do the scrappy, get a bounce thing that the kraken relied on against Dallas. I talked about Johnston to donate and I want to talk about the opposite, which is, you know, the Maddie veneers line. And I know McCann, Everly, you look at the counting stats from this past season, you think of them as the kraken's top line. But against Colorado, they were kind of the third matchup, right? I mean, gourd chased McKinnon around the ice, right?
The Hockey PDOcast
"second round" Discussed on The Hockey PDOcast
"I guess one area of concern that I might have in this matchup for New Jersey is an issue for them all season was sometimes being sloppy going back, retrieving the puck and then kind of making mistakes off of that. And one of their specialties is the rush defense, right? Like they are so good at stacking up on the blue line, preventing you from carrying it in smoothly. And that was a bread and butter for them defensively. Well, this Carolina team never wants to carry the puck in. So they're just going to dump it in every time. They're going to go back and forge the living daylights out of them and try to make mistakes that way. And so that would be a potential concern for me because it kind of neutralizes one of New Jersey's strengths and it's going to make it very imperative that they play as smoothly on those transitions as they can, which has been one of their few weaknesses this season. Well, and I thought it was a weakness that showed the only weakness that showed it all even in game 7 was that the rangers had some moments where they were able to generate some pressure, particularly in the first half of the game. Against the Devils and the Devils were a little sloppy in terms of clearing the puck, making the simple play, which they just aren't constitutionally sort of wired to do. I think the Carolina hurricanes do force you with their stress hockey approach to simplify if you're going to overcome it. And I think that edge that you just pointed out, that stylistic edge is a meaningful one. I think that's going to shape this series. And I think Carolina, despite being short handed, I think they're going to make this really interesting. I don't think this is a quick series. I think this is a drag amount brawl. Much like the death, much like the rangers series ended up being for the devil's, I think this one's going the distance. Yeah, well, ray Ferraro was all over this in that series and raised a really smart guy so you got to listen when he's talking, but he was pointing out what a great game call, by the way. I'm in the states, so it was an unbelievable game call from those two last night just loved it. It was. But a point he was making all the series was the times New York would actually have some sort of success at 5 one 5 was when they would get the puck deep and then make New Jersey make mistakes in that way and generally it was weird because the guys who are having success were the kid line because they could actually keep up with the skating perspective somewhat and then sometimes like Tyler Mott and Barkley goodrow Jimmy vesey just because they would just go in
The Hockey PDOcast
"second round" Discussed on The Hockey PDOcast
"You sick ajo installed basically on barzal and horvat. And by the end of the series, like Brock Nelson had what, 5 points, 5 on 5? There were moments where he was one of the NHL's leading point getters at even strength. That Zach Paris, palmieri line also put up sort of crooked numbers too. You know, the Devils are a really are really tough matchup for them here because and we'll see what Timo Meyer status is hopefully he's all right, but it feels to me like at some point they're going to have to do something like put that cock knee Martin nuke line out against Dawson Mercer and I just feel like that's going to be an overwhelming mismatch in the devil's favor. It will. So and the hurricanes have home ice advantage in the series, right? So they're going to start games one and two at home with last change. Rod brinda Moore, we have a lot of data now in these series where he is going to go above and beyond to get Jordan stalls line out there against who he deems to be the other team's biggest offensive threat. And I think that's huge, right? Well, so in the first two games, the game 5 and Carolina was a bit wonky because Matt barzal didn't really play that much if I want 5. But in the first two games where he had the full workload to install was out there for 1134 of his 14 minutes in game one and 1413, I was 18 and a half minutes in game two. So it was pretty much just matching them shift for shift and you write that probably will be huge now the problem is because of the way Lindy ruff has spread out the offensive talent in the top 6. It's hues with challah and pallet and both of those guys were very productive and pull out. I know you love his game in game 7 he was absolutely phenomenal and hollow the most productive players in
The Hockey PDOcast
"second round" Discussed on The Hockey PDOcast
"The discrepancy between the talent on the left side and right side. On their defense is very interesting for trying to contain the oilers top players right on the right side, they've got petrol and shade Theodore on the left side, I think braid McNabb will be back, but it's like him and Alec Martinez. Yeah. I really like Alec Martinez as a player. By nature likes to just sag back and try to block shots and I could see that being a problem, especially if they're going head to head against a guy like Dreyse who, despite being left handed, likes to carry it in on that side on his back end and kind of probe that way. You need to pressure dry that a little bit more. You can't just let them sort of set up shop. We saw him just carve up the kings in that way. And so I don't know. There's so offense defense in this series is absolutely phenomenal and I can't wait to see the interplay with it. I think Vegas has options. I just think the oilers have the solutions to a lot of the potential defensive problems that could cause them. I think if this series spins away from Vegas the way I sort of expect it to, I think, pretty quickly, you're going to see Nick Hague. Logging top pair minutes. Him and white cloud were already sort of their second pair. In terms of usage and against women peg. But I wonder if we could see haig's role expand pretty significantly if this series sort of becomes an Edmonton coronation, but if Edmonton's generating what they're looking for, turning up Nick Hague's role feels to me like probably their best option in terms of having a two way guy with a little bit more mobility on the left side play a greater bulk of minutes and maybe even with a different partner than white cloud who he's tended to be kind of glued to.
The Hockey PDOcast
"second round" Discussed on The Hockey PDOcast
"Found answers with extraordinary speed in that first round. I was really impressed with how he managed that bench. Yeah, I am too. And I like that idea if you are going to split them up to have bugs that would be the guy bumped it away as opposed to they've moved Kayla Yamamoto down the lineup after adjusting the top 6. And I know he scored the goal at the end of game 6 that wound up being the clincher, but if you go back, I put out a Leon dreidel mixtape from the first 6 games on Twitter. He could have easily had another 5 to 7 assists if the finishing talent around him was a little bit better. And so I think yeah, you're right with boogs that shot. That would be an interesting combination. I don't know, I can see why it's tempting because the first three games was such a slog, right? McDavid wasn't on the ice for a single goal at 5 one 5 and then you put them together and in the final three games they generate 5, 5, one, 5 goals, between McDavid and Rosetta, and so that could be very tempting and alluring, but I would expect that to split them up, especially because as we pivot here to Vegas and what they'll do, part of this might be predicated on what oilers do with that line. But they themselves have split up their pieces quite a bit up front, right? They're essentially running like three duos. They're running Stevenson and stone, they're running eichel and Mars or so, and then they're running Carlson and Riley Smith. And I'm very fascinated to see whether they stick that way, whether they themselves load up eichel with stone and Stevenson, which is something we saw in the regular season before stone got hurt and they were fantastic together. I think William Carlson is a is one of the most important players, if not the most important player in this series, because I think he was their best player in round one.
The Hockey PDOcast
"second round" Discussed on The Hockey PDOcast
"I think they've legitimately got, I think they've got the Vegas golden knights overmatched in the series. Well, so my thoughts on brek are well documented. I don't need to rehash those. Everyone listen knows that I'm a fan. The focal point is interesting because Jan mar goes down in game one against the kings, right? And then from that point forward, woodcroft goes with 11.7 formation, and that allows him to essentially buy all of these extra shifts for either McDavid, I said, or Ryan mccloud, one of his top three centers to play with, it was a rotating cast. It was cost in and Ryan for a while then they bump you set up in the lineup and then it was like, yeah, I'm a model and cost or whatever, but they won all of those bottom 6 minutes in a series against the kings where you would have thought heading in. That's the one strength or advantage the kings have. It's their depth and how well rounded the roster is. And that used to be such a weakness for the oilers. And so you're right. That was a pretty surprising thing to see. And fogle wasn't necessarily rewarded for goals, but him and MacLeod when they were on the ice, were just absolutely dominating territorially and creating chances. And what a glow up for the McLeod brothers. We've been talking about this off. But it feels like they're like, they're going shoppers shot here one night I watch Ryan mccloud and I'm like, wow, that was a very impressive play by him. And then Mike McLeod goes and scores the first goal in game 7 last night and it's like extraordinary patience. Yeah, yeah. It's a good time for the cloud brothers. So can we talk about dry Seidel with McDavid and Kane? Well, let me just make one note here on the oilers team, and then we can get into the actual personnel. What impressed me in round one was we think about this.
The Hockey PDOcast
"second round" Discussed on The Hockey PDOcast
"Welcome to the hockey PDO cast. My name is Dimitri filipovic, and joining me is my good buddy Thomas dren, Tom, what's going on, man? Oh, not much. I am so excited for the second round. You know, I thought, honestly, it just like globally speaking about the first round. I know there was like a run of bad calls, right? And there were a few bad hits that got discussed at length, you know, the cogliano hit mccar McCann and of course the troop of hit last night. But for the most part, I felt like this was the best of the NHL product. Like, I loved the last two weeks. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. And that's, you know, despite some really good basketball, like lots of other things drawing my attention. I ended up driving to California this weekend. I've had a lot going on, and you get every night, I can't help, but tune into these games, and I'm loving them. Like I absolutely love the hockey being played right now. I think this was a really good first round for the NHL product. Yeah. Well, I will aside from some of the fish officiating stuff, but I mean, that's going to happen. I think the swallowing the whistles thing as the series goes along, which our buddy capture it on is just absolutely documenting perfectly. The cynicism of that annoys me. But yeah, I still thought it was I don't think those negative storylines overshadowed what was a really fun couple of weeks of hockey. Well, especially the game 7 of bruins Panthers was really fun, but towards the end of that second period, right? David pasternak draws that penalty where he kind of like embellishes it. I think it begins bread them onto her and the referees clearly went into the intermission, saw the tape and were like, oh, he tricked us on that one. And then they just went into the third beard and they're just like, we're not calling anything. Unless someone shoots the puck over the glass, then definitely call it that. But yeah, so yeah, you're right. The level of play was through the roof. It was a great showcase for the league. Really exciting stuff. And we have a quick turnaround here. Round one ended last night, round two starts right away today. And so let's go. What we're going to do is we're going to preview the four upcoming matchups as best we can. We're going to go about ten to 12 minutes on each. And we're going to highlight what to watch for key matchups we're excited about, potentially exploitable strengths or weaknesses that we might have seen from some of these teams in round one that might come back to life in round two. And all that good stuff. So let's start with oilers golden knights. I think this is I'm excited about all four of these magics, but this one in particular, I'm very curious to see how it plays out. This oilers team looks and feels different to me. I've been saying this for a while now, but I know they had the same result as they had last year against LA, right? They wind up winning last year was 7 this year was in 6. But the way they got there just felt different to me. I know they went down to one in this series, but if you just watch those games and you look to the process, it was clear that you want to score picardo was just the reason why that was happening and you felt like eventually they would break through and in the final three games of the series, the oilers scored 16 goals I believe and get those wins and beat the kings and heading into this series, I feel like a lot of the questions and concerns we've had about the oilers in the past,
Winning Plays
"second round" Discussed on Winning Plays
"I still think when you have to get past two guys that have won championships and who have thrived in those moments in the past, even if it does feel a little bit ancient and I do feel like sometimes Kyrie lives off one shot in 2017. It's still something. And hey, if it's nothing more than exercising those, you know, like Kyrie came into the garden and did the whole stage thing. This feels like from the big picture. This is the Celtic saging everything. And sort of getting rid of those vibes and just moving past him. And for Tatum to take down Durant the way he did is huge. I just think there's a different level of confidence for this Celtics team now going into this Milwaukee series. And yeah, we're getting presumptuous there. But no, no, I know. But Alex Caruso could, really, you know, change the series. So but I wonder if it had played out any differently. If the subject had been in the bowls and then, you know, now they're going up against Milwaukee. They have the same swagger that they have the same confidence. I think having won this way against this opponent does matter in the grand scheme of looking ahead now and while before I was probably leaning towards the box in terms of just being the better team, I'm not as confident part of that as the Middleton injury, but yeah, so just shout out to the sellers because they took on that challenge and now they're sort of reaping the benefits from it. Yeah, there's no question the wave of positivity you're getting. You wouldn't see the excitement on the pension game for after a sleep of the polls. That's a team that had been falling apart for months and they showed a little bit of a fight in Milwaukee earned this season, but they've shown their true colors in the last couple of games here. And yeah, like with the Kyrie factor with the Durant with the proven veterans on that team that just don't have much left, but still are like names..
Winning Plays
"second round" Discussed on Winning Plays
"The Boston Celtics have advanced to the second round of the eastern commons playoffs. The only team in the NBA to sweep their first round series and they're perhaps should be no man. Thinking a big inner victory lap right now, then the one and only Chris forsberg of NBC sports Boston who I don't think anyone locally was picking against the Celtics in the series. True. Naturally, there was a lot of people picking against the Celtics. I think there was more ESPN picks for the nets than the subject which was wowed to me. Which shows me just how many these people watch the Celtics over the last three months and then that's on top of it. But Chris forsberg, from the jump, was like, listen, suffix in 5, like maybe these nets are not good. Even with your guy, rob Williams down and out, stuck to your guns and lo and behold, you were wrong. You gave the next extra game. Two minute too many. You know, it's funny because I'm not the kind of I say wild things, but I don't normally put predictions like that, at least that bold try to be nuanced and, well, if Kyrie got it going. But at no point did I feel like this was going to be a close series. And maybe I saved for the final minute of game one when I'm sitting there going, oh boy, I might have made the wrong prediction here. But you can tell I want to sell this took back game. Even when they were down 17 in game two, my buddy came over and was like, what do you think happens here in the second half? I'm like, they should be thanking their stars. They're only within their downtown because it felt like they were going to come back. I just feel like the Celtics were the better team decidedly in this series and they proved it over the course of four games. Now I know we'll sit here and say, oh, it's the fourth biggest fourth leaf spread between a sweep opponent and they are where crunch time games, but to me that's just another thing in Boston's favor. I didn't think the selfless could win crunch time games coming into this. And here they are. They won four of them. So a lot of reason to be excited if you're a Celtic fan because even though I thought they were going to win that series, the way they did it is still impressive..
The Clapper Report
"second round" Discussed on The Clapper Report
"I know i know that was last week but still See i'm going to go with me. Go renton him. All right Not a bad choice at all. I'd say curdle player. I can't believe that point streak seventeen. That's ridiculous dude. I know. I wonder what the record is. I mean we look that up easily. But i don't know playoff point streak record. Nhl gretzky thirty five nine probably It looks like it's on the islanders. Twenty seven oh twenty-seven right yep yep rain early eighties and you got gordie howe right behind him twenty two. I say right by them but he's had twenty two tim. We'll maybe well run in right now. He's at eight three now and he's right behind gretzky. Only has eighteen look surprisingly but three times. Yeah rain gretzky three times. He had an eighteen point. Streak while it's fucking bonkers bro. Absolutely insane so going to be interesting. See oh my god pavel bure a with the knox their sixteen Man i wish they cannot say kept them. Yeah well anyway florida. I think that's about all i have for this week's episodes such a weird one recording on a saturday felt off but i definitely feel out of it still. I know we don't have the beer kicking a nasty right. And i know we should have a mosasaur. Faulk missed opportunity. Mary's man on something like that. Well you know hopefully next time. I'm not telling you right before about a record wasn't right before it was a few hours before it wasn't about well you know. I'm glad we were able to change able to adapt. And i still think we had a great episode. Here plenty of we talked about so If you guys have any questions for us you have any statement. You want to call us an idiot for hating on the maple leafs as bad as we did. You could find us on instagram. Ats at the clapper report. T h e. cla p p. e. r. r. e. Prt yes so. Let us hear about a boy's let us know what you guys want us to talk about Playoffs this here. Man so Let's get talking. let's go guys. Hopefully islanders ticket to boston. Let's go islanders. Man i i you know me and my dad really were looking to get to this game. 'cause i got an email the other day you know from the islanders semi tickets but obviously didn't get one for this one probably because they sold out and i was watching stubhub and two tickets. We're we're in too bad but it was like fifty dollars more so now i'm looking at tickets and the price is only going up. You think the day of they will go lower but will now with playoffs. Playoffs is different during the regular season. Yeah the tickets are literally only getting more expensive as time goes on. How much are they right now. Well minus fees which are fifty dollars each It's a hundred and seventy two dollars each ticket for opportu thirty-seven row fifteen. I'd fees into that and you know there's two of us going so it's just become an be a little bit too much so we might try and sneak into game. Six hopefully aches if it goes to game six which hopefully hopefully it does. Yeah one would hope well anyway guys. Enough aboard mir with a ticket finding We'll see you guys here next week. Yeah peace guys..
The Clapper Report
"second round" Discussed on The Clapper Report
"I think it's definitely going to be a good experiment right with all these young guys so if it works and it works out great and how the but then if not then you know you you have young guys. You could probably move around on your squad well. And that's the thing. The canucks need in impact from their young players considering their calf situation this year. You know This is the last year of a lot of shitty contracts on the team. The russo beagle An ericsson deal deals It's the last deal of those gnat alone up. thirteen million. I think those three contracts when they get off the books So man yeah. I you know they need to be Be creative this off season. Jim benning said he wants to be aggressive. Shimmy better be aggressive and creative and smart about it and there goes along oregon. So yeah that really is. All i should say on again wasn't much The cdns they're still figuring out their role organization Apparently they're looking at assistant. Gm roles but you know. I don't know man should be should be entertaining especially with the draft then to the pick ninth Yemen i'm excited. Yeah no definitely. We'll have to dive deeper into that. When we go over our traffic's because picking night that that's not a bad pick at all. You could definitely find somebody to fall down that far or you know a diamond in the rough. A gem as nhl twenty one would say a jam all the gems never work or they never pan out. Yeah know which pretty fun pretty funny. Because i'm like why are you gonna thing if you're not gonna. I don't know there's a lot of weird stuff in that game. I know. I know. I've been playing at a lot lately. I love just buying a franchise mode and just like symington old thing. Because i feel like it's so rewarding to see how your team does bro. I might team right now. In allegany restarted. A new franchise canucks and man. It's like every fucking year my team off terrible and then they go on a tear and then losing the first round and it's so frustrating. I fire fiery my coach than and so i bring a new coach all fucking sudden the next year i start off like four and like eighteen or something and i'm like what the fuck Wanna barely missing the playoffs. So that sucked. But i know they're so it's so weird because like i was wondering how yeah. I wonder how much of an impact like the chemistry really. Has i always go to build the best chemistry on my teams rather than like anything else..
The Free Agents
"second round" Discussed on The Free Agents
"It's always play in game seven series and it looked like it was going to go back to denver. And you said it there. Trae breaking it down there with those with the fouls and then you'll get taking over two and lillard having nothing left in the tank in the fourth quarter but yeah lee. What do you think again. I don't think. I don't want to go like super long. What are the blazers. Go from here. Do we once again. Bring up the mccollum trade. His terry stotts. I know what's going to happen here. You're going to hear another podcast. But what did these think about the game specifically here well. Devon booker of course was the style last night. Let's get marco. Porta had twenty two points in that first quarter. He was hitting everything finished with twenty six of the game. But that's okay because then you start took over in the fourth quarter then nicol yokich but when it was at fourteen point game in the third quarter this had game seven written all evidence. There's no way little. It's going out like this but even you saw him in that fourth quarter win the lead like got to sort of six points and then eight points. Lillard was trying bombs that we know he's hit he sit him for so long and his career but even he just seemed the latest single little bit heavy and they weren't dropping in and that's when you of knew it was over for good so incredible resilience sharon by the nuggets of this series. Because i did lose game. One again with jamal. Murray is specifically thought that was going to catch up with him in this series because of their backcourt. But yeah monte morris. I mean in that fourth quarter was fantastic driving inside when it was there or just feeding into yokich and we know yokich can either finish or fonda a shooter on the perimeter there. So yeah this has been a great run here from denver and for port linda. Yeah i think this team's going to look drastically different next season apart from damian. Lillard rb surprised if you see too many of those same faces back. I think they have to do some. Make some changes here because it's a good team. It's a good regular season team but it doesn't really go all that far in the planet. The conference finals a couple of years ago against the warriors before they go sweat. But at this point i think the some changes needed because of our at plight and denver. We're fantastic and yokich. I mean he's just so incredibly fun to watch because he doesn't get rattled. He's got so much variety to his game. He complains a lot like. Don't teach every time valleys that good to the referee but but there there are fun team. And i'm happy for malign. I really am happy for the nuggets to to advance here now. They haven't got a lot of time to prepare for the next and they're going to be in for a tough one immediately against the sun's yeah we'll start bringing that down in the second task takeaways from this game the jump over here well just narrative wise. I'm happy that yokich the mvp is moving onto the second round so everybody can shut up about questioning him. In general he's just an incredible player and he's not the player that used to fade away at times in the first quarter second quarter third quarter yet had one subpar game but every great player does he was frick phenomenal throughout the entire series. And then on the other side. I think it's time for the blazers to go to a real defensive type center. That's agile enough not to be pick and roll to death. I don't think it's the. Cj mccollum move. I think it's just it's time to move on from use of norwich and to get a real defensive guy that can cover everywhere and not to put this on your mortgage but when its when you've got lillard and mccollum in the backcourt that's going to be the game plan is to try and beat them up Trying to get by them and they need better defense around. They tried it this year with robert covington and derek jones. Junior who obviously wasn't really a part of the rotation there but then You know is the backbone. You can't just pick and roll team if they've got a really agile big so it's time for them to move on from there and his quote after the game wasn't all that rosy vote his future portland. He was asked if he wanted to be in the right situation. He said yeah and the right situation. Yes we'll see. I don't know yet because this is not it. Maybe once the ball more. I don't know but i don't know maybe. He thinks he can be nicole yokich after being his teammate. For a long time in denver. But it's they got to move on they. Just it's not his fault but they've got if you've got an all offensive backward. You need enough defensive front court. I think the all offensive back orders. Personally the problem. I think they stayed attached to. Cj mccollum way too long. The blazers are not a great team. Damian lillard is incredible and he's carried this team farther than a lot of players could. But i mean. Cj mccollum didn't outplay michael porter jr. and we thought that that was going to be the case coming into this series we said maybe michael porter juniors got to score twenty five twenty six a game to be able to to equal what. Cj mccollum did cj. You know he was going giving you as twenty points a game. That's about it. Not a lot of impacts. Yeah and then. I mean it was. It turned into like this dual of course between. Mvp oh then this unbelievable damian lillard for most part throughout the series but you saw time time again felt likely you do need help you need guys to hit some timely shots at the very least and like a junior catching on fire in the first quarter was huge but like austin rivers another like sort of like classic dagger rivers three late in this game. Aaron gordon had one in the corner jamaica. Green was like grab a huge offensive rebounds and making big plays and it was just like you. Just look at that a little help for yokich all you need. You just need some timely help and a lot of times. I felt like in this series. B mccollum. Beat norman powell. They just came up when they had to like. Hey man we need to stop the bleeding here. We need a big shot or score here and couldn't get that help more times than not..
Game Theory Podcast
"second round" Discussed on Game Theory Podcast
"They rebounded 14% of their missed shots. They took in this game 67 shot attempts Texas took twenty or forty. I'm sorry, 22.7 and 23.7. 40. There's a 27 shot difference in terms of field goal attempts in this game impart, let's Texas turn the ball over twenty three times in part. It's because sex is only had five offensive rebounds Greg Brown. I want to say is only skilled, but by far his best skill is rebounding the fact that he couldn't get on the court when this team just desperately needed. Somebody come to come in and crash. The last says a lot I think about where Texas was with him by the end of the year. Yeah, unfortunately, so yeah, that's it's I guess I will have him as a like. I don't know if he's dead. Sharam pic. I'm just going to be honest with you. I do not know if he is a first-round pick. I I'm totally in agreement with you. I still think he goes in the first and somebody crazy athleticism really good rebounder wage like has all of the tools that you're looking for. I just I don't know that he showed enough this year to like really have faith in it. All right, let's talk about let's talk about Kim Thomas last year real quick. But what's the finish out the 1st rounder so cam Thomas took approximately 1000000000 shots in seconds equal. Oh, yeah. That might be yeah an understatement 806 on what was it you you shared it with me earlier. So I'll give you the 20 points 10423 shooting 06 West Ham. Love it. Love it so much that the economy of a cam Thomas basketball game. The 30 points was great. He was fun to watch he can heat it up like almost nobody else in college basketball. He doesn't do anything else dead. I don't know what to do with that. I don't either in the game plan for st. Bonaventure. That first game was like book 9 collapsible enforcement take tough shots. So he got them start picking up fouls and he end up going off or 13 for the free throw on he's good in those pick-and-rolls with those side trouble handoffs to allow him to get a head of steam. He's like a dangerous score. He despite the volume despite. Mrs. He was below 50% shooting on each game when it leaves his hand. You just have like a Sinking Feeling if you're betting the other side of it that the ball is going to go in and and that as a guy probably off as a scorer if he can hone in some of those shots and not force as much it's the offensive pop that a lot of playoff teams could use in that 25 or 30 range. We had him probably a little too high earlier. I would say late first the lack of passing makes me think it's going to be hard for him to go higher than that. Yeah. Yep. That's he is. And he's he's a he's a non-factor on that end. I don't know where he's going to end up. You could like Penny said you could tell me later, but you could sell me a second round at this point. He's early on I thought there was a chance. He was like mini. Jahmius Ramsey potentially. He's not that he's definitely better than bias. I think you probably will go off first round, but there's enough concern there in terms of will he have the ball enough in his hands to where it's worthwhile to draft him basically given the nothing else provides across the court..