Monday: LA Confidential

Now the Lakers are being investigated in the NBA’s gambling probe.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
I mean you have read along with Shane Carter or
audio disseminator and producer of this program today, and we
have something we By the way, Jamar Chase got fined
a game. He's gonna lose five hundred grand and miss
next week's game first spitting on Jalen Ramsey.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
There's got to be history there. That can just be
a one off thing.

Speaker 4 (00:24):
Yeah, something's going on.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
He said he didn't open his mouth to him, but
he clearly was yapping at him, and he was clearly
spitting at him.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
There's literally is a Pruder film of him spitting on Jay.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
It's a better it's a better quality film than there's
a Rider film.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
I'm glad you. I'm glad someone understands that reference.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
When I say something like that, well, I'm glad you
understand that reference.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
Since you're so much younger than but I heard years
younger than I am.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
He still studied it. That's they's still history.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
That's a that's a kudos to your teacher and whatever
school you went to, because my guess is someplace they
haven't studied it.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
But those that know.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
The Pruder film is literally the film of John F.
Kennedy being assassinated.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Yes, And there was a man in the behind the
grassy knoll, and there was somebody in the sewer and
all that good stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:02):
And it's been there for sixty years.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Guy shot in what sixty one, sixty three, sixty three? Okay,
we so it's been around since that long.

Speaker 4 (01:09):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
So the NBA and the FBI are doing a deeper
dive into these Terry Roseier and Damon Jones and Chauncey
Billups stuff. Chauncey Billups is a separate case because basically,
Chauncey Billups is accused of recruiting people to come to
fix poker games and then getting a cut of that.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
Why he would do that? I have zero idea.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
The guy's a Hall of Famer, the guy's got more
money than he'll ever spend in his life. I just
unless he's squandered at all, I can't even figure out
why he would consider doing that. And you don't go
from being a Hall of Fame player and then deciding
you want to coach without absolutely loving the game. And
if he's found guilty of what he's done, even though
it has nothing to do with the integrity of basketball,

(01:52):
my guess is is the NBA won't touch him, and
he'll probably do ten years in jail or five years
or whatever. The penalty is sure, But Damon Joe owns
is another story, and so is Terry Rozier, because they
were manipulating the outcomes of games, or at least Damon
Jones was sending people information about who was healthy and
who was not, and Terry Rogier was actually making sure

(02:12):
that he didn't score enough points so that people could
cover their prop bet. Emmanuel Classe in baseball was throwing
pitches into the left handed batter's box at forty miles
an hour so that it would be under ninety four
point four on what the bet was is how much
will your for what's the speed of your first pitch
going to be?

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Like?

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Why would anybody want to take that bet anyway? And
why would somebody put eleven thousand dollars on that unless
they knew what was going to happen. And then you
see the video on that particular pitch and it's at
least make it look good. Throw a hanging curveball at
ninety three and maybe you're off a little bit, you're
in the dirt, short, yeah, Or throw a splitter but

(02:50):
throw it at the batter so that it sinks into
the dirt and it's just slightly under the number. I'm
not condoning how you do it, but the way that
you did it was pretty odd since you did it.
And so the investigators are asking for former shooting coach
of the Lakers and a trainer, assistant trainer Mike Mansius

(03:14):
and executive administrator Randy Mims. They've already been cooperating and
voluntarily handed their cell phones over to investigators. I don't
think there's anything, including a gambling probe, that's going to
actually kill the NBA. It may be one of those
things that's too big to fail. And when it comes
to people like Lebron and showey Otani, with the interpreter

(03:35):
stuff and the big time names, there's not enough money
where you can buy those players. But with the aprons
and with the way that life goes in the NBA,
teams are basically of the thirty teams and eventually thirty
two teams. There's going to be one player that's Supermax,
there's going to be one player that's slightly under Supermax.

(03:57):
There's going to be a third player that's kind of
Sermax is seventy million, the third player might be making
twenty five or thirty, and then everybody else is going
to be lower than that unless they change that in
the collective Bari agreement where more people get paid towards
the medium.

Speaker 4 (04:11):
But the stars are not going to.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Budge on that because the stars want to get paid
and they want the maximum amount of money. And I
can see where there's a lot of players, you know,
if you go back to ten years ago. However long ago,
it was one of the former San Antonio player who
played for the Cowboys and then the Bears, was caught

(04:33):
on an FBI sting transporting cocaine. Oh Sam heard samherd Yeah,
And when he was asked about it, he said, I
just wanted the money. And they said, well, you were
making eight hundred thousand a year, and he goes, yeah,
but I was hanging around guys that were making eight
million a year.

Speaker 4 (04:48):
There's a difference, and there certainly is.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
You made it to the show, but you were never
going to be good enough to make eight million a year.
You were going to be a journeyman player in the NFL,
and that' should be enough for you, But it wasn't
for Sam hurt.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, those one year contracts where you were in league minimum,
which is about at the time, probably one point five.

Speaker 4 (05:06):
Yeah, it may be a little bit less than that
now or more than that.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
More than that.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
At least I think it's right now three and a
half for the league minimum, I believe, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
But but what I'm so my guess is that there's
NBA players and they go to the club and the
bill's twenty grand, and Lebron can just sign the you know,
splash of the VSA black card and on his way.
He never sees the bill anyway, Right, Man, I want
to do that? How do I get to do that?
And so the temptation is there for them to shave games,

(05:37):
or shave points, or shave their stats. I think you're
selling out yourself. You're selling out your game. And what
I'm finding more and more amazing is that kids in
junior high and high school don't necessarily have a fandom
for the game as much.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
As they do for players.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Well, it's like when you ask Beast football players today,
what's your favorite player?

Speaker 4 (06:02):
Who do you emulate who?

Speaker 1 (06:04):
Some will say Lebron, some will say Kevin Durant, a
few will say Steph Curry, but most, But there's a
lot and there's not most, but there's a lot of
players that go, I don't ever watch the NBA.

Speaker 4 (06:14):
I don't care.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
I'm only doing this because it's a way for me
to make money. And I know of that player because
of their their two K status and what they do.
I get to play him when I'm playing two ks.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
They know about the player like through like a destruction
means yes.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yes, But as far as sitting down with their family
and watching Tuesday night NBC basketball, they're not doing it.
But they're really good at basketball, or at least they
think they are, and they're seeing how much of a
living that they can make on that. So I don't
think you can kill the sport, but I do think
you can taint it. And there's going to be a
lot of people that are wondering every time somebody misses

(06:50):
a shot if they did it on purpose or not.
Steph Curry and Lebron James and Victor Wimbanyama and Shay
Gilias Alexander and the stars of this league, you don't
ever have to worry about them. You can't buy them.
They are billionaire brands they are, their name is a brand,
just like a department store used to be or Walmart.
They are a major, major brand, and most of them

(07:13):
it's Lebron incorporated. But Damon Jones, he's not Lebron, so
maybe you can buy him. And the gamblers know that,
and the gamblers are going to try to figure out
a way to get to get to these guys however
they can, because they're in business to make money at
whatever level they can and to game the system and
the casinos. Unfortunately, or fortunately for us, every bet is

(07:35):
scrutinized to make sure that it's legit and the inside
information or another party that's involved in the game isn't
involved in affecting the outcome of that particular prop bet.
And that takes us to day day Hunter, who acknowledged
on Good Morning America recently on Today, I guess that
he was motivated to get money to pay for his

(07:56):
newborn child.

Speaker 4 (07:57):
I just had a child.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
The school wasn't paying me money, so I was trying
to get money to take care of my child. Now, listen,
we'll do a lot of things for our kids and
our family, and a lot of us will go without
so that they don't, and especially a newborn, they have
to have diapers, and they got to have formula, and
they got to have food, and that is ridiculously expensive.
And in this day of nil, you can go out

(08:18):
and do pretty much anything you want on a day
off and get money for it. And I guess there's
a lot of people in New Orleans that don't care
about New Orleans basketball outside of those who follow the
team and who also follow or part of the team
or part of the school or city sports fans, things
like that. But I think day Day Hunters sold out

(08:42):
himself for a very short term game, and I think
there were other options that he could have chosen. And
if you are good enough to play college basketball and
good enough to have a prop bet on you in Vegas,
that means that you're actually playing some Sure, there's a
good chance that you can go someplace and play basketball. Now,
you may not want to go to New Zealand and

(09:02):
leave your newborn child behind or drag him and mother, wife, girlfriend,
whatever the relationship is with you. You can go to
the Philippines. You may be able to go to China
or Hong Kong, but I don't want to do that.
That's too much work, So I'll just miss a few
shots and I'll get paid twenty grand and I can
take care of my kids. That is selling yourself short.

(09:22):
It's selling the game short. And it goes back to
what I've said about the passion that players should have
for the game, and at some point in time they
seemingly lose. And my thought is this, if you are
a good enough player in college to play college basketball,
there's a league somewhere that will take you. And now
because of what you did, you're never going to play
basketball on any significant level whatsoever. You're never going to

(09:45):
be an administrator for any school, You're never going to
be hired to coach the JV girl's seventh grade team.
Nobody is ever going to give you a job in
basketball for the rest of your life. And my guess
is is you were probably banking on that happening. Now
you've screwed yourself by doing this because of what Because
you needed five grand, somebody would have given you five grand.

(10:07):
It's not even illegal anymore for somebody to give you
five grand. You probably just had to ask for it.
And I know that there's a lot of people that
break the rules and commit crimes, and they do so
because they're going to feed their family. But what he
did is punishable by going to prison. So how is
that going to help him feed his family when his

(10:27):
but's in prison. Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines are
far better playing basketball than prison, and so I have
a problem with this. I don't understand why athletes would
ever do it, but I think we have a lot
of athletes that have forgotten, Hey, I really like this
game and now it's going to be taken away from me.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
I had two points to all that. So the first
thing goes back to the Lakers. Okay, so I know
the FBI, and then the investigators are doing their due
diligence by looking into the cell phones. To be honest, Andy,
I don't know if that's going to be matter because
most people connected in this kind of way, with that
kind of money, they're gonna use phones.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
And those who know who burner phones is.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
It's literally people who buy a cheap phone, usually from
a distributor, use it for business purposes only, and then
they get rid of it. They don't put your name
in there all this. It's just like a quick use
and they get rid of it. It's like what drug
dealers essentially do to move product.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
It's what Jason Bourne does when he's running away from
bad guys.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
That's exactly what it is.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
The other point is this, and it kind of ties
to what we talked about the first segment of Last
Hour beyond just by taking care of your child, which
as a dad and as dad as yourself, we can
both empathize with that because if God forbid, like like
we had to do something else tomorrow, we would do
whatever it's necessary to feed their feed their kid.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
But I do I would do whatever's necessary, but within reason,
there's things I would not do. I would not rob
a bank to take care of my kid. I would
not become a drug mule to take care of my kid.
And I wouldn't give you anybody inside information about anything
I knew in a sporting event so they could go
gamble on it.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
What to be fair, Andy, just because you've watched The
Godfather did mean I think you would know how to
rob a bank. Just to be fair, now, heat I
think is a better movie to learn from before and
rob a bank.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
And that's my person.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
I have no idea reason to do any I think
that the mafia is a very fascinating is a very
fascinating part of Americana. But most of those people are
degenerates that I don't want to have anything to do with.

Speaker 4 (12:13):
I think all of them.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
The point I was gonna make though, is that when
it comes to day day, because again, like he plays
no offense to anyone who's listening who's a New Orleans alum,
he plays at a lower level program, which ended of
itself is not overshadowed by professional sports. They as have
Tulane there, there's also a big L s U base,
So you're right, there's probably not a lot of N
I L opportunities, maybe not even a lot of pro
overseas opportunities.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
I don't know them. I don't know like what they
look for in places like Greece or Japan or whatever.
That's irrelevant.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
There's a lot of average college basketball players that have
got that have played a lot of pro basketball.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
Sure, and then they probably make not rich, but they
probably make a decent enough living to where it to
where it can affect them part. But I would say
that it also might be a factor to where, like
he might have he might have been presented in a way,
because we don't know he might have presented in a
way to where he had no other way out. I
think as this investigation goes along and we usually see

(13:04):
something like this, we're gonna see how he's connected to
a bigger ring and how they brought him and potentially
other players into this, and how they will lure it
in with the promises of even more money.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah, I still don't I still don't get it.

Speaker 4 (13:17):
I'm not condoning.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
I'm just saying, like, there's.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
I understand you need to feed your kid. I get
that that, but they're the it's not illegal anymore for
you to get a job. And hey, coach, I can't
play basketball to night because I gotta go work because
my kid needs formula. Uh well, Daday, Instead of doing that,
we're gonna go have you sign autographs at the local
car dealership next week.

Speaker 4 (13:37):
We'll pay you a thousand dollars. How's that? There's options?
He chose the wrong one.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
There's nothing, There's no it's to me, it's not any
different now. Obviously, gambling on a basketball game and committee
murder are two different things. Or robbing a bank are
a little bit more extreme. But you're choosing to break
the law. You're choosing to sell out your game, You're
selling to choose, sell out your teammates, sell out the
school that it's allegedly giving you an education, and you're

(14:02):
doing it because you need a little bit of money
that you could have gotten someplace else. It may have
been a little more difficult for you to get that money,
but there were other options for you to get the
money to take care of your kid, especially if you're
a basketball player. I can't imagine any athlete at any
school struggling to not be able to take care of
their kids. UTSA had a offensive lineman. He's thinking, Frankie,

(14:26):
I can't remember. I'll have to go back and look
at the roster, but he was a walk on right
tackle and UTSA in the Houston game two years ago. Arthur, No,
he's on the rostery more. I think it was I
want to say Alvarez, but I'm not sure that that's it.
Go look at the twenty twenty three UTSA roster offensive lineman.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
You remember the name is better than Iowa Recky.

Speaker 4 (14:52):
I can look it up.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
But anyway, he went into to Jeff's office and he
was a walk on and he to play right tackle,
and Utsa was out of offensive linemen and he needed
to get a job because or he was working part
time and he was playing. And all of a sudden,
with the injuries, he became the starting right tackle because

(15:14):
we didn't have anybody left. Uh and uh and Jeff said, well,
you know, we don't want you to leave school. Do
we need to help you with what's college? I don't
know what they did, but he stayed. He didn't come
back the next year.

Speaker 4 (15:27):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
But I think they either gave him tuition assistance or
something or whatever it was, it was certainly legal to do.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (15:34):
And it was Martin Frankie Martinez. Uh.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
And so anyway they did. There's options, you can you
can do the anile thing. And I think that we
were just in the beginning of the nile stages, but
that there's options for everyone.

Speaker 4 (15:50):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
And you know you read all the time, well I
committed this crime and I, you know, ran drugs for
the cartels so I could feed my family.

Speaker 4 (15:58):
Well, there's better options.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
There's a lot better options that are a lot safer
and are not going to get you in prison if
they get you caught, where I guarantee you won't be
able to take care of your family. And a lot
of people want the short way out, and he chose
the short way out.

Speaker 4 (16:13):
All right.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Speaking of UTSA, they beat Charlotte this weekend. I just
noticed something about next year's schedule and about the rest
of this year's schedule that is kind of interesting. And
I think that the American Conferences is not only it's
kind of like a cast system, if you will, the
haves and the have nots. There's some at the very bottom,

(16:36):
there's some at the top, and there's some in the middle.
I'll explain all that coming up on the ticket