June 12, 2025 • 10 mins
What if one of the NBA’s most private and powerful executives had a hidden past as a jazz-rap musician—and you were the one holding the only surviving copy of his lost album?In this unforgettable episode of The Ben and Skin Show, the crew—Ben Rogers, Jeff “Skin” Wade, Kevin “KT” Turner, and Krystina Ray—dive into a story so wild, it sounds made up… but it’s 100% real.Skin reveals his long-standing, low-key friendship with Oklahoma City Thunder GM Sam Presti, a man so private he makes Batman look like an influencer. But the real bombshell? Skin owns a rare 1999 jazz-rap CD made by Presti himself—an album that’s been scrubbed from the internet and hunted down by ESPN’s Pablo Torre for a podcast deep dive. Skin even turned down a guest spot on Torre’s show to protect Presti’s privacy. Loyalty or missed opportunity? You decide.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
beIN and Skin Show ninety seven point one The Eagle,
Thank you for hanging out with us today. Now we
have a set of tickets that we can give away
for the Rangers Royals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I believe that's June nineteenth. Think we got a four
pack of that hoe.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
So if you want to go to Rangers Royals, you
better have the iHeart app, the streaming app, and on it.
You know, it's a free app. You can stream our show,
listen to our podcasts, all the great iHeart programming. There's
a microphone. If you click on it, you can leave
a thirty second talk back. The third person right now
to leave a talk back with their name, their phone number,
their email address, and the answer to the question which
(00:36):
one member of the show showed up today with a mustache?
We were just talking about it. One of us showed
up today with a mustache and a limpfoot, and if
you can tell us who that person is, you're going
to win Rangers Royals four pack.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Very excited about that, all right.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
We do have lots to get to today, including KT
promised to something called a technology thing, and we're going
to be doing that at the bottom of this hour.
Come up here in I have eighteen minutes or so,
but right now it's time for this.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Track, another edition of things.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Skin is Traffic.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
All right.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
This is kind of a little two part deal here
that I want to tell you guys, quick story about Ben.
You've probably heard me say this many times. You're aware
of this. I have a unique string. I would call
it a friendship because he does get back to me
and I do consider as friends. But we've never hung
out together outside of an NBA arena, but I've had
(01:36):
several text messages with him. Sam Presty the general manager
of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Now, if you don't know
much about Sam Presty, compare him to John Daniels and
that he was a NBA gm at like I believe
the age of twenty nine or maybe it was thirty.
He was very young, and he's very smart. He went
(01:59):
to Emerson, which is a liberal arts college. He played
Division III basketball, and he worked for the San Antonio Spurs.
And as the story goes, he was just begged and
begged and begged and had all this data and reams
of data and all this computer work he had done
to tell the Spurs that they needed to draft this kid.
(02:19):
Out of France named Tony Parker, and Tony Parker came
and worked out and Pop said, hell no and like him.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Huh, he didn't like him.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
He didn't like him, and Presty just stayed on and
on and on and on and on, and finally they
brought him back in and Pops relented and they drafted
him number nineteenth and he went into the Hall of
Fame with Dirk.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
In fact, during his Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Speech, he even said he gave special thanks to Sam
Presty for making Pop draft him. So anyway, so Sam
Presty gets this GM job and he goes to the
Seattle Sonic. So think you're a young man, you're gonna
be the GM and you're gonna go to Seattle, one
of the coolest cities. And then they moved to Oklahoma
City and a controversy and anyways, he this year one
(03:00):
NBA Executive of the Year. He's very very private, I
mean very private. But Ben and I worked, and Katie
you might have did you ever work or you might
have too? Christige, you guys ever worked with Meredith and
promotions over at the ticket Not intimately? No, Okay, So
she went to college with Sam Presty, all right, And
(03:23):
she was good friends with Sam Presty in college. And
because she was, she had a CD that he made
in the nineties that was a rap jazz CD called
All Things Considered. And she gave it to me and
I never gave it back to her, and so it's
I have it and I went and looked. Because today
(03:44):
on the Pablo Toro to Pablo Torre podcast, he does
a deep dive into Sam Presty's CD work that has
been scrubbed from the internet. Oh my god, he found
he and Pablo Torre reached out to me and said,
I see this tweet from two thousand, because I tweeted
in twenty twelve. I took a picture of the CD
(04:07):
and I said, here's my tweet. No, no, no, I'm not
I'm sorry. Yeah, this would have been twenty twelve. I said,
I have the CD from nineteen ninety nine that old
NBA heads wish they had, and I tagged Mark Stein
and Roys Young, who was a Oklahoma City thunder writer
at the time, and I screenshoted the picture of it. Yeah,
And when Pablo Torre, he knew that Sam Presty had
(04:29):
something out there but he he, you know, wanted to
do it a whole thing on it, and so he
reached out to me and asked me if I had
a copy of it and I would join him on
his podcast. And I lied to him and I said,
I don't know where it is because I knew Sam
Presty would not want that.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Oh wow, really, yes, that's great.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Then the podcast came out today and apparently there were
two Sam Presty CDs.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
One I didn't know existed. I have this other one.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
And the guy that he found was an Oklahoma City
thunder or he's like a fan and a lawyer found
it digging in Boston one day and he had uploaded
it on the internet and someone had reached out to
him said hey, I really think you should pull this down.
But the person never identified themselves as Sam pressed he.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Okay, hold on, yes, what is he doing on it? Wrapping?
Speaker 1 (05:16):
He's a drummer, and so what he's doing is he's
doing kind of remember the mid nineties when the not
even like the roots like Blue Note would do these
compilations where they would have jazz songs with live musicians
and put rappers on it, and it was kind of
a fusion of rapping jazz. But it wasn't just sampling jazz.
It was it's kind of like that.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
So why would he be upset about playing drums on that?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Because he just doesn't want anything out there at all
to be about him at all.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
He's got kids, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
And it's not even he just he's so, let's not
talk about me. This is about everybody else. It's not
even like a humble thing. It's just he doesn't want
any focus to be on anything about him.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
He's incredibly private. That's pretty John Daniel.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
So I want you guys and so, and here's the thing.
The reason I'm friends with him is because I never
ever asked him about basketball. All we do is talk
music like we've swapped music suggestions. And the whole story too,
is like he was He's so private and our buddy
Mark Stein, you know how Stein's as he should be
proprietary with his relationships. He was standing there talking to
(06:22):
Sam Presty one time and I came walking up and
I just stood there with my arms folded, waiting to
say something, and Presty's looking at me like what is
this person doing? And Stein is like, I can tell
Stein's sweating, like, no, Skin, this isn't a time for shenanigans.
And as soon as they paused, Sam Presty looked at
me and I said, Sam, my name is Skinwade and
I'm friends with Meredith Levin and he went, oh my god,
(06:44):
and like just a real person was suddenly there.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
What is she doing?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Like?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
And we became friends.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Instantly, and Stein was like, what is happening right now?
And again all we ever do is talk music. But
in this podcast today, I want to play this for you.
This is why we are hundred spirits. He went back
to twenty twelve in a very rare preseason interview where
Presty is talking about music and listen, we have three
(07:11):
clips here.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Play the first one.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
This is him, and first you start talking about He's like, well,
you guys caught me on a good day to even
be talking about this, But play this.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
I like U, which many people in here and probably
don't really care about, but I'll say anyway because I'm
interested in it. I like watching I like music documentaries.
VH one has this series called Classic Albums. Has anyone
ever seen this? It's like, I'm totally hooked, And if
you know where to if you know where to find
(07:38):
the actuals, like said of them, let me know, can't
find them, So I do much of most of my
viewing on YouTube. But they've got like all these to
basically takes you back through how the albums were made.
So like Pink Floyd the Wall, Jay Z's reasonable doubt
was that was really good Steely Dan Asia, and you
(07:59):
go back like the produce sir, and you hear what
they were thinking and the artists themselves, what they were
thinking when they were doing the actual recording. It's just fascinating.
I think it's it's really really good.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
I mean, is that wow? Okay?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Then they follow up and then they're like, Okay, well,
what kind of docs would you like to see?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Sam?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Pretty much anything by James Brown, I would be fascinated by,
you know, just to see the like just kind of
how he guided the bands because the bands were just
so tight and so well put together. And be fascinated
by by that kind of blue by Miles Davis. You know,
(08:41):
to see that history basically coming together, that would be awesome.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So I'll stop there. So does he know you turned
down Pablo Tori?
Speaker 1 (08:54):
He does, Okay, you appreciate it, but if you want
to watch, it's out and it's an hour long.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
And he so he found one of the CDs.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
He has Branford Marsalis, the legendary saxophone player who's also
friends with Sam Presty, reviewing some of the music and
like the dog, it's it's a mini podcast, but it's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
It's really good.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
It's only like an hour long, but yeah, Pablo Torre
was determined to make his Finals preview about Sam Presty's
secret music career.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
And dude, he took.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
All the proceeds and I had known this. He took
all the proceeds and donated it to charity. And it's
like he even says at the beginning of the album,
He's like, I'm not a jazz aficionado.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I'm not a rap of fionado.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
I just have music in my head and I want
to get good musicians to I mean, he's a very methodical,
thoughtful man, and I personally think he's making a mistake
by not going out there and talking about this stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
But he doesn't want to. Man, but you can't stop crazy.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
It's crazy and populatory did a really good job of
digging up some stuff. Man, Damn, that is cool, very
impressive that you didn't turn it over all right. Coming
up next, Kat, where you get to take us. Well,
I've got a little something for you about the age
of some of these apps and companies that you didn't know.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
It's that technology thing. Next
beIN and Skin Show ninety seven point one The Eagle,
Thank you for hanging out with us today. Now we
have a set of tickets that we can give away
for the Rangers Royals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I believe that's June nineteenth. Think we got a four
pack of that hoe.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
So if you want to go to Rangers Royals, you
better have the iHeart app, the streaming app, and on it.
You know, it's a free app. You can stream our show,
listen to our podcasts, all the great iHeart programming. There's
a microphone. If you click on it, you can leave
a thirty second talk back. The third person right now
to leave a talk back with their name, their phone number,
their email address, and the answer to the question which
(00:36):
one member of the show showed up today with a mustache?
We were just talking about it. One of us showed
up today with a mustache and a limpfoot, and if
you can tell us who that person is, you're going
to win Rangers Royals four pack.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Very excited about that, all right.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
We do have lots to get to today, including KT
promised to something called a technology thing, and we're going
to be doing that at the bottom of this hour.
Come up here in I have eighteen minutes or so,
but right now it's time for this.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Track, another edition of things.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Skin is Traffic.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
All right.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
This is kind of a little two part deal here
that I want to tell you guys, quick story about Ben.
You've probably heard me say this many times. You're aware
of this. I have a unique string. I would call
it a friendship because he does get back to me
and I do consider as friends. But we've never hung
out together outside of an NBA arena, but I've had
(01:36):
several text messages with him. Sam Presty the general manager
of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Now, if you don't know
much about Sam Presty, compare him to John Daniels and
that he was a NBA gm at like I believe
the age of twenty nine or maybe it was thirty.
He was very young, and he's very smart. He went
(01:59):
to Emerson, which is a liberal arts college. He played
Division III basketball, and he worked for the San Antonio Spurs.
And as the story goes, he was just begged and
begged and begged and had all this data and reams
of data and all this computer work he had done
to tell the Spurs that they needed to draft this kid.
(02:19):
Out of France named Tony Parker, and Tony Parker came
and worked out and Pop said, hell no and like him.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Huh, he didn't like him.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
He didn't like him, and Presty just stayed on and
on and on and on and on, and finally they
brought him back in and Pops relented and they drafted
him number nineteenth and he went into the Hall of
Fame with Dirk.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
In fact, during his Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Speech, he even said he gave special thanks to Sam
Presty for making Pop draft him. So anyway, so Sam
Presty gets this GM job and he goes to the
Seattle Sonic. So think you're a young man, you're gonna
be the GM and you're gonna go to Seattle, one
of the coolest cities. And then they moved to Oklahoma
City and a controversy and anyways, he this year one
(03:00):
NBA Executive of the Year. He's very very private, I
mean very private. But Ben and I worked, and Katie
you might have did you ever work or you might
have too? Christige, you guys ever worked with Meredith and
promotions over at the ticket Not intimately? No, Okay, So
she went to college with Sam Presty, all right, And
(03:23):
she was good friends with Sam Presty in college. And
because she was, she had a CD that he made
in the nineties that was a rap jazz CD called
All Things Considered. And she gave it to me and
I never gave it back to her, and so it's
I have it and I went and looked. Because today
(03:44):
on the Pablo Toro to Pablo Torre podcast, he does
a deep dive into Sam Presty's CD work that has
been scrubbed from the internet. Oh my god, he found
he and Pablo Torre reached out to me and said,
I see this tweet from two thousand, because I tweeted
in twenty twelve. I took a picture of the CD
(04:07):
and I said, here's my tweet. No, no, no, I'm not
I'm sorry. Yeah, this would have been twenty twelve. I said,
I have the CD from nineteen ninety nine that old
NBA heads wish they had, and I tagged Mark Stein
and Roys Young, who was a Oklahoma City thunder writer
at the time, and I screenshoted the picture of it. Yeah,
And when Pablo Torre, he knew that Sam Presty had
(04:29):
something out there but he he, you know, wanted to
do it a whole thing on it, and so he
reached out to me and asked me if I had
a copy of it and I would join him on
his podcast. And I lied to him and I said,
I don't know where it is because I knew Sam
Presty would not want that.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Oh wow, really, yes, that's great.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Then the podcast came out today and apparently there were
two Sam Presty CDs.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
One I didn't know existed. I have this other one.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
And the guy that he found was an Oklahoma City
thunder or he's like a fan and a lawyer found
it digging in Boston one day and he had uploaded
it on the internet and someone had reached out to
him said hey, I really think you should pull this down.
But the person never identified themselves as Sam pressed he.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Okay, hold on, yes, what is he doing on it? Wrapping?
Speaker 1 (05:16):
He's a drummer, and so what he's doing is he's
doing kind of remember the mid nineties when the not
even like the roots like Blue Note would do these
compilations where they would have jazz songs with live musicians
and put rappers on it, and it was kind of
a fusion of rapping jazz. But it wasn't just sampling jazz.
It was it's kind of like that.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
So why would he be upset about playing drums on that?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Because he just doesn't want anything out there at all
to be about him at all.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
He's got kids, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
And it's not even he just he's so, let's not
talk about me. This is about everybody else. It's not
even like a humble thing. It's just he doesn't want
any focus to be on anything about him.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
He's incredibly private. That's pretty John Daniel.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
So I want you guys and so, and here's the thing.
The reason I'm friends with him is because I never
ever asked him about basketball. All we do is talk
music like we've swapped music suggestions. And the whole story too,
is like he was He's so private and our buddy
Mark Stein, you know how Stein's as he should be
proprietary with his relationships. He was standing there talking to
(06:22):
Sam Presty one time and I came walking up and
I just stood there with my arms folded, waiting to
say something, and Presty's looking at me like what is
this person doing? And Stein is like, I can tell
Stein's sweating, like, no, Skin, this isn't a time for shenanigans.
And as soon as they paused, Sam Presty looked at
me and I said, Sam, my name is Skinwade and
I'm friends with Meredith Levin and he went, oh my god,
(06:44):
and like just a real person was suddenly there.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
What is she doing?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Like?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
And we became friends.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Instantly, and Stein was like, what is happening right now?
And again all we ever do is talk music. But
in this podcast today, I want to play this for you.
This is why we are hundred spirits. He went back
to twenty twelve in a very rare preseason interview where
Presty is talking about music and listen, we have three
(07:11):
clips here.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Play the first one.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
This is him, and first you start talking about He's like, well,
you guys caught me on a good day to even
be talking about this, But play this.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
I like U, which many people in here and probably
don't really care about, but I'll say anyway because I'm
interested in it. I like watching I like music documentaries.
VH one has this series called Classic Albums. Has anyone
ever seen this? It's like, I'm totally hooked, And if
you know where to if you know where to find
(07:38):
the actuals, like said of them, let me know, can't
find them, So I do much of most of my
viewing on YouTube. But they've got like all these to
basically takes you back through how the albums were made.
So like Pink Floyd the Wall, Jay Z's reasonable doubt
was that was really good Steely Dan Asia, and you
(07:59):
go back like the produce sir, and you hear what
they were thinking and the artists themselves, what they were
thinking when they were doing the actual recording. It's just fascinating.
I think it's it's really really good.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
I mean, is that wow? Okay?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Then they follow up and then they're like, Okay, well,
what kind of docs would you like to see?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Sam?
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Pretty much anything by James Brown, I would be fascinated by,
you know, just to see the like just kind of
how he guided the bands because the bands were just
so tight and so well put together. And be fascinated
by by that kind of blue by Miles Davis. You know,
(08:41):
to see that history basically coming together, that would be awesome.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So I'll stop there. So does he know you turned
down Pablo Tori?
Speaker 1 (08:54):
He does, Okay, you appreciate it, but if you want
to watch, it's out and it's an hour long.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
And he so he found one of the CDs.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
He has Branford Marsalis, the legendary saxophone player who's also
friends with Sam Presty, reviewing some of the music and
like the dog, it's it's a mini podcast, but it's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
It's really good.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
It's only like an hour long, but yeah, Pablo Torre
was determined to make his Finals preview about Sam Presty's
secret music career.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
And dude, he took.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
All the proceeds and I had known this. He took
all the proceeds and donated it to charity. And it's
like he even says at the beginning of the album,
He's like, I'm not a jazz aficionado.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I'm not a rap of fionado.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
I just have music in my head and I want
to get good musicians to I mean, he's a very methodical,
thoughtful man, and I personally think he's making a mistake
by not going out there and talking about this stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
But he doesn't want to. Man, but you can't stop crazy.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
It's crazy and populatory did a really good job of
digging up some stuff. Man, Damn, that is cool, very
impressive that you didn't turn it over all right. Coming
up next, Kat, where you get to take us. Well,
I've got a little something for you about the age
of some of these apps and companies that you didn't know.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
It's that technology thing. Next
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