Matt Thomas on Tilman Fertitta, Ime Udoka, 2024-25 Rockets goals

Matt Thomas, radio play-by-play voice of the Rockets and former public address (PA) announcer at Toyota Center, joins Thursday’s episode with insight on the 2024-25 season and beyond. Thomas hosts “The Matt Thomas Show” each weekday on SportsTalk 790, the team’s flagship radio station.

Discussion topics include the importance of Houston’s new training center and practice facility; storylines to watch in training camp, which starts Oct. 1; early impressions of Tilman Fertitta as owner and Ime Udoka as head coach; and key considerations and variables for the live announcing of NBA games.

The episode, which continues a “meet the Rockets’ broadcasters” series (Space City Home Network’s Vanessa Richardson joined earlier this month), also explores what expectations should be for the upcoming 2024-25 campaign. Topics there involve the continued development of Jalen Green and Alperen Sengun and whether postseason basketball in April 2025 is realistic in Houston.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Cheers, Rockets fans, Welcome to The Logger Line, an exclusive
podcast from the home of the Rockets, Sports Talk seven ninety.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
The Logger Line.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
It's proudly served to you by Car Box, Clutch City Lagger.
It is God, Oh Yeah, Red Nation, get Ready, Ready,
get Ready The lagger Line.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
It starts now. Welcome aboard, Welcome back to another new
episode of the logger Line. Again serve to you courtesy
of Clutch City Lagger of Carback Brewing. I'm Ben Dubos,
your host, editor of USA Today's Rockets Fire and contributor
to Sports Talk seven ninety, official flagship radio station of

(00:51):
your Houston Rockets. I'm joined again by Powlo Alves, our
co host and producer out of Portugal. You can follow
him on Twitter, slash acts at Powo Alves NBA and
me at Ben Dubo's As I'm sure our audience is where.
September is the flowest month on the calendar when it
comes to NBA hoops. So we've been doing some outside
of the box things here on the pod. A couple
episodes ago, which you can find in our Logger Line archives.

(01:13):
We had the panel episode for the all time Rockets Draft,
and then in our most recent show, we started to
meet the broadcaster series try and give you all some
behind the scenes intel about the folks who are going
to be narrating the coverage of live Rockets basketball this season.
We started that series with Fanasal Richardson of Space City
Home Network, and we're continuing that today with Matt Thomas,
radio play by play voice of the Rockets and also

(01:35):
host of the Matt Thomas Show, which runs each weekday
on Sports TALT seven to ninety from noon until three
pm Central. You can stream it on Sports seven ninety
dot com. So, Matt, thanks for coming on, and let's
start you with this. I just saw you a couple
of days ago at the grand opening of the new
Rockets training center. It's the latest in what I think
we can consider a wave of investments by TOILDMN Fertita.

(01:58):
They're renovating to out center now it's twenty years old.
They've got the luxurious new plane, which I know you
travel on with the team during the season, and now
you've got this seventy plus million dollar practice facility. So
for anybody unaware, Matt is often referred to as Fancy
Match for his inssistance on staying in five star hotels.
So with that in mind, by fancy Matt standards, how
nice is the new facility and do you buy that

(02:19):
potentially provides you know, some sort of competitive advantage to
the team.

Speaker 4 (02:23):
I don't know necessarily if it means it's a competitive
advantage to teams. I can just tell you that other teams,
other players would be turned off if they went to
other cities. And try to compare it to what the
Rockets have done. I mean, as you saw Ben Min today,
it's a taj mahall of practice facilities. I mean there
is nothing that they didn't think about, from office space

(02:46):
to training space, to the kitchen to the basketball court,
so the pools to the locker room, and you have
to do it that way. And it's happening in college athletics,
it's happening in all the professionals sports teams. And with
how crazy NBA free agency is, and it's maybe my
favorite time of the year is to see who's talking

(03:08):
to whom and whatnot. Number One, don't mistake this money
drives everything. But if you're in a situation where you
are thinking about three or four teams and the contract
offers are similar. They're going to go to the the intangibles, ownership,
general manager, city travel, accommodations, where they're going to live.

(03:36):
You know, all those little things will make a difference.
And I can tell you from watching Tillman and the
organization put in hundreds of millions of dollars to make
sure that the intangibles in their mind, the Rockets win
that battle every single time.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
So I appaued them for that.

Speaker 4 (03:54):
And as a person that enjoys the fancy Matt life,
it is definitely guess fancies it gets. Although when I
was taking the tour the other day, I was still
looking for the Matt Thomas Sweet inside this.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Facility and have yet to find it.

Speaker 5 (04:08):
I'm sure.

Speaker 4 (04:09):
I'm sure they have it.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
They just haven't.

Speaker 5 (04:10):
You know. It's it's so special that it took it
a little bit longer for them.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
There were some offices that didn't have names on them yet.
So sure, so I've got a fighters chance.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Then I got it. I appreciate that.

Speaker 5 (04:22):
I actually I just started touched on before before Ben
goes onto the next question, I actually read so just
to shout out to Rockets stratitans. I started there fair
early on someone was doing an an A M A.
And the berth was someone that worked with the company
that you know, took care of constructing the whole facility.
And apparently there's an analytic an analytics system called NOAHA

(04:43):
in it that the tracks you know, average spring speed
of players. You know, they alerts coaches if guys are
in practicing and they're not giving it. They're all it
tracks on jump shots. The tracks are cruly east timing, consistency,
uh sprint, shovel speed, vertical, amongst other things. But it's
like this state of the art thing that I don't

(05:05):
think many of the teams have, and I think it
just goes to show a little bit of you know,
that could be a real edge, especially on like the rockets,
if you got getting to basketball a little bit, you know,
gill and struggling with this jamp shot a man that's
the biggest question mark with him. Jingun could obviously would
be in an even better play if he had a
better jump shot. I think it's it's incredible that that's

(05:28):
a win specific. I think it's worth you know, singling
out because you know, the facility is a training facility,
it's obviously important, but having those edges might make the
difference in the long term.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
Sure, and I have the pr in front of me.
The part of it that really stood out to me
was whether the attempt was off the dribble or from
a catch and shoot. I mean, that is crazy detail
for a tracking system at a practice facility, and it's
funny a lot of these things. There's also like a
GPS tracking type setup, and Tolman mentioned during the press
conference that he wasn't even sure what that was yet

(06:01):
he did green light it anyway, And that's where I
want to bring that in because Matt, I think you
have a better knowledge of Tillman. This is sort of
your wheelhouse. I feel like, relative to most people in
Houston sports media, you have a better knowledge of Tilman
Pertita than almost anyone because you know him on multiple fronts. Obviously,
you work with him in a Rocket's capacity where you're

(06:22):
one of the faces or voices of coverage of the team,
but you also know him from being a University of
Houston aficionado, and how closely you've watched his oversight of
that university is tyfically The Cougar's athletic program over the
last ten to fifteen years So what does the average
person following the Rockets are just casually consuming Houston sports

(06:45):
not know about Tilman that maybe they should, and how
does this maybe play into that.

Speaker 4 (06:50):
Uh, that's an interesting question. I have known Tillman for
a very long period of time, going back to even
when I was the PA announcer in the early nineties
and he was a small owner of the team. I
would not say we have conversations daily, monthly, and I
may talk to him once or twice per year. Frankly,
you know, he's got so many different things that he's

(07:12):
involved with, from his restaurants, casinos, the hotels, the team.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
You know, I there's never a need for.

Speaker 4 (07:19):
Me to get involved with anything or except to say hello.
Same thing with his kids. They're all great, But I don't.
It's not like I could. He and I are texting buddies,
all right. You followed him for a while, yeah, oh absolutely.
I will tell you this, And it was mentioned, I
think in a Texas Monthly article years ago when Tilman

(07:40):
bought the team, is that I was in Dallas the
Big twelve media Days doing my radio show and I
got an email from the Rockets saying that Tad Brown,
who was the president of the time, is going to
have a press conference. And it was in a middle
of summertime, and you know, the Rockets wouldn't have a
press conference in the middle of summertime, especially because for Range
he had already come and gone and whatnot. And through

(08:03):
the grape vine, just getting a little whisper here and there,
I had heard that Leslie Alexander was.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Going to sell the Rockets.

Speaker 4 (08:13):
I texted Tilman immediately, I mean within two minutes. I said,
You've got to go buy this team. And he texted
me back and he said, what are you talking about.
I said, Tad Brown's about to have a press conference
saying that he's going to sell the team. So, very,
very indirectly did I spill the beans to Tilma that
said the teams will sale. So that's kind of a

(08:35):
little interesting anecdote to all those years ago. But as
far as Tilma is concerned, you know, I think he
works hard. I think he demands a lot from anybody,
from people that work at his casinos to his restaurants,
to employees of the Houston Rockets. And I think he's
willing to spend money to get to that point. You know,

(08:57):
I honestly, and I'm not trying to say this because
I'm sitting there looking at his portfolio, but it feels
like everything that Tillman touches it turns out to be
a success, whether it's opening up a new restaurant, a
new hotel, buying real estate. So he knows the little
things that have to happen. He knows that, you know,
you have to get free agents here, you have to

(09:19):
have smart people in your front office, you have to
have good drafts, you have to be able to spend
money and take the time to just build a franchise.
And you know, as he has said at nauseum, Ben,
you know it was a difficult decision when I think
Rafell and Patrick went to him and said, we're gonna
have to break this thing up because we're going to

(09:39):
be sitting here at forty two and forty for the
rest of our life unless we absolutely clean house and
start from scratch. And so a lot of owners wouldn't
want to do that because a lot of owners would say, well,
and I'm gonna win twenty games a year, I'm gonna
have eight.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Thousand people in my building.

Speaker 4 (09:52):
So you know, that has been a painful transition, because
think about it, if you're Tillman, you had don't normally
have to wait four or five or six years for
your investment to pay off. When the Posto Hotel opened
up in the Galleria, it became clearly the most luxurious
hotel in the place to be in Houston in a
very short period of time. He didn't have to wait

(10:13):
four or five years for the word to spread. So
I think probably in this respect, you know, you have
to teach patients when it's an NBA team because there's
a lot of things you can't control, whether it's drafts,
whether it's free agency, whether it's a salary camp. So
I would say I see a different side to him
as an owner of an NBA team as compared to

(10:35):
saying an owner of being involved with the University Houston,
where you know, the Cougar basketball program was in desperate
need of an arena, and hal Fien's pavilion was that
was one of the two or three top reasons why
we were not getting good.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Recruits to the University Houston.

Speaker 4 (10:52):
And he said, look, we needed a major up up,
a major upgrade.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
In our arena.

Speaker 4 (10:58):
We needed to be a palace, We needed to be
as comparable to anybody else in America. Allah, the Fortina
Center was built and now it's one of the best
places in college of basketball for not only fans to
be there, but players to come play their games.

Speaker 3 (11:11):
So I would say.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
It's probably he need admit it.

Speaker 4 (11:14):
It's nothing like anything else he owns in life. Because
if you open up a restaurant and you serve good
food and have good service, or it's going to travel fast.
The NBA doesn't work that way. So to me, it's
been interesting to see how they have been very, very patient,
and I think the patience is going to eventually pay off.
It's just been really difficult, especially in those first three years,

(11:37):
how Lenik got and how times were so tough because
the city has been so acclimated to winning, you know,
lots of basketball games and going deep in the playoffs
where you know, think about it now, it's been fourced
Ray seasons with any playoff appearances.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
But he did get some criticism his first couple of
years owning the Rockets, and in some respects he came
into a difficult situation because when we bought the team
in twenty seventeen, it was a ready made contender. With
two guys and James Harden and Chris Paul, who were
at the peak of their powers. So in some ways
it was a situation where relative to what he inherited,

(12:14):
it was almost inevitable that if they didn't win a championship,
there was going to be some slippage. We know how
the modern NBA works. Within a couple of years, James
Harden wanted out and the rest is history. That led
to the rebuild that you were just describing. But he
did get some criticism in those years for not paying
the luxury tax. Now, I will say, in fairness to Tilman,
some of the guys he didn't pay the luxury tax

(12:34):
for turned out to maybe not be for basketball reasons.
The investment that people at the time believed they would be.
Luke Ba mute after that great twenty eighteen season pretty
much never played in the NBA again because of injuries.
Trevor Reza the Rockets let him go. He was never
the same guy after twenty eighteen, probably because he's in
his load to mid thirties age wise at that point.

(12:55):
So maybe it's not all attacks related. Maybe some of
it's basketball related and just age slippage. But regardless, he
got some criticism, and so because of that, there's a
corner of the fan base that wonders, Okay, when this
team gets to a contending level a few years from now,
will he pay to keep this team together? Yet I
look at these recent investments, like the practice facility, like

(13:16):
the plane. None of these are investments that are required
to be made by an owner. He is making them proactively,
even the higher of emay Udoka. Look, Toronto wanted to
hire emy Udoka Brooklyn almost time a few months before that.
He may had other offers. If he was getting a
low ball salary, he would not be here. He is here.

(13:37):
So we've seen time and time again in my opinion,
that Tilburn is willing to spend. And so I don't
say that to push back on the luxury tax and
say that it's not issue. It is, but I do think,
well it was an issue at least, But I think
that maybe some of this is just a new owner
learning what it takes at the NBA level, learning what

(13:57):
he can and can't get away with, and now seven
years into his ownership tenure, maybe he knows now what
he has to do is spending wise to get the results.
That he wants Matt. Do you sort of agree with
that framing? What's your thought on I guess how Chilman
has evolved from his first couple of years as an
owner to the guy he is right now.

Speaker 4 (14:15):
Well, the reality is this, And I don't know about
the finances and the luxury text and all that kind
of thing. You guys are much more in the weeds
on that than I am. I will say this, there's
probably a segment there. First of all, there's nobody in
the Rockets community right now that has to be sitting
here in twenty twenty four going, oh my god, if
only timill would have spent one more dollar to get

(14:37):
over the threshold.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
That's the difference.

Speaker 4 (14:39):
Between the Rockets, you know, dethrowing in the Golden State
Warriors and that The reality is this. If you are
a Rockets fan late twenty tens, you either thought that
James Harden was the greatest player on Earth or James
Harden would never be capable of ever leading a team
to a playoff series, deep run championship level. So on, Frankly, Ben,

(15:01):
what segment of the population you're talking to in terms
of whether or not Tillman made some early mistakes. So
all I would say is, regardless of whether or not
people were watching Tillman, whether he was considered penny pinching
or just said I'm not going to go over the threshold,
that's a debate for economists in the NBA. I look

(15:22):
at it strictly from a basketball perspective as someone that
calls the games and talks about the radio. Was that
team good enough in the late twenty tens to make
that championship run? Of course, the number one thing we
always talk about is whether Chris Paul's hamstrings would have
stood up with they have been able to be Golden State.
And you know, I'm going to be purely selfish and
said the answer is yes on that. But I don't

(15:44):
think anybody that looks at those days when they were
winning fifty to fifty five sixty games, thought the Rockets
under any circumstance were considered cheap. The Rockets were ready
to bring in guys. They still had Eric Gordon, they
still had PJ.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Tucker, they still.

Speaker 4 (15:58):
Had James Harden, Trevor Ariza. They went and got Chris Paul,
they went and eventually got Russell Westbrook. So I think
somebody that's got an accountant's point of view on what
the Rockets did during that time, especially in Towman's early
run as an owner, as a little short sighted. It
comes down to did your alpha dog did your type a?

(16:21):
Was he the guy that was going to lead it?
And again, if you love James Harden thinks he can
do no wrong, you think, well, just a bad opportunity
that slipped away. If you are not in the James
Harden camp, or not in the Chris Paul camp, or
not the Russell Westbrook camp, you were thinking to yourself,
this is a Rockets team just throwing darts against a
wall hoping that something sticks. So I don't see him

(16:44):
being overly different. I don't think that if I was
to go to him and say, look, I want to
go get XYZ player the trade deadline, if this team
is close on the making a playoff run, or maybe
even being top four or five on the Western Conference,

(17:05):
I can't imagine at this point that Patrick and Timan
would would would say no to that because of a
potential salary tax issue.

Speaker 5 (17:13):
I think as the years went along and as we
saw more of kiam Sarkner's career, even though he is
one of my favorite players because I you know, got
in the NBA watching him. I think, ultimately, I think
the Chris Paul injury was a much bigger, a much
bigger problem than you know whatever. I think what most
people will point to at this point will be, you know,
maybe a couple FoST round picks that we used thumping
players that perhaply could have used elsewhere, But to make

(17:37):
the argument that that would be the difference between us
overcoming Golden State or not. I think the Chris Baul
injury was was much bigger than that. But since we
I was gonna steer this to you know, what you
do as a play by player on Stround Radio ENTV,
but i'll hostually hold off on that as we're talking
basketball at this point. So it's divided, you know, throught

(17:59):
the defense seem to the people who believe that jams
Outen could do it as the best player and the
people who don't. I wonder how you feel about the
current crop of young guys, and perhaps you know, I
think the first sans from Mike the obvious, but who
you think has the potential and who might be most
likely to essentially become that guy or if you are

(18:21):
more pessimistic about it. Maybe you don't think there's anybody
here that could become that, but you know, I'll leave
it open to.

Speaker 4 (18:25):
You, Pottle of the reality is, uh, there's no one
player that's going to take a team to a championship.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (18:34):
There are so many layers in the NBA. And maybe
we spent too much time as n being historians saying
it was just Michael Jordan in Chicago.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
That's not the case.

Speaker 4 (18:44):
It was clearly Tony Cook coach, and Scottie Pippen and
bj Armstrong and Dennis Rodman. You know, clearly the Lakers
showtime teams were not just Kareem or not just Magic.
The Laker teams, while again Larry Bird was the main
go to guy, you had Kevin McHale and Robert Pearris.
So I think we as basketball fans have to stop

(19:04):
thinking about, well, do the ask do the Rockets have
that number one guy? The reality is you're gonna need
three number one guys, or at least one one, A,
one B, one C, whatever the case would be, and
you gotta have a nice supporting cast. So I guess
what I'm trying to get at is I think you're
probably trying to figure out is Jalen Green or al
Brend Shanghun that guy. Honestly, I don't think you have

(19:27):
to worry about that. The question is going to be
ultimately and that'll be up for eMate or decide, is
do those two guys together possess the ability to be
the one two punch that you're gonna need to go
compete against.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
You know, Devin Booker and Kevin Durant in the Western Conference?

Speaker 4 (19:43):
Is it Anthony Davis and lebron in the Los Angeles
is it you know, Steph Curry in company in Golden State?

Speaker 3 (19:50):
Uh?

Speaker 4 (19:51):
You know that remains to be seen. I like both
of their games are there? Are they perfect? Under no
circumstance they are, But there are some intangibles with both
of those guys that it make me think, Wow, I
can't wait to see what these guys do in.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
The next couple of years.

Speaker 4 (20:07):
So what I will do as a sports talk host
and certainly as a broadcaster for the Rockets, is I
look at the complete cast. I want to see if
Aman Thompson becomes this player that we saw back half
of the year, where you can put him in four
or five different spots. You know, does Reed Shepard step
up and become this jump shooting machine the Rockets have

(20:28):
adescmal is looking for for the last handful of years.
What's it like with Fred and Dylan one more year together?
Does Alpi put it together where he is? You know,
I hate the term mini Jokic. I think it's just
our junior Yokich. Whatever you're hearing. That's not fair to Jokich,
and it's not fair to Alpi. I want them to
be themselves. And then ultimately the month and a half

(20:50):
two months, we saw Jalen Green towards the back half
of the year whereas was his best moment as an
NBA player?

Speaker 2 (20:55):
Can he play that for eighty two games? So if
you give me.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
A little bit of all the things I just.

Speaker 4 (21:00):
Said, that's what makes championship team. Not saying just Alpi
is gonna take this team to fifty wins or just
jayel like Green's going to take this team to fifty wins.

Speaker 5 (21:10):
Yeah, hundred percent. I think actually Jalen Brown, if I'm
not mistaken this week, earlier this week, you know, obviously
current NBA champion, he said that the plan for them,
and it has been so this far and it will
be even more next season is to play through you know,
obviously they'll play through Dison Tatum, Killen Brown and then
christaphs Perzingis, but he mentioned that there will be games

(21:33):
where they'll play more through Sam Hauser. They are three
points shooting the specialist where he'll get if he'll let
them ten threes or he let them fifteen threes, he'll
get you know, twenty five points, and it will be
the Sam Houser game. Everybody will say, oh, we just
got beaten by Sam Houser, who's this random role player.
But actually the team was designed to on any given
night be able to feature different guys, not just the stars.

(21:53):
And I think the Celtics are a perfect example of
the team that you know or any given night, I
think you could argue that either Killen Brono j something
that we're the best player on any given night, and
sometimes Christoph Perzingis was a difference maker, and that's you know,
the current NBA champions. You can argue about how difficult
their rule to get in there was, but it is
proven to be a recipe that works, and I hope

(22:15):
the Roppets can can attenulate that a little bit. My
follow up, you know, staying on basketball, and I asked
this question of Vanessa as well, and I think this
is a probably question that we're going to ask everybody.
You know, Gun to your head, do the Rockets make
the playoffs? Not playing playoffs this next season?

Speaker 4 (22:33):
Gun in my head, I am such a fan of Emaadoka.
I have such tremendous respect that I think he is
going to get the most out of what this team
can be. The West is uber, uber, uber competitive. I'm
not going to say top six, but don't be surprised

(22:55):
that they're seven or eight just because the West is
so loaded, and while the Rockets I think can at
least play five out our basketball and hopefully even better.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
You know, you're steel.

Speaker 4 (23:07):
You still want to figure out what Jalen Green is
for eighty two. You still want to figure out I'll
bring Shangoon. You want to figure out if the Reed
Shepherd Act with Trade is going to be paid dividends
for looking for that pure jump shooter. But it's not
an indictment against the Rockets under any circumstance. It's it's
the fact that you've got to ask one or two

(23:28):
or three teams guys to fall off and I kind
of need that to see that to happen. Does Sacramento
take a step back? What's Paul Pierce out of LA?

Speaker 2 (23:38):
What does that mean?

Speaker 4 (23:40):
Paul George? Excuse me, Paul Pierce. Paul was thinking about
the Celtics. Paul George.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
What is Paul.

Speaker 4 (23:45):
George out of LA?

Speaker 3 (23:46):
What is that? Like? Are the Lakers?

Speaker 4 (23:49):
What is Klay Thompson not in Golden State? How much
does that impact them? What's left in the Lakers tank
in terms of keeping eighty healthy on the floor and
Lebron James. So, if there's anybody in the league that
can make that next step and get this team in,
I am one hundred percent confidence that the Rockets decision
to bring in emay Aadoka year ago was one of

(24:11):
the best things that this organization has done in a
very long period of time.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
And so if there's a coach that can do it,
it would be in Adoka in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
Yeah, and I'll note that if you can just get
to the seven or eight seed, that means so much
with the way the play in tournament is constructed, because
that gives you two games to win one. So, in
terms of Powlo's question about actually getting to the playoffs
if you can finish in the top eight of the West,
and maybe the Rockets because they're so deep. We heard
this week that Steved Adams is on track to be

(24:40):
a full participant when training camp opens in.

Speaker 2 (24:42):
A few days.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
So all of those are good sides. If the Rockets
can get even if they aren't in the top six,
just get to a seven or eight seed, and ultimately
you have two opportunities to win one game to get
in the playoffs. At least one of those would be
inside the friendly confines of Toyota Center. So that's a
pretty good spot you mentioned im Udoka. I want to
fall up on that. So besides the abilities as a coach,

(25:03):
you also get to know him a little bit as
a man. You get the interviews almost every game. In fact,
you've done that well. When did you take over as
radio play by play? You split This is my ninth
year calling radio play by play.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
The first five years I did the PA and.

Speaker 4 (25:20):
The at home and the play by play on the road,
and this is my fourth year of doing it all
the way through.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
And that was the Bill Quarrel transition plan when Craig
was between radio and TV, depending on home and yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (25:31):
So I talked to em every single game before the
game and what to build a curtain back. He has
a media availability for home games at five fifteen and
on road games at five thirty, presuming the games are
seven o'clock, And so as soon as he's done with
those media responsibilities, he and I will go into his

(25:52):
office or the his locker room that he's in on
the road and we'll have a conversation. It's about a
four minute radio visit for our pregame show. We'll chitchat
a little bit beforehand, a little bit after it. That
chitchat's probably ninety percent basketball and ten percent something else.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (26:09):
The one thing I have learned with Eve is he's
all about business, and I'm okay with him. You know,
we'll we'll talk about dinner, seeing friends and family, whatever
the case may be. But largely it's hey, if this
player doesn't go tonight for a particular team, or your
guy doesn't go, what will you do? And it's kind
of those little insights that I can get that I
can get the broadcasts that that that I can tell

(26:33):
you at seven o'clock when tip time comes on, but sometimes.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
At by point thirty.

Speaker 4 (26:38):
When we're doing these things and there are things up
on the air, he would not he would not want
them to be broadcast or discussed. So it's just kind
of a little behind the scenes stuff. And I think
most team broadcasters have that relationship with their coach. I mean,
he and I are not going out and having dinner
or having beverages on the road, but we have a
very good relationship. And he does a weekly segment with
me on my radio show during the season, and he's

(27:00):
always forthcoming and it doesn't men's.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Words, and.

Speaker 4 (27:05):
Frankly, I've been very, very blessed. I had so many
great seasons, five with Mike D'Antoni, three with Steven Silas,
and then this last year. I think I'm losing track
of years, but uh maybe four with Dan Tony whatever,
and then a year with with coach of Doka. I've
had a great relationship with all the coaches, and I've

(27:25):
been very blessed that those guys are I consider friends
and a tremendous respect for all of their jobs. I
know that they have different fortunes and different outcomes of
each e to the coaches, but I do enjoy our
little small time with Ema because I get a little
bit of insight that I don't normally would get if
I was just sitting in a press conference room.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
What's different about e May compared to those other two?
And I'll note that I have somewhat of a relationship
with them, but not literally as close as you do.
I never got as good of a feel for Steven
because a lot of Steven's tenures during the COVID years
were obviously there were more were restrictions. I will say
with regards to Emy versus Mike, Mike was incredibly personable,

(28:09):
and not that e May isn't, but e May is
much more as you said, matter of fact, he wants
to get down to business, Whereas you know Mike, depending
on the day, he might small talk to you a
little bit and you know, talk about some things other
than basketball. I May it feels like he is very
driven and focused on a day to day basis and
just always wants to get at whatever that competitive edge is.

(28:32):
How would you characterize Emy versus those other two guys?
I think you said it best.

Speaker 4 (28:38):
You know, Silas was his first time as an NBA
head coach, so he's kind of navigating the waters. And
you had COVID and mix in all by the way,
he had lost James Harden and Russell Westbrook and trades
and didn't get the kind of basketball team he thought
he was inheriting when the team when he took the job.
So he's you know, in a you know when Christian,
what is your alpha dog? That doesn't initially mean you're

(28:59):
gonna be thinking about a deep playoff run. But he
was always very personal, very honest, try to be as
positive as he could. But he the situation was tough.
As in d'An Toni's case, D'Antoni had a veteran Laton team.
Mike's been there, done that, having coached with you know,
the Lakers and the Knicks and the Phoenix Suns, so

(29:20):
you know, he had been through years and years and
years of big time games. So you know, he knew
at the end of the day that this team was
going to go as far as James Harden was going
to go on, no matter what kind of offense he
tried to put in or what kind of presence he
asked from his team defensively, it was, you know, this
is James' basketball team. He's going to put James and
any of the people that James wanted to around him

(29:42):
in the best possible position to win. In an Emay's case,
he's got a young basketball team. He just got a
couple of gritty veterans, which I think he wanted because
he doesn't want those.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
Veteran guys I e.

Speaker 4 (29:53):
Dylan and Fred and Landel to a smaller extent to
kind of step in there. And obviously Jeff Green would
be a great example of that to say, you know what,
you guys run your thing, but I still want to
have my uh, you know, my foot on this basketball team.
I want I want the direction, I want the culture,
I want the intensity. And so if Email is not
going to crack jokes, that's not that's not a personal

(30:15):
side to you or any relationship.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
You would have with him.

Speaker 4 (30:18):
He's just going to be just hyper focused. And you know,
for a basketball team that is on the cusp of
really I think making some serious inroads in the NBA
and especially the Western Conference.

Speaker 5 (30:28):
I'm all for that, especially with withiting this young We
we needed that, especially because of Homo Kip contrasts with
what we have this Steven Sellas. But I'll you know,
take the opportunity to to ask you about you know,
obviously he said you were a PA and answer earlier
on and then you moved on to the Playlight Play radio. Yeah,
what were some of the pros and cons of both?

(30:50):
And I mean, I'm guessing you like Playlight Play better,
but you know, I'll, yeah, leave it up to you.

Speaker 4 (30:56):
Yeah, it's interesting. It's a great question because I get
asked it all the time. First of all, my seat
at the PA's Spotlight press row is significantly better than
why I broadcast from I am I have. When you're
the PA announcer, you have the best seat the house.
I mean, you are just about mid court on the
core level. In the NBA, there are only probably of
the thirty NBA buildings, there's probably only four or five

(31:18):
places I get to call a game on the floor.
The rest of them are either in the lower portions
of the upper portions of the lower level, like we
are the broadcast deck at Tota Center, or we're in
locations we're on the top two or heros of the
second deck, or in some cases, there are some places
in the NBA that I feel that are just completely
unacceptable for broadcasting broadcasting games because of the location when

(31:39):
they put us in But by and large, I don't
complain about that because I'm very very lucky. I love
calling play by play, I love being on the radio
and in painting a picture. So for me to, you know,
to Pistimona about where my broadcast spot is, I'm not
going to do it because of the five hundred guys
that will be willing to take my spot tomorrow. But

(32:00):
the biggest pro would be you are telling the drama
on the radio. You're painting a picture for two and
a half hours. The biggest pro about the PA is
being on the floor and trying to get a crowd
of sixteen seventeen, eighteen thousand people to react to what
you're doing. They both had their pros and cons. But
when the opportunity was presented to me years ago, when

(32:22):
they said, hey, we're going to transition Bill to doing
just home games and ultimately when Bill retires, Craig will
go full time to television, you'll go to full time
to radio. I couldn't say no and was very very
happy to do that. So in my spot right now,
I am as happy as can be because I get
to travel the NBA, I get to call eighty two
hopefully maybe ninety two NBA basketball games a year, and

(32:46):
the money's.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Good, so that's always a nice thing too.

Speaker 4 (32:48):
But ultimately, I says someone that grew up watching NBA
basketball pretending I was broadcasting these games, and now I
get to do it as only you know. I think
I'm the fourth. I'm only the fourth full time play
broadcast in the history of the Rockets organization. I hold
that in high regarden and absolutely love doing it and
don't want to ever give it up.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
Yeah, and they put fancy mat up in five star
hotels and they put you on like the nicest plane
in sports.

Speaker 4 (33:13):
Right, it's not bad. I'll be brutally honest. The one
thing that's nice is that most teams don't have our
own their own plane, right right. And we also have
our same flight crew that all we all know them
by their name, they know us by our name. And
so you know, it's eleven thirty midnight and you're in
Atlanta and you're about to go to Memphis or Charlotte
or to anywhere else Detroit, and you've got an hour

(33:33):
flight that's going to take you to that airport. At
one thirty two o'clock in the morning, you get down
to your seat where you're gonna sit every time, and
there is your favorite beverage. In my case, it's unsweet
tea with a pillow and a blanket sitting there for you.
And that's it's a little bit of a creature comfort.
Because the NBA travel is rigorous. You don't get to
go somewhere for three or four days. Typically you broadcast

(33:56):
one game you're in the night of you leave right
after you go to the next city. So it's way
different than broadcasting Major League Baseball, where you actually get
to unpack your suitcase and put him in the drawers
in the hotel. We are literally and one's to get
out on their most occasions pretty quick.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
And when you're at home, you typically have an analyst,
either Adam Clinton or Adam Wexler. What's the biggest difference
in working between the two of them, other than Adam
Clinton has a greater propensity for checking you in on Facebook.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
That's funny.

Speaker 4 (34:26):
I love working with both of those guys. They both
bring different dynamics to it, but that's what they are
on their radio show. So I wouldn't want this, you know,
if one of them said I'm quitting the other ones
that I'm doing all eighty two. I'd be okay with
that too, But they both enjoy doing it. They both
like the flexibility. They don't have to be there with
me for all eighty two games. The home games are

(34:49):
fun because I have another set of eyes that can
watch the game, that can see something that I didn't
see and can chime in. Also, I will write some
things down on my prep boards that I can get
to that I think can add to the broadcast because
those guys are talking. When you're doing a game by
yourself on the road, I don't have much time to

(35:10):
do that. I have to call what's in front of
me because if I stare down and look at a
stat about let's say Dylan Brooks's career against the LA Clippers,
where we average fourteen points a game, or average nineteen
points whatever, where we had a career high thirty one
against him, I have to wait for a commercial break
to do that because if I look down and try
to look at my numbers, I might miss something. So

(35:31):
those guys are with me for all eighty two. They
just are in the studio for the forty one, and
sometimes I get them involved with an instant replay that
they may see that I won't be able to see.
But typically the easiest thing is with having them with
me at home games, because like I said, they can
add a little anecdotal things to the broadcast. There are
a second set of eyes, and then give me a
chance to look down once in a while and maybe

(35:51):
you get a simple water in between a play call.

Speaker 5 (35:54):
That's just great. I love the the different I would
never imagine that those will the issues are, or that
would be something that's come up while weally you guys
are broadcasting.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
My most awkward moment I appreciated how difficult of a
job that is. So from time to time I chip
in in the stats role on NBA radio broadcast and
so I've done it for a few teams here and there.
Probably the coolest experience I had was when I did
it for Noah Eagle, who came up Ian Eagle's son
with the Clippers. Now he's like the voice of NBC.

(36:26):
People saw him on the Olympics this summer. I also
used to do with it, by the way, he yeah
so good. I used to do it with the Utah
Jazz because when I hosted Locked on Rockets back in
the day. Obviously David Locke, voice of the Jazz on radio,
and so he would use his lockdown guys for stats
if that's what they want to do. So I would
chip in well one time in the playoffs. So it

(36:47):
was one of those Jazz Rockets playoff series. In twenty
eighteen or twenty nineteen, Donovan Mitchell had a nagging injury.
Was the final minutes of I think a close out
game for the Rockets, and I was doing stats and
David would asking their analyst who was on site but
not within someone that was in the tunnel, and I

(37:07):
thought they were live on air, and so I tweeted
about the injury to Mitchell and it turns out they
were not live on air. It was during the prep
process and David, you should have seen his eyes, and
you know, I deleted off Twitter. It was gone in
fifteen seconds. It's fine, it's no big deal. But that
gave me a new appreciation for how difficult that job is.

(37:29):
When you're doing a live broadcast that you know you're
going back and forth. It's not just the times that
you're on air, Matt, it's also like the prep that
goes on in those ninety second two minute breaks that
set up the next ten minutes a dialogue.

Speaker 4 (37:42):
Right, Yeah, for sure, if there's a trend in the game,
if there is what happened the previous game, like you know,
there'll be a time where the Rockets, I know what
it was last year. Do you remember how bad the
Phoenix Suns were guys in the fourth quarter of games? Yes,
And so that's that's one of those situations that I
wanted to make sure I had the stats on because

(38:05):
the Phoenix Suns were notorious for giving up second half leads.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
And I believe the.

Speaker 4 (38:08):
Rocket's got to win in Phoenix after Phoenix had a
huge lead in the game. So, you know, just a
little bit of opportunity to take a breath and look
down and reference something. You just don't get much of that.
The NBA timeouts are two minutes long. So and by
the way, I need to get a sip of water
because in football and basketball, you are literally calling ninety

(38:28):
four feet each direction. You can't take five to ten
seconds to skip and just watch the basketball being played.
You've got to describe every moment at least a good
play by play down is where's the ball? Who's got
in his hand? Is he being guarded by somebody where
is he on the floor, and so you know, it's
you are literally taking dictation of something right in front

(38:50):
of you, and it's fast, it's furious, and you know,
the little breaks you can get, whether it's during commercial break,
whether it's at halftime, or if you have a partner
with you, you can make a difference. But you know,
for play by play people, it's not necessarily a requirement
to have a color analyst on the basketball radio broadcast,

(39:12):
because again, the action moves so fast that if you've
got somebody with you that talks in long sentences and
gets into great detail, you're going to miss a lot
of action. So I applaud both Adam and Adam for
knowing when to get in and get out to say
what they want to say and let me get back
to calling the action.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
And that's what's different about radio even relative to TV, right,
I assume in that respect it can be even more
challenging because TV you can occasionally take a break because
the viewer can see what's going on in the background,
as opposed to the radio you are their only lifeline, right,
I mean, you can't take a break just based on
the nature of the format. Yeah, you know, it's funny.

Speaker 4 (39:50):
I think part of what makes Craig and Ryan so
good on television is the fact that we're anecdotal. On
their broadcasts, they'll have something funny will be said about,
whether it's Hello Kitty, or something they aid or when
Ryan played. And while I'd love to do that myself,
I just don't have much time for that. The only

(40:10):
time I'd ever be able to throw anything anecdotal in
would be probably during a free throw or coming out
of a time out.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
You know, my.

Speaker 4 (40:17):
Responsibility is to paint the picture, and that's for people
not listening in Houston. But it's all on our radio network.
And of course, you know, there are lots of people
in their cars with the with the emergence of serious
XM radio, that are driving from one end of the
country to the other, or maybe just driving around on
a particular night, that want to catch an NBA game

(40:37):
and they want to hear it. They're not ready to
hear mac Thomas stories about how much fun it was
to have a pizza in Orlando. They want to know
if Dylan Brooks picked up his fourth follower.

Speaker 3 (40:49):
Yeah, I'm a.

Speaker 5 (40:50):
Hundred percent noting out over this. Conversation. So I think
I already told Ben, but I'm a huge you know,
I really appreciate play by people because to me, first
of all, I think been witnessed this with the Astros
when so I started watching every single Astros game the
year they last, the last one there the World Series, right,

(41:13):
and there were so many iconic calls, and I remember
I remember talking to men about you know, obviously I'm
from Europe, so I come from a background, but I
grew up watching football. I remember all of my favorite
calls growing up from you know, really great goals or
really great moments. I have all of those memories with
Obviously with the Astros, there's there's obviously the at the

(41:37):
NG themselves have so many great, you know, play by
play guys on TV. I think I think it's a
really underrated part of what makes sports special because you
really associate great moments with with what the play by
play and also is saying while it happens. Obviously, you
know with games start didn't even have that card against
the Goldens. That war is the film Thrower one. Everybody

(42:01):
remembers those exact calls, and I think it's I think
big bad play by play announcement can really ruin a moment,
and you can not know the one to insult anybody.
Obviously respects everybody that does it. But when when you
listen to at least last year, when it listened to
a Nastros game on Apple t he or whatever it was,
the play life was so dead they kind of made

(42:23):
the game boring. It's I think, obviously does satifically tell
me that just wanted to, you know, they could take
the time to really say how much I volume that rope.

Speaker 4 (42:34):
Thank you for doing that saying that, because it's very important.
I wanted to be a play by play guy since
I was old enough to walk and talk. So I'm
very critical of myself, but I'm also critical of people
in our profession because again, whether it's Division I basketball
or it's the NBA or the NFL, I am a
radio geek. I grew up in radio. I've been working

(42:56):
in radio for thirty over thirty years now, so I
appreciate the art of it, but it's lost.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
Frankly.

Speaker 4 (43:02):
Television streaming has taken away a lot of the luster
of the call on radio, especially in football and in basketball.
Baseball still has its niche of a hardcore radio group.
I'll go and do an example of this. Gen Peterson
recently passed away, and he was one of my idols

(43:26):
growing up a lot with Midel Hamilton, and you know,
I remember listening as a junior high and in young
days in my high school listening to Gene Caul Rockets Radio.
And you know, I love doing it because he loved
doing it. But there's also a part of me that
worries that I don't have a generation of people that

(43:46):
were Matt Thomas in nineteen eighty seven, eighty eight, eighty
nine that are listening to radio like the r in
twenty twenty four, twenty five, twenty six down the road.
So I kind of know where my landing spot is
and where I am in terms of Orton's. The only
thing that I get is that, you know, while television
is such a big part of broadcasting them, there are

(44:08):
still people that have to get in their cars that
have to go pick up their kids from camp, or
have to go to the grocery store, or have a
late night shift, or our truck drivers that want to
hear the games, and so I owe it to them
to give it the same effort regardless of I have
twenty five thousand people listening or two thousand, I five
o ore people listening. So you know, I take it

(44:30):
very very seriously, knowing that the industry, the medium itself
has changed, where especially as I said, basketball and football,
it is much more of a television sea medium than
it would be on radio.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
So I think Matt Thomas, the PA voice, everyone associates
you with those iconic starting lineups from the nineteen nineties
when you were just twenty something, your old kid and
you were first getting started, and you've told that story
plenty of times. People can you know, google Matt Thomas
Rockets podcasts and find a ton of content where you've
described that in the past. We don't need to go
into that today because I think most of our audience

(45:07):
understands your role there. I think people also probably know
in twenty eighteen you had that iconic call of the
Golden State Warriors intros on the other side of the
excitement spectrum literally nothing, and so from a PA standpoint,
I think people know stand out Matt Thomas moments. Because
radio isn't quite as in sync with the social media era.

(45:32):
I don't know if the Matt Thomas calls, especially because
the Rockets the last few years haven't been as right,
I guess buzzworthy as a lot of other teams. Let's
just be blot. That's fair. So what would you say
your standout calls are? Is there one or two that
stands out that you look back and say, hey, you
know this was a really good call of a big

(45:52):
moment that stands out to me.

Speaker 4 (45:54):
Well, you know it's I wrestle with this all the
time because you know, in gene one was calling games
the nineties when radio was a bigger part of the
NBA and not every game was televised, and there were
some times ever games on pay per view. You know,
everybody knew how sweet it is.

Speaker 2 (46:11):
And that's how I ended it.

Speaker 4 (46:12):
I end every Rockets when on radio, just like I
did at the Rockets. When I do the when I
did the PA, I will run my.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
R and go.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
Rockets win.

Speaker 4 (46:22):
That's something that I've always done as a PA announcer,
and I.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Will and I do it on my radio broadcast.

Speaker 4 (46:28):
Uh it certain terms of my signature calls, h I
really only have two that I'd like to use.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
One is nothing but nylon.

Speaker 4 (46:36):
When I see a big three pointer, go in it
just just goes right through.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
The twine and doesn't move.

Speaker 4 (46:41):
I will use that a couple usually once or twice
a broadcast, and then I will sometimes I will say
sets fires and hits on a big three point shot.
But again that's I don't want to do that every
single time because I think if you do that, then
you become a cliche machine. And I want no one
that's listening to my broadcast thinking I'm doing that. But
as far as you know the big moments, Eric Gordon,

(47:04):
I think in my first or second year, hit a
three pointer at Philadelphia on a baseline to win.

Speaker 3 (47:08):
A game during the twenty seventeen World Series, by the way,
the game that a lot of people didn't watch because
of that.

Speaker 4 (47:13):
Yeah, yeah, there was. I've been a lot of those games.
I've been a lot of games opposite astros, playoff games,
that's for sure. And then I think with James Harden
scored sixty in Philadelphia, I think I called a pretty
good game on that one. At a moment, I will
say this, and this is purely egotistical, but if you
asked my fellow NBA broadcasters the exact same thing, they
would say, yeah, Matt, I do this as well. ESPN

(47:34):
does a show called sports Center All Night that if
you ever listening to ESPN Radio one, two, three o'clock
in the morning, you'll they'll always have their top five plays.
And so we'll go, let's say we have a game
in Chicago and we'll fly home and I get back
to hobby at you know, one forty five, two o'clock
in the morning, and at about five till each hour
they go to the Sports Center Top five. And I

(47:55):
kind of pat myself on the back if I make
the ESBN Top five, because I know, A the Rockets
won and B it was a good call.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
So that kind of gives me a little bit of
an ego boost. And like, not that I need it,
because I'm I I joshed that much fun. I lived
my life.

Speaker 4 (48:11):
But it's nice to be recognized in an area where, again,
if I walk the arena Totas Center, there are people
that know me for my radio show. They knew me
as a p announcer for the teen years and for
the you know, the years that I was doing in
at Tota Center, and obviously you were talking.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
About the Golden State Game.

Speaker 4 (48:33):
I you know, I'd like to be recognized as much
for my rockets radio play by play. But you know,
the reality is is that it's a it's a sport
that people want to see in person and they want
to see it on television.

Speaker 5 (48:42):
Sure, I just want to take you know, thirty seconds
just to say that, you know, you were talking about
how you know, radio maybe lost a little bit of
space to TV. I'll just maybe maybe this will share
you up. But he didn't. Portugal and we are ninety
five percent football slash soccer or whatever you call it.
What they do here is, you know, you have we

(49:04):
they take even on TV, they take the radio broadcast
and they play the audio over the TV clips because
the radio broadcast is so much more iconic for the
people here, and because growing up that you know, tea
at spots, TV was expensive, so a lot of people
you know, only kept up with the radio version of
big events. And so that's usually what they do, because

(49:25):
you know, everybody recognized that the radio, the radio feed
is usually better, you know, a better play by play
than than what's going on on TV. They're being said,
and moving on to see the question that I originally
wanted to ask before we went on this massive tention.
Although it was worth it. We had an SR and
we talked about funny stories that you might have from

(49:48):
the rest of the guys. You obviously, Ryan and Craig
Her pond sid about you.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
By the way, was that you don't know any music
post nineteen ninety two? True?

Speaker 2 (50:01):
Absolutely true.

Speaker 4 (50:03):
I will say my wheelhouse is nineteen seventy three to
nineteen eighty three. Now, well, I've listened to other songs.
Of course, I have a swifty for a daughter, so
I have to hear Taylor's within my house half the time.
But if you're gonna look at my phone and we
listen to music on the plane, I like to put
the earphones on and try to go to sleep, especially

(50:24):
in the night flights. Probably ninety percent of my catalog
and my iPhone is songs between those years. So yeah,
I would not say I'm very hip to today's music scene.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (50:35):
Oh, by the way, I definitely respect that I only
listened to music older than me. And I was born
in two thousand and one, so you know, with Johnny,
I need to say one I was I was. I
want to ask if you have any revenge stories since
since you know Vanessa talked about your music. Bastes do
you have and revenge shorts of al or Craig and Ryan.

Speaker 4 (50:58):
Obviously I don't have bench stories. We are very close
as a broadcast unit. There are a lot of teams
in the NBA that I have been told that don't
have the same relationship we have with all of us.
Whether it's professional jealousy or it's just a vibe. Fraik, Vanessa,

(51:21):
Ryan and myself get along really, really, really well. We
try to have dinner at least once a road trip.
Now all of us will have family and friends in
other cities, or you know, I like to go to
the casino when I'm in other cities, so sometimes I
will beg out on dinner to go play some blackjack.
But generally speaking, we do hang out quite a bit together.

(51:41):
I should also mentioned Adrian Tava. We are a Spanish announcer.
We're all one big family and we really enjoy it,
and I think you have to be because we are
with each other so much of the time. And this
has one a slot against the players. But these players
are between the ages of say nineteen and twenty nine
years old. They don't necessarily to hang out with Matt
and Craig, who are adults with families and kids and whatnot,

(52:06):
you know, and Vanessa's got her own life, and Ryan's,
you know, retired player. And while he's gonna connect to
some of those players because he played in the league
for as long as he did, they're still gonna be
a little separation. Not the are inclusive and don't involve
us in anything. They're all very polite and nice to us,
but they're just not going to be people that we
hang out with. So we as broadcasters tend to navigate
to hang out with each other more than just like

(52:28):
anybody else would.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
As far as.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
Funny stories, I tease Craig about the fact the only
works like eighty five days a year, so he has
a lot of downtime. I saw him at the Rockets
unveiling of their facility a couple of days ago, and
I think that's the first time he's actually put on
a pair of pants in probably six months, since he
doesn't work except for the Rockets games. Ryan Hollins eats

(52:51):
more money, eats more food than anybody I've ever seen
in my entire life.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
We will go eat. He will get multiple.

Speaker 4 (52:59):
Appetizer, multiple entrees, and desserts. So if we're going at
a restaurant in Vanessa's dinner's twenty five vines thirty, Craigs
is thirty. Ryan will be in the fifty to fifty
five of sixty hour Rainge because he orders so much
food and he.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
Eats it all.

Speaker 4 (53:15):
And it's amazing that he that one man at seven
feet tall, as skinny as he is, can consume as
much food as he does. As far as Vanessa's concerned,
she's very, very funny.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
We get along great.

Speaker 4 (53:27):
We sit next to each other on the plane where
I will have a Rando song on my iPhone at
one o'clock in the morning and I'll tap her on
the shoulder.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
I'll say, do you know this song?

Speaker 4 (53:34):
And nine times out of ten she knows it, which is.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
I'm very impressed.

Speaker 4 (53:38):
You know, she grew up in a music family when
she was growing up in Tarot, Indiana, so I really
appreciate her eclectic style and music. But in terms of
crazy stories, nothing really too super crazy that I could
tell you over the pod. We've had some good times,
but some of those good times need to be kind
of held in our own private lock box, so to speak.

(53:59):
So but we get along great, and I love working
with them. It's gonna be fun getting with them on
the road again this season.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
She says she's best at karaoke. Do you agree with that?

Speaker 4 (54:08):
You know the reason why she won the karaoke contest
because her songs are more current than mine.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
But I am.

Speaker 4 (54:15):
I mean, there's no dobt in my mind on the
best singer, hands down and all. By the way, Ryan
Hollins and I. Ryan's favorite dinner to eat on the
road is stirfry. He could go to a Benny Hannah
four times on a road trip if he wanted to.
He's always asking me to go eat stirfry. We're in Denver, stirfry.
Is there a stirfried place in Sacramento? I have to

(54:36):
anytime we go to a city, I have to find
out if there's a stir fry place and tell Ryan this.
But sometimes I tell them there's no stir fry in
a city when there really is. Because I like stirfry,
I just don't want it multiple times on a road trip.

Speaker 3 (54:50):
All right, So as we wipe out our conversation, I
want to transition back to.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Your other job.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
I'd like, Craig, you do not work, just eighty five
days a year, because, as mentioned leading off this EPP,
you also host the Matt Thomas Show daily noon to
three on Sports Talk seven ninety. You can stream at
Sports seven ninety dot com. And there's an interesting juxtaposition
for you, or at least I think it is, in
that you are paid by the Rockets. You have incredible

(55:17):
ties with this organization, obviously the Tilman era, but really
going back all the way to Less Alexander. As you
mentioned earlier, this is thirty plus years. They are your
baby in a sense, and yet it feels like in
this era of Houston sports they're a little bit of
an afterthought. Now, some of that I think would happen
in any market, because when the team goes into a

(55:38):
rebuild the depths of which the Rockets went into earlier
this decade, then people aren't going to talk about them
as much. But in this market, not only is football
a big deal, well pretty much, football is a big
deal no matter where you are these days in America,
but the Astros drive MLB discussion in a way that
I feel like almost no other market gets the level

(55:58):
of baseball talk that Houston does. And that's a good
problem to have. Because obviously the run. The Astros have
been on two World Series titles for American League titles
in the last seven years. Hopefully they're about to add
another this year. We'll see what happens in October. Congratulations
to the Astros clinching a seventh straight full season Al
West title. But because of that, there are only so

(56:20):
many segments. There's only so much oxygen, so to speak,
for a sports talk radio discussion, and so I know
you don't get to talk Rockets as much as you
would like because there are all these other interests going on.
So my question for you is this, what is it
going to take for the Rockets to become more culturally
relevant in the Houston sports scene the way they were

(56:43):
in the nineties, in the two thousands, even for a
lot of the twenty tens, although I think, you know,
maybe the peak James Harden yours a little bit overshadowed
because it coincided with the Astros getting to that World
Series level for the first time. Like when I go
back to the nineties, one of the little niche conversations
among you know, diehard Houston sports fans that I think
people outside the market might not realize. You talked earlier

(57:05):
about how it's not just about Michael Jordan or Hakim
Elijawan or Magic Johnson, that it's about a team. And
so these discussions from the nineties about oh, what would
have happened if Michael Jordan didn't retire, Well, no, I
think if you're a diehard Rockets fan, or if you're
just a diehard Houston sports fan, you know that that
second year, well, first off, Jordan came back during the season,

(57:27):
he lost to the Magic, and the Magic then got
swept by the Rockets in the ninety five finals. But
what was different about that Bulls team They had lost
Horse Grant and it was before they had added Dennis Rodman,
and so they were not as good of an overall
team even if they did have Michael Jordan. That's why
they lost to the Magic. And then of course the
Magic were swept by the Rockets in the NBA Finals.
And that was a type of conversation that back in

(57:49):
the day wasn't just discussed amongst diehard NBA fans. It
was more part of the broader conversation, a fabric of
the city, as opposed to now it feels like we're
having those conversations on Rockets podcast, on Rockets Twitter and
Rockets Reddit and these super niche outlets. But in terms
of the more mainstream, it feels like those narratives are

(58:09):
more limited to baseball and football. So in terms of
potentially changing that is making the playoffs enough, is it
going to take until the Rockets actually contend for a title?
Would it take them actually winning a title? What does
it take to get the Rockets back into the general
consciousness of the average Houston sports fan to where those

(58:31):
types of conversations are playing out not just on Rockets
podcasts like this, but on the Matt Thomas Show daily
from noon to three.

Speaker 4 (58:38):
First and foremost, I have been very blessed to work
for an incredible company and iHeartMedia that has said, Matt,
you do your show and I'm not going to make
you talk about one team for fifty five minutes of
sixty minutes of an hour.

Speaker 2 (58:54):
I wouldn't want to do that show. I want to
want to be forced to do that show. I wouldn't
do that show to.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
Talk about the backup Texans offensive blood.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
That doesn't interest me.

Speaker 4 (59:04):
Now if that if a team like the Texans was
to go off to a eleven and two start, they're
a number one seeing the playoffs and they're going to
go towards the super Bowl. That obviously you got to
play the hits, guys, and I don't understand why people
don't understand that, and out of it's because that you're

(59:27):
being forced because of ownership or management or programming. But
I want to listen to a show where I don't
get the same thing over and over and over. I
like to get into a variety of different things. I
do like talking about college football, would need be and
when Texans are going, and certainly when we carry the

(59:47):
Astro games. They're a huge part of our show. And
I love talking about the Astros because as a seven
or eight year old guys, I was an Astros fan
and an Other's fan and a Rockets fan. Two of
those three teams are still around, and regardless of if
I have a microphone in front of me, I'm still
a fan of those teams. The addition of me being
the voice of the Rockets, and this will be between

(01:00:09):
the two teams, between the two different decades. I think
it's my eleventh year of the Rockets organization. I have
a vested interest in their success. But the Rockets have
been fantastic, I said, Matt, we know that we are
not page one. We're not going to ask you to
force feed your audience conversation about our team. When we're good,

(01:00:30):
people will come and gravitate towards our product again. And that,
to me, in the most simplistic way, is the answer
to your question.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
We play the Hits. If the Rockets are.

Speaker 4 (01:00:42):
Fifteen to thirty two this year and are aforcing the playoffs,
we're talking a lot of NBA basketball. If the Rockets
are twenty and sixty and thinking about being a top
three lottery pick, it ain't getting another radar. The Rockets
understand that my audience knows that my programmers know that
at the radio station, and so that's how you've been

(01:01:03):
able to be What the Matt Thomas Show is is,
we're just We're going to do things that you are
at a bar talking with your buddies about. And I hope,
desperately boys the Rockets become a bar tab conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:01:18):
Because I'm with this team.

Speaker 4 (01:01:20):
I have some inside knowledge because I'm with them every
single day. I'm not trying to brag about the knowledge
of just saying that I want to use it. I
want to say, hey, I saw this at practice today,
this was interesting, or this happened before the game, or
I talked to Emay and.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
He said this.

Speaker 4 (01:01:36):
But if I get into a deep, headdive, head first
conversation about the Rockets and they've lost nine in a row,
I'm gonna lose my radio audience. And the Rockets understand that,
and the radio station understands that. So as the Matt
Thomas Show has been around since January of twenty ten,
I wanted to talk about.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
What hits and when the Rockets hit. Guess what.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
I want to be the.

Speaker 4 (01:01:58):
Place that people used to go to to talk Rockets
over and over and over again. And hopefully that's going
to be happening in the not too distant future.

Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
Yeah, and I think it's largely going to resolve itself,
and that the Astros. I'm not going to say they're
going to fall off by twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six,
hopefully you don't see something like the late two thousands.
But I do think that this era they're clearly on,
let's call it the backside of it. Not saying that
they're eminently going to fall off, obviously, they have L
two Bay Jorda and under contract, YadA YadA. But over

(01:02:29):
the next few years, as the Rockets are getting better
and hopefully getting back to a contending level, I don't
know that it's reasonable to expect the Astros to be
quite where they are right now, and so because of that,
that may shift the conversations a little bit over the
upcoming years and sort of resolve. It's just based on
the normal cycle of contention and rebuild that the company's
you know, competitive sports where thirty teams are all trying

(01:02:50):
to be the last standing, and so obviously it's very
difficult to be at a peak level every single season
on a consistent basis, Matt, Before we close out the pod,
one other top I wanted to bring up. So you
were in New York within the last week or so
for the annual broadcast meetings, right, yes, yes, Okay, So
there's a lot of things in the company that basically

(01:03:11):
it's the league prepping you guys so that everybody's on
the same page going into game broadcasts for the upcoming season.

Speaker 4 (01:03:17):
Right, yeah, it's basically practices, not in practice, like you know,
what you do in a broadcast conversation, pieces to say
of the league, what's happening. We got a nice officials
rundown of some changes some things. There was a symposium
with three different referees talking about their lives and how

(01:03:39):
they deal with certain things. There was a conversation about
PR directors in our relationship with team broadcasters. Other Yeah,
break Head area where was just us radio guys got together.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
But it's just kind of.

Speaker 4 (01:03:49):
A two day, very informal get together to kind of say, yeah,
here's we are as a league. We also got a
chance to see a video of presentation of the do
into a Dull in Los Angeles was looking spectacular and
I can't wait to get there for our first game there.
But it's just kind of an opportunity for all collective,
all thirty teams, broadcasters and PR departments that kind of

(01:04:09):
get together in one building.

Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
Well. See, I wanted to ask you about the officiating
component because for a die hard fan of officials, like
everyone knows Ben Zubo's is what should I be on
the lookout for this year?

Speaker 4 (01:04:24):
The continued relationship building between officials and the players. Zach Zarba,
Bill Kennedy, and.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
I forgot who the third player referee was.

Speaker 4 (01:04:37):
Oh Josh Tibbon said, Look, we don't want to get
into a bad relationship with players. We want to get
the calls right. We want these games to be decided,
and we for the do everything in our power to
check our egos at the door we walk in the
arena because we want to call these games. We don't

(01:04:57):
want officials deciding these baskets games. And I really believe
those guys. So the three guys they happen to choose
are three of the most respected guys in the league.
They talked about their relationship with the younger officials and
how they want to work with the younger officials because they.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Were once young officials and they want to.

Speaker 4 (01:05:15):
Instill their knowledge and situation and temperament to those So
you know, the rules are there going to be the rules.
The challenge system isn't really changing, But I just get
the sense that they want to be even further away
from the limelight. They want the games decided. They are
pro replay, they are pro looking at things. They're pro

(01:05:37):
in Secaucus, New Jersey Replay Center. These gentlemen and ladies
want to get the call right because the last thing
they want to do. And I can clearly tell you
that none of them are on social media because they
said they would be the professional suicide if they did that.
But they just want to get these calls right, and
I respect the hell out of them. It's a very

(01:05:57):
difficult position. It's the most difficult phishating position in sports.
And that's why when you listen to me on Rockets Radio,
you will very very rarely ever hear me criticize them,
because again, I think it's so tough. You can't go
back and autocorrect, by and large, and you know you
may have missed a call one and then five seconds
later you're making another call the other end. It's a

(01:06:20):
thankless job. And I applaud their efforts and I try
to give them the benefit of doubt every chance I
can get. Yeah, And to your point on.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
Replay, they're expanding it this year or one change they
recently announced is that when there's an out of balanced call,
you can look not just at who it went on, yes,
but if a foul caused it, Because historically, I think
what's happened a lot of time is there'll be the
split the difference calls. Well, maybe there's a foul, but
they don't want to call the foul, and then when
you go to replay, you can review who at last touched,

(01:06:51):
but you can't review the foul that wasn't call, and
so the replay can sort of lead to a very
unjust result as opposed to now actually call the foul,
And so it's going to be a result that I
think is more sort of justified. Simplify it.

Speaker 4 (01:07:06):
If the ball goes off of Dylan Brook's hands, why
they go off his hands because Victor Woman Yam has
slapped him across the wrist. They can now call the
ball in Victor, So that's Yeah, that's the one thing
I think is why did the ball go off of
the player's hands because of contact?

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
They can now call that contact, which I think is
a great decision on their part. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
Well, I do like that you pointed out the relationship
between officials and players. I think that's so important because
everyone that follows me on Twitter knows my biggest trigger
by far, and I'm not going to get on my soapbox.
I don't. We need to wind down the conversation. But
I cannot see in the amount of silly objections that
happen in MLB and the NBA, because at the amount

(01:07:46):
that leagues and teams are asking fans to pay for
tickets and the amount of time that they are asking
fans to commit to these leagues. There's more content, there's
more games than ever before. The incredibly quick trigger fingers
are uncalled for in many cases, and it's not that
different than you know in football and soccer. The dialogue

(01:08:09):
between players and coaches is not that different. It's just
sort of understood that in a sport with fewer games,
there's a certain bar that needs to be clear for
it to be worthy of. I'm going to literally take
the player out of this game to where fans can't
enjoy seeing him play, which is what in many cases
they paid to do, as opposed to I think culturally,

(01:08:30):
in a sport like baseball or basketball, there's so many
games that some of the more old school officials can
want to make an example out of. Hey, if you're
if you're not treating the officials right, then I'll throw
you out to try and set a tone. And I'm
not saying that players are innocent in this. They're not.
Players can engage more respectively. It is a respectfully it's

(01:08:50):
a two way street. But I think the bottom line
is if we can have fewer objections over hurt feelings,
that I think the overall product is going to be better.
And so again it's not to say that it's all
on the officials. The players can do things to, you know,
bolster those relationships where they aren't as contentious in the
first place. But the bottom line is having a better

(01:09:11):
relationship between officials and players makes for a better product
because you're gonna hopefully have less ejections, have players out
on the court more frequently. I think that's sort of
what they're getting at, right.

Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
Couldn't agree more.

Speaker 4 (01:09:22):
They they want players in the floor, they want the
stars determine the game, and they're going to try to
give as much leeway as possible. Now these officials are
berated and called name.

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
Sure, they've got no other.

Speaker 4 (01:09:32):
Choice, but I think that hopefully will be a downtrend
because I think they're the players want to be on
the floor. They don't want to be paying fines, they
don't want to cause their teams ejections and you know,
handicap their teams.

Speaker 3 (01:09:44):
Well, I think that's everything for me. POWLO. Did you
have anything else before we close up shop?

Speaker 5 (01:09:49):
Yeah? I mean I don't know if I want to
spark the rantser or not that I was going to
ask about the wave in what Matt thinks of the wave?
That's as already gets here in plus tho is pretty fubbular.
Nobody has a problem with it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
All right, I'm going to have dinner.

Speaker 4 (01:10:03):
I'm gonna let you guys go because we're not having
this conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
Wavebusters hou on Twitter, right, yes, I'm over a thousand
people follow it. Wave busters Ah show you the wave
must and Ben.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Spread the word.

Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
We'll do all right, folks. That is Mat Sabas. You
can follow him at Sports MT on Twitter, slash ax,
and of course, as mentioned, you can listen to the
Batsavas show on Sports seven ninety or at Sports seven
ninety dot com each weekday from noon to three pm Central. Matt,
thanks so much for the time, guys, call me any time.
Take care now sounds good, right, And that'll do it
for today's show for myself and Powlo. If you want

(01:10:40):
to follow us on Twitter slash x, you can do
so at Benjubo's or at powow Alps NBA and this
show at the logger line where if you have the
link tree. In the bio, you can find links to
obviously distributors to Apple, Google, Spotify, subscribe, leave positive review
if you've not already. But also friends of the program
sponsors Carback Brewing Sports seven ninety USA, Today's Rocket Square
can so their content that would help us as well.

(01:11:01):
We would greatly appreciate it. I'm sure they would as well.
All Right, that will do it for today for Polo
and Matt. I'm Ben Jubo's thanks always for listening, and
please come back soon for another new episode of the
Logger Line.