CHASING BASKETBALL HEAVEN Episode 6: Occasionally Brilliant

Summary

30 for 30 Podcasts

Chasing Basketball Heaven, Episode 6: Occasionally Brilliant (July 22, 2025)

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Episode Overview

The final episode in the "Chasing Basketball Heaven" series is a contemplative journey through the legacy of Martin Manley—the brilliant but largely unheralded pioneer of basketball analytics. Hosts Rich Levine and Nick Altshuler explore how Manley's ideas have shaped modern basketball, wrestle with why his name is mostly forgotten, and seek answers about legacy, influence, and the imprint we leave behind. The episode weaves together scenes from the 2025 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, an intimate visit to the home of statistics legend Bill James, and powerful recollections from Martin’s stepdaughter, Marissa. Through reflection and interviews, the episode grapples with the meaning of Manley's life work, his tragic suicide, and how we measure the worth of a legacy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Fate of the Three-Point Revolution

[00:15–04:22]

• The hosts attend the 2025 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, exploring whether analytics—particularly the dominance of the three-point shot—have harmed basketball.
• Key Question: "How many three-point shots is too many?" (02:15)
• Many at the conference, including NBA insiders, are questioning whether the proliferation of threes has made the game too monotonous.
• Rich Levine on Manley’s lost legacy: "We went to Sloan to learn about the future of basketball...But another reason we hit Sloan was to find out how many of these number crunchers were even aware of Martin and his work." (03:15)
• Shockingly, almost none of the new generation of sports analysts have heard of Martin Manley.

2. The Debate: Has Analytics 'Broken' the Game?

[06:15–09:21]

• The panel "Have the nerds ruined Basketball?" features Deepak Malhotra (moderator), Daryl Morey (76ers), Evan Wash (NBA VP), Mike Zarin (Celtics), and Sue Bird (WNBA legend).
  • Daryl Morey surprisingly argues that the three-point line now gives "50% more than the other shots...It essentially breaks the game." (07:18)
  • Evan Wash disagrees: “A game design or a rule in and of itself cannot be a problem...It is only a problem if the style of play that results from that is not exciting.” (07:45)
  • Sue Bird reflects on the impact: “I don't think the game is broken. I still find it very entertaining...But I did go to a random college pickup game...instead of taking the one-dribble pull up, [the player] sidestepped for a three. Clang. Like terrible shot, obviously.” (09:06)
• Memorable Moment: Tension on the panel, described as “a little fake show, but the slaps were real.” (08:03)

3. Deepak Malhotra's Case Study and the Slow Adoption of Analytics

[09:28–12:43]

• Deepak Malhotra wrote a case study on why the NBA didn’t immediately exploit the three-point shot—despite the clear mathematical advantage.
• Organizational inertia, culture, and job risk aversion were major barriers.
  • “If you're being inefficient and everybody else is inefficient, you don't have that same pressure …as long as you're doing something you can justify, even if things don't go well, you're safe.” —Deepak Malhotra (11:18)
• Innovation is hard: “You may have a research paper, you may have written a book, but you're not necessarily on the inside anyway...” (11:43)

4. Searching for Manley’s Ghost at Sloan

[12:43–16:19]

• Rich and Nick roam the conference, profiling aspiring analysts and established team staffers. None recognize Manley’s name.
  • Coy Stefanos, a promising young researcher, is asked: “Do you know who Martin Manley is?” “I’m bad with names. No.” (16:00)
• Insight: The new generation shares Manley’s obsession but lacks awareness of his influence—his ideas have completely permeated the game, but his name is lost.

5. Defining Legacy—Bill James’ Perspective

[18:48–30:28]

• The hosts visit Bill James, the legendary baseball analytics pioneer, in Kansas.
  • Both James and Manley came from small-town Kansas, obsessed with statistics; their lives ran parallel until diverging in approach and tenacity.
  • “The central realization was that there was an audience interested in the subject, and no one was writing to that audience...So many told me you’ll never make a living doing it, that I knew it couldn’t be true.” —Bill James (21:57)
  • Bill describes a key difference: “Martin was organized and intelligent and a businessman by nature. I’m a writer by nature…that was a critical difference between us.” (23:34)
  • On legacy: “It's unfortunate that [Martin] thought that he had no legacy...In baseball, everyone who plays the game well leaves behind his imprint in the game. Somehow or somewhere.” (31:36)
• Bill’s cover blurb for “Basketball Heaven”:
  “Basketball Heaven is thorough, fresh and occasionally brilliant. Manley’s systematic analysis...is unlike anything I’ve seen about the sport. His research is massive, his writing lucid, and his approach novel.” (26:14)

6. Marissa’s Memories: Personal Legacy Beyond the Numbers

[33:11–43:08]

• Martin’s stepdaughter, Marissa, recounts his deep but sometimes inaccessible love and presence in her life.
  • He restored a trailer for Marissa during hard times, gave her his washer-dryer, and left a final voicemail saying “I love you” the night before his suicide. (35:37)
  • “The biggest realization from our visit with Marissa is that the no kids part wasn’t exactly true. It’s clear he loved you deeply.” (36:30)
• Grief and anger intermingle in Marissa’s recollection: “I couldn't understand it a lot more if he was severely depressed and made a split second decision. The fact that he took so long...He knew how it would affect me...but he did it anyway.” (36:32)
• Vivid anecdote: Martin braved an F4 tornado for photos, leaving young Marissa terrified in a stairwell.
  • “So he’s out there...taking pictures of this F4 tornado...he just had no fear.” —Marissa (40:36)
  • “Most of the people thought I was insane. Of course, they’re right, duh. But it is a badge of honor I wear proudly.” —Martin Manley (42:31)

7. Final Reflections at Martin’s Grave

[46:32–50:22]

• Rich and Nick find Martin’s headstone in Kansas—a joint grave marker with his first wife, unfinished, as she is still living.
  • Psalm 139 is engraved (“You have searched me, Lord, and you know me…”). (48:00)
  • “We kind of joke a lot of things with Martin seem like there’s always something lacking in the end…even here when we come to his headstone.” (49:28)
• Martin was cremated; his remains are scattered among family and places, symbolic of a fragmented but real legacy.

8. Rethinking Legacy and Impact

[51:07–end]

• Rich and Nick contemplate legacy as something we have little control over—our influence flows downstream in ways we cannot predict.
  • “Twelve years after he was gone, two people he never knew came to exhume his life. We tried to use his legacy to build a piece of ours and learn to accept that no matter what we do, the current will take us one day too.” (51:07)
• Final words from Martin:
  “The only thing I was sorry for is that by dying I may have reminded you of your own mortality. And that seems to be a big problem for everyone else. Sorry.” (51:24)

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• “His Titan is obviously the Titanic...How did the author get away with it? Because the novel that so accurately described history in reality foretold it in 1898...” —Martin Manley on unlikely prophecy (00:03)
• “It's a gray cavernous building that feels like someone put an old train station on the moon.” —Nick Altshuler describing the MIT Sloan venue (01:42)
• “[Three-pointers are] 50% more than the other shots. That's simply too much. It essentially breaks the game.” —Daryl Morey (07:18)
• “Why did it take decades for the three pointer to go from afterthought to core principle?...Whenever you see a situation where something seems obvious and it's not happening, it's already interesting.” —Deepak Malhotra (10:12)
• “Martin was thinking, I'll do this, and if it has to pay off in this time frame or it's not worth doing. Whereas I didn't think in those terms. I was like, this is what I know how to do. I'm going to do it.” —Bill James on the difference between himself and Manley (23:34)
• “It's unfortunate that he thought that he had no legacy.” —Bill James (31:36)
• “But he gave us so much hell. Without Martin, we would have never gone to see Bill James. We wouldn't have had the chance to ask one of the wisest people we've ever met. The biggest questions about life.” —Rich Levine (44:20)
• “The advice would be: find what other people are not doing...What makes you special is what you know that other people do not know.” —Bill James’ advice to the hosts (45:19)
• “Rest in peace, Martin Manley. There you are, sir. Oh, you should know that Mitch Richmond made the hall of Fame.” —Nick at Manley’s grave (50:25)
• “Legacy is an inefficient motivator...Our legacy lives in a future we'll never see. We can work toward it, but never touch it.” —Nick Altshuler (31:12)

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Themes & Tone

The episode is insightful, bittersweet, and honest, combining investigative journalism with personal reflection. The hosts’ search for legacy—both Manley’s and their own—is resolved not with tidy conclusions but with an acceptance of ambiguity. The show’s candid, sometimes playful dialogue (e.g., “wrestling...but the slaps were real,” “on the eye test, that dog’s a five-tool dog”) lightens heavier moments of loss and existential musing.

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Conclusion

"Occasionally Brilliant" closes the series by recognizing Martin Manley’s contributions, even if his name is nearly lost to time. Through expert testimony, family memories, and soul-searching conversations, the episode concludes that legacy is less about broad renown and more about the tangible, sometimes invisible, ways we shape others and the world. Manley’s influence exists—in basketball’s numbers, in the lives he touched, and in the curiosity he inspired.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:15–04:22: Sloan Conference—Three-point shots, searching for Manley’s impact
• 06:15–09:21: "Have the Nerds Ruined Basketball?" panel
• 09:28–12:43: Malhotra case study on resistance to analytics
• 12:43–16:19: Conference attendee interviews; Martin Manley’s erasure
• 18:48–30:28: Bill James interview—contrasting legacies and philosophies
• 33:11–43:08: Marissa’s stories; personal impacts and grief
• 46:32–50:22: Visiting Martin’s grave; reflections on memory and loss
• 51:07–end: Final meditations on legacy and life

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This episode is a moving, probing finale to "Chasing Basketball Heaven"—essential listening for anyone interested in sports history, analytics, and the deeper questions behind numbers and names.

Transcript

[Martin Manley]

The novel Futility is about the maiden voyage of a fabulous ocean liner, a ship far larger than any previously built and labeled unsinkable. The vessel sets sail for New York from Southampton with a cargo of complacent passengers. Strikes an iceberg en route, goes down. The ship was called the Titan. So why didn't Arthur Morgan Robertson come out and say it? His Titan is obviously the Titanic. Both liners were touted as the biggest, most luxurious and foolproof. Both were inadequately stocked with lifeboats, resulting in heavy casualties. And both sank at exactly the same spot in the North Atlantic, each on a cold April night. How did the author get away with it? Because the novel that so accurately described history in reality foretold it in 1898, 14 years before the real life Titanic set sail.

[Rich Levine]

So we're walking here down a more narrow hallway here at the convention center. This is the hall of Research papers.

[Nick Altshuler]

In early 2025, Rich and I attended the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston.

[Rich Levine]

Since 2006, the conference has been bringing together some of the greatest and geekiest minds in sports data.

[Nick Altshuler]

Let's go this way and come back.

[Rich Levine]

Yeah, okay.

[Nick Altshuler]

The event was held in the Heinz Convention center in the city's Back Bay. It's a gray cavernous building that feels like someone put an old train station on the moon. It swallowed the thousands of stat heads in attendance, people who had traveled from all over the world to be there.

[Rich Levine]

We went to Sloan to learn about the future of basketball. A future that might look very different from the present. That's because ever since Steph Curry started routinely hitting threes from arena parking lots, a decade long debate has grown in volume.

[Nick Altshuler]

How many three point shots is too many?

[Rich Levine]

As team after team adopted the strategy popularized by Curry and the warriors, the game has turned into a long range shooting contest. Pretty much what Martin was pushing for in basketball heaven. I remember looking back at that old Bulls Celtics game from 1986 and noticing every single player standing inside the arc. Today, on any given possession, it's common to see every offensive player behind the arcs.

[Nick Altshuler]

The all time NBA record for three point shots.

[Rich Levine]

By the time we hit the convention, threes had come to dominate play so thoroughly, some NBA insiders were calling for the shot to be abolished.

[Nick Altshuler]

What if we took away the three point line?

[Bill James]

Who would be the best team in the NBA?

[Rich Levine]

That's a good question. If you don't have the extra point, I think that would be a fun thing for the G League to experiment with it.

[Nick Altshuler]

Is this product a little monotonous with the threes.

[Rich Levine]

Yes, it is.

[Deepak Malhotra]

The three point line in particular is something we'll continue to look at.

[Rich Levine]

This conversation had us wondering not only about if three pointers were an endangered species, but what that change would mean for Martin Manley's legacy, such as it is. Because another reason we hit Sloan was to find out how many of these number crunchers were even aware of Martin and his work. Do any of these people know Martin Manley? Do they understand his role in kind of kicking off this whole shebang? And what's your guess?

[Nick Altshuler]

I'm gonna say one out of ten.

[Rich Levine]

One out of ten. So 10% of the kids here are gonna know the name Martin Manley?

[Nick Altshuler]

Yes, I might hold the book up.

[Rich Levine]

We soon learned that Nick's guess was wildly optimistic. You ever heard the name Martin Manley? How about the name Martin Manley?

[Nick Altshuler]

Have you heard the name Martin Manley?

[Rich Levine]

No, I have not. How about the name Martin Manley? No, no, no, I have not. I'm not familiar with. Have you ever heard the name Mart. Martin Manley? No. Martin Manley.

[Nick Altshuler]

Is that you guys? No, no, no.

[Rich Levine]

He was one of, like, the pioneers of basketball analytics that we're learning that not that many people know about anymore.

[Nick Altshuler]

There was a time when people did know Martin's name, people like David Stern and Fred Hickman. And now here we were at Sloan, searching for any evidence of his impact.

[Rich Levine]

Martin was a man who'd gone to great lengths to craft a lasting legacy. And as we learn, maybe that was the problem. From 30 for 30 podcasts. I'm Rich Levine.

[Nick Altshuler]

I'm Nick Altshuler. Today, the final episode of Chasing Basketball Heaven. Episode six, Occasionally brilliant.

[Rich Levine]

This week, the PGA Tour's Best Players Go Prime Time with TGL, presented by SoFi in doubleheader action. Atlanta Drive takes on both Boston Common Golf and Los Angeles Golf Club, plus two primetime matchups on Tuesday. Keep up it's golf. Tune in Monday and Tuesday at 5pm and 9pm Eastern only on ESPN and ESPN 2. And the ESPN app.

[Martin Manley]

The world moves fast.

[Nick Altshuler]

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[Rich Levine]

when we weren't assessing Martin Manley's legacy, such as it is, we were talking to anyone we could about the future of basketball and attending panels like this one. Good morning, everyone.

[Deepak Malhotra]

It's my pleasure to introduce today's conversation. Have the nerds ruined Basketball? A conversation.

[Rich Levine]

That panel featured a conversation about a concept we've danced around for much of this series. When do analytics and efficiency go too far?

[Nick Altshuler]

That is to say, has the three point shot ruined the sport?

[Deepak Malhotra]

And I'm going to ask the panelists to address this question. Is this a problem for the game? Because there's people out there that are saying it makes it less interesting. There's no creativity, there's no imagination. The game has become a three point shooting competition.

[Nick Altshuler]

The moderator, Harvard Business School professor Deepak

[Rich Levine]

Malhotra, was speaking with Evan Wash, the NBA's VP of strategy and analytics. Also Daryl Morey, the 76ers president of basketball operations, a noted three point advocate, who you might remember we spoke to earlier in the show. However, that day at the Sloan Conference, Morey argued from an unlikely position.

[Deepak Malhotra]

So, Darrell, we'll start with you. Do you think this is a problem? I do, yeah. I think game design's important. I don't think it's the fault of the teams or the, the analysts out there because their job is just to win, but it's 50% more than the other shots. That's simply too much. It essentially breaks the game. I'm gonna let Evan go next on what you think about this.

[Martin Manley]

Do you agree?

[Deepak Malhotra]

I do not.

[Rich Levine]

A game design or a rule in and of itself cannot be a problem.

[Nick Altshuler]

It is only a problem if the

[Deepak Malhotra]

style of play that results from that is not exciting. We're already there at three, so that is your belief. So let's get a couple more.

[Rich Levine]

Nick, we've talked about this a little bit. How serious do you think these guys were? Is this a genuine rivalry or are they kind of like playing it up for the crowd?

[Nick Altshuler]

Came across like wrestling. A little fake show, but the slaps were real.

[Rich Levine]

There was some real animosity in there.

[Nick Altshuler]

Maybe blood was drawn. Yes, people got red in the face.

[Rich Levine]

Also on the panel were Celtics exec Mike Zarin, once a member of that data focused Yahoo group that Dean Oliver ran. And basketball legend Sue Bird, she of four WNBA titles, two NCAA championships and five gold medals. Bird made the second most three pointers in WNBA history. But she also saw how the shot hurt the aesthetics and the pace of the game.

[Marissa Tillman]

I feel like I'm sitting between my divorced parents because I'm a mid range shooter at heart, but I want to win. So I'm like, which parent Am I choosing? It's difficult. I will say this. I don't think the game is broken. I still find it very entertaining. I think people find it entertaining. But I will say I did go to randomly a college pickup game the other day. A college kid, so, you know, at best mediocre. College kid, like student, not athlete.

[Rich Levine]

Okay.

[Marissa Tillman]

Caught at the top of the keep pump, faked. And instead of taking the one, dribble in for the pull up, sidestepped for a three.

[Deepak Malhotra]

Sounds fun.

[Rich Levine]

Clang.

[Marissa Tillman]

Like terrible shot, obviously. And I thought to myself, like, ugh, Darrell.

[Nick Altshuler]

But ultimately, in a panel full of sharp insight, it was one line from Maury to Malhotra that really got our attention.

[Deepak Malhotra]

The three point line was 100% good when it was put in. And as you know well, because you wrote a case on it, people didn't use it well at the beginning.

[Rich Levine]

Wait a second. We spent the last two years wondering how it took the NBA so long to start shooting threes. And this guy wrote a whole case study on it.

[Nick Altshuler]

That's what our close friend Darrell said after the panel.

[Rich Levine]

We had to track him down.

[Deepak Malhotra]

My name is Deepak Malhotra. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School where I've been for the last 23 years. And my area of work is primarily negotiations, deal making and conflict.

[Rich Levine]

Malhotra's case study examined three point shot usage. He wanted to figure out why it took so long for the MBA to utilize the clear and significant advantages presented by the three point line. He asked questions like, why do organizations sometimes not learn?

[Deepak Malhotra]

And why do people have models in their head that maybe aren't accurate, but they persist?

[Nick Altshuler]

In other words, why did it take decades for the three pointer to go from afterthought to core principle?

[Deepak Malhotra]

The math is pretty straightforward, right? You know, if you're far away from the hoop, being another couple of feet even farther and getting 50% more points is a pretty good idea. So that's the math is totally clear. And so whenever you see a situation where something seems obvious and it's not happening, it's already interesting.

[Nick Altshuler]

Obvious change is blocked by numerous factors. First, there's the analytical. The math may be persuasive, but the coach may have counter arguments.

[Rich Levine]

If we start shooting a lot of threes, won't our offense become predictable?

[Nick Altshuler]

Second, we have cultural barriers. Three is more than two is an airtight mathematical argument. But that logic doesn't immediately make sense on the court.

[Rich Levine]

Hey guys, I know it's been drilled in you since birth to love the easy layup. Like so much so that a layup has become synonymous with something easy. But what I need you to do now is start shooting from 25ft away.

[Nick Altshuler]

And lastly, there's the psychology involved.

[Deepak Malhotra]

If you're being inefficient and everybody else is inefficient, you don't have that same pressure. There was an old saying, you know, the 80s and 90s, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. And the basic notion was, listen, as long as you're doing something that you can justify to other people why you did it, even if things don't go well, you're safe.

[Nick Altshuler]

Why take a big risk when what you're risking is your job? After all, it's rare to get in trouble for conforming.

[Deepak Malhotra]

Often what looks simple and straightforward mathematically can have a lot of layers of complexity in terms of actually going from an idea to implementation in an organization. Because there is this general tendency for people to believe it was a great idea. Somebody would have come up with it already. Not to mention a lot of the folks that are coming up with the ideas don't have the access that they need to make a difference. So you may have a research paper, you may have written a book, et cetera, but you're not necessarily on the inside anyway. So it is very hard to have an impact. But it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It just takes different channels to make it happen.

[Nick Altshuler]

What Malhotra said there really made me think about Martin, about his apparent failed attempt to make an impact. He wrote Basketball Heaven to shift the way we all saw the game, but no one bought the book. Still, he played a part in changing how numbers are treated in the NBA. And the field of sports analytics eventually exploded around him. Rich and I were curious to see what this explosion meant for the next generation of moneyballers. So we wandered the conference to meet them.

[Rich Levine]

As we headed out to the main floor, we heard a rumble building in the distance. Like we were about to get trampled by a stampede of math obsessed bulls.

[Nick Altshuler]

Reminded me of my days in Pamplona.

[Rich Levine]

Would you sell cotton candy there

[Nick Altshuler]

on the floor? We quickly learned how to read the dress code. Nice suits, red lanyards. Those were executives and they weren't stopping to talk. Sweatsuits, team logos. Those people already work for a team. And appeared very relaxed.

[Rich Levine]

But they weren't there to do interviews either. Can we ask you a quick question? Sorry, I have to have to immediately. Oh, okay. We've heard that one before.

[Nick Altshuler]

Tight suits, cuffs ending 3 inches above the shoes. Those were the up and comers, students or young professionals on the grind, hoping to get their resume in the right hands.

[Rich Levine]

And let me tell you, they did want to talk. And so I would love less time out.

[Nick Altshuler]

Austin Peterson, based in Austin, Texas, crunches numbers for a sales and marketing firm, but has some thoughts on how to improve the NBA product.

[Rich Levine]

I know there's revenue issues with commercials and stuff like that. I totally get it. I like money, too. We all like money, but the like, just more flow to the game, which requires the players to make more decisions in real time, I think would be great. Then there was Hayley Nuccio, a senior at Butler University and well on her way to efficiently navigating the real world.

[Marissa Tillman]

So I already have a job lined up with the NCAA starting in April. I'm going to be an enterprise risk management analyst. But I do like the head of data analytics for the football team at Butler and the head of a data analytics project for the basketball team.

[Rich Levine]

So what project are you working on for basketball?

[Marissa Tillman]

So we do biometrical analytics. So the Kinexon chips that they wear in the back of their shirts, basically analyze those after every practice and games. That way the coaches can plan better practices, things like that, see who's slacking.

[Rich Levine]

We also met coy Stefanos, one of 15 researchers invited to the conference to present their work and participate in an annual poster competition. I work for the Hornets. Yeah. This is the last vestige of my research career. So this is. Can you give us like, a quick, like, elevator pitch of what we're learning here?

[Nick Altshuler]

Yeah.

[Rich Levine]

So fundamentally, I'm interested in what happens when you miss.

[Nick Altshuler]

So we're basically saying is there's other

[Rich Levine]

ways to create positive value when you miss. Namely, you get the board, you put it back in. So in order to quantify that, what happens when you miss, when you put yourself in the best position to succeed, give it your best shot, and it still doesn't go in. There's a resiliency to being efficient. It's not the cliche that you miss every shot that you don't take. It's the reality that you'll also miss a majority of the shots that you do take, especially when it comes to three pointers. Coy obviously knows this. When it comes to basketball and analytics, he seems to know it all.

[Nick Altshuler]

Do you have an opinion on who the Bill James of basketball is?

[Rich Levine]

I think Dean Oliver's probably got the claim to that. I think he's the first person to be paid by a sports team to do analytics. So I would probably say Dean I think he was really influential to like four factors. So far, not a single person at this conference had known the name Martin Manley. But Coy. We had a feeling about Coy. He might be our angel from basketball heaven. I think he's the guy. Really? Yep.

[Nick Altshuler]

You know who Martin Manley is?

[Rich Levine]

I'm bad with names. No.

[Bill James]

Maybe.

[Rich Levine]

You ever the book Basketball Heaven? No.

[Nick Altshuler]

He was sort of, maybe the original. Like, three's better than two. Guy.

[Rich Levine]

Interesting.

[Deepak Malhotra]

Okay.

[Nick Altshuler]

Yeah.

[Rich Levine]

That is what it sounds like when you miss. I had faith in you, Coy. I'm sorry.

[Nick Altshuler]

None of the young statisticians at Sloan knew Martin's name. None of them could see their connection to him. But we did. The shared obsession, the drive. We could imagine a young Martin hustling through those halls, pitching his formulas, promoting the three. That Martin would be here laughing, pontificating with his peers and correcting their math. If anything, our trip to the Sloan conference only made our reckoning with Martin's legacy more complicated. His biggest basketball fantasy had bloomed into reality and been adopted by the league. Perhaps too enthusiastically. But his influence went unrecognized. His name mostly forgotten. But perhaps it's less important how many people remember you. But who and how well? There was one man we could think of who could make sense of all this and put Martin's work in the proper context. It was time to climb the metaphorical mountain. It was time to meet Bill James.

[Deepak Malhotra]

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[Nick Altshuler]

My day kicks off with a refreshing Celsius energy drink. Then straight to the gym, pre K pickup back home to meal prep. Time for my fire station shift. One more Celsius. Gotta keep the lights on when the three alarm hits. I'm ready. Celsius Live Fit. Go grab a cold, refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate [e-mail].

[Rich Levine]

We have reached the top of the mountain. Nick, do you feel any more nervous now than you were two seconds ago in the car?

[Nick Altshuler]

A little bit.

[Rich Levine]

Bill James lives on a brick road just off the main drag in the college town of Lawrence, Kansas. The street is lined with old colonials, the kind of houses that bring to mind town leaders and college professors.

[Nick Altshuler]

James House is dark blue with a wraparound porch. Home to an old black lab lying in the sun. Immediately, just from the eye test, he's a five tool dog. My guess was his name was Fred Lynn, the old star outfielder for the Red Sox.

[Rich Levine]

I went with Nap Lajoie, an early 20th century second baseman for Philadelphia and Cleveland.

[Nick Altshuler]

I'm gonna ring the bell here.

[Rich Levine]

Hope he's home. Supposed to be here.

[Nick Altshuler]

Catch the man in his pajamas. Oh, Here he comes.

[Rich Levine]

Mr. James?

[Bill James]

Yes.

[Rich Levine]

How are you?

[Bill James]

I'm good self Rich. Hi Rich, Nice to meet you.

[Nick Altshuler]

Nick. Pleasure to meet you.

[Bill James]

Hi Nick, come on in.

[Rich Levine]

Oh, thank you sir.

[Nick Altshuler]

Thank you. Bill James keeps a wicker basket full of baseball gloves in his entryway. It sits at the feet of a giant wooden baseball player.

[Rich Levine]

Who's this statue up here?

[Bill James]

Not of anyone. This is a statue of baseball player.

[Nick Altshuler]

It's not Mike Schmidt.

[Rich Levine]

He looks at the Schmidt mustache.

[Bill James]

That's a good point. We'll start calling him Mike.

[Nick Altshuler]

Oh, and the dog, as I'm sure many of you are wondering, is named Amos for Amos Otis, center fielder for the Royals from 1970 to 1983.

[Rich Levine]

You watch the Jayhawks?

[Bill James]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rich Levine]

Still watch everyone?

[Bill James]

Oh yes.

[Nick Altshuler]

Wow.

[Rich Levine]

Bill is 75 years old. As he led us through his living room, we saw pictures of him with US Presidents on the mantel. His dining room is lined with knickknacks and souvenirs like a shelf of stone elephants. A Kansas Jayhawks nesting doll. We sat at his table under a picture of a baseball field at night painted by his wife Susan. It's all evidence of a life well lived.

[Nick Altshuler]

Bill had a stroke in 2024, but he still has his fastball. Right away he flashed the familiar traits of a great sports analyst.

[Rich Levine]

Like what's your work day? Is it like 6am to 9pm sort of stuff or.

[Bill James]

I think my bad habit of getting my work done in the middle of the night probably goes way way back. I was up till 4:30 this morning.

[Rich Levine]

You know, that's this morning.

[Bill James]

This morning, yeah. And that's pretty normal for me. That's why you guys ask about coming at 10. I don't know if I can do 10.

[Rich Levine]

Like Martin, Bill grew up in small town Kansas, keeping busy with statistics and make believe. Martin created his own fantasy leagues while Bill made his own baseball cards. Both dealt with challenging circumstances.

[Bill James]

I don't know how dysfunctional Martin's childhood was. At Wynham, but it couldn't possibly have been more dysfunctional than mine. But it's been a long time and, you know, I'm 75 years old.

[Nick Altshuler]

Also like Martin, Bill was convinced he was on the right path and thought others might follow.

[Bill James]

The central realization was not that there is a way that analytical thinking will help resolve these issues. The central realization was that there was an audience that was interested in the subject and that no one was writing to that audience. When I started out, you absolutely would not believe how many people told me that, I'm interested in what you're doing, but you'll never make a living doing it because there aren't enough people who are interested in it. So many people told me that that I knew that it could not possibly be true.

[Rich Levine]

Baseball Abstract did have meager beginnings. Only several dozen copies of the book sold in its first year. But eventually the book took off, and Bill had a remarkable influence on America's

[Nick Altshuler]

pastime, something that Bill never saw coming.

[Bill James]

Well, I never envisioned myself as having any impact on the game at all. I was. I was quite astonished that people actually started using my ideas and applying them. I had never. I wasn't trying to influence anyone.

[Nick Altshuler]

Martin stopped writing Basketball Heaven after year three. Fiscally, the numbers didn't add up. Bill, however, kept going. He told us his third abstract sold only about 400 copies. His career changing Sports Illustrated article didn't come out until after his fifth book. Bill had his eyes on a vast horizon, not the pinched box score of a tiny royalty check. And that is where the career paths of these two men diverge.

[Bill James]

Martin was organized and intelligent and a businessman by nature. Right. I'm a writer by nature, and it's a different thing. Martin was thinking, you know, I'll do this, and it's this much work and it has to pay off in this time frame or it's not worth doing. Whereas I didn't think in those terms. I was like, this is what I know how to do. I'm going to do it. And that was a critical difference between us.

[Nick Altshuler]

Would there have been a tipping point for you? Like if seven abstracts in and you weren't hitting 1,000 subscribers, would you have been like, oh, maybe I'll try something else?

[Bill James]

When you first write a book, you have no concept of how much work it is until you do it. I don't know if any of you

[Nick Altshuler]

ever written a book, but I tried and I failed.

[Bill James]

It's an immense amount of work. So after the first book and after the second, and after the Third, and probably after the fourth, I would say, I'm never doing that again.

[Nick Altshuler]

Would you have encouraged him to keep going or.

[Bill James]

Well, you know, keep going means you have to keep paying the price. You can't tell someone to keep paying the price.

[Rich Levine]

The price Bill speaks of can come in many different forms. We can't be sure which price ultimately pushed Martin to quit writing his books. What we do know is that as a business venture, Basketball Heaven failed. But as a work of analysis, the book earned the respect of Bill James. More importantly, so did Martin Manley.

[Bill James]

I lived in north of town, 25 miles north of town that time. And when he started doing Basketball Heaven, he wrote to me and I said, sure, come on out and see me. And we went to a couple baseball games together.

[Nick Altshuler]

Oh, wow.

[Rich Levine]

So do you remember those games? What do you remember about Martin?

[Bill James]

Very bright young man. And I expected him, too. I don't know to what extent I should talk about it, but after his death, there were things that he said that you would look back on and say, oh, I could see that. I could have seen that coming. Or he was. I thought his book would succeed to an extent that it did not. I thought his book would catch on.

[Rich Levine]

Would it be possible? Could we. Have you read your cover quote that you wrote for Martin? Sure, if I have it right here. Just right in the note section right there.

[Bill James]

All right. Basketball Heaven is thorough, fresh and occasionally brilliant. Manley's systematic analysis of basketball from the time of George Macon to the present is unlike anything I've seen about the sport. His research is massive, his writing lucid, and his approach novel.

[Rich Levine]

And then our producer, Raghu Manavalan interjected to highlight one line in particular. We all laughed about occasionally brilliant.

[Nick Altshuler]

Sometimes when I'm feeling a little ornery towards mine, I go occasionally brilliant as a joke. But you did it too,

[Bill James]

I'm sure. I didn't mean it that way.

[Rich Levine]

It was just being honest. It's an accurate assessment.

[Bill James]

Nobody's bragging on everybody, Page.

[Nick Altshuler]

While it was nice hearing Martin get some love from the master, there was something Bill had said in passing I was curious about. You said when you read it, you thought, like, oh, I should have seen something coming.

[Bill James]

Right.

[Nick Altshuler]

What was it that you.

[Bill James]

I remember Martin talking about his wife wanted kids and he didn't. He didn't want to. You know, he wanted to concentrate on his career and his business and his. But his wife wanted kids. And that, of course, led to breakup of the marriage. And I should have seen that coming. You know, I knew about it. He Talked about it. I should have seen that coming.

[Rich Levine]

Should have seen that coming. It's a familiar reaction for those of us left behind. Unfortunately, the picture often becomes clearer after the tragedy happened. In the middle of life, it's hard to see a person as the complete and complex being they are. In a way, we're all just looking at one another underwater. We see the murky shape of a life, but never an entire clear image.

[Bill James]

My wife and I, we just took a vacation in New Mexico and my wife went whitewater rafting, which I did not and do not. It's like the fourth time she's gone and I ain't doing that. And her kayak or canoe turned over and she's in the water and hits rock. And you know, it's. I think of what happened to Martin as being like, not that he went down a wrong river, but that his kayak turned over and he hit his head on a rock and it was an end. But it wasn't an inevitable end. It was just something that happened.

[Nick Altshuler]

The reasons behind it are impossible to know. No matter how hard you study the problem, no matter what math you apply to the mysteries of fate. Which is why we still find ourselves asking, why did Martin kill himself? Despite him providing an almost 10,000 word answer. Why did one sports analyst succeed while his friend down the road, similar man, different sport, flamed out?

[Bill James]

There were people trying to do things, sort of like what I was trying to do in the 1970s, who completely failed. And the biggest thing reason they failed was that they made it about themselves and they rather than about the game. The biggest reason that I succeeded where they failed is that I didn't think in those terms. I thought in terms of growing the field. And I still do. It's. I still do every day. It's just part of.

[Nick Altshuler]

Is that. Could you say, like, that's thinking about your legacy?

[Bill James]

Because I'm old. I guess it is, but when I started doing it, it was thinking about the future.

[Rich Levine]

Do you think about your legacy?

[Bill James]

I think about, you know, how I'd be remembered, if I'll be remembered when, I'll be remembered when.

[Nick Altshuler]

I don't know. But if. Yes, you will.

[Rich Levine]

I mean, if you're not going to be remembered, the three of us have no chance.

[Nick Altshuler]

This was a thought Rich and I were growing more comfortable with because we often consider our legacies too. We began this story hoping to create something we could be proud of, something that would last. But that second part is completely out of our control. I think about my father's legacy Imagine what he thought about it and whatever role I play in defining it. Now I know the best thing I can do for my legacy is the best that I can do for my sons.

[Rich Levine]

It's now been more than a decade that Martin Manley has owned real estate. In my brain, Nick and I have considered his story from every angle you can imagine. One thing that's become clear, legacy is an inefficient motivator.

[Nick Altshuler]

Our legacy lives in a future we'll never see. We can work toward it, but never touch it. No matter how we optimize our time or play the percentages tomorrow, our shots may miss.

[Rich Levine]

Martin overthinking his legacy, sacrificing himself on the altar of efficiency, was perhaps an ironic waste of time.

[Bill James]

It's unfortunate that he thought that he had no legacy. My father was a small town schooltener, but I could still go to that small town where we grew up. And I could see trees that he planted and sidewalks that he put and porches that he built on people's houses. And this comes again from baseball. But in baseball, everybody who plays the game well leaves behind his imprint in the game. Somehow or somewhere. It's like when you see a game that you're seeing a continuation of game that was played in 1928, because all those people played then somehow contributed to reshaping the game. And I'm sorry that Martin didn't see that, but it's true anyway, that we all leave things behind us that are part of the world long after we're gone. I mean, you're part of the river and occasionally the river kills you, but it moves on, whether you're swimming in it or pissing in it. You know,

[Marissa Tillman]

My boyfriend and I at the time, we didn't have anywhere to live, so we were going to live in his parents trailer. Hadn't been lived in for years and needed a lot of work in the

[Nick Altshuler]

last few months of Martin's life. His stepdaughter, Marissa, was going through a rough patch in college, battling anxiety attacks.

[Marissa Tillman]

So Martin would drive down and there was no air conditioning, no running water, no nothing. But he would work in the.

[Rich Levine]

Oh, God.

[Marissa Tillman]

It was probably 110 degrees inside that trailer. And he fixed it up for us, fixed the walls and the plumbing, and painted it and got it all ready so that we could move it to

[Rich Levine]

Manhattan to live in Manhattan, Kansas.

[Marissa Tillman]

He knew that we didn't have a washer and dryer for it, and. So he offered us his. And I asked, well, aren't you gonna need it? And he said, no, I'm. I'm moving somewhere and I'm not gonna need it. And I was like, so are they gonna have one there for you? And he, like, was weird about the answer. He didn't want to lie and say, like, yeah, I'm. I'm moving to a new place. They've got a washer and dryer for me. He just kept insisting I don't need it. So I said, okay, all right, we'll. We'll take it, I guess. And the night before, the night before he killed himself, he called me. And I almost answered because I just had this feeling, but I didn't answer.

[Bill James]

And

[Marissa Tillman]

he left a voicemail, which I still have on my phone if you want to hear it. It's him just saying that the washer and dryer are going to be at my. My mom's and that he loves me. And that was the last I heard from him. Like, I knew it was gonna happen and I should have stopped it.

[Rich Levine]

Hey, Marissa. Martin, it's about

[Bill James]

10:50 on Wednesday. Anyway, your washer and dryer are at

[Rich Levine]

your mom, and also your chair is at your mom, so everything is out of here. And ask your mom so you can

[Bill James]

get it whenever it works out for you.

[Rich Levine]

But I just wanted to make sure you knew that. That's all I need. Bye. Oh, by the way, love you. When we first stumbled on Martin's story, he was always described in the national media as twice divorced, no children. And a lot of that was Martin's doing. It helped him rationalize and write about his suicide. But the biggest realization from our visit with Marissa is that the no kids part wasn't exactly true.

[Nick Altshuler]

It's clear he loved you deeply.

[Marissa Tillman]

He really did. And that's why it hurts so much. Not only losing someone to suicide is always, always hard, but I couldn't understand it a lot more if he was severely depressed and made a split second decision. The fact that he took so long to plan it and made such a thought out decision to leave me, especially knowing being the only person to know of the issues I was starting to have. He knew how it would affect me and break me, but he did it anyway. It's a lot harder to understand that.

[Nick Altshuler]

Are you angry?

[Marissa Tillman]

Yeah, I'm angry. I've gone through a lot of emotions about it over the years, but anger is definitely one of them. He made sure to be around for my sister's graduation. I was only a year or two from that myself when it happened, and I wanted him to see me graduate and get married. And have kids.

[Bill James]

And.

[Marissa Tillman]

He knew how much I loved him. He knew how close we were. And he chose to abandon me. And that makes me angry.

[Nick Altshuler]

Near the end of our conversation with Marissa, we asked her about one particular Martin story that had stuck in our minds since the moment we first heard it. Do you remember May 4, 2003? The tornado?

[Marissa Tillman]

Uh, God, yes, I remember the tornado. I'm never gonna forget that. It's.

[Nick Altshuler]

Can you tell us the story?

[Rich Levine]

One of the core memories. Martin remembered it, too. He wrote about it on his website in a section called KC Tornado.

[Martin Manley]

My brother and sister were in town visiting, and we had gone to the Royals game the night before. Rather than taking a second Royals game the following day, we decided to go to Kansas City to watch the dog races. I knew nothing about the sport then, and I know nothing about it now, Only that a bunch of dogs run around a track at blinding speeds. After about half the car, the clouds started getting nasty. Shortly after that, they announced a. A funnel cloud had been seen a couple miles southwest of the Kansas Speedway.

[Marissa Tillman]

All of a sudden, they wanted us to get away from the windows. And then they announced that there's a tornado, and it was coming by close, and we had to get even further into the building until eventually we end up in a stairwell. That's small and cramped. And here we are, me, my sister, and our step uncle, I guess he would be, who we barely knew. It was the first time we were meeting him. And he's the one who's got us huddled in there and comforting us because Martin decides he has to get pictures of this thing.

[Martin Manley]

When I turned around to go back outside, one of the officials at the Woodlands tried to stop me. You can't go out there, he said. I replied with the only thing that came to me. I'm a professional photographer, and this is my job. Of course. I just had this little 35 millimeter camera and barely even knew how to push the click button.

[Marissa Tillman]

So he's out there in the middle of the parking lot taking pictures of this F4 tornado. It was almost a 5, and he's right up close to it taking these pictures. He just. He had no fear.

[Rich Levine]

Do you have fear? Are you thinking you're going to see him swept up in this moment?

[Marissa Tillman]

Yes. I thought he was going to be gone and we were all going to die. I mean, I. I especially as a child, was just very fearful of anything and everything. So I was terrified, crying my eyes out. And when they told us that Martin would not come inside and he was refusing to come Inside, I. I was bawling. I. I couldn't believe it. I was so mad and scared.

[Rich Levine]

Martin, meanwhile, as usual, thought he had it all under control.

[Martin Manley]

It was immediately apparent to me that it would miss the parking lot to the south and travel by us on the east. So I knew I was safe. I watched it duck in behind the horse racing track and then later, as it danced away to the east.

[Marissa Tillman]

And still, for a long time after, I was mad at him. I was mad at him for risking himself, but for also putting me in that position, to be that afraid of losing him just for some pictures. Oh, it's okay. It was always gonna be all right. I wasn't that close to it. They were just freaking out over nothing. It's fine. I just wanted to get some pictures.

[Rich Levine]

That's a good Martin impression.

[Marissa Tillman]

Thank you.

[Rich Levine]

I think the reason we love the tornado story is that it captures the most distilled version of Martin.

[Nick Altshuler]

The desire, almost compulsion, to stand out.

[Martin Manley]

Most of the people there thought I was insane. Of course, they're right, duh. But it is a badge of honor I wear proudly.

[Nick Altshuler]

Martin would be the guy to march out of the crowd while everyone else sensibly ducked for cover. The guy who ran the numbers and was so confident in one outcome, maybe he didn't fully consider what else he was risking. A man who had to document the moment, to leave evidence of what he had accomplished. A moment that was courageous and needless, charming and frustrating. As we heard time and time again, that was Martin being Martin.

[Martin Manley]

If insane means abnormal, count me in.

[Rich Levine]

In the days after our trip to see Bill and Marissa, Nick and I talked a lot about the idea of legacy. One thing we concluded, Bill James didn't set out to become Bill James, and that's why it happened. He was just a person with a passion, hoping to sell enough copies of his annual abstract to earn the same as a Kansas public school teacher. And if that's all that ever happened, he would say he was a success.

[Nick Altshuler]

Martin tried to be the Bill James of basketball, and that's part of the reason it didn't work. He could have leaned into his biggest strength, his singular personality. That's what he did. On the website now read more than Basketball Heaven ever was.

[Martin Manley]

At some point in reading this site, you would have asked whether I was ultimately satisfied with my life. So I decided this was the best place to address it. I suspect nobody is completely satisfied, and I'm no different. No, I wasn't fully satisfied with my life, but I was fully satisfied with my death.

[Rich Levine]

On his website, Martin showed a side of himself that his friends and family hadn't seen. Actually many sides. The light, the dark, a recipe for fruit slushes. He finally opened up and the world came in. Now his legacy might be shifting again. He's the subject of this six part audio documentary and an enduring obsession for us. He's given us so much hell. Without Martin, we would have never gone to see Bill James. We wouldn't have had the chance to ask one of the wisest people we've ever met. The biggest questions about life, Nick and I, minus the vast success, are very similar to where you were about 30 years ago. You know, mid-40s, young kids, just trying to get through every day and just make ends meet, really. I was wondering what kind of advice you might have for us for just how to make the best of what lies ahead.

[Bill James]

The advice would be find what other people are not doing and figure out what other people do not know. I mean, all power of analytics in baseball comes from knowing things that other people do not know. What makes you special is what. What you know that other people do not know. Because, you know, we're small island of knowledge and a vast sea of ignorance. And so that's what I would encourage you to do, is figure out something that other people are not doing and do that.

[Rich Levine]

What makes you special is what you know that other people do not know. We think that Martin understood this and on good days that idea pushed him toward greatness. All right, we are about 18 miles, I think southwest of Topeka. During one of our conversations with Martin's sister Barbie, she told us that after Martin died, his first wife Chris had ordered him a headstone. An email from Chris confirmed a location.

[Marissa Tillman]

It is just off 89th. I think it is Hawk Road. There's a small green sign just before the turnoff to the cemetery.

[Nick Altshuler]

So we're turning into the cemetery road and we're going up a slight hill and literally the hill just goes right into the sky. It's like the end of the world.

[Rich Levine]

It's like an infinity hill.

[Nick Altshuler]

It's crazy.

[Rich Levine]

We can turn in here. So we're turning onto a gravel.

[Marissa Tillman]

I'm remembering row eight, but not 100% sure.

[Rich Levine]

So that's one, that's two, that's three, that's four, that's five. This would be six. Oh, Tillman, that's. That's her name. That's the family name.

[Nick Altshuler]

Oh, should we get out?

[Rich Levine]

Yeah, so let's, let's get out and see if we can find the grave. Should we Bring the metal detector.

[Nick Altshuler]

I mean, it's not the worst idea,

[Rich Levine]

but for the record, also clearly not the best. Maybe Chris got the gold and buried it under his headstone. All right, so these are the Tillmans, George and Mary.

[Nick Altshuler]

And an infant, Bertha and George.

[Rich Levine]

Okay, so these, I believe, are. These are Chris's parents.

[Marissa Tillman]

Martin's headstone is black. It has two hearts made of redstone.

[Nick Altshuler]

And then we saw it.

[Rich Levine]

Oh.

[Nick Altshuler]

Oh, my gosh.

[Rich Levine]

So what we didn't realize is that Martin's headstone is actually a dual headstone with his first wife's name on the

[Nick Altshuler]

other side, Martin Manley, August 15, 1953 to August 15, 2013. And on the right side, Christine Ardell Tillman, 1951. To Blank Space. That's. I did not expect that. Next to each other, they'll be buried together.

[Rich Levine]

Standing there on the top of the hill, we stared at the numbers that bookend the life of Martin Manley. The day he was born and the day he chose to die.

[Nick Altshuler]

And then bisecting the two sides is the column, and it says Psalm 139, which I don't recall.

[Rich Levine]

I'm going to look that up right now. Psalm 139. You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely.

[Nick Altshuler]

I wonder if he had that memorized. Is that before Timothy? I don't know.

[Rich Levine]

It's so interesting because, like everything, we kind of joke that a lot of things with Martin seem like there's always something lacking in the end. It's like even here, when we come to his headstone. Gravestone. There's nothing underneath.

[Nick Altshuler]

Yeah, this is his gravestone, but he's not here. Martin was cremated. Some of his ashes are in Barbie's basement. He's with Terry, with Marissa. He's scattered outside the Advent Lutheran Church.

[Rich Levine]

But a headstone is still a place where you can gather to remember to make a gesture. On our way here at the Dollar General store in Auburn, Kansas, we bought a 20 ounce bottle of Pepsi. I don't know if he was here. We could pour it out a little bit. Maybe it would seep down into.

[Nick Altshuler]

If we do that. Pour a little bit out for him.

[Rich Levine]

I think so.

[Nick Altshuler]

Rest in peace, Martin Manley. There you are, sir. Oh, you should know that Mitch Richmond made the hall of Fame.

[Rich Levine]

Martin had wanted to change the game he loved while he didn't look live long enough to see that happen. It happened nonetheless. Basketball has become more like the game he thought it should be, but not because of him. He left and the river kept moving without him.

[Nick Altshuler]

Twelve years after he was gone, two people he never knew came to exhume his life. We tried to use his legacy to build a piece of ours and learn to accept that no matter what we do, the current will take us one day too.

[Martin Manley]

The only thing I was sorry for is that by dying I may have reminded you of your own mortality. And that seems to be a big problem for everyone else. Sorry.

[Rich Levine]

It's okay, Martin. We can live with that. I'll put this right here next to his headstone.

[Nick Altshuler]

And I realized I use old basketball cards as bookmarks and I had one in my book. Michael Williams.

[Rich Levine]

Cleveland Cavs or Pacers?

[Nick Altshuler]

Pacers. From. Actually, from. Yeah, from 91. 92. So good year.

[Rich Levine]

You know what I remember about Michael Williams? That he had the record, I think, for most consecutive free throws made.

[Nick Altshuler]

Really?

[Rich Levine]

And one is his foul shot percentage on the back of the car.

[Nick Altshuler]

87%. 88% in 91.

[Rich Levine]

Yeah, he was a very good file shooter.

[Nick Altshuler]

Chasing Basketball Heaven is a 30 for 30 podcast produced by ESPN, HyperObject Industries and Meadowlark Media.

[Rich Levine]

It was reported and hosted by Nick Altshuler and Rich Levine with Craig Kilborn as the voice of Martin Manley.

[Nick Altshuler]

Executive producers from HyperObject Industries and Meadowlark Media are Adam McKay, Claire Slaughter and Bradley Campbell.

[Rich Levine]

Senior editorial producer of 30 for 30 podcasts is Preeti Varathan. The series senior producer is Raghu Manavalan. The series producer is Gus Navarro.

[Nick Altshuler]

Consulting producer was Gary Hoenig.

[Rich Levine]

Story editors were Jamie York and Mack Montanden.

[Nick Altshuler]

Sound design and mixing by John Delor.

[Rich Levine]

Theme song composed by Alison Layton Brown and John Delore.

[Nick Altshuler]

Show art by Brian Lutz.

[Rich Levine]

Becca Lish is the voice of Chris Tillman.

[Nick Altshuler]

Fact checking by Matt Giles and David Savino.

[Rich Levine]

Our sensitivity reader was John Moe for

[Nick Altshuler]

30 for 30 and ESPN line producer is Kathryn Sankey.

[Rich Levine]

Associate producer is Isabella Seaman.

[Nick Altshuler]

Production assistants are Diamante McKelvey and Anthony Salas.

[Rich Levine]

Producer is Carolyn Hepburn.

[Nick Altshuler]

Senior producers are Marquise Daisy and Gentry Kirby.

[Rich Levine]

Heather Anderson, Marcia Cook, Brian Lockhart and Burke Magnus are executive producers for 30 for 30.

[Nick Altshuler]

Rights and clearances by Jennifer Thorpe and Cal Griffith. This podcast was developed by Taryn Adalny and Cynthia Parabello. To listen to more sports series like this one, search for 30 for 30 podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts or find [e-mail] and as always, thanks for listening.

[Marissa Tillman]

Thank you for listening to Chasing Basketball Heaven. If you loved this series, you might enjoy some of our other seasons from 30 for 30 podcasts, especially the ones that focus on basketball like the Bad Game, the Sterling affairs, or the King of Crenshaw. You can find all of our seasons in our show feed anywhere you listen to podcasts. Just search 30 for 30 podcasts. Thank you for listening.