← Brian Windhorst & The Hoop Collective
Brian Windhorst & The Hoop Collective
Expert Lawyer Explains NBA Gambling Scandal
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Hoop Collective: Expert Lawyer Explains NBA Gambling Scandal
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Foreign.
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Welcome to the Hoop Collective podcast. We talk about the NBA, although today we're going to be talking about the NBA a little differently. Joining me from New York is Tim Bontevs.
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Hello, Brian. I would say hello everybody, but a certain other person isn't here. I've been freed for a day.
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B
Yes. This was a, this is a complex pod and you want me to say.
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You said it, not me.
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And he's nowhere near to, nowhere here to, to defend himself. So.
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C
That's right.
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B
We are bringing on an attorney today, which nothing is more exciting on a podcast than bringing on a lawyer. Kate Riley. She is a partner at Pryor Cashman, which is a New York law firm. And the reason we're bringing her on is because for, for 11 years and up until very recently, she was a prosecutor in the Southern district of New.
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York, which is which any, if anybody knows anything about law, when you hear that they're. The Southern district of Manhattan is prosecuting a case that is, it's the most glamorous.
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I mean, I don't know if lawyers take out, I mean, you know the show Billions.
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Yes.
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You know, that was about, I mean.
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There'S only one district in the country that people know about in terms of the, the, the United States district attorney apparatus. It's the Southern district of Manhattan.
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Right. And she, she specializes in, in cases that were similar to the case that's involving the NBA that came last week. I don't want to say that she has an impressive resume before she joins us. Bontemps. But she went to Princeton undergrad at Harvard Law School, you and I, she's.
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A hell of a lot smarter than us, that's for sure.
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She graduated magna cum laude from Princeton and somehow that got her into Harvard. Yeah. So before we, the idea behind having.
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The idea behind having her on when we, we decided to do it was we wanted to like, obviously this is a really interesting story in the NBA. It's also really complicated. Right. We are not lawyers. We know lawyers. Brian's married to a lawyer. But we don't, we don't, we can't break this down in simple terms. But by bringing Kate.
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On.
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And being able to talk to her about it. I think if you have any interest in this case whatsoever and where it's going and how it's going to play out and the relative strength of the case that the government is bringing in both indictments. I think it's a really illuminating and interesting interview. And she, I think, did a great job of explaining exactly how this stuff plays out and what the process of this is like as somebody who's lived it and done it for a long time.
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B
Yeah. And a full disclosure. Bontemps just kind of referred to it. The interview's already been done, so we know what she said. But I want you to pay specific attention to when she discusses. She discusses it several times. The relative strength, in her opinion, as somebody who prosecuted cases like this, the relative strength of the case against Chauncey Billups. Actually, Chauncey Billups is not indicted in this, but against.
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A
Well, no, she. She. She discussed the strength of the case in both the illegal and rigging of poker games indictment and the sports betting indictment and the differences in the cases and how each case came to be. It's. It was. It was a fascinating.
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C
Listen.
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Her evaluation, which Jackson marks here on YouTube, her evaluation of the viability and strength of the NBA case is important to listen to. So without further ado, here's Kate Riley. Okay, so glad to be joined right now from New York City, Kate Riley, who was a partner at Pryor Cash. We went over your resume a little bit earlier, Kate. Really appreciate you taking the time to join us and provide us with your expertise. And people know that you're also a big basketball fan, so I should point that out. Can you take us through your background and also your. Your basketball fandom?
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C
Sure. My basketball fandom goes back much farther than my background as a lawyer. I'm the child of a big Knicks fan. So, like the 1994 Finals and the loss of the Rockets, like, that was a tough time in our family, and I remember it well. But professionally, I am a partner of prior Cashmen. I work in our white collar and regulatory enforcement group, but I joined the firm earlier this year after spending 11 years as an Assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. attorney's office here in the Southern District of New York. So I was a federal prosecutor prosecuting all kinds of fraud cases. And my last few years in the office, I was the chief of our complex frauds and cybercrime unit. So, you know, supervising federal criminal cases in a wide variety of areas related to financial crime and cybercrime and crime that comes out of the sports world sometimes too.
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In other words, she's way smarter than us and we are very fortunate that she's here to explain things to us that we and the rest of basketball fans, I think, can barely understand from these indictments last week.
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B
Right, so, yeah, exactly. Can you explain the charges in as much of layman's terms as you can for knucklehead basketball fans?
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C
Yeah, absolutely. So there were two separate indictments. An indictment is just a charging instrument that a grand jury returns. So the prosecutors presented evidence and the grand jury voted through the indictments. The first indictment, and I think kind of the more traditional indictment is one related to illegal poker games. And essentially the allegations there are that some of the professional basketball players were essentially being used to pull, you know, high net worth big deal players into these poker games and they were part of cheating rings. So the players were in on the cheating, there were other gamblers in on the cheating, and the victims were sort of putting money into a rigged game. And that indictment ties those games to the mafia and ties it to some pretty traditional sort of organized crime activity like, you know, forced extortion of paying debts and also gunpoint robbery in one case of one of these sort of rigged shuffling machines they were using in the games. So that's the first indictment. And then the second indictment, which is a little bit different, charges a number of individuals, including some coaches and players, with conspiring to essentially defraud sports betting websites. So essentially what it says is these guys had access to non public information about things happening in the NBA and they sold that information to people who used it to place bets, or sometimes they sort of took part in the betting themselves. And that when they placed those bets, knowing they had non public information, they defrauded the sports betting websites they were placing the bets on, and then they laundered the proceeds. So again, two different indictments with two very different sets of allegations, but clearly some overlapping people involved in them.
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So when you say that the poker one is more of a traditional indictment and the that would sort of indicate, at least to me, that the second one, the sports betting one, is either less traditional or not traditional. Why is the first one traditional and why isn't the second one traditional? And does that have anything, any bearing on you in terms of how strong the cases are that the government is bringing in both of them?
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C
Yeah, absolutely. So I say that the first indictment is more traditional because if you take out the sort of NBA piece of it and the big press conference, they were able to do because of that. This is not that different than a sort of typical organized crime indictment. Right. They're operating illegal gambling. They're facilitating that by using force, threats of force and violence. Sometimes they're using sort of actual violence. In terms of the gunpoint robbery, it looks like an organized crime case. And the sort of interesting part of it, from a press perspective and certainly a sports fan perspective, is the involvement of these professional athletes and they're being used to sort of lure people in. But this is the kind of indictment, you know, you've seen coming out of organized crime prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York for a long time. The other indictment is less traditional in that I think it pushes the boundaries of what can be considered wire fraud in a sort of interesting and different way. The wire fraud statute, Right. Essentially says that it's a crime, a federal crime to misrepresent a material piece of information or to omit a material piece of information to try to get money or property from someone. So if I lie to you so you'll give me money, that's, that's wire fraud. Assuming I use an email or phone. An interstate wire in the boring lawyer lingo. But here, what they're really saying is in placing these bets, there were misrepresentations or omissions made to the sports books. And exactly what those are isn't laid out in the indictment. But there's some suggestion that agreeing to the terms of service of some of these sports betting websites which bar the use of non public information, that that might be one of the misrepresentations or maybe that there's an omission because they didn't disclose the non public information. So. And I think that's a pretty aggressive use of the wire fraud statute. And I expect, you know, we'll see motion practice by the defense lawyers once they are in the case. Sort of challenging the legal validity of that theory.
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Interesting.
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So I think one of the things that is very interesting to not only fans, but specifically the other teams and even the teams that the Terry. The team that Terry Wagier is on, the Miami Heat. The fascinating thing here is that the NBA did their own investigation and the league does not like the word cleared they are using. You know, they say NBA stands for nothing but attorneys.
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Their phrase is he did not violate any NBA rules.
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They say he didn't violate rules and they didn't say clear. They say they could not corroborate the allegation. Whereas the FBI and in turn the Justice Department has indicted Terry Rozier for doing just that. Could you sort of point out the differences that may exist between what the FBI could do to bring a case versus what a private company could do to investigate a case?
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C
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I mean, look at the outset, what violates NBA rules versus, like what I was just describing could be used to say is a violation of federal law. If we're being aggressive about, it might be different. But I suspect the bigger difference is exactly what you pointed to, Brian. That law enforcement have tools that private lawyers, even the most expensive, fanciest private lawyers don't have. Right. So at the outset, they can issue subpoenas and compel people to give them documents and information. That's not something private lawyers can do. But I think more relevantly here, and there's some suggestion in the indictments that they did do some of this. You know, law enforcement can do search warrants on, for example, email accounts. They can take someone's cell phone and do a search for it on the cell phone and look at the text messages, and there's clearly some degree of communications among the co conspirators that law enforcement had their hands on. Because they talk about the fact, for example, that in one of these situations where one of the coconspirators had a tip about an NBA player not playing in the game, and then it turned out he did play in the game, he then exchanged messages with his coconspirator saying, no, I promise you, I had the tip. This was real information. Government obviously has those messages. So those are things that, you know, the NBA lawyers, they have some ability to exert influence over people in the NBA players and coaches and to get information from them. But that only extends to the people within the orbit of the NBA and they just aren't going to have the same tools in terms of, you know, going to an email provider or getting into a phone to get everything that's there that a private lawyer that the government would have.
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Let me ask you this. So I don't think I'm saying anything that's shocking. NBA players have multiple phones frequently. Is the Justice Department able to track down when someone has multiple phones? If they don't admit to it, can. Can they figure that out?
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Everyone has multiple phones these days, Brian.
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Yeah, that's true. Not me. This is it. For the record, I was gonna say not.
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Not me either.
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Okay, well, we're.
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We're all not committing any crime, so that's good. You know, Look, Brian, the answer is sometimes, right? So there's a couple different ways the government might assess if someone has multiple phones, even if they're not being told that. I mean, one, the government often works with cooperating witnesses, right? People who are involved in the scheme and come in, and if they say, look, I was sitting with and I know he has three phones, the government's going to follow up on that. But there are more technical ways to do it too. Right? So if you register your three phones in your name or at your address or using the name of your manager, right? There are ways to get at information from the phone company. If you tie your three phone numbers to your Google account, which lots of people do, there are ways to get that information from Google. The government has a lot of tools at its disposal to get to the heart of that information. It's not perfect. They don't always know where to go, and they don't always get to the right answer. But there's a lot that they have to work with that other people don't.
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It wouldn't be a surprise to you that. I know this sounds like a basic question, but this is at the heart of what a lot of people are focusing on. It wouldn't be a surprise to you that a private company would not be able to find something, whereas the federal government would. Would it just be a surprise that they would? I guess. Are you surprised knowing these, Knowing the facts in this indictment or what they say in this indictment? I don't know if they're facts that the NBA would let him keep playing if they knew that the FBI was still investigating him.
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C
So the indictment are just allegations. Right. And so what the facts will be. We'll see if there's ever a trial. You know, I. I think the answer to your question really depends on what the NBA knew. Right. And how much they were able to find on their own. And frankly, what their dialogue was with law enforcement, I would suspect, I don't know. I don't have any involvement in these investigations. But, you know, if I was the prosecutor working on this case, I would have made document requests and talked to people at the NBA. And so how much information flow there was, you know, from the prosecutors to the NBA, I don't really know. It is not at all inconceivable to me that the NBA may not have had a fulsome understanding of what the conduct really was here. And so their decisions may not have been fully informed.
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The NBA has said Adam Silvers did an interview with our former colleague Cassie Hubbard the other day and talked about the process of the Terry Rozier investigation. Said he gave over his phone, said they interviewed him, said they they've cooperated with law enforcement. But like the way you just laid that out, if the NBA is cooperating with law enforcement, that doesn't always necessarily mean, I would assume that law enforcement is telling the NBA what's going on throughout the process and how much they're actually digging on it would be, for instance, hey, can you give us this? Can you tell us about this? And then whether radio silence is the right word or not, it's sort of you ask for stuff, they give you stuff. And that's the extent of what that back and forth is really going to be.
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That's exactly right. The government's not obligated to tell any third party anything about an investigation. And in fact, the government's subject to grand jury secrecy rules that prevent it from sharing certain information. So, you know, it certainly is the case that sometimes an entity like the NBA that's represented by experienced lawyers can read between the lines, but they're not getting a full readout of what the investigation is finding or where it's headed.
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One other question that a lot of people have had about the betting indictment in particular is there's a section in there about a co conspirator number eight who, when you read the description of the co conspirator number eight, a guy who played in the NBA for 17 years who has coached since 2021 and lives in Oregon. There's really only one person it can be right, who is Chauncey Billups. So now in the indictment, it lays out how Chauncey Billups talked to one of the people who is indicted and talked to them about his team tanking and guys not playing in games before people were aware of it publicly. I know you didn't work on the case, so I know this is a hypothetical theoretical question, but do you have an idea as someone who has done a lot of these sorts of Indictments before. Why, for example, Chauncey would not have been indicted for doing something that seems at least similar to what people that were indicted were doing in this. In this indictment.
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C
Yeah. I mean, anytime a prosecutor charges a fraud case, they're making determinations about who had sufficient intent and knowledge to be a part of the scheme and who didn't. And there's no sort of perfect answer or right answer about who falls in which bucket. And it's very much fact dependent. So as you said, Tim, I wasn't involved in this investigation. I don't know why they didn't charge Chauncey Phillips, but I would guess based on my experience, sort of making these determinations among individuals and who goes in an indictment and who doesn't. And it's one of the most important things a prosecutor does. Right. Because every prosecutor knows that decision has a huge impact, not just on your case, that's less important, but on the actual people who, who are affected. I would guess that it has something to do with how much Chauncey Billups had visibility into the full scope of the sports betting scheme. So yes, the indictment alleges that he provided information to one of these people and that that information was non public. But it's not clear to me from the indictment whether he understood exactly how that person was going to use the information, that he was going to share it with others, sort of where he was going to go with it. It's not clear to me whether Chauncey Billups was compensated in any way for the information he provided or understood that others were being compensated. Those are the kinds of things that around the edges can affect that determination for sort of who goes in the indictment and who doesn't. And it's also the case that sometimes there's a circumstantial case a prosecutor could make about someone's knowledge and intent where you say, you know, look, maybe you could prove this and they decide for whatever reason that they don't want to go that far and they cut it off sooner than that. The other thing to know, and we can't predict the future, so we don't know where this is going. This is the indictment right now. But all the time in federal criminal cases, especially in cases that involve sort of large conspiracies like this, where there are lots of players, including some who haven't been charged yet, the government works to develop additional evidence and then files what's called a superseding indictment. So they go back to the grand jury and they say, here's our Additional evidence, we're going to add charges or add people to the charges. So I don't think we should assume that this group of people who is charged are forever and ever the only people who are going to be charged. The government may learn new things. They may develop additional evidence and seek to bring additional charges.
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B
So when you say that, is that another way of saying that it's a possibility that some of these folks who were indicted or arrested could be offered plea bargains for more information? Is that. Is that, you know, because I know that they have this very, you know, big press conference with all these different officials. They all get up and talk. But, you know, I. I would assume that they would be open for business in some respect on this.
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C
Yeah. So typically, the way it works in the Eastern District of New York, where this case was brought, and it's the same in the district that I practiced in, which is just across the river. It's not necessarily a plea bargain, but what would happen is if one of these people, either someone who's been charged already or someone else who's, you know, one of those unnamed coconspirators. Right. Coconspirator two or three or four. If they come into the government and say, look, we know about this scheme. We want to tell you what we know. The government will have what's called witness proffers with them. They will sit, they will listen, they will ask questions. That person will have to disclose everything they ever did wrong, everything anybody else they know has ever done wrong, and then they'll have to plead guilty, really, to everything they did that was illegal conduct. That works differently in different places. But in these districts we're talking about, in the Eastern District of New York, where this case is brought, that's generally how it works. And they do that because when they're done cooperating, when it's time for them to be sentenced, the government will write a letter to the judge and say, this person provided all of this cooperation and the judge will take an account at sentencing. Those people tend to fare pretty well at sentencing. So that is definitely a possibility that some people may come forward and try to play that role. There also may be other people who weren't directly involved in the criminal conduct, but who see the writing on the wall that this is, you know, really serious. And they try to get in the door and say, you know, maybe I'm not here to sort of admit my wrongdoing or plead guilty to charges, but I have information to offer you. So I absolutely think the government's investigation is Likely ongoing, even as we talk.
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B
Yeah, I think, because a year ago, when John Tay Porter, who was named in this indictment but was. Has already pled guilty, there were five people, I think, indicted in that. And now we have these cases. In some cases, at least in one case, there's one defendant who's been indicted in all of those cases, in the johntay Porter case and the gambling and the poker case and the NBA case. And now it's over 30 people indicted. So clearly. And that's just, you know, basically, you know, a year, year and a half after. Like, at some point, you know, do you stop after you. You know, I mean, how do you know when to stop an investigation like this?
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C
Yeah, it's. It's a tricky question. And I will say one of the things, if you'll forgive the sports pun, but like, one of the things I find inside baseball interesting about this as a lawyer, is these two cases were brought by different units at the U.S. attorney's office. So the illegal poker case was brought by the Organized Crimes and Gangs unit. That makes sense. Those are the people who do Mafia cases. But the sports betting case was brought by the Business and Securities Fraud unit. So those are more traditionally financial crime prosecutors. And if you look at it, the indictment reads very much to me like an insider trading indictment. Right. Like you're trading stocks with inside information. And the reason I mentioned that is because that can mean that they're sort of taking on something bigger. Right. This isn't one small team of prosecutors who took one case and, you know, are pursuing all the leads. This is now multiple teams of prosecutors. It may all emanate from the same place, but they're sort of taking it in different directions, trying to build a bigger case. Now, there definitely does come a time where you sort of reach the end of the. What it makes sense to do. And, you know, in my experience, and it's different for every prosecutor in every case, in every office, but in my experience, that's when you sort of reach the end of, like, these are the people where we can prove they had criminal intent, they had the requisite knowledge, and frankly, where the crime is one that's deserving enough of sort of the resources that a federal prosecution requires. Exactly when that's going to be, though, I think is very tough to say from the outside.
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A
I don't want to put words in your mouth at all, so feel free to shoot me down in this. But as you've laid this out, like, again, to go back to your original description of it, right, it seems like the poker one based off it being, again, to use the word traditional, like the amount of evidence that's in there, all the various exhibits they had that seems, I don't want to say completely buttoned up, but it seems like a pretty rock solid case that exists and is, has existed in the past. It seems like the way you have described this, with your history with wire fraud cases, that you're not sure it's quite the same level on the betting side. And perhaps you don't necessarily think that there is a really good argument in terms of whether fraud has been perpetrated here. I know I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but from your perspective, is that an accurate description of how you feel about the case? And if so, what, what, what holes do you see, I guess in the case that's being presented that could lead to, you know, it either whether it gets thrown out or, you know, there's a chance that, you know, obviously as you said, these are allegations, so we're, we're not talking about anything as a certainty. But what, what sort of leads you to believe that is, is the way you view it, if that is an accurate reading of the way you've talked about it.
- [26:25]
C
Yeah. So I would draw a distinction between the sort of factual evidence and then the legal issues. My guess is the is strong in both cases that. My guess is they have the bank records, they have the text messages, they have maybe a cooperator, it's tough to know. But federal prosecutors don't have to bring any case. And so generally speaking they bring strong cases. And so my guess is that on the facts they have witnesses and evidence that are strong on both cases. I think the bigger issue is the legal question. And so I think the illegal poker case is there are not to me, on the face of that indictment any particularly sort of thorny legal questions or any real legal risk for the government. Those are pretty standard, straightforward legal theories. And I don't think anything about those theories is going to expose the government to risk. You never know. Obviously an enterprising creative defense lawyer could find something, but that's my view, just looking at it from the outside now, the wire fraud indictment, the sports betting indictment, I do think has some legal risk.
- [27:30]
A
And why, I don't mean to interrupt, but just for people that are listening, when you say legal risk, what do you mean exactly?
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C
Yeah, so what I mean essentially is that the case could get thrown out because even if you believe the facts the government is alleging or eventually whenever they prove up Whatever facts there are, it's not a crime or. And sort of doesn't satisfy what we call the elements, the specific pieces you need to satisfy to prove a criminal violation. Now, the tricky thing is defense lawyers can, and I'm sure they will, in this case, make a motion at the beginning of the case about that, a motion to dismiss the indictment. But those are very hard to make and almost always unsuccessful. So the likely place a legal challenge like this would come is. Is after a trial. And so after all the evidence is in, after the defendants have gone through the burden and the difficulty of a trial, and then they're filing motions with the judge to say, even with all this evidence, no crime has been established. So that's a difficult thing to undertake. There certainly have been lots of cases, especially in recent years, and frankly, especially in New York, where there have been challenges to various parts of wire fraud and other fraud statutes, to say prosecutors are pushing this too far. And this, this could well be one. Exactly how it plays out. We'll have to see.
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A
Because when people hear that the head, the headline that will pop in their minds is, well, there's a chance that this gets thrown out, right? So, like, when you say that there are potential holes, there are the things that somebody, a defense attorney could come back and say, this isn't valid. Like what. What are the things that you would point to and say, this is the best argument that the defendants would have to say, this is not actually the crime that's being. It's being alleged to be.
- [29:21]
C
My, My son would say, I'm taking something really fun and interesting and making it boring by talking about the legal holds. But I'll do it anyway, just for you, Tim. To me, the question is, is there an obligation by people who place bets on sports betting websites to disclose any of the information that they had here? And can the government prove up that there really was a misrepresentation or omission to these sports betting websites? So, for example, the indictment calls out that anybody who places a bet on these sites agrees to the terms of service, and the terms of service prevent using inside information that is not typically the basis of a wire fraud indictment. Like if you agree to the terms of service of Gmail, and then you use your Gmail in some way inconsistent with the terms of service, that's not something we would typically prosecute as wire fraud. Now, there are other reasons for that, too, but I think the point is that's a pretty aggressive use of the wire fraud statute and a stretch of what misrepresentations are involved and omissions, it's even more so. Like, I think that defense lawyers would have, you know, a real argument that people who place bets on sports betting websites don't have a duty to tell the sports betting website everything they know. Right. I mean, Tim, you placing a bet on a sports betting website, you got a lot more knowledge about basketball than I do.
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A
Well, I'm not, don't, don't be saying I'm pacing. Placing bets on sports website on any betting websites.
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C
Just type. You wouldn't have to disclose to anyone sort of what you do for a living. Right. Just to place a bet on fanduel. Right. And I think you could see examples that push this to, you know, is this really sort of a ridiculous position for the government to be taking?
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B
It's all very interesting. Do you think there's anything we're missing that you would. That you would. That you find interesting about this case?
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C
You know what I think is going to be interesting is to see how these cases unfold. So there have been really no sort of substantive court appearances on these cases yet. So for all the sort of excitement about the press release and hearing who's in the indictment and who isn't, I think there's going to be a lot of movement. Right. So I think there will be motions. I think there well could be people who cooperate and so, you know, come into the case in a different way. So what I think is interesting is to sort of see how this all plays out. And my guess is the former players and coaches, this may not be sort of the full scope of who's going to be involved in these cases at the end of the day.
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B
Interesting.
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A
More Hoop Collective podcast after this. Well, to try to make it fun at the end since I was told I was making it not fun before you mentioned you are a big basketball fan. You mentioned your sons. I know they are big basketball fans. So we have bothered you with a bunch of legal questions that I'm sure you'd rather not spend talking about like you spend the rest of your day. So what basketball questions can we answer for you or and or your kids? To have a more fun end to.
- [32:29]
C
The interview, I collected questions from both my sons and I think their questions speak to their respective engagement with basketball. I have a six year old and my six year old wants to know what foods you like eating when you watch a basketball game. And my 9 year old wants to know whether you think Mike Brown is going to make the Knicks better this season.
- [32:48]
A
Wow. Okay. Which one do you want to take Brian?
- [32:51]
B
Well, what do you eat at the Garden? You go to some specialty. I don't even know what it is. What you're.
- [32:57]
A
So at the Garden. At the Garden, they. They'll back up. So the Garden used to have the worst press food in the league by miles. They had. You would go in downstairs where they do the coaches interviews now, and they had this. They'd serve breakfast half the time. The food was awful. You'd have to like bring lunch with you. And I'm not a very picky eater. So when the Garden renovated, which I know, Kate, you have been to games like the food there is now great. You pay a $10 donation to the Garden of Dreams and you get a $25 voucher to eat at any concession stand in the arena, which the upgrade on that from one to the other is like the warriors pre, staff and post. Steph. It's the complete transformation. So at the Garden, I always go to the TAO booth and get a chirashi poke bowl, which is very good and surprisingly healthy.
- [33:51]
B
Would love that. I'm sure it's a little fancier than.
- [33:54]
A
A little fancier than. I'm sure they go get pizza or a chicken sandwich, the Fuku chicken sandwich or one of 100 other good things. But that's what I always get there.
- [34:02]
C
Okay.
- [34:04]
A
What about you, Brian? Well, Brian lives in Omaha, Kate, if you didn't know. Omaha, Nebraska, where there obviously is no NBA team. So most of the time he's just in front of a tv, TV camera looking like he's on a court like he is right now, not actually in the arena. So I'm curious what this answer is.
- [34:19]
B
I've been to one or two NBA games.
- [34:22]
A
You have a couple. Couple.
- [34:23]
B
One or two NBA games. The NBA was meant to be one of it was. It was meant to be watched with popcorn. Kate, I think that's the answer for your sexual. As a father. As a father of a seven year old and, or, and. Or Sour Patch Kids. Now let me ask you this. Have you.
- [34:42]
A
I didn't think that was going to be a choice.
- [34:44]
B
Not for me, but for my six, my seven year old. Have either of your sons said to you six, seven. That.
- [34:50]
C
They said like seven or 800 times.
- [34:51]
A
So I'm gonna make an admission. I'm gonna make an admission. This came up on the pod the other day. I have nieces that are 10 and 8. I have a 6 month old son. I have absolutely no idea what sixes and sevens is. I still don't.
- [35:04]
B
I didn't look it up on purpose.
- [35:05]
A
Six, seven, whatever. I have no idea what it is.
- [35:08]
C
Consider yourself lucky. Tim.
- [35:09]
B
The, the Athletic recently did a story. The New York Times did a story, a triangle, to determine what it meant. And it came up with the answer that it meant nothing.
- [35:18]
C
That's right.
- [35:19]
A
Yeah, that sounds about right. But I purposely didn't look it up to see if at some point I would see someone even talking about it. I haven't even heard anyone say it outside that twice.
- [35:27]
B
It's been mentioned on the pod. You're supposed to do it with this.
- [35:30]
C
Like this.
- [35:30]
A
Yes, that I saw too.
- [35:32]
B
It goes back to a TikTok where somebody asks a basketball player, is that Starbucks drink? How is that Starbucks drink? And he goes, six, seven. You know, like on a scale of one.
- [35:42]
A
That's it.
- [35:43]
B
That's it. Buddy.
- [35:46]
A
Jackson said McCamp McMahon has brought this up many times. Our other co host, Kate.
- [35:50]
B
As for Mike Brown, I don't know how your, your older son felt about, you know, I know a lot of New Yorkers felt a certain way about Tom Thibodeau getting fired especially.
- [35:58]
A
How did he feel about it?
- [36:00]
C
Let's, let's ask a little bit of a family divide. I was a little upset about it, but my 9 year old thought it was a good move. Time to make a change. He's tough.
- [36:08]
B
I heard Ben Stiller talking about this, you know, very famous Knicks fan Ben Stiller just talking about this a couple of days ago and he described it as the reason he took it so hard was because the Knicks were in the conference finals, you know, two wins away from the finals for the first time and pretty much everyone's adult lifetime and like a couple, like they were like living and dying every day for weeks with the Knicks and, you know, pulling for tibs and pulling, you know, and just mesmerized by Jalen Brunson and. And then like three days later, the coach was fired. And it was the shock of going from this to this guy being no longer a part that he said he struggled with. But you know, Mike Brown is a guy that I've known for 20 years and he's a lot different coach today than he was when I first met him 20 years ago. It used to be if Mike Brown's team lost a game, you know, 86 to 85, you know, extremely low scoring game, and you would say, coach, you only scored 85 points, like, you know, what could you do to get more offense out of your game? And he would say, the answer is not an offense, sir. The Answer was, we should have only given up 84. If we scored 85, we should have only given up 84. And as a result, he led a team to the finals several times, not getting out of seven winning playoff games, not scoring over 80 points. Now, Mike Brown is very highly focused on offense. He's morphed himself, and he really wants the ball to move. He's got something that he's a believer in, something that Greg Popovich, actually, I would say the Argentinian national team, but Greg Popovich really brought it to the NBA called 0.5 offense, which is in.5 seconds. In half a second, when you catch the ball, you either dribble, pass or shoot. No holding the ball. Basically no dribbling. You know, make the decision, pass, you know, pass, pass. If you don't have the shot or. Or drive, lane, pass, pass, pass. And he was brought into a team that has a guy who is the best player that the. That the organization has had in, you know, generations. And Jalen Brunson, who led the NBA in dribbles last year. And so he's being brought in and saying, okay, we want to move. And by the way, it's working. The Knicks are passing the ball way more. The amount of time that Jalen Brunson is holding the ball, all the players hold the ball, has dropped. Not down to 0.5, but. But in that vein. And so the reason that he's doing that is he believes that in the playoffs they will become less predictable and there will be less stress on Jalen over the course of six months. So it's a reasonable strategy. Whether it will work, I don't know, but they definitely have a team. What's more interesting, you know, we're recording this on Wednesday. I'm sorry, on Tuesday. It's coming out on Wednesday. Tonight, the Knicks are playing the. The box and which. What would be interesting for your sons, you know, they haven't lived as Knicks fans for decades, begging for a star player. They have a star player right now in Jalen Brunson, an all NBA player. But Giannis Tennikounmpo, this is the type of guy the Knicks have been dreaming about since. What do you say, Bontemp? Since Patrick Ewing.
- [39:13]
A
Since Patrick Ewing, yeah.
- [39:14]
B
Yeah. They want a star player to walk.
- [39:17]
A
Carmelo briefly filled the void.
- [39:18]
B
That's true.
- [39:19]
A
Carmelo, but he's not Giannis. As great a player as he is, he's not Giannis and he's not Patrick Ewing.
- [39:25]
B
And this is really the first star on this level since Carmelo who said, I want to be a Knick. And even though he kind of denied it, he told his team he wanted to be a Knick. And so, and they didn't do the trade for various reasons, they couldn't or didn't do the trade. So that's an interesting thing. The Knicks have arguably the best team they've had in 25 years, and now they've got a guy who wants to. A superstar who kind of wants to come. And so you judge yourself. Do you break up with this team that's been, that's the best team you've had in 25 years? Because a star, a star that you've wanted for 25 years wants to come? It's a, it's kind of what this season is about.
- [40:00]
A
That was a very good filibuster. Didn't answer the actual question, which is, will Mike Brown make the Knicks better?
- [40:05]
B
That's what, that's how you do a deposition. Right?
- [40:09]
A
Very good lawyering. Brian loves to not make predictions, so that's his favorite thing to do. I, I, here's what I would say. Brian's also the dentist, the leading denizen of hashtag Cav's corner on our podcast because he's from Northeast Ohio. So we talk about the Cavs all the time. As you know, the Cavs and Knicks are the two favorites to win the East. And I think the only. The truth is, the only real way we can answer this question is whether the Knicks make the Finals, right? And if you ask 20 people in the NBA who's going to win the east, all 20 of them will shrug and say, we have absolutely no idea. Because the Knicks have their issues, the Cavs have their issues, and right now, the two teams in the east that are undefeated are the Sixers and Bulls. So that sums up, like, where the east is at. But it is one of the more fascinating bets in recent memory.
- [40:58]
B
Sir.
- [40:59]
A
True. For as good as the Knicks were and as you've lived and died with for a long time, like, it's been a lot of lean years in New York. So to go from making the conference finals, getting two wins from the Finals, to then say, this isn't going to work, we got to scrap it and go in another direction. It was a heck of a. It was a heck of a risky gamble, and I would say that I don't feel super confident about it working, but I don't feel good about anybody in the east, so I.
- [41:24]
C
You might.
- [41:25]
A
The Knicks probably are the favorite by default as of today, so I don't know.
- [41:29]
B
Well, Kate, thank you so much for your time and expertise. This is something that is extremely interesting to us. We really appreciate you spending the time and for prior cashmen to allow your valuable time. You know, I'm married to an attorney, so I know time is money. So thank you so much for joining us.
- [41:45]
C
Thank you so much for having me. It's great.
- [41:47]
B
Enormous appreciation for that expertise with Kate Riley Bontemps. The, the value of that was in the thousands of dollars of legal analysis that, that she just donated to our listeners.
- [42:01]
A
Yeah, it was really like, I, like, like we said beforehand, like, if you have any interest in this case at all, you have a way better, you should at least have a way better understanding of how this thing works and where it's headed and where it could wind up after that. I mean, I, I certainly do. I, you know, we, you and I read the indictments last week and we sat there on TV and we talked about stuff we read in the indictment. But even though I was reading the indictment, there's only so much of it I could understand. You know, we're not lawyers. So that was I, I thought it was awesome to be able to have somebody who really understands what's going on and be able to walk us through what this thing could look like.
- [42:35]
B
Yeah, for sure. And I think her, her viewpoint that we let you know at the beginning of the pod, her viewpoint on how strong that case is. She, I'm sure top defense attorneys who these guys will hire will see the same thing. But she was sort of laying out kind of a little bit of a roadmap for a defense attorney and how they would defend some of these guys.
- [43:01]
A
I would say, listening to her, that it's not a certainty that Terry Rozier, the one obviously active NBA player involved in this, is necessarily, you know, going to wind up being convicted in this case. Not saying he is or isn't, but she definitely left open the possibility that this would wind up with either the case getting thrown out or dismissed or, you know, he ends up being exonerated.
- [43:24]
B
Yeah, she, she talked about how federal prosecutors, you know, you hear that, you hear the phrase, I don't want to make a federal case out of it because usually once a federal case, the prosecutor's batting average is very high. They don't bring cases they don't think they have a good chance to win. And she seemed to believe that the poker case was traditional, which is, you know, code word for we're going to win it.
- [43:44]
A
So she even said that one. She didn't see any legal risk, I believe is exactly how she put it in the poker rigging. One, which you know, that I think is an indication of the strength of it.
- [43:57]
B
And I will say this like the, I think one interesting thing about this case and it's not really relevant to the way the NDA has to adjudicate it because they've got to do what they've got to do. But the victims in the two cases. In the, in the, in the case of the. In the. In the NBA betting case, the victim is sportsbooks. In the, in the poker case, the victim is technically illegal gamblers. But the reason that they brought the case was to prevent money and in this case millions of dollars from being funneled to the mob, which they say is the mob. The government says is the mob. Whether it is the mob or not, it has to be to be proven.
- [44:36]
A
That's right.
- [44:37]
B
But those two things are different. You know, we're trying to shut down a multi million dollar mob situation. We're trying to prevent the sports books from being harmed from a couple of bets. Not that I'm, you know, just so. Okay. I also want to say that the NBA's she also was talked quite a bit about how the FBI might work with the NBA and what the. She might have. The NBA might have known. And she can't talk about cases she was involved in, but she was involved in sports league cases. Sports cases. And she said with pretty certainty that it's typically a one way street.
- [45:19]
A
I was going to say that that was the way. If you listen to what she said, it said, well, what would the relationship between the government and the NBA be if the NBA is cooperating? That was the first thing I was going to say. It sounded like a one way street. The government says, hey NBA, you give us stuff and then we say thank you and we leave and that's it.
- [45:36]
B
And I would say that if you think the federal government and the Justice Department, you know, Bigfoot's people, the Southern district of New York and to a lesser extent the Eastern district because they're kind of the cousins, they Bigfoot, the Bigfooters. So like I don't know what the FBI said to the NBA. What I do know is this. The prosecutor of the Eastern district said the NBA has been cooperative. I didn't hear Adam Silver say that the FBI has been cooperative. I don't want to make an assumption, but. Okay. All right. Thank you for listening to this edition of the Hoop Collective. Thank you to Jackson. Thank you to Bontemps. Thank you to Kate for giving us your expertise back to pure basketball later this week.