Ep 06: The Politics of American Basketball

Jemele's "The Filibuster" draws attention to the mounting gap between American and European basketball. North Carolina Central University head men's basketball coach LeVelle Moton relays the changes he's seen in how young American hoopers are developed. Then, Jemele is joined by Craig Robinson, executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, co-host of Ways to Win with John Calipari, and older brother to Michelle Obama. Craig reminisces on Michelle pushing him to be a better athlete, his development as a basketball player, and his unconventional transition into coaching. Craig also shares his experience with being unfairly fired and his thoughts on whether NIL harms the culture around American basketball. Finally, Jemele addresses a reader who wants to know why Black athletes aren’t as politically and socially active as they were during the Civil Rights era.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, what's up, everybody.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Jamel Hill and welcome to Politics and iHeart podcast
and Unbothered Network production.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Time to get spolitical.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
So this week we're going to have a conversation about
one of the biggest wedge issues in America immigration Now
only let's have this conversation through the lens of basketball.
On the first night in the NBA this season, a
record tying one hundred and twenty five international players from
a record tying forty three countries were on opening night rosters.
This is the result of the NBA's global popularity, which

(00:38):
has been decades in the making. But as the NBA's
international reach continues to expand, in the NBA game itself
has taken on more of an international feel. Not everybody
is happy about it.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
What changes can the league make to bring more competitive
balance to both sides of the ball.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
I know what they can do.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Get rid of all the Europeans.

Speaker 4 (01:04):
Look, you just said it. You just said it.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
You go to college and learn defense college and Europeans
go to I'm with you, know, I just like we
don't go to college.

Speaker 4 (01:17):
They have no athletics. Give something, come over, no athleticism.

Speaker 5 (01:21):
They all come over.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
They have no athleticism, right, They have no speed, no
jumping ability. They are a liability on defense. There's one
hundred and fifty euros in the league today. Name the
top ten defenders. No, I'm not right, just to Rudy
Goldberg in Greek de Free. Other than that, they're just
offensive players.

Speaker 4 (01:43):
They're not defensive players. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
So the NBAS took away aggression. They took away aggression
to open up.

Speaker 5 (01:53):
The year rod league.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
When they first started to get in here, it was
too rough for them and.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
So they didn't make it. They didn't make it right.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
So eventually they softened the rule. They just soften the
rules for the Americans. They softened the rules to open
it up international.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
So when they're saying.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
The Euros that's going to run the league in the
next five years, why do you think that more threes
pass and come? This is not our league. This is
not the American style, This is the euro style.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Sounds like Gilbert Arenas supports mass deportation. Now Gilbert's wild
conspiracy theory aside, because he must have forgot that. The
league eliminated handschecking in two thousand and four, the first
of many rule changes that would happen to benefit offensive players.
They did that because fans complained that the game was
too physical and they basically got tired of seeing Big
ten basketball at the NBA level. I went to a

(02:40):
Big ten school, I can say that. But the surge
of international players dominating in the NBA is raising some
compelling questions about the state of American basketball. Are international
players now better equipped and more prepared for NBA's success
because their systems of development is perhaps better than the
American systems of development, namely AAU high school and college basketball.

(03:02):
I'll unpack all of that in a moment, but first
a history lesson. In nineteen seventy eight, the NBA played
its first international exhibition game in Israel. It was the
then Washington Bullets against the Maccabees Tel Aviv, a team
that had just won the European Cup by beating a
top tier Italian team.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
The Bullets, however.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Were just three months removed from beating Seattle for the
NBA Championships. Now, not to give them an excuse, but
the Bullets were still in celebration mode. They were out
of shape because back then, to quote Bernie Mack, when
players took a break, they broke played by international rules.
They allowed zone defense, which was then illegal in the NBA.
The Maccabees beat the defending champions ninety eight to ninety seven. Now,

(03:43):
the international loss was such an anomaly for the Americans
that the Bullets players they weren't even mad.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
The legendary was unsealed.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
The captain of the Bullets said after the game, I
came to Israel on vacation to enjoy myself. The game
really was not what this trip was all about. Now,
on the world stage, America largely has been known as
having the best brand of basketball in the world, even
before the United States started sending NBA players to represent
the country at the Olympics. The US won the gold
medal with college players and nine of the first twelve Olympics,

(04:11):
But at the nineteen seventy two Olympics in Moscow, the
United States started showing signs it was vulnerable. At that point,
Team USA have won sixty four straight games in Olympic
basketball competition, but in seventy two, the Soviets handed America
a stunning, albeit extremely controversial defeat, and the final seconds
of the gold medal game.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Well confusion range.

Speaker 6 (04:32):
But the United States still they have that one point
late fifty to forty nine as a result of two
pressure pack foul shots by Duck Collins Illinois State. Now
the clock shows three seconds. There is time for the
Russians to go to their big man, Alexander Bellout. They're
going to try Alexander bell off between two American defender.

(05:01):
I girl with it for Unbebella and the Russian team
has bob y'all Axandrabella.

Speaker 5 (05:09):
At this time that is over.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
It was Team USA's first Olympic loss ever. The loss
stunk so badly that the US team refused to accept
their silver medals out of protests. While Team USA recovered
from the loss to the Soviets to win gold in
seventy six, something shifted in the landscape. Team USA did
not compete in the eighty Olympics in Moscow because then
President Jimmy Carter led an international boycott of the games

(05:32):
to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And while in
nineteen eighty four America predictably won gold again, the nineteen
eighty eight team lost to its nemesis again, but unlike
in nineteen seventy two, this time the Soviets left no
doubt that they were the superior team the.

Speaker 6 (05:47):
World that certainly caught up with the United States in
this game. No longer does the US dominate as they
did for.

Speaker 5 (05:55):
So much of these Olympic Games.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
A year after that loss, FIBA made the decision to
allow countries to use professional players to field their Olympic
basketball teams. But here's the irony. Despite suffering some gold
medal losses, the United States actually voted against this change,
voting against our own best interests. There's a metaphor in
there somewhere, but I'm gonna leave that one alone. In

(06:19):
nineteen ninety two, America sent is version of the Avengers
to the Olympics, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley,
Scottie Pippen, Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullen, David Robinson,
Christian Laitner, and John Stockland. Now y'all know Dale will
Isaiah Thomas should have been on that team, And no,
I don't acknowledge Carl Malone. I'm gonna let y'all google

(06:39):
that way. I'm petty like that. The nineteen ninety two
Dream Team molly wopped everybody team USA's average margin of
victory was thirty one points. But most importantly, that team
established a pathway for the NBA to expand its reach worldwide,
which included further opening the door for international players to
make their way to the NBA.

Speaker 5 (06:57):
We opened up the game to the world.

Speaker 4 (06:59):
So that's why all these guys are playing.

Speaker 5 (07:01):
In the NBA today. The Dream gam is responsible for that.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
But what Magic Johnson probably couldn't anticipate is that the
young international players that were once inspired by the Dream
Team wouldn't just stop it just pursuing a dream NBA career.
They would one day stage a real takeover of American
basketball altogether.

Speaker 7 (07:18):
You know, to be completely honest with you, I had
the opportunity to be a part of USA Basketball for
two years I think it was twenty fifteen and twenty nineteen,
and being an assistant coach for those teams, I'm surrounded
by the best young talent in America, you know, the
k kind of hands to Jason Tatums having mostly Scotty Bars,
Jayalen Green, Jalous.

Speaker 4 (07:38):
You know, list goes on to Jayalen Bronston.

Speaker 7 (07:42):
The list goes on and on, And I had an
opportunity to see firsthand how the game was catching up, right,
There wasn't. There's always been a big gap between the
United States and the rest of the country, and a
lot of that was a large part because of athleticism. Well,
they bridged the gap because of their fundament in their
work ethic and their development. So over here, a lot

(08:04):
of times our young kids at the developmental league such
as the AAUS and the high schools, and even the
lot of years in middle school, it seems as if
they're more concerned with what can I do if I
have the ball in my hands? So everyone is every
workout is a one four flat, well one four flats

(08:24):
for the Allen Ivers's and Gilbert Arenases and those kind
of guys of the world, right, and so how can
you become a star in your own role?

Speaker 4 (08:32):
And what happens?

Speaker 7 (08:33):
I think my personal opinion is American born citizens don't
know what to do when the basketball is not in
their hands anymore. They don't know how to move without it,
they don't know how to play without it. And the
reality is, in a forty eight minute game in the NBA,
you're going to spend forty five minutes without the ball
in your hands.

Speaker 4 (08:51):
So now what do you do?

Speaker 7 (08:52):
And we haven't mastered that yet through our developmental leagues
and up and coming leagues, and they have. I had
the opportunity to play basketball overseas for seven years, and
one thing I used to notice was that they work
out three times a day and their skill training is
vastly different from ours.

Speaker 4 (09:09):
Our skill training is going in the.

Speaker 7 (09:10):
Gym and working on what we have quote unquote our
bag and imitating some of the moves that we've seen
on Sports Center or something that's going to get your
Instagram real with some more likes and clicks individually shooting,
and then teamwork and playing without the basketball. And so
now you have none American born citizens. That's pretty much
taken over the leave with the Lucas and even like

(09:31):
Joe Embiid, he wasn't, you know, an American citizen, and
then obviously Joker, Jihannis and Liszt is going to continue
to grow until we do something about the grassroots level
of our basketball development.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
That was LaBelle Molton, the head men's basketball coach at
North Carolina Central University, and what he's saying is supported
by some fascinating results. The last six MVP Awards have
gone to an international player. Nine international players played in
the NBA All Star Game, including six that were starters,
and given the way Luka Doncic, Shay Gilgers, Alexander and

(10:02):
Nikola Jokic are playing so far this season and international
player winning another MVP is more than possible.

Speaker 5 (10:08):
Now.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
The NBA couldn't be happier about this surging European dominance
because it's had a tremendous impact on the bottom line.
The NBA currently earns six hundred and fifty million dollars
per year in media rights revenue outside of the United States,
and seventy five percent of the NBA's social media followers
aren't on you as soil, and with an extraordinary player
like Victor Winbinyama seemingly on his way to start them,

(10:31):
the demand from abroad to see international players compete only
will increase, but as the skill level of European players
continues to get better, people like coach Moten believe the
skills of American players, especially at the youth level, are
headed in the opposite.

Speaker 4 (10:46):
Direction and so basketball over he has become the new hustle.

Speaker 7 (10:50):
Right, everybody's a skill training that right, and parents don't
know any better. They're just putting their kids under the
watchful eye of a guy that's making them go in
and out of cone or just google some drills off
of YouTube, charging them forty five dollars an hour, and
parents just don't know, right. And so the other thing
that's lacking the development is there wasn't a time where

(11:10):
the drug dealers sponsored the teams. Now the drug dealers
are no, Like, what in the world is going on
out here now?

Speaker 2 (11:18):
I don't mean to make it sound like there aren't
young American basketball players dominating in the NBA. Anthony Edwards,
Jason Tatum, Jalen Brown, Jalen Brunson, Donovan Mitchell, Devin Booker,
those guys are all pretty damn good. But in this
hyper capitalistic American society, the greed permeating youth basketball is
negatively impacting youth basketball development and therefore the superstar pipeline

(11:41):
doesn't look the same. Five years ago, my former ESPN
colleague Baxter Holmes wrote a fascinating story about how they
increased emphasis on specialization and the grind of the AAU
circuit are collectively damaging the health of young basketball prospects.
According to research, young American basketball players are experiencing a
much higher rate of injury than European players because while

(12:02):
international players start playing with professionals at a young age,
they don't play in nearly as many games as their
American counterparts.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
For example, Zion.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Williamson and Jah Morant went one to two in the
twenty nineteen NBA draft, and LaMelo Ball went third in
the draft the following year. Between the three of them,
they've missed almost five hundred games due to injuries. Now,
what did they all have in common extensively competing in AAU. Meanwhile,
Luka Dancic, who started playing professionally when he was thirteen
and is in his seventh NBA season, He's played in

(12:32):
an average of sixty six regular season games per year.
Jokic is averaging seventy five games, and Yannis seventy two. Now,
this isn't to say that every foreign player is a
picture of health, but Americans playing professional schedules as they're
still developing can't be good. But with so much money
and exposure on the line, coach Moten believes the development
of young American players is no longer a priority.

Speaker 7 (12:55):
You know, AAU has always been beneficial because it showcases
the top. But I think it's become extremely toxic because
there's no substance to it.

Speaker 4 (13:07):
Right.

Speaker 7 (13:09):
Part of basketball is being able to compete at a
high level every possession. But these kids aren't competing anymore
because of AAU. If you lose at nine o'clock, then
you play again at twelve o'clock, And if you lose
at twelve o'clock, then you play again at four fifteen.
If you lose again, then you play the following weekend
with another team. Right, and so the art of the

(13:31):
competition has gone. When I grew up, and I hate
to be that guy when I like, I don't want
to be that guy. But our AAU team in North Carolina,
there was only one AAU team in the city that
I was in Raleigh, North Carolina, and we were called
the Raleigh Stars, and we had to be selected. It
was myself and Jerry Stackhouse and guys like that.

Speaker 4 (13:51):
Right.

Speaker 7 (13:52):
But what happened is AU has become super saturated. Right,
People who fathers wasn't saw their children wasn't good enough
to make a team, they went out and started their
own AAU team. And now it's become nothing but a
money graph. Right, So AAU at his core hasn't served
this initial purpose to develop the talent and showcase the talent.

(14:13):
It's now a money grap. You go to any AAU
tournament in the country and parking is fifty dollars for
the weekend entry feeous seventy five dollars. Right, gatorays are
eight dollars. Like, it's just a money grap. It's just
a hustle. Everyone that's connected to this game are now
using it to hustle it instead of to develop the

(14:33):
talent and simply strictly care about these kids and their
overall development. And that's what AAU used to be. And
somehow or another, we got away from that, and it's coming
back to bidens. And now we got to send a
thirty six year old Kevin Durant and a forty year
old Lebron James to the Olympics and Steph Curry to
steal save us instead of having twenty two to twenty
three year olds go compete for our country.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
While I'm certainly not suggesting American basketball players are about
to go the way of the dinosaur, were fast approaching
the time where America isn't going to enter every Olympics
as the best team, and perhaps we should also get
used to the fact that the title of best player
in the world isn't an American birthright.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
I'm Jamelle Hill and I approved this message.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Up next, on politics, I'm going to continue this conversation
about the state of American basketball with the executive director
of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. He also was
a former head coach at Brown and Oregon State, and
he is host of a podcast called Ways to Win
with legendary coach John Calla PARTI and one more important note.
He's the older brother of former First Lady Michelle Obama.

(15:37):
Coming up next on politics, Craig Robinson. Well, Craig, I
want to just start by thanking you for joining me.
I know you're a very busy person, and it's because
I adore you so much and love so many of

(15:57):
the things that you talk about, just from a leadership
stateandpoint some of the principles you share. I'm going to
start this podcast by asking you what is your favorite
sports memory?

Speaker 5 (16:08):
Ooh, So I have been fortunate enough to have so
many great sports memories. I mean, I mean, you know,
I'm a Chicagoan, so you know the feeling when, when,
when the when the Bears won their first when their
Super Bowl when I was still living there, the Bulls
first couple of championships. I loved the Cubs winning the

(16:30):
World Series. And then on a personal note, just having
played basketball my whole life, I mean, we had IVY
League championships when I was at Princeton. One of my
favorite memories after playing at Princeton and professionally and then
working some friends of mine, John Rodgers from Aerial Capital Management,

(16:51):
Arnie Duncan who was the Secretary of Education, Kit Miller
who was another Princeton basketball player, a guy named Eric
Kubi who was our friend from Chicago, played competitive three
on three and ended up winning the World three on
three championship. So we were the precursor to this three
on three FOBA Olympic stuff. We would have been an
Olympic team, that's how good we were. But my favorite

(17:15):
memory wasn't really a basketball a sports memory. It was
an event memory. So think back to Barack getting inaugurated
the first time. So you know, the election happens in November,
but the inauguration doesn't happen until January, so that's right

(17:35):
in the middle of basketball season. I met Oregon State
coaching and my family and I fly from Oregon to
d C to go to the inauguration and all the ceremonies.
But we're playing Cal on Thursday, and the inauguration for
some reasons, on a Tuesday. Right, it's not even on

(17:57):
the weekend, so I can make it and back from
DC to the Bay Area. The team practices without me.
My assistant coaches do a great job. I'm thinking, there's
no way we could win this game. We're playing at Cal.
They were good then, and I get there in time

(18:19):
to get to the bus to go to the arena,
and I go in the back way as you always do.
The team's warming up. I'm in the locker room trying
to drop a play. I don't know what to say
to the team, right, I'm emotional. I'm worried about them
because I wasn't there. And the team goes up to

(18:40):
warm up, and you know, the coaches don't come out
till about three minutes before the game starts. And I
come out and all of a sudden, the crowd stands
up and there is a roar of standing ovation applause,
and I know it's because of Baraka Michelle. But the

(19:02):
warmth that I felt from that crowd, Jamelle, I was
almost a blubbering idiot before the start of the game
in the hubble, I had to have the guy stand
around me. I was so emotional and I said, look, guys,
I don't know what to say. I said, I want
to win this game badly, but I don't have much

(19:22):
for you. I mean you could still hear it in
my voice, and I didn't know what to say.

Speaker 4 (19:26):
Do you know?

Speaker 5 (19:26):
They went out and played an almost perfect game for
a team that was sort of didn't have their coach there.
And it's a tribute to my staff, It's a tribute
to them, It's a tribute to the people at CAL,
you know. I mean they were rooting for their team, right,
but they really showed some love for me that day.

(19:49):
That has to be at the top of my list
of greatest sports memories. And I'll never forget it. And
I mean, to this day, Cal holds a warm place
my heart. Right Like when I was when I was
younger and thinking about colleges, I would have never thought
to go to CAL. I wish I had known about it,
and because I might have applied, but it was a

(20:11):
great memory.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
Now, was there any small part of you that said,
day I wasn't here and they played flawlessly, what is happening?

Speaker 4 (20:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (20:21):
Well, you know what it says is that you don't
win games the day of. It's all the work you
put in before you get there. And it was great
to see that they executed. Now, once we got into
the game, you know, I got back to my normal self.
But I mean the way they started that game, they

(20:42):
were just on point, and it was as if they
wanted to show me that they weren't going to they
weren't going to let themselves down, but they weren't going
to let me down because because they knew that I
wasn't missing in action, I had to I had to go.
There was something bigger at stake here. But yet, Jamelle,
you are right. You know a lot of coaches are replaceable.

(21:06):
They think they're irreplaceable, but they're replaceable.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
I know the story, but I know there might be
some listeners right now who don't know the story. So
let's talk about your sports origin story. How did you
get involved in playing basketball?

Speaker 5 (21:19):
Well, I'm old enough to be back in the day
where there wasn't all this youth sports right, and I
got involved in basketball just as a way of My
dad would come home from work and want us to
be out of the house, and he was a recreation guy.
Even though he was handicapped. He was outside we'd be

(21:40):
playing catch. And when I say we, my sister too.
My sister and I were interchangeable, so we because she
was the only one I had to play with other
than my dad, and my mom would join in too,
So we would play the sports that were available, and
baseball was my first sport. I wanted to be a
football player, and basketball was act lead. My third sport,

(22:01):
a tie with hockey, because I will you know, being
from Detroit, hockey big was big in Chicago. They used
to freeze all the parks in the winter time and
you could go skate and we lived right down the
street from a park, so we played hockey too. And
we would go on vacation. We went to a place
in Michigan, white Cloud, Michigan called Dukes Do you know,

(22:26):
Duke's Happy Holiday Resort. It might not been there when
you came along, but it was in white Cloud. It
was one of these It looked like a motel, but
we thought coming from Chicago. We thought it was the
Ritz Carlton. It had a pool, it had a game room,
and it had a tennis court and basketball court. And
that was when my dad started teaching me the game

(22:47):
of basketball. That's how I got started playing. And I
didn't play organized basketball till I was about eleven or
twelve years old, like my kids all started when they
were three or four. And I played at the at
the youth level, AAU and sort of wreck ball at
the y m c A and AAU. Then was you

(23:08):
went to one tournament of summer and different now it's
so different now. Yeah, and then I played in high
school and got recruited to go to Princeton.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Now, you know, maybe some people don't know this, perhaps
they were just, you know, hatched from an alien pod.
But of course Greg's sister is a former First Lady
Michelle Obama. You mentioned her as an athlete, right, What
kind of athlete was Michelle?

Speaker 5 (23:32):
So she was She was really really good and unfortunately
back then, there weren't a lot of sports for women
and girls at the time. But she could play every
sport I played. She could play soft she played baseball, softball, basketball,

(23:53):
and she ran track. We went to a day camp
in Chicago at Rainbow Beach, and she would win all
the ribbons for So she was fast athletic, and she
had the spirit of an athlete, right, so she was
trying to win. She wasn't just out there for exercise, right,
And so she was a really good athlete. And I

(24:14):
always tell people part of the reason why I ended
up being a good athlete was because I had her
a practice with all the time. Because my dad, like
I mentioned, he had MS from the time I was
could remember, he walked with a with a limp and
it got progressively worse so he couldn't run. So my
sister did all the running for him. And my mom

(24:36):
was out there too, but not as much. So she
was the reason that kept me going when I didn't
have anybody to play with. So and unfortunate, I say, unfortunately,
she sort of passed all this when she went to
high school. Her athletic career pretty much ended because you know,
she didn't like how uncompetitive the teams were then. And

(25:02):
she also I also she she'll she'll say she doesn't
agree with me on this, but my sister didn't enjoy
people having to lose, not just her losing. She didn't
like the idea of making someone else feel bad because
she beat the daylights out of them. And as you know,
we competitors, we love that feeling, right, We love that it.

(25:26):
Like I hear you talk about playing spades with your friends,
That's how I am. The best part of spades is
the other person losing. The other person loses more fun
than me would it.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
I thought this was known, but.

Speaker 5 (25:39):
But she so. She she'll disagree with me when I
say that, but she's really she's really very compassionate that way.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Now, So when you all were, you know, kind of
playing against one another.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
Be honest, often did she get the best of you?

Speaker 5 (25:54):
Oh? So, now you this is here's where you get
Maryann and Fraser Robinson's first life lessons to me, some
of the first life lessons. So it got to be
no matter what we were doing, whether it was a
board game or we were playing with our toys, or
we were doing something in sports. It got to a

(26:15):
point where she could not beat me in anything, and
my father pulled me aside. Is like, you're gonna lose
your partner in crime if you keep dominate the game.
You gotta point shave. Sometimes you gotta let her win
so that she'll keep playing. And you know, Jamelle, just
think about that. Just think about now. My dad was

(26:36):
he was helping me out, but he was helping her
out too, or I said that backwards, he was helping
her out, but he was really helping me out. It
was it was sort of the first lessons of being empathetic.
And he said, you can win every game and enjoy
her losing, but she won't play with you, and he
was right. And so every now and then I would

(27:00):
make I would point shave and she'd win and I'd
be like, oh god, I can't believe you beat me
on this, and I played it up and uh. And
then my mom was like, get you can't be too
much of a hammer. She's gonna figure it out. But she,
of course, because I'm twenty months older than her, and
most of the time we were playing physical sports. You

(27:22):
could see I could be more physical than she could.
But it was it was really every now and then
she went like, in board games, I didn't have to
point shape because it's just the luck of the game,
and she would be as good as I was. And
we played everything. We played Monopoly, We played this game
called hands down. We played all sorts of games the

(27:45):
four of us did, so she got her share of
real winning without without without us helping her.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
You know what, that next time I lose to my
husband and golf, I'm gonna tell him that I'm be
like you know, I wanted to make sure I keep
yourself esteem high. So that's why I lost. So you
just gave me the perfect perspective and to go with
the perfect narrative to sit with him the next time
we're on the golf court.

Speaker 5 (28:09):
Yeah, because see, if you end up beating him too much,
he's going to start coming up with reasons why y'all
can play together.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
No, I think we're both super competitive, so I don't
think you have to worry about that with us and place.
We both started golfing at the same time, and I
think that has been really helpful with that. But we're
both you know, we both pay sports in high school
and so like that competitive fire.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
Ain't no letting anybody win anything in our house.

Speaker 5 (28:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Yeah, So I now, at what point, as you were
developing as an athlete, did you realize you were a
special player or maybe had a little bit more talent
than your peers.

Speaker 5 (28:46):
Man I wish I could say it was early, but
it was not right. I was always a late bloomer,
you know, I didn't, I was. I was. So I
played what was called biddy basketball at the time. I'm
in seventh and eighth grade, and you couldn't be taller
than five six. So I was able to play that

(29:07):
till about the beginning of my eighth grade year, and
then I grew to about five eight five nine, and
I couldn't play anymore. So going into high school, I
was probably six feet tall, and when I graduated from
high school, I was six ' four and then by
the time I was done growing, I was about six seven,

(29:27):
and so I was never the best player until about
my senior year in high school. But back then, you know,
at least in our household, we weren't banking on basketball
do anything but be extracurricular activity. So I got good

(29:48):
grades because my family emphasized doing your best, and in
our house, doing your best was getting a's and b's.
That if you didn't get b's, you had to answer
for whether or not you did your best. And it
was the best Jedi mind trick my parents ever did,
because you knew when you didn't do your best, because

(30:10):
every time you did your best, you got aids. So
we were looking at basketball that way until I went
to this camp called Athletes for Better Education and it
was out of Whitewater, Wisconsin, and it was the precursor
to what we now know as the Nike Y All
American Camp. The people who started that camp ended up

(30:32):
blossoming that into the Nike Ye All American Camp, and
they invited the best players from the Midwest, the Chicago
area to play at a camp. And I was on
a team with Darryl Walker, who ended up playing in
the NBA. Went to Corlis High School in Chicago. I
went to Mount Carmel. We were on the same team
and we won the championship. Then I started hearing from teams,

(30:53):
and I didn't even know you would hear from colleges.
It never crossed my mind that people recruited first college.
And that was when I realized, oh, maybe I'm pretty
good at this and it's amazing, Jamelle. That was when
I realized how much confident plays into being a professional

(31:17):
or being a being really good at what you do.
We were always taught to be humble, I'm sure you
know growing up on the South Side of Chicago, black family,
you had to if you were a black male too. See,
my parents raised me to be humble. They raised my
sister to be have a big mouth, right. It was
really it's amazing. We talk about in our family all

(31:38):
the time. It's because for men had you can't be
too uppity, you can't be too braggadocious, you can't be
too arrogant, and women had to be able to advocate
for themselves loudly. And I could see it in my sister,
and I used to always think, man, I wish I
could say to some of the things she says to
her teachers, you know. But that was when I realized

(32:01):
confidence is part of this whole life experience. And so
I would say probably the end of my high school career,
I realized, once I started getting recruited, maybe I'm pretty
good at this. But never did I think I get drafted,
or be able to play overseas, or be be able
to play professionally, you know, not at all. I was

(32:21):
using it as a means to an end, and that
was education, get a good education, because neither of my
parents went to college.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
What's really fascinating about your life is like, you've made
a lot of very dramatic career pivots or you know,
in your life, and one of the first ones that
you made was going as you mentioned, your professional career.
You went to the NBA, you played overseas, and then
you just left that to do finance, right, and what

(32:51):
was the reason that you decided, hey, or how did
you know I should ask that it was time for
you to stop playing basketball.

Speaker 5 (32:58):
So it was relatively easy for me because, as you mentioned,
I got drafted into the NBA. I got drafted by
the six Ers when they won at the year after
they won the championship, so they had one red room
for one contract and it was the number one draft pick,
Leo Rautins, and he and I played the same position,

(33:20):
so I could see the writing on the wall. And
that was when I was like, man, even if you
get here, it's so hard to get here. And then
I went overseas and played. I was fortunate enough to
be able to play a couple of years over there,
and the money back then, Jamil was not like it
is now, like you could make a living over there.
I could have played ten years, but I would have

(33:41):
been making sort of you know, high nineties, low six figures.
That would have been about it. And with my degree,
I could. I mean, you know my friends who went
straight to Wall Street. That was their bonus check, right,
So they were like Craig, whenever you're ready, come start

(34:02):
coming to work. And it was interesting. I almost didn't
even do that because when I was deciding whether not
to go back over or not, I came back from England.
I played in England for two years. I came back,
flew through Newark and I don't know if you see

(34:23):
you're too young to remember this, but there used to
be an airline called People's Express and they would fly
from Newark to London.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
And it was just that sounds like it was made up.

Speaker 5 (34:32):
It sounds like it's made up. It used to be there,
but it was a cheap flight from Newark to London.
And I used to take that flight back and forth,
and I'd stop off in Newark and I'd go down
to Princeton to visit me Is, my sister, and visit
Coach Carill and visit all my friends who were still
playing there. And when I was in England, the coach

(34:53):
there knew Coach Carill, and he knew Princeton. He knew
about the Princeton offense and he asked me to implement
some of it with our team, and I did and
we won, and I was said to myself, this is it.
I'm going to be a coach. And so I started
mapping out this plan of all right, let me talk

(35:14):
to coach Carill about it. And I went back to
Princeton and I said, Coach, I figured out what I
want to do. I want to be a coach. And
I thought he would just embrace the idea of me
following in his footsteps. He meant so much to me
that I wanted to be a coach. You know what
he said. He said, Craig, you don't want to be
a fuck I don't even know if we can curse

(35:36):
on everybody he said. He said, you don't want to
be a fucking coach. He was like, I can't believe
you want to be a fucking coach. Here. You are
a black kid from the South Side of Chicago and
you got this Princeton degree and you can't let go
of the game. And I was like, and I was
completely devastated. I was heartbroken, but I realized he wasn't

(35:59):
coming from a place of negativity. He was. He was
he thought I was destined for more. And back then
basketball coaches weren't making these big salaries. It was a
thankless job, he thought, and he wanted me to aspire
for more. And I was like tag. And now I

(36:21):
got to regroup and figure out what I'm gonna do.
And I went home and I talked to my friend
John Rodgers, who I was telling you about from Aerial
Capital Management, fellow Princeton grad, one of my dearest friends
for a long time. He said, you should look into finance.
He said, I'll give you some names and numbers. And
that was how I got into the finance world. And
I did that for fourteen years. But here's what I

(36:47):
didn't do, Jamil. I didn't give up on my dream
of being a coach because I thought I could be
really good at this. And then I thought about the
coaches that I had, starting with my parents all the
way up to the professional coaches I had. And so
when I got my first bonus check it working in

(37:07):
the finance, I was like, holy smokes, if I can
do this, and I was at the time twenty three
ish twenty four, If I can do this for fifteen years,
twenty years, I'll be forty five. I can save up
enough money, pay for my house, pay for my kids'
education when I finally have kids, and then I can

(37:29):
teach seventh grade and coach high school basketball. That was
my exit strategy. That was it, And so I just
started on that. And you talk about making these big pivots,
you know, I attribute that to again, my parents. My

(37:52):
parents were always the type. The biggest lesson I learned
from my parents was don't let other people think of
you dictate who you are. It was a self just
the self worth stuff they taught us was tremendous and
I think about them all the time when I think

(38:12):
about these kids having to deal with social media. My
parents would be like, what do you care what they say? For? Wow,
these are people who don't even know you. My mom
would say, the people who care about you sit around
this table every night and talk to you and know you,
and you listen to them. Don't listen to all these
people out in the street. And that's what she used
to say, don't listen to people out in the street.

(38:34):
And it was the best advice I ever got because
that on top and then my dad said man, if
you're ever lucky enough to be able to do something
you love and get paid for it, you will never
work a day in your life. And this is coming
from a man with MS who worked a city job,
blue collar, got up every day, worked a swing shift,

(38:57):
and would have loved to do something else, but got
up and went to work every day. And you know,
you see a guy on crutches going to work every day.
It just makes you a hard worker.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah, and then it also doesn't give you an excuse, right.

Speaker 5 (39:11):
Is exactly.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
You see what your own father.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Is doing, It's like, well, what's my excuse not to
work as hard as he did? I want to talk
about another major pivot, because you mentioned that you left.
You were in finance, what about fourteen fifteen years somewhere
in there, right, yep, yeah, and then you do decide
to jump into coaching, right, but you weren't coaching seventh graders,
you weren't in middle school. You jump into college coaching,

(39:37):
so clearly you didn't follow your former coaches.

Speaker 5 (39:41):
I just so what I did. I didn't follow his advice,
and then I changed my plan. But what happened was
an opportunity of a lifetime came at the time. So
the way Princeton recruits I come to find out after
having gone there, is they used their network of people

(40:03):
who live all around the country who played basketball at
Princeton to recommend guys who they think would be great
Princeton players. And I was doing that in the Chicago area,
so whenever they came to Chicago, I mean you could
you could imagine. By this time I had moved back
to Chicago. I was working for Morgan Stanley in Chicago,
still trading and in the sales and trading arena, so

(40:26):
I had my days were busy, but my afternoons and
nights I could I could go to games and hang out.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (40:33):
So when they would come to town, I would take
him around to the to the good games that I knew,
where kids had good grades but were good players. And
our assistant coach at Princeton was Bill Carmody, who later
then became Northwestern. At Northwestern yeah yeah, oh yeah, another
one of your connections. And he got the job at

(40:57):
Northwestern and he calls me up once he gets the job,
and I was like, coach, you beat me to the punch.
I was gonna call the say congratulations, And I thought
he was coming out to look at some players. I
was like, I got a better group of players for
you to look at. And he's like, no, no, come down,
calm down. I want to ask you if you see
if you'd be interested in being my assistant coach. And

(41:18):
so I'm on the trading desk when he calls me,
and I was like, let me call you right back.
And I hang up the phone. And so I'm running
the desk so I have my second in command. I
was like, look, handle the desk. I got to make
a phone call. So I go downstairs out the door
because the trading room is so loud and busy you
can't talk privately. I jump in a cab and I said,

(41:38):
just drive around. I got a phone call to make.
And I'm talking to him and he's going through. He's
trying to sell me this job of being an assistant
coach at Northwestern, and I am so blown away that
I don't even know how to say no. I just say,
you know what, I want to do this. But I'm

(42:00):
partners with people at this firm. Now I'm at a
different I'm at a smaller firm where I'm one of
the partners. I said, I got to talk to my partners,
make sure it's okay with them, and then I'll give
you an answer. Give me forty eight hours. And he
said sure, And so I go back to my partners. Now,
mind you, Jamel, I'm going through a horrible divorce. I've

(42:22):
got two small kids, eight and four. And I go
to the guy who runs the firm, who's a good
friend of mine, and I said, Jim, I got to
tell you. So I got an offer to be an
assistant coach at Northwestern University, and I think I want
to take it. And you know what he said to me.
The first thing he said, he said, Craig, how much

(42:44):
did him jobs pay? Because you know, you can imagine
how much I'm making running a trading desk. I was like,
I think they make I think assistant coaches making about
forty or fifty thousand. And I was saying that, like cheerfully,
and He's like, I can't you do it. I can't
let you do it. You can't leave for that little
of money. Let me talk to him. I was like, no,

(43:05):
I don't need you to negotiate for me. I just
need you to understand that I don't want to leave
you in the lurch. But this is an opportunity that
I've been waiting for my whole life, and so I
finally take it. But I'm worried that my kids are
used to this lifestyle right that we had big house,
big vacations, nice car, private school, So I'm for some reason,

(43:32):
leaving it up to an eight and a four year old.
So I'm like talking to them about Daddy changing jobs,
and the first thing they were like, are you moving?
And I was like, nope, I don't have to move,
but I'm going to change jobs and it could change
the way we live a little bit. And I said
to my eight year old son, I have eight year
old at the time year old son, four year old daughter.

(43:53):
Daddy's going to be a coach. And I waited for
their response and the looks of their faces, and the
eight year old said, does this mean that your office
is a gym? And I said no, but it's right
next to the gym, and he said, oh cool. And

(44:14):
my daughter, right before he could get out cool, she
said do they have a pool there? And I said
yes they do, and they were like, oh, this is great,
And that could have gone either way, but in my
mind I thought it was going negative, right, because they're
just kids, and that was how I made the pivot
into college coaching.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Best movie you Sell ever, the easiest seal ever, a
gym and got them.

Speaker 5 (44:39):
That's right, That's right, that's right.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Well, is Greg.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
There's so much more I want to ask you about.
I want to ask you about ways to win your
podcast with John Colini and get your thoughts on today's
American basketball culture for sure. But we're going to take
a quick break and we'll be back with more with
Greig Robinson. So you were mentioning before the break about

(45:08):
how you got into coaching, and I think your first
head coaching job was Brown, correct, correct? Yes, Okay, so
you were at Brown coaching the IVY leagues. Obviously you
know you know that league.

Speaker 5 (45:18):
Very very well, that's right.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
But the jump from assistant to head coach, I mean,
what was that transition like for you?

Speaker 5 (45:27):
It was? It was It seems like it's a small jump,
but it is. It was a huge move and the
list of responsibilities just exploded exponentially, And I thought I
knew what it was going to be like, but it
hit me like a ton of bricks and I had

(45:49):
so I had been coaching at Northwestern for six years
as an assistant coach next to a guy Bill Carmody,
who was the type of head coach who was always
preparing you to be a head coach. So I thought
I was really prepared for it until I got the job, right,
And I had interview for a lot of jobs before
I got the Brown job. I don't want to make

(46:09):
it sound like I just was like doo doo doop.
It was I must interview for twelve jobs, you know,
and finally Brown opened up and it was the perfect fit.
But from hiring your own staff to you know, all
the major decisions being your own. And at a place
like Brown, there's not a lot of resources. People think

(46:32):
the IVY League is flowing in endowments, but that's for
academics and that's for research, and they they sports sort
of you have to you have to make your own way.
In sports, you get a little bit of money, but
you have to make your own way. So scheduling, you
had to decide how many by games you were gonna
get bought for, So those are games you get killed,

(46:54):
but you make some money for the program. And the
best buy game we played, by the way, was Michigan
State and that that I'm going to tell you a
quick story because that's your school. We played Michigan State
at Michigan State and that's one of those games where
you just know you're going to get your head handed
to you.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
And what year with this?

Speaker 5 (47:15):
Oh man, okay, so this would have been an O six.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Okay, I had just seven because when you okay, it
was funny you brought up Bill Carmody because I covered
the Big ten.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
So I very much remember Bill.

Speaker 5 (47:27):
Car Yeah, yeah, so you then then then you didn't
cover this game. But we went to uh, Michigan State
and we ended up losing by six, and that was
a feat in and of itself, but the best thing,
and this should be on my list of sports memories.

(47:48):
I neglected to bring this up because I didn't think
of it. I was just thinking on my feet. Here.
Tom Iso came into our locker room and then he
said on the in the press conference on National TV, Craig,
you have the hardest playing team I've ever coached against.
Now that's from Tom. He's the pope of playing hard.

(48:13):
And he came in and said that to my team
and to me, and we just took off after that,
But it was one of those games where we just
played as hard as we could and we were prepared
for how hard they played, and that was that was
always a memory. And Tom of course is on the
board of the NABC, and he and I have got
a wonderful relationship and have stayed in touch and all

(48:35):
of that. But he is one of my favorite I mean,
you know, yeah, I represent all the coaches. You can't
have favorites, but he's one of my favorites for his
outspokenness and and he just is a truth teller. But
I digress. I digress. So I'm at Northwestern and and
I mean, I'm Matt Brown and we played Michigan State,

(48:56):
and I'm just thinking of the the moving that one
share over to being a head coach. There's so many
responsibilities sort of thinking strategically about the program. You don't
have to do that as an assistant, right You like
figuring out film exchange and doing scouts and things like that.
And one of the hardest things for me was the

(49:17):
transition of not doing the scouts like I did scouts,
and I was very thorough and giving that up to
the assistance. To do that took me a while to
be comfortable with, because it was like, if it wasn't
done the way I liked, I had to be able
to accept the fact that this is their way of

(49:38):
doing it and then sort of fit in when I could.
But it was a real transition, and I counseled people
who will ask me about that move. It's one of
the hardest things to do, and no matter how I
can explain how hard it is, it's one of those
things where you have to go through. It's kind of
like learning how to drive, right, you don't really learn

(49:59):
how to drive, so you get your driver's license and
your parents aren't in the car with you anymore. You know,
you remember those days where it's like, oh, I can
make a mistake about my dad like being what what
are you doing? Screaming at you. So it's like that now.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
You unfortunately experienced something that more coaches experience than not
is that you went to Oregon State. You were let
go there, you were separating from your job to put
this fire fired. I mean, I think a lot of times,
especially as you know, the coach is always the lowest
hanging fruit.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
That's always the first person people call for to be fired.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Right, But what kind of insight or give people some
insight about what that's like. Because professionally, I mean, you
take pride of your job. Nobody signs up.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
To be a job badly. Nobody's trying to do that.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
So what was that experience like for you being fired,
which I assume might have been one of the few
times in your life that's ever happened to you.

Speaker 5 (50:55):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, outside of being cut from
the sixers, right, you just don't get fired, I mean,
you know, but here's what I will say. It was
the worst thing and the best thing that could have
ever happened to me. Because I'll tell you this so
having you know, we as black coaches talk about all
the time, we don't get access to the great jobs

(51:18):
or the good jobs. We get the bad jobs. Brown
was a bad Northwestern was a bad job. Coach Carmedy
got that one. Brown was a bad job. I got that.
Oregon State was even worse. And I got that. But
because I had experience in these tough places, I don't
want to I shouldn't say bad now, they tough places.

(51:39):
I knew exactly what it took to get to the
Promised Land, and I got to Brown. It was the
Brown's two winningest years in history, got me the Oregon
State job. Got to Oregon State, and I said, before
I took the job, I was like, look, the only
way that this makes sense is if you're going to

(52:00):
understand how long this is gonna take. If I'm not cheating.
If I'm not cheating, it's gonna take six years to
get to the point where the seventh year you have
a chance to go to the tournament. That's what I
told them. And we get there. We're winning games, graduating players,

(52:20):
and we get to year six and I am the
second winning as coach in Oregon State history. But the
school there's two things at work. Football team's doing poorly.
His contract's bigger than mine. They can't fire him, and
everybody knows my politics. So year six we're set to win.

(52:46):
We're set to go to the tournament. Year seven, I
get fired in June. I mean, go figure that like us,
it doesn't even make sense. It's like, fire me where
I can get another job. Fire me in June. And
my ad is like, well, I gotta make it. He
tells me, I gotta make a move, and I'm like, what, Well,

(53:08):
then make a move on the football coach. He's the
one not winning, and so I get fired. And in
year seven, the guy comes in and goes to the
tournament with my players, right, and.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Now everybody's looking at you like this just proves you
were doing.

Speaker 5 (53:21):
A bad job. And I'm like this, Bruse, I'm doing
a good job. He won with my guys.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
Let's let's talk about ways to win for a moment.
You your new podcast with Yus John Caller Party. One
of the most winningness coaches in college basketball history. He
just made a hell of a pivot. Okay, to go
from Kentucky. We know about that tradition. Yes, the numerous
top players that call has turned out that are playing

(53:49):
in the NBA.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
You know Anthony Davis.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
I mean he's got It's like the Kentucky guards alone
across the NBA is just they can stand on their
own and many regards. So he has been a talent
factory for a while. But now he's at Arkansas of
all places. How surprised were you that he made the jump?
Since you you know him a little bit.

Speaker 5 (54:11):
So I was surprised more that Kentucky was willing to
let him go than I was surprised that he made
the jump because I have been doing this long enough
to know, and I've talked to a lot of coaches,
and really, your gestation time if you're if you're not

(54:32):
John Calipari and you're not winning as much as he is,
and to some people he wasn't winning enough national championships.
But the gestation period is about six years and then
there needs to be a change on either side. But
for cal I mean you said it. He talked about
in one of his I can't remember if it was

(54:55):
a tweet or Instagram or he said it somewhere, but
his players have signed over a billion dollars in contracts.
Just think about that wealth for young black players. That
in and of itself, he would be my coach for
life because I could use that pr at my university

(55:19):
and it would help admissions, it would help fundraising, it
would help my freaking football team.

Speaker 3 (55:26):
Right.

Speaker 5 (55:26):
So I was more surprised that they let an asset
like that go. Now where he ended up surprised me
because I've always thought of Arkansas as.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
All SEC football.

Speaker 5 (55:39):
It's a football school, you know, I mean, this is
your job. So I'm and I told you football was
my first board. My parents just wouldn't let me play it.
So I consume college football. So when he said when
he got me, because he didn't say anything to me,
I had to read it in the papers. And nor
would I have asked him right because I wouldn't put

(55:59):
him in that position. But he said when I heard Arkansas,
I was like, no way, not Arkansas. They're trying, they're
trying to get him, but it's no way he's going
to a basketball school. And I was I was trying
to figure out if it was going to be, if
some moves were going on. And when he when I
finally talked to him, I was like, you're not going
to Arkansas and he's like, I think I might, he said,

(56:20):
and the sound in his voice he was happy. And
so I think this might be a tremendous move for
both him and Arkansas. And they're they're they're getting behind
him in a big way on the nil front. And
that's that's the that's all you need. And he was

(56:42):
already a good recruiter. I mean, now he takes that
ability to send guys to the NBA and takes it
somewhere else. So somebody else is going to benefit from that,
because it to me Cal's style of managing players is
what helps them get to the NBA and that begets
more recruits.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
So you mentioned a very hot topic of conversation, and
I am the three the three letters, and I've heard
some of your thoughts before about name, image and likeness
at least and you can certainly correct me if I
remember if I have your viewpoint wrong. But your position
seems to be like there needs to be some level
of regulation here because it's you know it is it

(57:24):
is a bit of the wild wild West, like you know,
if we if we're being honest, right, why do you
think there needs to be more guardrails? I'll use that
term for name, for name, image and likeness. What are
you saying that you feel like is maybe problematic that
needs to be dealt.

Speaker 5 (57:41):
With, And I'll tell you what it is, because really
true name, image and likeness is. And let me take
a step back. I am thrilled that the student athletes
are getting to participate in this ecosystem of enterprise right
because it's long time coming. And back when I was
coach and I used to talk about this, and I

(58:01):
also think had we had we had we started talking
about this fifteen twenty years ago, we wouldn't be at
this place that we are now. But that's it's neither
here nor there. True name, image and likeness was supposed
to be set up so that student athletes can use
their name, their image, and their likeness to make some
extra money for themselves. And what we have going on now, Jamill,

(58:26):
is not true name, image and likeness. It's pay for play.
Let's just call it what it is. We've got these
collectives paying kids to come to school to play at
your school, and then you might have to sign some
motographs in order to get you collect your money. So
that's not real, an il. So what we need is
guardrails on this pay for play situation because what it's

(58:49):
causing and what I'm very fearful of is that And
this has happened even before pay for play, and you
know this. Having covered the sports, we have got to
be experts at getting these kids through college. And they
get a college degree, but they're not college educated. And
let me just make that clear to the listeners. Is

(59:11):
what I'm saying is they get a piece of paper
and get a degree, but when they go to interview
for jobs, they're woefully unprepared. And I don't like that.
I don't think that's the fair trade off. The fair
trade off is come out be able to get a
job and be a successful professional away from your sport.

(59:33):
We're losing that because with the way it's set up now,
along with the transfer portal, student athletes are going to
move from place to place for the hire dollar right now,
which isn't very much money at all unless you're one
of these guys who's getting millions of dollars. But most
of the student athletes are getting less than one hundred
thousand dollars a year, and it's going toward taxes and

(59:57):
jewelry and sneakers, in my opinion, not you know, I
haven't heard anybody say, well, I'm putting this in an
interest bearing account and not going to touch it until
I'm forty five years old and I'll have a little
nest egg to buy my first home or something like that.
So that's why I say there needs to be some
sort of guardrails so that we have an education component

(01:00:23):
to this where we can guarantee that our student athletes
will come out in better shape than they were going
in other than in their pocketbooks.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
Okay, so we have and I'm glad you better. We
have a you know, sort of a two worlds or
two meteors colliding.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
We have nil.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
We have a transfer transfer portal where there's way more
kids in the portal than they are actually jobs actually, right,
so it's highly competitive. A lot of kids who think,
you know, grass is green. On the other side, they're
finding out it is not, because there there is.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
No grass Number one.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
That's one of the things they're finding out. How are
these two things, in your opinion, impacting American basketball culture overall?

Speaker 5 (01:01:03):
What you're finding is the whole nil. The money. Just
follow the money and you'll figure it out. The money
is attracting the subculture of agents handlers, however you want
to call them, who are telling kids that there are
opportunities out there for them somewhere else when there aren't.

(01:01:24):
And that's how you get the portal being overloaded with
not enough places for folks to go. And then what
happens to all these people who don't get jobs. They
end up having to go Naia, they end up having
to go nowhere, right, So they sit out a year

(01:01:44):
and their development starts to go down, and we can't
even keep track of those folks right, And at the
last I heard, it was like thirty percent of the
numbers that were in there. And so you've got two
thousand kids in the portal. That's a lot of kids
who are you know, you're talking about six hundred kids
who are homeless for lack of a better term. And

(01:02:06):
I think this ability to be able to transfer is
a good right to have if you're if you're transparent
and truthful, and you know what the opportunities are right now.
I don't think. I think you have people who are
advising student athletes who don't really have a position for

(01:02:30):
them to go. They're trying to entice them to be
their client based on the money they say they can get.
But we're looking around, where is that offered? Nobody knows
we need this. I would like to see it like
an exchange, like when you trade stocks and bonds. You
can see where things are trading. Then you can figure out, well,

(01:02:50):
I'm not better than this guy, or I'm better than
this guy, so I should be getting offered this. But
I'm not getting off for this. So this is Let
me stay where I am and see. Once you go
into the portal, it's very hard to go back because
coaches don't think you're coming back, and they move on.
They give your spot to something that's That's exactly right, Jabelle,
That's exactly right. And so I just think what we

(01:03:12):
want to do at the NABC, we want to do
a couple of things. We want we want to have
more of a voice for the coaches who are dealing
with these student athletes in the room when these decisions
are making, because we can help alleviate some of these
unintended consequences that happen that we could easily have fixed
if we were in the room or at least brought

(01:03:33):
to folks attention. And then the second thing is we
want to be a part of the solution. We think
we have some decent ideas for solutions to all of
this where everybody can all win. But there need to
be some rules. And I understand that the NCAA's rules

(01:03:54):
have gotten them sued now, so they're very leary on
what to do. But I believe the the Coaches Association,
the coaches have a lot of institutional knowledge that would
help solve these problems. You know, and we and you know,
it's really interesting because we the coaches have been asked
to do the NC double A comes a call them

(01:04:16):
when they need our help and when they need our health.
To talk to legislators in d C or our legislators
in our home states. They'll listen to us, they won't
listen to the NC double A. So that's what we're
fighting for. And I just think I and the last
thing I'll say is the game changes, the life changes.

(01:04:38):
Our coaches are going to be fine. They'll they'll adapt
to whatever rules you give them. But they're trying to
They're trying to figure out how we can still be
influential and a positively influential to our student athletes. So
when they leave, they feel like they have a place
to come back to. The transfer portal is going to

(01:04:59):
make it where our student athletes won't. They won't what's
going to be their home. When you know, you go
back to Michigan State, you feel pretty good about that.
I go back to Princeton, I feel really good about that.
But if I had gone to four different schools, which
one am I gonna feel good about now?

Speaker 2 (01:05:16):
Of course, the natural pushback is that coaches have freedom
of movement, and we see it all the time where
coaches get to take whatever job they want.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
They don't care about.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
How they leave, what shape they want to leave a
program in. So why the pushback is.

Speaker 5 (01:05:31):
Some coaches, some coaches. Some coaches feel yell not all.
But what I'll say to that, and I'm all for
them to be able to move around. I just think
that if you're going to have a move around and
get paid, then they should have contracts just like we do.
I don't there is nothing wrong with that, and that

(01:05:53):
was one of the things we were talking about at
the beginning of all of us. If you're gonna let
them move, then let's just figure out what the contract?
What the what? What do they want? You want to
stay at our school for one year? Okay, and here
are the you gotta go to class, you got to
go to treatment, you gotta do this, you gotta do that.
And after one year you could leave. You want to
be three years, great, We'll sign you for three years.

(01:06:15):
And if you go for three years and you want
to leave before then you have a buyout, just like
we have a buyout. I want to make it even steven.
I think it should be even steven. And I think
most of our coaches are feeling that way too. But
part of the contract is you have to go to class,
you have to have your progress toward degree, you have

(01:06:39):
to you have to do whatever you can to come
out of here being college educated because most of you
aren't going to be pros because the pros aren't getting
an IL. The pros are getting a contract in the NBA.
You're getting an IL. You're not a pro yet when.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
You look overall, it's just the mentality of today's players
because we're having you know, as you put it, pay
for play, which I would agree that that's kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:07:01):
What it is.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
Right now you have that and then it has and
as we mentioned earlier about how AAU culture is totally different.
You know, anybody's been paying attention to the NBA, they
should see the last six MVPs have all been international
players and seeing where American basketball culture is. Is this

(01:07:23):
a good thing or a bad thing? I mean, we
just had multiple French players taken in the top six
in the NBA NBA Draft and there's been some players
who have said it loudly, some have whispered it that,
you know, American basketball.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
Is kind of fighting for its life a little bit.
So what are you what's your take on that issue?

Speaker 5 (01:07:43):
My take on that is it's hard for me not
to agree given what I'm seeing now that I've stepped
back from coaching and I'm looking at the whole picture,
because Jamelle, what what what I'm seeing? There's there's a
couple of dynamics at work here. First, the youth sports

(01:08:04):
industry is a multi billion dollar industry now, So what
you have is you have way too many people in
the business of training your kid to be a college player.
There's not enough raw materials out there, right, and we've

(01:08:26):
gone away from basketball being a grassroots sport or an
inner city sport. It is now a middle class sport.
So you can't even be on the radar from a
raw materials and development standpoint unless you have parents who
can afford lessons and nutrition and all these youth basketball

(01:08:46):
tournaments that cost tens of thousands of dollars. And the
second thing is those are all you're training to play
in these games to get highlight tapes. And what the
difference is between where we used to be and where
international basketball is. Back in the day, we had way

(01:09:09):
more practices than we had games. Now we have way
more games than we have practices, and you can't develop
that way. That's my opinion. That's a lot of coaches opinion.
But now we're seeing the empirical data coming in the draft.
And the way Europe does it is they grab their
best players and they have them practice with pros and
they have way more practice. And I'll tell you from

(01:09:30):
back when forty years ago, when I was playing in Europe,
you had two days on every day except for the
day of a game. You practiced in the morning and
played a game. You practiced all the time, and that's
how you got better. And that's why college was always
viewed as a great stepping stone for NBA players because

(01:09:50):
you had four days of practice every week and then
you had games. Now, because of the way youth basketball
is coming along. You know, I've got a fourteen year
old and twelve year old. Now I've got two older kids,
are two younger kids. My two younger kids are in
the youth basketball system. They have games every weekend, and
they play six or eight games on a weekend and

(01:10:13):
practice twice a week Monday Wednesday or Tuesday Thursday. It's
not enough development, and you don't develop playing in the games.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
So looking at this this culture, do you anticipate as
we move forward that or is there fear that really
American basketball players will become they'll be far fewer of
them in the NBA than what we see now, or
would they just be different that.

Speaker 5 (01:10:42):
I think they'll be different. I think because there's going
to always be those. See the NBA only needs that
those They really only need the sixty guys they draft
every year in the two rounds. So you got to
find the sixty best players in the country every year.
That'll be easier to do over here because we have

(01:11:02):
way more people playing basket, so they'll still be But
what you'll what you'll see is what you spoke of earlier,
the influx of the international guys, the skill level, the
attention to detail. When it comes to the you know,
top eight who are playing, it'll be interesting to watch
how that goes. Like those bottom guys who are at

(01:11:23):
the end of the bench, they can fill them up
with American players from college who are will stick around
for a year or two the two way contracts, and
then they'll get they'll get the next group coming in.
They can go in and out. But the guys who
are playing and competing for championships, it'll be really interesting
to see how long American basketball can compete with these

(01:11:43):
European folks who come in. I mean, you know, you
look at Jokic. He is my favorite player to watch
because he does everything with so so much ease against
guys who are supremely more attic than he is. And
it's almost like a joke, but it reminds me of

(01:12:04):
what we used to do at Princeton. We just were
just fundamentally better basketball players. We just didn't have the
athleticism that these other schools had. And at we're getting
to a point where people are figuring out how to
meld the two. And so where do I see this going.
It'll be interesting because just like we used to send

(01:12:25):
coaches over to Europe back of the day, whoever we
sent back in the day to teach them this, it
picked up. I think you're going to see more coaches
from over there come over here and try and retool.
I think the NBA is trying to do that right
now with their academies. They're trying to get more development
at the lower level to teach them at a younger

(01:12:46):
level how important practice is and how important development is.
And now, I mean just fifteen years ago, you didn't
hear people talking about player development the way you hear
them talking about it now. And it's because we're behind
in player development. We've got we can run and jump
and dunk and and and look good on the metrics,

(01:13:06):
but when it comes to playing the game, we're losing
our footing.

Speaker 1 (01:13:10):
I want to ask you before I let you go.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
I got two political questions to astually that this is
a sports and politics podcast, right.

Speaker 5 (01:13:18):
Yeah, yeah, and my first, my first sports and politics.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
They to you know, it's like ham better than jelly,
despite the fact that people try to pretend otherwise.

Speaker 5 (01:13:32):
People try people, they go kicking and screaming in the
opposite direction. Right, They don't don't know politics in my
sports all.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
Over the place, I was like the bonement, you buy
a ticket to it get everywhere it is politics because
that stadium was funded by the taxpayers.

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
More than likely that's where it is. That's Have you
ever considered running for public office?

Speaker 5 (01:13:52):
No? I have not. It's so funny. Our family gets
to ask that question so many times now. My sister
gives and whatever, all the stuff that's going on now,
and it's so funny because we only got into this now. Now,
don't get me wrong. My parents. My dad was a
precinct captain in Chicago, but that's because he worked for

(01:14:13):
the city of Chicago. When you work, are you have
a city job, you're expected to go out and get
people to vote and donate things like that. Never was
a politician, but participated. Made sure we grew up knowing
that we had to vote. We gotta. He would take
us when he went to vote, he'd take us to
the polling place, show us how it was done. And

(01:14:34):
so when when I turned eighteen and I could vote,
it was like a big deal. It was a big
deal in our house, and we all four went and
my dad went in with me and he just he
helped me get through. It was like a big deal.
We went out to dinner afterwards. It was crazy. But
we have I've never ever thought about being a politician,

(01:14:58):
and we never you know, it gets back. I know,
I keep sounding like a broken record, but it gets by.
My mom and dad would always say, when you're a politician,
that's when you have to think about what other people
think of. And they always taught us not to worry
about what other people think of. Now, that might make

(01:15:19):
a good politician, but it would turn you off to
being a politician, and that's where I am. I just
I just think I don't have the temperament for it.
And I know my sister. My sister likes to be
very frank and say what's going on. That doesn't make
a good politician. You have to be able to say,
you have to have be able to have some nuance

(01:15:41):
to it. Now I have more nuance, but it's just
not interesting to me much more. What's more interesting to
me is catching these young folks at a at an
early age and pouring in as much as I can
that I got from Frasier and Marian Robinson, because you know,
those two changed my life. I mean, I would have

(01:16:02):
never thought about going to Princeton. If it was for them,
I would have gone to somewhere it was giving me
a basketball scholarship, right, I would have never been able
to And then Princeton allows you to take all these
crazy jobs that I've taken and be able to turn
myself into what I was able to turn myself into
with the confidence, with the intellectual confidence of being able

(01:16:22):
to compete.

Speaker 4 (01:16:23):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:16:23):
It's just so I'm more focused on sort of the
helping others who might want to do that, but not
for me. Not for me.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Now, the perspective you have, it's because you guys grew
up in the same house. That sounds like something that
might have been a factor and why the former First
Lady won't run And to me, I do I'll just
say quickly, my perspective is like a lot of times
when her name is brought up, despite the fact she
has said numerous times she does not I'm clear, no

(01:16:58):
interest in being there.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
It's a bit like loving the backup quarterback.

Speaker 2 (01:17:04):
Like y'all say this now, but we all know, given
the level of scrutiny, all the things she went through
as the first Lady, you all make it like I
think people have a bit of revisionist history about what
that is actually like in practice.

Speaker 1 (01:17:18):
But that being said, my.

Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
Final political version for where you get out here. Have
you ever tried to convince her to run for president?

Speaker 5 (01:17:26):
No? No, no, And so here's how this goes. This
is how it went in our household. Right, she met
Barack and he just happened to be a politician or
want to be a politican. He wasn't a politician where
we met him, and he but he aspired to be
a politician, and he never made it a secret. And

(01:17:48):
so when he started running and winning, my sister had
a little bit of an attitude, and I was like,
hold up, Now you and I are brother and sister.
You're my closest friend. I'm gonna look out for you.
But I gotta tell you in these relationships, he's been
upfront the whole time. You just didn't think he would
win or be good. And now you can't be pissed

(01:18:10):
at him because he's good at what he does. That
would be like my wife being pissed that I'm a
good coach and she didn't want me to be a coach.
She didn't like coaches, and she thought for a minute,
she's like okay, shit. And then and so then we
get involved in this whole thing. Only because she met him.
He has to talk her into letting him run for president.

(01:18:31):
Run for president. It's like what, you can't say no?
But he was like me with the kids, asking about
going to be a coach, and oh man, he might
it wouldn't have worked. So he you know what he did.
He went, He's like, Craig, can you talk to your mom?
And because he knew my mom, well, he's a politician.

(01:18:54):
He knows how to work the angles. And I was like, oh,
good idea, and so what we we we That's how
my mom ended up going to the White House because
she we said, look, we my sister wanted her daughters
to be raised like she was raised and like I
was raising my kids like my dad and mom raised us.
Low key, focus on academics, hard work, don't worry about

(01:19:17):
what other people are thinking. Not on front street. And
she's going on the front is to front streets, right,
so we we we get we get this all going.
He wins that you got that, you know, two years
of running and then eight years in the White House.
Every time people ask her, she says, no, I know,

(01:19:38):
I get it. It's a it's a hard note. I
would bet every every cent I have on the fact
that she wouldn't run. And I just went all the
bets I went on. Because everybody thinks they're gonna talk
her into running. It ain't gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
It is not anybody ever come close to do.

Speaker 5 (01:19:59):
But I mean, you read my sister's book, you probably
know my whole family. Even I can't talk her in
the stuff, I can talk her. I can give her
some counsel. But if she doesn't want to do something,
she ain't doing it. And I don't blame her, I
don't blame you. She's been like that since she was
four years old. She the toughest personality in our family.

(01:20:21):
And you when you give her two things to choose from,
you better want both of them to happen, because she
liable to choose the one you don't want. So it's
nowhere near close and it's it's And I applaud her
for that because I think she can get more done
outside of the White House. She's got such a platform

(01:20:42):
and people really listen to her. And like you said, Jamelle,
you being a black woman and being in the media,
you saw all the stuff all it was such mean stuff.
And you know what, what's so funny is people are like, hey, Craig,
how do you put up with all this stuff they're saying?
And I'm like, I go back once again, it doesn't matter.

(01:21:04):
They don't know her. It doesn't bother me. It's like
when people said bad things about me as a coach.
You know who you are, we know who we are.
I'm not worried about that. But it's a lot, and
it's a lot when you have little children too, that
you have to sort of bring up this way. And
I just think she's done such a great job at it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:24):
And you know, yeah, I wouldn't sign up for that again.

Speaker 5 (01:21:29):
Oh so last thing. See, I know you're a movie buff, right,
I know, and I love that and I'm a big
wire fan. But you know your movies Gladiator? Did you
see Gladiator?

Speaker 1 (01:21:41):
Of course A thousand times?

Speaker 5 (01:21:42):
Of course you love and Gladiator is one of those
movies when it's on, you turn it, you'll catch any
part of right and then you watched it to the end. Well,
then you remember the part when Caesar goes to Russell Krutch,
to Maximum Suppers, to Maximus and he wants them to
be Caesar, right, and Maximus says, I can't be Caesar,

(01:22:07):
and Caesar says, that's why you have to be season now. See,
but my sister doesn't watch Gladiators. No, she ain't. She
ain't Caesar.

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
But you know we see this often though, is that
the people who should one are the ones who are
never interested in right.

Speaker 5 (01:22:27):
And see, see you can't be too thirsty for that position?
Are you too thirsty for it? It ain't for you?
And and see all these people who want it, they're
just a little too thirsty in my opinion. So I'll
leave it with that. I'll leave you with that.

Speaker 2 (01:22:41):
Well, Greg, I just want to thank you for taking
some time out to talk a little hoops and especially Uh,
you know, with everything you have going on, I really
appreciate your time. And can't you know everybody tell everybody
how they can check out ways to win?

Speaker 5 (01:22:56):
You can, you can catch Ways to Win on any
way you get your podcast. We are here for the
long term. Coach Cal is gonna be with us UH
and now in his new position at Arkansas, he's having
a blast doing this. And again, Ways to Win is
a podcast that shares the lessons that we have all

(01:23:18):
learned in the sports arena and how you can apply
them in the regular world even if you are not
a sports fan. And it's some really good stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:23:29):
I love the show description, which is on court wisdom
to solve your off court problems. Yeah all right, with
people start asking you off for dating advice, I'm just saying,
you know.

Speaker 5 (01:23:42):
And we have some tips to that too, because I
always told my players I always do want to play.
Nothing good happens after midnight, and even if it's good.
Even if it's good, it's gonna turn out to be bad.
So we're ready for the date advice.

Speaker 2 (01:23:58):
All right, that's a tough sale, eighteen or twenty two
year old crowdfit, but God bless you pretty sure, Ryan?

Speaker 1 (01:24:04):
All right, everybody, Creig is getting out of here. We
got more to come.

Speaker 2 (01:24:07):
We'll go to take another break and we'll be right back,
all right, before I close out another episode of Politics.
Time now for this week's viewer slash listener question, which
comes from a Lot of Day bar hope, I set
that right, all right, Oh, a Lot of Day says, hello, Jamal,

(01:24:29):
and congrats on your new and much needed podcast outlet.
My question is what has happened to the black athlete
who stood for social causes like our elders did back
in the day. Colin Kaepernick made his position known, and
he was black balled because of it, but he heroically
made his stance known nonetheless. So I think here's what
we have to accept is that what athlete activism looks

(01:24:51):
like now is very different than what it used to
look like. Because, of course, you're alluding to maybe Jim
Brown and Muhammad Ali and Wilma Rudolph and Althea.

Speaker 1 (01:25:00):
Gibson and Arthur Ash.

Speaker 2 (01:25:02):
I think the money has certainly changed and influenced whether
athletes feel comfortable and empowered enough to say certain things
in these spaces. But I think twenty twenty was a
real turning point. And I think even what happened to
Colin Kaepernick was a real turning point because a lot
of athletes saw what happened to him, and on some
end you could argue that it was maybe discouraging for

(01:25:24):
the athletes who maybe wanted to speak up, but they
saw how it cost him his career and they decided
against it. But I think it was more people encouraged
by it than discouraged by it. And of course I
think in twenty twenty that level of athlete activism was incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
It was really at its height.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
I think COVID had a lot to do with it
because you had the NBA and the WNBA both in bubbles,
and that is rare because rarely do leagues that size
you get all the players in one area, and so
they were able to kind of mobilize in a different way.
You saw there was a game stoppage or refusal to
play after what happened to Jacob Blake. Now it's a

(01:26:06):
question of what will athlete activism look like in this
stage of America because now we have a polarizing president
who will be returning to office. A lot of black
athletes made him know how they feel about him before
during the first presidency, and so you wonder if there
will be that same energy there to keep fighting. I
wish it weren't so reactive because a lot of times

(01:26:29):
we see athletes who are often responding to things that
have happened on a wider scale, responding to something like
Trayvon Martin or you know what happened to Sondra Bland
or any number of cases from George Floyd to Eric Garner,
like they're always responding, and so I would like to
see more proactive behavior from athletes, But you know, we

(01:26:51):
have to be fair about it.

Speaker 1 (01:26:53):
Just because they have.

Speaker 2 (01:26:53):
Platforms doesn't mean they're able or willing to be the
voice for these issues.

Speaker 1 (01:26:59):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:26:59):
I think there's a reason why there's only certain athletes
who can speak to sort of these larger social justice
issues that are happening, because I don't think, you know,
everybody is equipped to do that, and so I think
what has to happen. When there is an athlete who
does believe and supports a cause and it's vocal about
that cause, it's important that you show that support because

(01:27:20):
understand that other athletes are watching too, and if they
sense that it is polarizing or creates backlash, I think
it just discourages them from having and finding their voice.
So I still think that's there, that voice you speak of.
I just think it's very different now because so much
about sports has kind of changed overall. So I try

(01:27:44):
not to be too tough on athletes, but I do
recognize that, you know, they could do certainly a lot
of good with their platforms, especially speaking out about things.
You know that most vulnerable people don't get an opportunity
to have that big of a megaphone. So thank you
for your question, and hope I gave you somewhat of

(01:28:05):
a coherent answer. Now, if you would like to ask
me a question, you can email me your question or
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Send your questions to spolitics twenty twenty four at gmail
dot com. That's Politics twenty twenty four at gmail dot com.
That's s po l t i CS. Also make sure

(01:28:27):
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Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
A new episode of Spolitics drops every Thursday.

Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
It's available wherever you get your podcasts, and also on iHeart.
This is Politics where sports and politics don't just mix,
they matter. Spolitics is the production of iHeart Podcast and
The Unbothered Network. I'm your host Jamel Hill. Executive producer
is Taylor Schakog. Lucas Hymen is Head of Audio and
executive producer. Megan Armstrong is associate producer. Original music for

(01:29:00):
Politics provided by Kyle Viz from wiz FX