The Price of Risk is Lower Than You Think - [Glue Guys, EP.35]

Early in my career, I'd spend hours alone in the film room thinking I was being productive. But the truth was I had no idea what I was doing. I was just going through the motions. That's what finance leaders tell me. They're frustrated because they waste hours manually tracking expenses and reconciling statements when they should be focusing on driving their business forward. Be honest with me, how much of your time is spent on high value work? For many finance teams it's less than 20%. But you can change that right now with Ramp. Ramp is a free corporate card that handles all the tedious financial operations automatically so your finance team can focus on what actually moves the needle. One CFO told me they cut their month end close from five days to one. It's no surprise over 25,000 businesses trust ramp, including Shopify, CBRE and Boys and Girls Club of America. Don't waste any more time going through the motions. Check out ramp@ramp.com GG and for glue guys listeners, Ramp is offering metal cards for the next 30 days. Just go to ramp.com GG cards issued by Sutton bank member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply.

The draft is about hope. I think people overestimate the risk of like doing something bold.

So you're saying be bold but not too bold.

No, no, no, no, no. What I'm saying, what I'm saying, good point. I think I'm saying, Shane.

This draft in particular, it's interesting to me because it's 20 years ago. I was drafted in 05. Here we are, 2005. I'm 40 years old. It was half a lifetime ago, literally half a lifetime ago that I was drafted. And so every time this, every time of year this comes around, it obviously brings up a ton of memories. All the hoopla and prognosticators and you know, the up and down and oh, you know, obviously this year, Shador, where's he going to go? Is he, you know, some people very high on him, other people have him falling. You know, it played out my year obviously with Aaron and so I, I just find it fascinating. It brings up a ton of injury, a ton of memories obviously for me. But I do find the crux of the quarterback fascinating in the sense that I just said it. Teams overreach for QBs every single year in the draft. Every single year. Right. They're overvalued and therefore historically have the lowest hit rate. I think I've said this before. It's, it's historical data. The lowest hit rate of any position of a first round Picks quarterbacks by far. However, it's clearly the most important position in football.

Yep.

And you don't get a quarterback by accident. Right. It doesn't just magically fall in your lap. You do have to do something aggressive and risky to find one. Right. You have to go trade up in the draft and sacrifice draft capital to get a guy. You have to go make a, a bold trade with a team you can't.

Play, not to lose on it. You have to, you have to go do something.

And however, though it's like funny that as a GM or an owner, like these are the very things though that very likely might get you fired, right?

Yes.

But you have to get one.

Right.

And all the teams at the bottom end are searching for one and trying to figure this out.

Shane, like, do you think that that is, could you do something similar in basketball and would it work?

It's a little bit different than the NFL because in the NFL you know, every person that is in the top five rounds is fast, strong, quick, you know, all the above. Right. And in the NFL I would argue that the differentiators is the processing speed and the intelligence. Right now in basketball there's a pretty line, a pretty, a pretty linear line of like what we'd call talent in terms of like athleticism, length, kind of, kind of, kind of raw skills. And so those guys tend to get valued more. And so I rarely hear people saying we need a point guard, we're going to draft a point guard. It's usually usually the best player and usually the best person that has the best, the, the most physical attributes that go the highest.

So maybe asked another way I feel like, and I know, I understand your point, it's like a different question because it's, people have sort of accepted this positionless idea more so which that makes sense to me and obviously you can't do that in football, but I guess still same question, which is I was struck when Alex said you got to draft the can't miss guys early. And what my brain goes to is like how confident are you that they are can't miss? And my impression is that in basketball you can't be as confident in somebody being can't miss as like, you know, being predictive because they're so young and so many people have like the length and the athleticism and whatever. And so it's sort of like how can you, how can you say that.

There'S no such a thing as a, as a can't miss 18 year old. Yeah, it's not named Lebron James.

Yeah, right.

I mean LeBron was, you know, he was a can't miss guy. Everybody else, there's always a question. Yeah, give me any name. All right. And there's always a question mark maybe. And it depends on where you fit. So it is much more. That's the crapshoot in basketball. That's, that's why you're drafting length, athleticism and, and raw skills. And you hope that the, the, the mental sort of follows and the guy has the, the heart to, to take it to the next level. Like you can't get to that level unless you have just unbelievable physical skills and like raw, like raw material I guess you could say. Raw, raw talent to run, jump and, and dribble the basketball at the same time.

I think the position list thing.

Yeah.

In basketball lends itself to just to your point, Shane, just take the best player. And the measurables. I think in basketball do have a larger impact. Like there is a floor you have to meet for most players of length and agility and athleticism. The other thing that's weird about basketball that I think is like how many rookies actually play, you know, that make a roster and play. It's. The turnover is not as high as my, at least from my view. The churn in the NFL is enormous. Yeah, I mean the number of rookies that make rosters and play in the NFL is huge. And so these are, you know, again they're cheap contracts so they're, it makes the cap flow. And again it's, there's huge rosters. There's 53 guys on an active roster, obviously a lot more when you count practice squad, but the churn's greater. And then obviously you do have very specific positions. You know, rarely you see guys do, do change, but for the most part it's whatever position you're in, you're in like there will be GMs that just reach, they reach every year. And the quarterback's the biggest like culprit of this.

Yeah, right.

Because I mean it's, it's obviously the most desired position in every year. Players get overdrafted every single year.

But dude, it's so interesting you say that because I obviously I agree with you. I was just thinking though, like if you go back, you know, like to just take the basketball point. Like the guy who I think most people say is the best player in the league is Nikola Jokic.

Right.

And like he was what, a deep second round pick if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, he's not like he's not the same level of athletic that all these other guys are. Right. But he's a fucking savant. Like he's, he's just amazing. And so one, it's just like interesting that the current best player in the league is some guy that like doesn't meet really any of the specs, you know, and was drafted super deep. So it just definitely tells you that it's like not that much of a science. And the second thing to your exact point, Alex, on like people reaching, like the team that has the best record in the league by far has this dude Shay who like was traded. They remember they like traded Paul George and they got Shay and like a whole shitload of picks.

It was kind of throw in. Yeah.

And like they're the best team in the league and, or at least best record in the league. And they also have the craziest future. Like I'll tell you, like this guy, Sam Presti, it's insane. Like they have a team that won 68 games and they have like 35 picks in the next 10 years.

That, that, I think that is one of the only ways to accumulate talent in Oklahoma City, right? Like if you're a small market team in basketball, you're, you have a serious disadvantage.

It's luck, all right? It's luck. It, it. The, the balance of the ping pong ball, all right, the, the evaluation of, of the player, you know, that maybe SW flipped and swayed by, by one scout. Ready, right? And, and like I remember on, on draft day we drafted Bam Ebadayo and the Miami Heat. You know, he was a lottery pick and obviously, you know, he's been all pro player, an Olympic player and an unbelievable player. But I'm not gonna say the guy who, who was, who was being considered next to him, the guy's out of the league, right? And there was like serious conversation about do we take this guy and go a little more offense or do we take this guy, go a little bit more defense? And like now you're like, it's laughable. So like, like that's what the average fan doesn't realize. There's so much randomness and so much luck in the front office. And like there are good scouts because they put the work in and they're thoughtful and they are always updating their priors like any good super forecaster would. But I think that's much rarer than the average fan would ever believe.

Shane, don't you? But like, I, I feel like you're literally making our point, right? Like if it is just Dumb luck. More swings is better, right? So like, accumulate picks, take more swings. This is the Bill Belichick model forever. He traded down accumulate picks in the middle of the round, right? Play the compensatory pick game and it's just more swings. And I, I'll take, I mean, he was infamous. There were some years he would take like four or five DBs, and you're like, well, why? You don't even have that many open roster spots. He's like, well, you know, like one of them, one of them's got a hit, you know, like. And so like, again, if you're Oklahoma City and you're never, not never, you're not going to rarely gonna attract a blue chip free agent, right? Like, you have to do it a different way.

Well, Robbie, you know, you're, you're in the business of drafting, okay, how's this any different than, than your day to day, okay? You, you have a high draft pick, all right? You don't have infinite draft picks. You have a certain number of draft picks with institutional money that you better hit on, right? And, and so, you know, you don't have infinite cracks. You can't just, you know, you could, you probably will have a job much longer if you, if you greenlight every, every founder that you talk to. So how do you think about that? How do you think about talent accumulation? How do you think about scouting for founders when you have limited resources for draft pick?

Yeah, I mean, it's often, I think, people that pay any attention to venture capital, it's like people realize, I'm going to define it anyway, that it's a power law business. And so mathematically the way this works is if, typically in a fund, let's say you have a fund that you will make 40 investments in over a two, two and a half year period. Typically, the way the math works in a successful fund is that one investment is worth more than the remaining 39 combined at the end of it, right? So you have. And then the second one is worth more than the remaining 38. And so think about just how extreme that is of like, what that means, you know, and so constantly the thing that you're trying to look at is like, could this be something that like, colloquially doesn't return the fund? If you invest $30 million, could you make 50 times your money and return a $1.5 billion fund on it? And so, Shane, to your point, one thing that prevents you from just like taking a ton of swings, if we invested in 150 companies rather than 40 and made 10 million a piece, all of a sudden, the return you need on one is just too high to, like, make up for all the other mistakes. Right. And if you make the funds bigger, which a lot of times people do, the real problem that happens then is that you lower the bar for inclusion, you know, and you're no longer going after the great things. So, anyway, to your point, what do any of us look for? The. The big thing you're looking for is spikiness rather than, like, excellence across the board. It needs something special and unique. It can't just be better. It has to be different. Do you see what I'm saying? And so a lot of what you're looking for is it's not. Are there good metrics across the board? Is there one that makes you, like, not be able to sleep afterwards? And that could be something in the person, it could be something in the data, it could be something in a reference. But I give you. I'll give you a couple of examples that come to mind. Okay, so one, you know, when I went to work at Instacart, this is obviously not a venture capital investment, but in many ways it's even more extreme version because it's, like, not a portfolio stuff. Just one thing. There was two things that, like, really made me want to go beyond, like, liking the company. One was the founder told me that there was people ordering Instacart 15 times a month. And I remember hearing, like, what? Like, 15 times a month? And I couldn't believe he said that, like, how often do you go to the grocery store? Once a week.

Yeah.

Great. So, like, the average thing for using a grocery store is like, four times a month. This guy is saying people use his product 15 times a month. That is something that, like, doesn't. It's not just a number anymore. There's like a stat that's like, wait, the whole behavior is changing. Everybody is doing something super different than what I've ever heard of before. I could. I never imagined somebody going to a grocery store 15 times a month. I couldn't picture that. And the second thing was when I asked Avni what she thought, she said, I love it, and if you wanted to move, I wouldn't move unless Instacart delivered to the new house. And you think about somebody telling you that they wouldn't fucking move unless this product existed there. And I was like, whoa. So my point on that is, like, even though the numbers and I should have done more diligence and all that stuff, even though the numbers at the time weren't that good in many ways. There was two like, holy shit. Stats that made me like, you know, think about it. And so you. Usually what you're looking for is something that like blows your hair back. And I don't know what the equivalent is in football or basketball or sports in general, but for us that is a huge element is like some signal of specialness. And the big risk factor is that you just kind of get vanilla things across the board rather than one thing that's just a complete outlier.

In football, it seems like the week of the NFL draft, there's a mix of spiky and safe.

Yep.

Right.

Yep, totally.

You know, like, you know, when they talk about the, you know, the offensive guard who's, you know, as his, his arms are a little reach a little too, a little too short, but like he's going to be a great guard. Right. And so, and that's okay. You're not getting fired. You're not getting fired for taking a guy who's going to play 10 years in the NFL.

Right.

Well, like let's, let's take Jalen Carter, for example. Right. Like, widely regarded as the best talent that year. Not, not even close. And, and, and Ravi, he was a guy that, that I think you, you know, not universally, but everybody regard this guy's like, this guy is an all pro player, potential hall of Famer.

Okay.

And obviously, you know, this time in this case, spiky because of some off the field stuff.

Sure.

That happened in, in college. And so he falls to the eighth pick. Right. And again, the crazy thing is Howie Roseman, who, you know, again, these teams all have to do their due diligence. Right. And, and in different ways.

Right.

This time it's a character kind of more so evaluation. And this is a, this is a team that strength of the Eagles at that time is already defensive line. I mean, it's Fletcher Cox, Patrick Graham, Brandon Graham. Excuse me. You know, they had a boatload of guys. They taken Jordan Davis with the first round pick the year before.

Yeah.

And like you're going to do it again. I mean, you're going to like, you know, and it's to the whole point of like just taking the talent. Right.

Like.

And it. And at this point, you know, so they take him with the eighth pick, which seems crazy now in hindsight that he fell that far and they're super bowl champs and he's probably the best lineman on the field ord. Lineman in the Super Bowl. Right. As a, you know, second, third year player. It's crazy. Patrick Mahomes. I know now that like everybody's on the bandwagon of like, oh, we all knew he was going to be great when, when the Chiefs traded up to get him, there were so many people that crushed them the next day that this guy, his footwork, his style of play, he's a loose cannon. He's got no fundamentals. He'll never make it in the NFL. Never. Like, and when you think about the way Patrick plays, to your point, Ravi, it is spiky. Like it looks different. Like he plays the position, he throws differently. His footwork's all over the place. I mean, watch him roll left and throw a ball back across the field. Like nobody can do that. Like that. And again, like, that was not a, that was not a popular thing when the Chiefs traded up to get him.

Yeah, but like, great decisions, generally speaking, amazing life altering investments in technology are not made by committee. Somebody has to see something great. And in one respect, it's much easier, guys, because we're not, it's not, they're not entering a team. Do you see what I'm saying? Like, you think about what you guys are saying. Some of these other things, like you're like kind of trying to concoct a team and one person is fitting into it. What we're trying to do is like, yes, this person has to build something around them, but our portfolio doesn't have to work together. Do you see what I'm saying? Our 40 investments in the fund have, they don't have anything to do with each other in that respect. And so I think that's a little bit easier where it's like each time you can try to hit a home run each time. And Shane, I want to hear what you have to say. But one thing that's really funny is sometimes founders, understandably, if they have good numbers in their business and you choose not to invest or choose not to pursue it, they'll be like, why? What, what would I have to have in order for you to invest? It's such a reasonable question. Like if, if I'm growing at 3x year over year, what if I was growing at 5x? And it's such a dissatisfying answer. But a lot of times your answer is like, I, I can't give you a checklist. I, I only make one or two investments a year and I sort of have to like decide that this is one of the one or two investments I want to make. And I, I kind of need to like fall in love I, I, I.

Don'T know how you like Barbara, you hit them with it's not you, it's me. No, but the thing, it's not you, it's me.

I know. The thing about it is so crazy in this case, it's actually true. Like, it's like I've been dating of these since I was 19. I've never broken up with anybody. I don't know how this works. I'm just saying that like, but I actually think in this case it's like I can't give you a checklist. I just, I just don't feel it, you know? And like, I think it's true.

If you're picking outside of the to how many like surefire bets are there in the NFL draft? Like typically maybe 15ish plus or minus, like give or take maybe, maybe. Right. Like in a given year. So, and, and the problem in the NFL obviously is like the better teams, the better you do. You're picking now you're picking, you know, 28, 29, 30, 31. And so trying to be productive. Either have to trade up into those first 15 picks or hope that some of them fall, right. Which does happen sometimes. Or you got to take again like the spiky, the spiky outlier. And again, like, I just think back to like in Casey, we were, you know, we had a good run and so picking late a lot. And so obviously I mentioned the one time we did, you know, you chose to make a move and get one of those guys with Patrick. But like I remember like drafting Marcus Peters, right? We like took him the 20, some pick. And it was again like he had spiky character off the field stuff. I'll never forget like getting him into training camp. And again, I would like, I don't know what year I was in at that point. 11, 12, like, and we get this rookie into camp right late first round pick. Like, this guy was like immediately, immediately different. I'm like, this guy is a freak. Like a baller. And again, talking to our, the whole, the whole crew. Chris Ballard did a bunch of due diligence. He was kind of our number two GM at that point on all the character stuff. And they're like, no, this guy's misunderstood. This guy is like a, this guy's a great teammate, you know, an awesome football player and has been misunderstood. And they, you know, he falls to us in the some 20, whatever number pick and turns into again like an all pro player. And I think those are things like given where you're, you Know your position, especially in sports, like, you have to take some of those risks. And to your point, Ravi, like, it was one or two guys that held a belief. And in that case, like, I.

That's a huge thing.

Distinctly remember Chris Ballard was the guy. Like, yeah, this guy. We can trust this guy. He had done.

Somebody has to be willing to do that. That I. I feel very strongly about. You are not going to win a championship without getting a quarterback that can help you win. It doesn't have to be.

That meets a certain threshold.

Right. There's some standard. Okay, cool. And therefore, you need to go get that quarterback either through the draft or through free agency or something. You got. You're just being bolt and it might get you fired by doing the bold thing. I think the thing that I get to. Which is why I find people that don't like that to be frustrating. I'm kind of like, dude, there's. How many NFL teams are there?

32.

There's 32 NFL teams. There's 32 jobs in the world, right, that are GMs. Okay, 32. They're not like 10,000. And you have one of them. And so the idea that you then, like, get in one of those and you're trying to, like, protect it or whatever, I'm going to, like, no, like, you already are elite. And now, like, the fact that you go there and you're trying to, like, not swing the bat, you play not to lose is so frustrating. And this is actually very akin to, like, companies. It's super akin to companies. Which is the most maddening thing in the world, is when someone gets one of these amazing seats to run one of these amazing companies, and then they just, like, sit there and they, like, game. Manage it, right? And it's like, no, go play, throw. Like, who cares if you get fired? This is the whole reason you, like, worked all this time. It's to, like, get this seat, you know, and, like, go do something and, like, be bold and try things. And like, I. I'm telling you, that guy in Hard Knocks, I forget the name of the Giants gm.

Shown. Joe Shown.

Joe Shown. His son is like, dad, you gotta trade up to get Jaden Daniels. You know, like, you remember that? That's what he says to him.

Yeah.

And his dad effectively kind of, like, laughs it off. But I'm like, he was totally right. And I. To whatever extent, he didn't do that because it was, like, risky or painful or job risking. This is something Peter Thiel says all the time, and it's crazy. He's like, the riskiest thing to do if you're a leader is not take the risk because you are assured to fail and ultimately get bounced if you don't go do it. And this is the thing that I think is so crazy. Like, this is the time. Go be bold.

The crazy that. That is so rare though, to find owners, GMs, and, and, and certainly crusty old football coaches telling players to be bold.

Yeah.

You know, and like, it just, it just is the opposite. Right. Like everything's the other way, but I.

Think it's time horizon again, you know, like, you can not be bold for a couple years and be fine, but if you want to create anything of value over like a 10 year period, you have to do it. You gotta do it.

I agree. That sounds great, Ravi. It sounds great. Until all of a sudden when you get there and you're trying to hold on, you're trying to. You know, human beings, their first instinct is safety and stasis. All right? We are a people that are ruled by. By risk aversion. Not risk, not thrill seeking.

Yeah. Have you ever seen the American President? You know that movie, Alex? Have you seen it? Michael Douglas, when he's giving the speech at the end, he says this thing that's like, amazing. He's like, I was so busy trying to keep my job that I forgot to do my job. And it's like, that is what is happening right now, you know, like, you gotta, like, try. You gotta do things.

You just summed up like my first five years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Trying to hold on and not it up. Dude.

So much of what literally you guys asked me this one time, like, do hen when you were at kkr, did Henry and George ever like, come and like, you know, like, fire up the troops? And I was like, so much of what they would do is just like, stop being so scared. Like, go do stuff. Like, just try it. Like, they, to their extreme credit, actually were guys that were always like, go be bold. You know, go try things. Like Doug Leone at Sequoia, he would tell people all the time, he's like, you're never going to get anywhere if you don't stick your neck out. Like, you actually have to try something if you want something good to happen. And the only thing that I will allow is a counter to this. Okay. Because I know Shane, I'm like, passionate. There was this guy who's the biggest moneymaker on Polymarket. You know what Poly Market is? The prediction markets.

Yeah.

So he's like this huge moneymaker on Polymarket. Okay.

What's Poly Market?

Polymarket, it's like a real life casino.

Yeah. So like you can say what the most obvious example like who's going to be the president? Who's going to be the president? 20, 24. And it's like a real moment by moment way to bet on the odds of each thing. And you can monetize it because like let's say there's a 48% chance of one candidate, then it goes to 72. You can monetize that. Right. But if you basically think you know something about what's going to happen in the world, you can express that.

All right.

So the one thing that he said that's fascinating is he's like, it's actually not very hard to like make some money in Poly Market. He's like you can like make good bets that where you have edge. He's like the hard part is not losing a lot of money and he's basically like what ends up happening. I see you nodding Shane, because you're definitely going to agree with this. He's like what actually happens is that people, experts tend to lose the most money in the domain that they think they're experts in because they overestimate their knowledge of that thing. Like they are an expert. They do know some but they think they know more than they do on a relative basis. And so the one counter to like go be bold, go be bold, go be bold is that we sometimes overestimate how much we actually know. You know, and you can imagine making like a bad bet because you think you, you think you're 80% sure of something you're only 60% sure of. Shane, what do you think when you were being drafted, what do you think your chances, what do you think the percentage chance would have been of you being a 13 year NBA player? Basically have the career you had the career you had or better. What is the likelihood at moment of drafting of that happening?

I would have had a probably a 40% confidence level.

Okay. And do you think that would have been like agreed upon by the majority of general managers in the league?

I think that would have been high.

Yeah. And you, what do you think they would have said at the moment, at time of picking they would have put 20.

Okay, 15 to 20 that I have 13 number again.

Were you six?

I was six pick.

I wonder how many six overall picks have 13 plus year career.

It's actually like the worst number in the lottery. Lottery. If you look at the it is. If you look at the it's it's a pick of horrors. If you go on, go on a basketball reference, look up all the, the sixth pick in the draft. It's like the one like always fits.

So crazy. Alex, what do you think the chances you would have put. Same question to you. You're getting drafted 16 year NFL career, multiple Pro Bowls. Forget the injuries for a second. But just like your level of success, what are the chances you would have put on that at time of being drafted?

I, I would have been so ignorant or naive if you'd asked me at.

That time like, yeah, it's an unfair question.

Playing 10 or 15 years seems, seemed insanely long at that point. I, I think the, the thing that I, it's similar along the same lines. Like if you're with, if you have the number one overall pick, like you expect that to be a franchise changing pick, right? Like, or, or a caliber of a player to have a career pretty special. I, I, I personally like did I live up to being the number one pick? I played 16 years. I played for three different franchises. I did take all of them to a division championship. I never, I went to a Super bowl as a backup. I've gone to championship games. Like I've never, I don't know if I lived up. And part of the this for me is like obviously the next quarterback taken is a Hall of Famer, right? Like that one MVPs and a super Bowl. So I will always be competing compared to Aaron. But I don't know, like apples to apples, if you put up all the number one picks, like what? I don't know if I do I get a thumbs up or a thumbs down. You're not the worst, Alex.

You're not the worst. You're my boy.

Yeah, thanks. I'm not the worst.

Give yourself some credit.

You had a hell of a. Yeah, yeah. My guess, my guess Alex, is that you are dramatically overestimating the production on average of a number one, number two or number three pick in the NFL. Like I spoke one time to a former NBA GM who told me that the likelihood of a top three pick turning into a perennial all star top three pick, which is like sort of all this stuff, he's like, it's like sub 5%. Like the percentages on all this stuff is so low. Which goes back to like why that people need to stockpile. So my guess is that even in the most stringent group that you could come up with number one picks, I would bet you that you are well above the expected value for that simply because you went to multiple Pro Bowls and played for 16 years. And my. I think the reason I think this is important is I kind of think it goes back to the, like, be bold argument, because if you assume that the chances of somebody being productive are lower than we might expect, you know what I'm saying? Like, even the sure thing is not a sure thing. The. The price of risk is lower than people think.

Yep.

I think that is actually like a huge takeaway for me, like, in my life that I think about all the time, which is basically other than a mistake of integrity. In business, you can basically bounce back from anything. Like, other. If you make a mistake of integrity, you have a big problem. You know, like you, you can, you can never, you can never shake it. But any other mistake, you can basically bounce back from. And so generally speaking, what the people that, like, create real things tell you is they sort of like, people overestimate the cost of failure or risk. And I suspect that's true in the, in sports too. For, like, these GMs. Did Jerry west know that Kobe was going to be Kobe? Like, you can't know. But did he have a sense that he had a chance enough to be great that he was willing to trade away his starting center for him? Like, yeah. And so I wonder if we almost give too much credit to the people that are, like, I knew this was going to happen versus people that are just, like, there is some chance of it happening and therefore I'm going to, like, behave accordingly.

We're probably overvaluing the risk.

Yes. Yes.

And on the spikiness, their upside is higher.

Yes.

If it does work.

Yes.

You know, whereas if you're taking the safe bet.

Yes.

Who may have a higher floor. They have a higher floor, but a lower ceiling, you know?

Well, the one place. And this is what. Okay, so Shane, you mentioned this earlier. The pain that a fan base takes for multiple years of being bad. Okay, multiple years. How do you compare that to the pain that a fan base takes for twice as long of being mediocre? You see what I'm saying? Like, let's say you're not like the bottom. Bottom, bottom, but you are. But you are sometimes making the playoffs and you make it as the eighth season seed. And do you see what I'm saying? Because I can tell you for me, like, as a Bulls fan. Yeah. God, I wish that we were not 42 and 40 every year. I would much rather us just like, bottom out for multiple years to see if we can actually do something.

Yeah.

But this, like, purgatory of where we are, where we don't even have a chance to get better. But you know what I'm saying, we're not going to get the best free agents and we don't have a top draft pick and we keep on, you know, like maybe making the playoffs. Like, it's like, you know, it's just like you're not going anywhere.

It's hope. I mean, that's, that's the difference. You're able to, you're, you're able to sell hope when you're, you're aimlessly tanking, you know.

Exactly, exactly.

You know, there's always. It might be our year, it might be our envelope at the top of the, the draft board, but that's what.

I think the draft is about. The draft is about hope. Right? The draft is about hope. And I think if I think people overestimate the risk of like doing something bold, you know what I'm saying? Okay, just to argue against myself for a second, the one thing that you could say is that the Clippers, by trading for Paul George and giving away all those picks and giving away Shay, that was bold. And that was a big, big, big, big, big multi year franchise mistake probably.

You know, I think to your point though, you, you make the argument this is all the big trades in football. It's the RG3 trade, it's the Herschel Walker trade. Yeah, you're, you're giving up so much for this one player and you're sacrificing so many future swings. Right? Like, that's the limit and that's what the Clippers did, right? Like all these future first round picks that are gone, that they've mortgaged, like, those were all swings. And I think, like, to your point, it's actually like a numbers game.

The risk of giving away a lot of your swings in a game that you don't have as much certainty in is really high. It's like the value of future picks is actually pretty like underestimated.

Underestimated.

Right.

And you've, you think you're an expert.

And you think you're an expert back.

To your value of this market.

So you're saying be bold but not too bold.

No, no, no, no, no. What I'm saying, what I'm saying, Good point. I think I'm saying, Shane, be. You got to be bold in the draft, right? I think you, I'm saying you got to be bold in the draft. And I think that on free agents you should be bold as long as you're not giving up tons of future picks, right?

Sure. It's all random. That's all random. It's all random.

I think it was bowled by the Thunder.

It's all random.

I, I think he, I think Presti on the Thunder for that shape pick. I kind of think what he did a good job of was figuring out that the real thing he needed was lots of picks, you know, and that Paul George wasn't one of the five guys in the NBA that can take you to a title.

And so he's, he's evaluated talent, I think so better and like understands that somebody was overvaluing that.

I think so.

And overpaid for it. Like so that like I, I think.

Inherently new owner needs to win. He's going to overvalue this guy.

He knew the market better and had a bet. You know.

Shane, can I tell you, and a.

Healthy Kawhi Leonard had nothing to do with the trade being a bust.

Okay, well here's the question.

Exactly.

It's all contextual.

I got it. Here's a question for you. Okay. The Brooklyn. I know you don't want to do this. Yes. Okay. Yes. But if you were a GM of an NBA team for 10 years. Yep. Okay. 10 years. And you're, you, you are doing all the analysis. You are, you are unemotional about the decisions. Yep. Okay. I know you said it's all random, but do you think you would do a good job with enough duration knowing everything you know about the league? Right. And I understand that there is some risk that you might not just because of stuff that's totally out of your control. Yep. But like do you think overall that you'd be better than the average GM over a 10 year period just based on the fact that you're like disciplined and analytical about it?

I would be capable and the basketball gods would, would let me know if I was history would remember me as a winner or a loser. That's the best we can hope for. I think I'm smart enough to know that I don't know it all. And I think I was smart enough to know that if I ever did that I, I would need people that are much smarter than me and I would know when to listen to them, when not to, and that would be my strength. And if you get a few bounces and some, some good health, you know, that's the best you can hope for in this, in this crazy sports world.

Dude. The crazy thing is, dude, is that you could just take everything you said and apply it to life. Right. And apply it to like, you know, much bigger than sports. And it would totally work. Like your Zen attitude on that of like, I'm just going to do what I can do. I want to be do what's in my control. And there's be a bunch of luck that's going to determine some of these other things. It's not just specific to like being a GM in basketball, you know, and.

If they fired me, I just go back to glue guys, so win, win, win, win, you know.