Episode 2: How Beautiful the World Could Be

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]you know, I just want to [ __ ] up healthcare. Nobody looks at their healthare and says, you know, the economic side, oh, it's great, it's cheap, it's easy, I trust it. Everybody says the exact opposite.

[00:00:09]>> Yeah. Unfortunately, I think healthcare has become kind of a punching bag even in politics. Uh, if you look at the whole industry, there's so much ingenuity, innovation, question about AI. You know, I've been reading all these doomsday reports about it's going to cost people millions of jobs, lead to an unemployment crisis. What are your thoughts on those kind of doomsday scenarios?

[00:00:31]>> LeBron makes everybody in the team better. Michael Jordan will take the game-winning shot every single time.

[00:00:37]Right now, Coupe makes everybody better and he's incredible and he's much like LeBron.

[00:00:43]>> You mentioned Jordan LeBron. Where you at on the GOAT debate? Who Who's the GOAT to you?

[00:01:16]Welcome to the good investor podcast. My name is Robin John and I am here with Chris Brousard. And >> how are you?

[00:01:23]>> Hey, good. Chris, how you doing?

[00:01:24]>> I'm great. It's good to be here. I'm excited about this uh episode.

[00:01:28]>> I am too. We're going to have a wonderful guest on with us.

[00:01:30]>> Yes, we are.

[00:01:31]>> Uh but first, I wanted to talk some basketball with you.

[00:01:34]>> Of course you do.

[00:01:36]>> You love basketball more than anything.

[00:01:39]So couple of um you know months ago we posted something where I talked about Jordan being the big brother and LeBron having the little brother mindset.

[00:01:50]>> Oh >> there was a lot of backlash. Okay. And I think it was some unfair backlash.

[00:01:54]People mis misunderstood what I was saying. I was just saying that alpha mindset. Um and I I think it's it's the same thing if Kobe and LeBron were on the same team. I think if Kobe and LeBron played together, I think Kobe would be the natural alpha on the team and LeBron would be >> probably more so >> LeBron might be the better player, >> but Kobe would take the last shot. Kobe would be the one that wants to lead and dictate what happens on the court.

[00:02:19]>> Different personalities. I agree. And I do think LeBron is the better player than Kobe.

[00:02:24]>> I think so too. I think so too. Yes.

[00:02:25]>> But I don't think he's better than Michael Jordan.

[00:02:28]>> No, I don't think so.

[00:02:29]>> That's the big debate. But look, our next guest, former majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, now a minority owner still of the team, Mark Cuban. So, I guess we can ask him and and Mark will be here to talk about chapter one in the good investor book, which is how beautiful the world could be. And he's got he start, you know, he's been involved in a lot of things, but his latest endeavor or one of his latest endeavors is cost plus drugs. that is really shaking up the drug and pharmaceutical industries and really has been great for consumers because it's enabling people to get their prescription drugs at a cheaper price which obviously is great for all of us.

[00:03:15]So >> Mark, welcome to the good investor podcast. Mark, I'm gonna say this and you know we go way back from covering the NBA. The NBA misses you man.

[00:03:26]>> I appreciate that. I I mean seriously like like you you see a lot of the stuff that's going on. I I did want to ask you and we'll get into obviously the serious stuff, >> but what do you what were your thoughts on Steve Kerr suggesting they cut the regular season to 72 games from 82? I mean, everybody's talked about that, but economically you can't because when a team asks um a city for money, that city wants the money back and they want as much economic impact as possible. And those 10 games is a lot of economic impact. Everybody who opened up a restaurant, everybody who, you know, the Uber drivers, whatever it may be, that's cutting out a lot of money for them and it's going to be less money for the players. The players would rather just have the 82 games. So, I liked Adam um Silver's idea to cut the games to 40 minutes more because that matches um what happens globally cuz we're the only league that plays 48. And so, I think that's better. I think that protects the players. I don't think it really impacts the fan experience at all. I mean, because you see it in college, etc., WNBA.

[00:04:35]Um and I think that overall has the same impact. And on top of that, I'll tell you this, the longer the less the less actual playing time a sport has, the higher their TV ratings.

[00:04:49]>> So if you look at it, football plays like 12 minutes for an entire actual action, you know, play action, like 12 minutes for a whole game.

[00:04:58]>> Soccer is the whole, you know, what is it, 80 minutes or 90 minutes for a whole game, and that has the lowest ratings.

[00:05:05]Hockeyy's an hour, the next lowest ratings. baseball what happened when they sped up the game and so you know it was all shortened same thing if you reduce the playing time there's just more action and things happen more quickly and I think television well ratings don't really matter anymore because of streaming but I think that the the the subscription retention by our streaming partners would be higher >> that's interesting because I I remember when you said a few years ago you said eventually they could raise the ticket prices if there were fewer games but that still probably wouldn't account for the losses.

[00:05:38]>> No, that's a mistake these days cuz you know there's been so many new arenas where the ticket prices got jacked up anyways that I think we have the problem that ticket prices are too high in a lot of cities.

[00:05:50]>> Yeah. There's also the historical stat the stat the statistics right so players I'm sure one >> all all leagues go through that right like how do you compare pre-3 point to post three-point right you know I remember talking back in the early 2000s when scoring was in the 80s and 90s and looking at data that said the more fouls that were called you know the more points that were scored and that would help alleviate it then you know then you change rules like eight seconds to get across the half court line instead of 10 seconds. Then you change rules so guys can get 43 free throws and make 83, you know, score 83, you know, anything's possible.

[00:06:28]>> Somebody's going to get a 100.

[00:06:30]>> Oh yeah. I mean, once they saw that, right, you go up against a team. But I like, you know, it was fun as hell to watch, particularly since the Wizards were triple teaming them and, you know, it was it was kind of crazy.

[00:06:42]>> I'm I'm not hating on Bam out of your >> No, not at all. Credit to him, man.

[00:06:46]Congratulations.

[00:06:47]>> You can't do that in a pickup league. 83 points like that, >> right?

[00:06:52]>> He was also driving a lot. People act like he just shot threes all day and got free throws, but he was playing a full >> Well, he started missing those threes and put his head down. It's like, I'm going to foul me or I'm going to look ugly when I miss. I don't care. And the game was out of control already. And you know, you can argue that when Spo started fouling to get the ball back so he could score again, that was kind of bastardizing the game. But, you know, I read some of the comments from somebody who played against Wilt in that 100point game in Hershey, Pennsylvania, who said they were doing the same thing, right?

[00:07:22]Where they were kind of, you know, letting him score.

[00:07:25]>> And you've seen that from guys all the time, right? You know, a guy's going to get 70, the other team will do one of two things. They'll go over the top trying to stop him or it's just like, okay, the game's over. It doesn't matter. Because you can make the argument that a guy who's just trying to get points that, you know, that's not the way you play, you know, but >> right. I love I loved watching BAM. I thought it was awesome.

[00:07:46]>> Yeah. At the same time there was like I remember the time Trace McGrady got like 60s something in three quarters and then he said >> well Kobe got five in three quarters and >> he had against he had 61 and three quarters and it was us and I'm like what the knock him on his I'm like knock him on his and our guys are just looking at me going and I was smiling. I wasn't serious, right? You can't take out Kobe.

[00:08:10]But, you know, I'm thinking to myself, old school old school basketball, somebody would be bleeding. You know, >> he would have got hammered. He would have got hammered. He would have got hammered. So, let let's move on to to you know, the business. And um we want to know first of all, what were some of your uh tell us about some of your favorite Shark Tank investments that not only made money but really made a positive impact in society? you know, the the ones that made money aren't necessarily the ones that have the impact, right? It's the smaller companies that that have the impact. Um, like I there was a guy Noel Drury that did this thing called Twisted Up Combs.

[00:08:48]And it was for African-American men with naturals, right? And it looks like a little tennis racket, but it like kills it. And, you know, it allowed me to kind of understand the culture more and get into it. But he's taken that and selling, you know, making a million, $2 million a year. and now he's investing that in the community and developing housing. So, if you all for your hair, look up Twisted Up Combs. Um, >> I've seen that. Yeah, I've seen those. Y >> you know, Retold cycling. Um, there's been all kinds of businesses, you know, that that um have had an impact, but I'm still I still like the the big hits, you know. So, we just had a company, Beatbox Beverages, that came on Shark Tank, and I gave them a million dollars for 33%.

[00:09:31]And there was these kids, man, the star quarterback and his receiver and one of their friends at um Amy and they put together this sparkling beverage company and it just blew up and went and they just got sold to Annheiser Bush for like $600 million. And it was great because Shaq came in late as an investor, like a year before they sold. So he killed it, too. I crushed it. Um you guys have probably heard of Dude Wipes.

[00:09:57]>> You know that was a Shark Tank company.

[00:09:59]Dude Wipes is on fire. They just And they're funny as hell. That's why I did the investment. They were hysterical because all they do for their marketing is make jokes. Someone their pants in a game, right? They're going to be, you know, they're going to sponsor them and and it's just great. You know, my 16-year-old uses them. They're everywhere. So, I' I've had some big wins. I've made a lot of money now. Um, but you know, doing Shark Tank, it was as much it was not as much about making money as it was sending a message to families that watch together that the American dream is alive and well. You know, and I can't tell you how many people have come up to me, yeah, we watched it as a family and my son or daughter started this business because they watch Shark Tank. And so when you hear that, that that's really the impact and that obviously makes me feel good.

[00:10:47]>> That's good.

[00:10:48]>> Yeah. I I think probably the company that I that comes to my mind that had a huge impact and made a lot of money was one that none of you invested in is a home security system. I I forgot the name of it.

[00:10:57]>> Yeah. Ring.

[00:10:58]>> Ring. Yeah. Exactly.

[00:10:59]>> Ring. Yeah.

[00:11:00]>> Now, Jamie did a great job, right? That blew up, but that was one of those companies. It was a good idea, but in order for it to be successful, you going to have to keep on raising money all the time. And so, you know, in some businesses that are really consumerdriven and you need shelf space, whether it's Best Buy or a grocery store, whatever it is, you have to pay those um those retailers a a stocking fee, a slotting fee in order to get on the shelves. So, you know, companies like Ring, you're having to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to get them shelf space and to sell enough units to get the attention of an Amazon.

[00:11:37]And Jamie was a master at it. Poppy was another good example. They came on with Rohan and did the same thing. Um, but I just don't like those type of companies because you get diluted really quickly.

[00:11:48]But more power to Jamie, you know, he came on, he came back as a guest shark and just crushed it.

[00:11:54]>> That's great.

[00:11:54]>> I I I love what you're doing. You mentioned it earlier, the cost plus drugs, like what you're doing with that and and how it's impacting the the pharmaceutical industry. Can you kind of talk about cost plus, what your motivation was and all that? Sure. I started because I got a cold email from my now partner Dr. Ashmayanssky and he wanted to manufacture drugs that go in these short supply lists. So, believe it or not guys, like literally there are pediatric cancer drugs that go in short supply. And so, we build a manufacturing plant in Dallas that manufactures those and that's one part of our business. But the part people know about is costplusds.com.

[00:12:33]And the way it works is that when you go to cost plus drugs, you put in the name of the medication and if it's one of the thousands we carry, and we don't carry all of them unfortunately, but if it's one of the thousands we carry, it comes up and we show you our actual cost. And then we show you that we only mark it up 15% and then it's $5 for shipping. And in doing so, and having a reasonable markup, our prices are almost always lower than everything but the $4 drugs.

[00:12:59]And we've been able to save people thousands of dollars per month, hundreds of dollars per month on, you know, multiple sclerosis medicine, um, cancer medications. And literally, it's changed it. It's changed the drug industry from two perspectives. One, people trust us because we're transparent. We've been doing this four years now. We're still the only pharmacy that had that publishes our price list and shows their costs. Nobody else comes even close. And two, we build trust. Because if you think about how you get a prescription now the doctor says you need da da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d and then the next question isn't can you afford it or here's the cost. The next question is what pharmacy do you use?

[00:13:39]>> And then you got to hope you can figure out and then you get to the counter or whatever and you see people that can't afford it. You hear stories about how they have to ration. That's no longer the case with costbplus.com. So, if anybody out there needs medication, even if you have insurance, like we have tons of customers that are on Medicare, Medicare Advantage, have company insurance, you guys know that when you need to use your insurance, you have a deductible and that could be really expensive. You have a co-ay or co- insurance that can be really expensive and a lot of times we're cheaper than those. And so, you know, come check out costlastdrugs.com.

[00:14:16]It's literally changing the industry and we're going to expand it there onto the medical side and you know I just want to [ __ ] up healthcare. Nobody looks at their healthcare and says you know the economic side oh it's great it's cheap it's easy I trust it. Everybody says the exact opposite. So that's really why we we're rolling with it.

[00:14:34]>> Yeah. Unfortunately I think healthc care has become kind of a punching bag even in politics. Uh if you look at the whole industry, there's so much uh ingenuity, innovation, value creation, >> the doctor, the care side is legit, right? Like literally, people don't understand this, but doctors and nurses make the least amount of money of everybody in the supply chain. Like if you're an independent doctor, those big insurance companies will just on you.

[00:15:00]Like they don't pay you as much as the guy selling peanuts at a Mavs game. It's really crazy how many hours they work and how little they get paid. And I hate it, right? I want my doctors golfing on Wednesday. I want them rested, relax, so whatever it is I need, they got time to spend their time on me. Um, and that's just not the way the system is. But the quality of care, the innovation, it just continues to get better. You know, people talk about how we spend more money per patient than any other country in the world, and that's true. Um, and a lot of that is because of the waste, but part of it is because we have more advanced solutions and can solve, you know, bigger health care problems than any other country. And that's a credit to the doctors and nurses and scientists and researchers that do all the work.

[00:15:46]And so, we're trying to bring attention to the fact that the insurance companies, these things called pharmacy benefit managers that they own or are owned by, they're the problem children.

[00:15:55]They're the ones that jack up the costs.

[00:15:57]And that's what cost plus drug cost plusdrugs.com is there to solve.

[00:16:01]>> Yeah. And I love that because I think what what you're doing is you're cutting out the middleman, the pharmacy benefit managers, the insurance, the pharmacies, marking the price up by just 15%. Uh but the biotech company themselves a lot of them >> the what they get paid is actually I think pretty fair because the work that they do doesn't just help the it's not just about this generation but those drugs eventually in 1015 years go generic and then there are much lower cost for future generations and the and I think the whole system just needs >> yeah every drug that you've ever taken either one of you somebody had to invent it didn't just come out of osmosis right Somebody thought, "Okay, I'm going to do the work to fix." It's like the GOP ones, the weight loss drugs that literally came from a government project. And I'm going to say this wrong. You know the Gila lizards, right?

[00:16:51]The um with the the big old lizards with huge tongues or big fat bodies.

[00:16:56]>> They were definitely they were testing the venom in those. And they've analyzed the venom and that went from the venom over like 15 years into creating weight loss drugs, these GOPs that are taking over everything.

[00:17:10]>> Wow.

[00:17:10]>> Because somebody had the intuition and the creativity to say let's go from lizards to a drug that everybody talks about, right? And that that's how crazy and innovative this country is when it comes to healthcare.

[00:17:26]>> So I have one more question related to that. So, you're cutting out the middleman and saving cost and now I notice the government has a Trump RX.gov and and I think he's doing what he's called what he's calling the most favored nation uh pricing basically getting the drug the biotech company itself to bring down the price.

[00:17:49]>> Right.

[00:17:49]>> I see a lot of synergy between the work you're doing. So, he's lowering the drug price.

[00:17:53]>> Look, anything anything that brings down the price to drugs I'm a fan of. Right.

[00:17:57]And people, you know, I'm people like to rip on Trump. I'm like, look, Republicans need drugs, too. Republicans need cheap drugs, too. You know, and so they're doing a lot of good things that, you know, the CMS, which is that deals with Medicare, Medicaid, they've, you know, cut down the revenues to um the big insurance companies. So, you know, the guys behind the scenes, the Chris Clamps, the the Marcales, they're they're doing a lot of great stuff for Trump. And so when it comes to health care, you know, maybe it's not perfect, but it's a it's a major step forward, particularly for IVF drugs, families trying to have kids and can't do it.

[00:18:33]Those drugs were so expensive and Trump RX really pushed down the price of those drugs.

[00:18:38]>> That's right.

[00:18:39]>> Mark, I have a question about AI. Uh because I, you know, I've been reading all these doomsday reports about it's going to cost people millions of jobs within the next year or two, lead to an unemployment crisis. H what are your thoughts on those kind of doomsday scenarios? And how do you think we can react to AI or navigate IAI in a way that's positive for people rather than negative? Well, first you make him go left because he's not a great three-point shooter. But no, the obvious um >> Yeah. Right. I'm not a doomsday guy.

[00:19:17]Remember, you know, and you're right.

[00:19:18]People are saying we're going to lose a million jobs in a year, two years. They said that a year year and a half ago, right? And so we haven't seen those doomsday scenarios. But like businesses will fall into two categories. Those who are great at AI and those who went out of business because they didn't understand AI, you know. So any any business even yours doing podcast for preparation you probably used AI you just went in there asked some questions put together some questions for Cuban that are involved with da da da da da da tell me about am I right >> a little bit a little bit >> right because you not cause blood drugs I'll tell you that >> yeah right and so because it's crazy not to I use it all day every day so that's part one for companies you got to use it part two there's going to be two types of people when it comes comes to using AI. Those people who use AI so they don't have to learn anything and those people who use AI so they have the opportunity to learn anything >> because you know once you've played with it you can go down that rabbit hole in anything you're interested in and it's like having every professor every major library and it's a great democratizer of of knowledge. So some kid in a messed up school, you know, in a messed up personal situation, if they've got access to a smartphone or a laptop or a PC, they can go to, you know, Anthropic named Claude, right? They can go to Gemini from Google. They can go to Chat GPT and say, "Okay, um, Claude, um, put together, you know, I don't get along with my social studies teacher. Here's what we're covering. We're covering the American Revolution. Put together, I'm 10 years old. put together a study guide for me. And by the way, here's a picture from the book and here's so that's what we're covering. Make the study guide cover these materials and have it adjust to my answers. So the better I get, the harder the questions you ask, etc. So you can personalize education as a kid.

[00:21:13]Like my son, my 16-year-old was telling me how he like used Claude to do these fill-in-the form types things so for his school so he could just hit one button and he gets done. So if you really want to learn, there's nothing better than AI. And if you don't have any interest in learning, you know how some people they don't want to learn anything.

[00:21:33]Right.

[00:21:34]>> Right. Then those people can use it just to do all the grunt work and stuff and it's going to be harder on them because everybody else is using it to get ahead.

[00:21:42]But will it distort jobs? Um there will be some job loss. You know, the analogy I like to use was the horse and buggy versus cars. When cars came along, horse and buddies buggies disappear and people say, "Oh, you know, all those people are going to lose their jobs." They never envisioned all the gas stations on every corner. Right.

[00:22:01]>> Right.

[00:22:02]>> And so there's now it's going to be the same thing. There's stuff that we can't even imagine that's going to happen.

[00:22:09]There's people that we can't even don't even realize are going to use it. Like I was on Twitter X and um some dude tagged me. He's a um a union electrician that does high-end home electrical work. And he's like, "Yeah, I use Claude because so many people when they buy an electron an EV and they want to put a charger in their house, right, and they bring in an electrician, the electricians will rip them off by saying their power can't handle it." Well, he put together a little 15 or $25 test. And he he's not a programmer. He's electrician. And he used Claude code and said, "Okay, here's what I want to write. write it all up, turned it into an application on his website, and now people can just put in the information from their electrical bill or something, and it'll tell them whether or not they need to upgrade, saving them $3 to $5,000. This is not a coder. This is an electrician just coming up with ideas. And like I said, people who want to learn everything will use AI. People who don't want to learn anything, you know, they'll use AI to do less.

[00:23:13]And also in some industries like the one I'm in investing uh the the adoption of AI has been a whole lot slower than I would have expected. I think there's still a lot of fear around data uh security and things like that. So >> yeah, you got to be careful when you're investing, right? You don't want all your information particularly if you're investing other people's money. But at the same time like okay this this I'm putting it into cloud. I'm like okay the straighter horn moves is closed. you know, what public companies are going to be most positively impacted or negatively impacted. And it's not necessarily always going to be right, but then like you can ask the three of us basketball or business questions and we're not always going to be right. You know, you're always going to get discrepancy in in responses, but it gives you a good head start compared to before where when you put that into Google, you'd get 15, you know, blue links and you'd have to go through all of them and 90% of them are misinformation. And so I think, you know, on balance, it's a huge positive for people who want to learn and want to, you know, be more productive and profitable.

[00:24:15]>> You mentioned basketball questions. I know Robin is dying. He's got a question he's dying to ask.

[00:24:22]>> So, >> so, so Mark, uh, the So, the question I have is, you know, the whole Luca trade.

[00:24:27]Obviously, you've talked about this a lot and and I've seen I I've listened to your your your conversations, >> but one question I have is Cooper flag.

[00:24:36]Um given that he's so much younger than Luca, if you kept Luca, you wouldn't have got Cooper most likely because of the the way that the Yeah. Yeah. So, given how everything turned out, given the fact that you have a much younger player who's a more, I would say, well-rounded player in a way because he plays defense.

[00:24:54]>> He dives for loose balls, all of that. I didn't see from Luca as much.

[00:24:58]>> Um, so given all of that, would do you think the Mavs are actually in a better place long term over the next years?

[00:25:03]>> There's But it's too early to tell on Coupe who he's going to be other than phenomenal, right? You know, he's incredible. So, that's a given. The difference right now, and Coupe can always catch up on this. Luca is the moment player, right? The big moment player. There are some guys that you need to be able to get off a shot. And even though he may not be the world's best three-point shooter, Lucas threw his leg through his leg, forward, back, step back, boom, hit that three over Rudy Goar and, you know, talk to him, right? Luca's got that in his bag and that's like unique. There's only a few players in the NBA who can get a shot off against anybody who are big enough, you know. So, having that from Luca, we want Coupe to get there and I think he will get there. But it's like the conversation between LeBron and Michael Jordan, right? LeBron makes everybody in the team better. Michael Jordan will take the game-winning shot every single time. right now. Coupe makes everybody better and he's incredible and he's much like LeBron and I think he'll become, you know, have those Michael that Michael Jordan mindset because he has that killer mindset like Luca does and he'll get to the point because he's big enough to get off that game-winning shot and have the confidence to make it. But right now, from an onc court perspective, Luca has that killer vibe.

[00:26:27]He has that killer instinct and he has the size and the skill to get off that shot. Now, part two to that is the cap.

[00:26:34]You know, when we had Luca, it wasn't the second apron. And so, now the benefit is with um with Coupe, he's on a rookie contract. And so, we have the opportunity to build around him with some space because the, you know, first pick last year, I think, made $14 million, $15 million, give or take, right? And so that gives us a whole lot of space now after the trades we made at the deadline that we otherwise wouldn't have. And it creates a lot of problems for teams that from pre-second apron, excuse me, that may have more than one max out guy. And if one of your max out guys underperforms, >> you're screwed, right? Because if you have two guys making 50 40 million or more, you know, or let's say 50 million or more and um one of them ages out, right? they're just getting older, but you signed that deal because they earned it early or because they're hurt, whatever it may be. You've got a real problem. And I think so having Coupe on that rookie contract is a huge advantage for us.

[00:27:37]>> You mentioned Jordan, LeBron, where you at on the GOAT debate. Who Who's the GOAT to you?

[00:27:42]>> MJ, I'm I'm a huge fan of LeBron. So, it really comes down to who else is on my team?

[00:27:48]>> If you know, LeBron, if I've got another killer, like when he had Kyrie, right?

[00:27:52]Yeah. LeBron probably would be better for that team than Michael Jordan would be because, you know, you had a killer in Kai who could get off a shot like the Mavs have now when Kai comes back. But, um, you need you need somebody like that and LeBron, that's not necessarily him, right? Um, but at the same time, you don't get to the finals unless LeBron can carry you when he needs to carry you. Michael Jordan on the other hand, he'll push off Byron Nelson, you know, he'll push off Craig Elo, you know, and shoot over him. He'll get off that shot every single time. So, if you have a good team, but you don't have a killer, Michael Jordan is the the best killer in NBA history. So, by the way, so on that topic, I want to say one thing on one thing, which is the two there's two statistics I hear that that you guys don't talk about enough. Okay? One is people always say six for six in the finals. People say he never went to game seven. Okay, whatever. But in the '9s when he started winning, I think he won like 24 out of 25 playoffs game games in the '9s. He lost one series the year he came back.

[00:28:56]>> Series.

[00:28:57]>> Yeah. Series. Yeah. He came He lost one series to Shaq and Penny.

[00:29:00]>> Yeah.

[00:29:01]>> He came back the next year and swept them. Okay. That's how dominant he was in the 90s. People don't talk about the the dominance.

[00:29:07]>> Oh, no. We talk about it. That's why he's in that conversation.

[00:29:11]>> They just don't give the details like you do, Robin. Yeah. Yeah. And then the secondly, the number of championships plus the number of MVPs plus the number of like finals MVPs. I think only him I think the only people in that conversation is him, Bill Russell >> and maybe Kareem. I think there are three.

[00:29:27]>> But but um MJ had Scotty, right? He had, you know, um Steve Kerr to shoot and score. I mean, you had LeBron had some bum. That's unfair to say. Nobody in the NBA is a bum. But relatively speaking, right, there was I don't see know anybody from the early days and LeBron's been around. How many um Hall of Fame players did he have, you know, at you know that were re that were >> in his first stint in Cleveland? Yeah.

[00:29:57]None in his first stint in Cleveland.

[00:29:58]I'm with you.

[00:30:00]>> I have But I have to say though, um he was the owner of the team that beat LeBron.

[00:30:05]>> Oh, for sure. Trust me.

[00:30:06]>> Yeah. No.

[00:30:09]So, okay.

[00:30:10]Durk, they have Yeah. But let's say LeBron and Durk cancel each other.

[00:30:16]>> If you take number two, number three, number four.

[00:30:18]>> LeBron had the better catch.

[00:30:21]>> Yeah. But that was al Yeah. No question about it. LeBron the He the Heedles were better on paper, >> but we had Dirk >> and we had Jay Kidd and we had Jason Terry and never count out Brendan Haywood. We had Bwood, too.

[00:30:36]Hey, I'm with you on the Jordan over LeBron. I got LeBron number two. But Wimi could make it all.

[00:30:44]>> Could change it all. Yeah, change it all. Coupe could change it all. You know, guys today coming out are different than when we were growing up because we saw games on TV and we had VHS tapes to watch them if we were lucky. Now, like my 16-year-old, every move that every prime time player makes is on Instagram and Tik Tok, on YouTube, and he'll just >> with the ball and doing everything right, you know, and doing the same shooting drills and all that. So, players skill levels are getting better.

[00:31:14]The science, the healthc care science is getting better. The only downside is the game has gotten so physical because the guys are so big and so fast. They're running, you know, and sprinting more.

[00:31:26]Um, and everybody's got to play defense for the most part that it's more taxing on their bodies, hence some people wanting the fewer games.

[00:31:34]>> Yeah.

[00:31:34]>> Because like even like we're talking about when the Mavs won, there was always one guy on the court that was the defender that couldn't shoot to save their lives, >> right? Now, you know, even Dyson Daniels who can't make a three can still score and they give him the ball to score. So even your best defensive players, you know, like for us, Caleb Martin, you know, he's not a scorer now. He's making his threes, so he so you got to at least respect his corner three. Yeah.

[00:32:00]>> And so you don't you didn't have that back in the day, which meant your best scorer could rest.

[00:32:07]>> And so, you know, LeBron at his peak, MJ at his peak, there was always somebody who was not going to shoot a three or was not going to you were just going to leave him open, you know, open for a reason, right? And that was that's those things are the biggest differences in the game and why there's more injuries now. Just be so much faster. You run so much more. The guys are bigger, more physical, and everybody grew up being able to shoot. There's nobody that doesn't work on their threes, etc., etc. And you know, it's like I'm I push Derek Lively when he comes back. I'm like, dive, you got to take those threes like I got you, OG. I got you, OG. So, it's a it's an important part of the game.

[00:32:51]>> I'm good.

[00:32:52]>> So, so Mark, thank you for your time.

[00:32:54]This is so helpful. Thanks for giving us time.

[00:32:56]>> Yeah, thank you, Mark. Great talking with you again, man.

[00:32:59]>> Always, man. Anytime. Always fun. And now I'm going to go hoop it up. So, if you see me on crutches, you'll know why.