PTFO - We Found the Secret Album That the NBA's Best Executive Doesn't Want You to Hear
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I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale. Exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities. Please drink responsibly, because today we're going to find out what this sound is. Right after this ad.

Do not open what's in front of you yet. Is it a very angry letter from Stephen A. Smith? It's just him being like, how dare you not believe that I could be serious about running for president? I can say that it is not that, although I can't rule out the fact that he might say that to you at one point. All right, now I'm even more curious.

The extent to which I've told you that we're doing a kind of different Sharon Tell today in which it's just you. You just said, hey, come do the show. No other details. So, yeah. Batter up. Yeah. And now you got this thing in front of you. With my name on it, yeah. That's your name on it. It's very expertly wrapped, as always. This is our NBA Finals coverage. All right. Welcome. Jabba!

But my first real question for you, Wyatt, is whether you know anything about the executive in charge of the Oklahoma City Thunder, a guy by the name... Sam Presti? Of Sam Presti. What else do you know about this man? He was from the Spurs organization. Yes. And then got the job in Oklahoma City, and his first name is Sam. That's kind of how it goes, I think, in general with Sam Presti, who, by the way, this year did win the NBA's Executive of the Year Award.

His team is in the NBA Finals, obviously. They're playing the Pacers right now, the Oklahoma City Thunder. And he is, I think to the point of you not knowing much beyond what you gave me, extraordinarily private. He is very secretive. We don't know a lot about him by design. I want to look on national television and apologize to that man for any questions I've had about how exceptional he is as an executive. I'm dead serious.

I don't apologize often. But Sam Presti, on national television, I'm going to say this. I, Stephen A. Smith, owe this man an apology. I don't give a damn about the championships right now. I can't when I'm a Knicks fan. I can tell you this. To have 15 picks, to have that roster, to have them this young playing at this level, this man...

The man is a special executive. And all of this means, for people who just aren't familiar, that they overcame the loss of the three consecutive MVPs that Sam Presti drafted in his first three drafts. He took Kevin Durant, then Russell Westbrook, then James Harden in his first three seasons as the GM. And in fact, while those three MVPs left Oklahoma City...

For bigger markets, Sam Presti, who has had a ton of incoming interest from other bigger markets, he never did, obviously. He never left. And so what he did was he stockpiled a zillion draft picks. He traded for Shea Gildress Alexander, the season's MVP, which is impressive in its own right, 168 games. He got a city that pretty much nobody wants to willingly play for back to the finals.

And the secrecy of him, the secrecy of this organization, which has been a bit of a black box, has been this way for so long that there is one story from Grantland years ago in which a reporter for Fox Sports said, quote, when it comes to getting a one-on-one interview, it would be easier to get access to the leader of ISIS.

End quote. Didn't ISIS, didn't they have social media for a while? Imagine if that's your job is, yeah, I'm the social media manager for ISIS. My real passion is making music, but my day job, I am managing the ISIS social feeds. We've got some pretty fun TikToks. All of this is to say, and I want you to be aware of this before we proceed any further, that Sam Presti did not want me to do this episode with you, Wyatt.

Specifically because of me? Well, that part I can't necessarily isolate, but... But in general... Yeah, he doesn't want this to happen. Okay. He's also very media fluent. And I say that because one thing I can report is that a little over a decade ago, he actually explored hiring our extremely plugged-in buddy Brian Winhorst away from ESPN to work as an information guy for the Thunder. And the question of like, why would he do that?

Why would he do that? It's because... Yeah, we got to put up our Windhorst fingers. Yes, that's right. The reason that Sam Presti considered hiring Brian Windhorst to kick the tires on hiring him away from ESPN is that information to Sam Presti is currency. It is an edge, a competitive advantage. And you don't surrender that information. And so Sam Presti

Never speaks to the media on the record during the season. He actually, in a very careful way, does it precisely twice a year. He speaks once in the preseason and once after the finals are over.

And he just talks basketball. That is his entire allotment of public exposure. And so what I started doing in lieu of a sit down with Sam Presti, him being the third chair with us on this episode of Share and Tell. Right, yeah. We should have still just had a chair. Instead, what I started doing was I was just grinding Sam Presti press conference archival video, looking for the thing that he seems to be trying to hide.

And what I found was something interesting. Okay. Because back in 2012, which was the last year that the Thunder were in the NBA Finals, Sam Presley, perhaps not coincidentally, showed up at his annual preseason press conference that fall, a little more loose than usual, even a little more confident, you might say.

I like, which many people in here probably don't really care about, but I'll say it anyway because I'm interested in it. I like watching, I like music documentaries. VH1 has this series called Classic Albums. Has anyone ever seen this? It's like, I'm totally hooked. And if you know where to find the actual set of them, let me know. I can't find them. So I do most of my viewing on YouTube.

But they've got like all these – it basically takes you back through how the albums were made. So like Pink Floyd, The Wall, Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt, that was really good, Steely Dan, Asia. And you go back like the producer and you hear what they were thinking and the artists themselves, what they were thinking when they were doing the actual recording.

It's just fascinating. I think it's really, really good. Sam Presti, to continue the scouting report, he did play basketball at Emerson. And that video, by the way, had 28 views on YouTube for those who want to go check it out. And part of what I learned as the 28th person to see this video is just that his genuine and to this point, generally undisclosed non-basketball passion does happen to be music.

Other thing that I thought was interesting, or for me personally, I share it with everybody since we're on this weird kick. And everybody knows I'm like really open about all this stuff. You catch me on a good day. And at one point, Sam Frosty is asked actually which music documentaries about which particular albums he might like to see. Pretty much anything by James Brown I would be fascinated by.

you know, just to see the, like, just kind of how he guided the bands because the bands were just so tight and so well put together. I'd be fascinated by, by that. Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, you know, to see that,

history basically coming together um that would be awesome so i'll stop there but that but i can go on when he said miles davis kind of blew it's interesting that he said just that album and not maybe a more expansive miles davis well now i think it's clear probably why i invited you here

Sure, yes. Because you, beyond being a person with an actual expansive record collection, you are a bit of a musicologist. You would do listening parties, basically, on your social channels for a while. Oh, during the pandemic. During the pandemic. And so, yeah, like, I am not that guy. But what I did, in lieu of my musical knowledge, is continue to just fall down the rabbit hole on this. I went to the dark corners of YouTube and Twitter and Reddit,

Trying to just like look into Sam Presti and his love of music. Yeah. Did you find like a Discogs account for him? Well, you know, multiple friends of his in the NBA told me that they knew nothing about this period. But in lieu of a Discogs account or anything like that. Yeah.

I found somebody who did know something about this topic. Hi, my name is Dara Mirzai. I'm an attorney. I've been an Oklahoma City fan since the day they moved to NoKC. I was born and raised in Oklahoma. And what you should know, Wyatt, about Dara is that he's an Oklahoma native, an under-super fan, and I found him while digging through Reddit. And Dara, like you...

also loves music, not unlike Sam Presti, it seems. And in fact, like you, Dara does love digging through crates. So about seven or eight years ago, I was on vacation around the Boston area, and we were visiting some music shops or whatever was left of them. And we went into one, and they had this extensive discount bin of CDs, which is full of a bunch of CDs of bands no one's ever heard of.

And so I was looking through them and all of a sudden I stumbled across one and I thought, oh, this is funny. This guy has the same name as the Thunder GM. I picked it up and it was obviously a really old CD. And so I figured it was some local musician from 20 years ago. And so I just bought it. I mean, I bought CDs for worse reasons before. About a week or two later, I finally put the CD in just to hear what it was like.

And I thought it was going to be like an Accused Sook album or whatever. And all of a sudden, 20 seconds in, the guy starts talking. I'm like, I've heard this voice. Like, this is definitely Sam Presti's voice. And so Wyatt, what I'd like you to do now is please open the package in front of you and describe it for those not watching on YouTube, please. All right. Because what you are doing, what you have in your hands is what Dara himself has

was holding almost a decade ago now when he was looking very closely at this strange found object. It is a CD cover. It says Sam Presti. The title of the album is Milk Money. There's a picture of what appears to be a young Sam Presti in...

Shorts of the time, this feels very much, I would say, mid-90s, where the shorts are going way past the knee because that was a time in life where men felt they had to cover up their knees. Yeah.

So the black and white photo that's kind of like artistically shot, right? Like the foreground woman is out of focus. The text is like the sans serif, like red. You know, it's like a highbrow kind of aesthetic. There's someone else who could look at this and say, oh, this is the design style of like seven like indie backpack hip hop albums of the time. Right. And of that time, it turns out,

is Sam Presti. He was a drummer at Emerson College. And the voice that Dara heard when he was listening to this thing on loop and started Googling all these search terms, it didn't exist anywhere else on the internet. No one had posted this. There was no audio of this music anywhere else. And there still isn't, by the way. So a couple of years ago, I actually tried to put it on YouTube. I just thought it'd be fun. I wasn't trying to make any money off of it.

And I put online just Sam Presti, Milk Money, nothing like Thunder GM's hidden rap album. And I put online and got a couple of views. And then a couple of days later, I kind of just started getting some messages of just some people asking me to sort of take it down. So eventually I did. Who asked you to take it down? So I don't know who they were, but they were just complaining like, hey, should this really be out there? This was kind of something you did when...

He was young and I sort of started talking to them and I don't have any proof of it, but it felt like it was someone who kind of might've known Sam or was in their camp and just like, I'm not really sure if we want that out there. And so, um,

I was just like, okay, I don't want to mess with anyone. I'll just take it down. I don't want to cause any problems. You don't want to be at war with your favorite basketball team over this CD that you found in a crate? Yeah, and at the time, I was traveling back to Oklahoma City a lot. I didn't want to get banned from Thunder games or anything. Yeah, I will say that banned for posting Thunder GM's hidden rap album would be an incredible headline. That would, yeah.

I'm looking on the back here, and this is all accurate here, the sort of back production credits? I believe so. Because it says this was put out on Relativity Records. What does this mean to you? 3-6 Mafia was on Relativity. Common was on Relativity. It raises the question of why Sam Presti does not want this on the internet.

Because presumably, like, the question is, is it actually so embarrassing that you would want this scrubbed? Right. Right? And so what I can tell you is that even though Sam Presti did not want me to do this episode with you,

I have done now significantly more than merely acquire this copy of the album Milk Money that he released. An album, by the way, that his longtime PR person, Matt Tumbleson with the Thunder, has never heard before. Okay. I am told. What we're kind of doing in this episode, Wyatt, is making our own version of one of Sam Presti's favorite things. We're going to make the Milk Money music documentary.

Also, one other thing in the production, you said the chap we were talking to, his name was Dara? Yeah. So this is written and produced by Sam Presti under Relativity Records and Dara's Dream Publishing. It's Sam Presti's nightmare, but it seems like it's Dara's dream.

So, Wyatt, at this point, I just want to turn your attention to some of the band members involved in the production of this album. Because, again, Super Thunder fan, Dara randomly unearthed this thing in that discount CD bin in Boston. And it turns out that Milk Money was more than merely Sam Presti's musical debut.

Hey everybody, my name is Mike Tucker. I'm a professional saxophonist. I'm a Grammy-nominated saxophonist who teaches at Berklee College of Music. I'm a professor there and I also tour regularly with trumpet player Arturo Sandoval. At the risk of

ruining this interview already. Do you have your sax nearby, Mike? I feel like people meet a comedian and they're like, tell me a joke. And it's like, no. Or if you meet a dentist and it's like, hey, take a look at this tooth. No. But saxophone player, hey, do you happen to be strapped right now? Of course, I'm a saxophone player. I'm always strapped.

For the record, your Grammy-nominated saxophonist, Mike Tucker, was ready on all sorts of fronts. I mean, when I asked him, do you remember meeting Sam Presti, who was, again, playing D3 basketball at Emerson at the time? Yeah. He did not hesitate. So the first time I met Sam was actually at a rehearsal for this recording when I was a junior in high school.

But Sam, you know, he definitely made a real impression on me. My friend, Matt Morin, he was a pianist. He doesn't play anymore. But we both were playing together. And Matt went to Concord Carlisle High School, which Sam attended. Yeah. So my name is Matthew Morin. And I used to be a musician, a jazz musician, a jazz pianist. And...

Then I became an ethnomusicologist and a professor. And now I'm a dean at a community college in California, Santa Ana College. So Sam and I went to the same high school. He was a year ahead of me. And he was definitely one of the cool kids. There was a band room and...

We were really dorky, right? Like we were like losers. And we hid in the band room, like we would eat our lunch in there. And he totally would come and listen.

And it wasn't fake. He really did. He looked up to us as these dorky kids, as a really popular basketball guy with a girlfriend and all this other stuff that we looked up to. That was the best. That was the best. And I think it actually did a lot for our self-confidence that we probably never admitted to ourselves that then he asked us to be on this album.

Basically, his concept was he didn't want to do anything specifically jazz or hip-hop, but he was into both. So when we recorded, we recorded a couple jazz tunes, but then there were a couple spoken word rap things in there too. Actually, just the other day when you guys contacted me for this interview, I hadn't listened to the album since we recorded it, basically.

Oh, wow. Wow. Wow. But I listened back to it yesterday and it was like probably in like 1996 or 7 that we recorded it. So it was like at a time where like hip-hop artists were collaborating with jazz musicians. Are you a basketball fan? I mean, man, like I'm not at all. But Wyatt, this era, dare I say, might be very familiar to you. Yeah. Like he was saying, there was a big...

connection between jazz and hip-hop whether you were talking about

Tribe Called Quest, but also thinking about Guru was putting out the Jazz Mataz albums and Diggable Planets. And so there was this thing that was happening around that time. I think that predates Cornel West's rap album. Oh, God. Which is a thing that exists. That's right. Yeah. You're talking about Noted Musician.

Matrix Cinematic Universe cast member, Cornel West. Yeah. You might know him from The Matrix. Nothing else. Just The Matrix. But again, conscious hip-hop, right? Yes. Was the brand. All of which is to say that track one of Milk Money, the introduction, sounded like this.

Music transcends race, religion, sex. It transcends all of that. It's a reflection of the human heart. Somebody can decipher that for you, you know, and say what it means, and dig what it means. You'll flip. I mean, flip for real. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. Yeah, that's what I tried to do is, you know, because I had all the music in my head.

that I wanted to do, but I had to track everybody down. So the only way I knew how to do it was just get the people that were close to me that I thought could carry out and kind of expand on the things that I was thinking about. I got Mark Panaski from way back, Dave Wolpert from way back, and Jason Reese, Chris Hall, both came in and did some horn work on it for me. I got Matt Moore and

Mike Tucker just killing them. James Blackwell doing some cuts. Got Matt Bynfred, stuff from Jersey with his man Islo from Philly. It's a flow of a track that we did. And it's tough because I didn't want to overstep my boundaries because I'm not a hip-hop purist. I'm not a jazz purist by any means. But it's music that I love. And it's stuff that I wanted to do. So...

So what are you thinking as you listen to track one of Milk Money for the first time? The first thing I'm thinking is there's a real humility that he has that I feel like I want to commend him for as both saying he is someone who appreciates his music and

but does not consider himself an aficionado. The other thing that stands out to me, as I was listening to it, there was that horn, that sort of horn riff that I couldn't place, but I recognized it, and I'm still having trouble recognizing it. I feel like maybe it was from a Guru Jazzmatazz album.

i'm not 100 sure but then there was this audio collage of things that were happening there was a piece from the roots from proceed there was something from you could hear q-tip in there and so the thing that was teed up earlier where i was mentioning this moment in time and the roots and tribe and digible planets and all this stuff

It is, yes. He and I were drinking the same water. Nailed it. You just nailed it. Yeah. This is, I know you, Sam. He could not be more clearly a fan of a Tribe Called Quest. Yeah, yeah. And that got Matt thinking. I'll just say that the hip-hop influences were his. Like, he was really, I think, down that road. He was picking the genre that had...

less cachet and less marketability because instead he wanted to lean into the harder thing. Because it really was his creation. It wasn't like Mike and I were calling the shots. Because if we were calling the shots, it would have been straight ahead jazz, every single track, and probably nothing but up-tempo. And there is a really strong parallel to what he does right now. And so that whole thing about Sam Presti

on this quest to win a title in Oklahoma City, which has less cachet, less marketability. Again, no star players, demand trades there, or sign there as free agents. The TV ratings also, compared to the larger markets, obviously worse. If Sam Presti were in a larger market, if he were in New York, I don't know that he has the cachet to say, hey, I want to stockpile draft picks,

I want to basically... So many draft picks. I want to go into the basement for a little while and tinker. And when you think about, you know, that sort of world of indie or backpack conscious hip-hop, whatever you want to call it, I feel like for so much of that, it was, okay, yeah, you're going into the basement and you're just tinkering. And I think that exact argument...

might be embodied in the title of what turns out to be the album's fourth track, which is an original song titled Nothing to Lose. Freeloading. Yo, here and gone. It's Mother Nature's sad song. That's why when we alive, we gotta strive and keep on. So shift in the drive now. Put your minds in it.

Life's lesson, chapter one, slice you a section from the pie graph, a word graph, a mic lesson. I set an incline, slipped in a vinyl booth, pursued the paragraphs, the polar caps in a luge. Lay back, lounge core depth, nothing to lose. And it reminisced and glistened as I shifted to

♪♪

Life impede, crazy copper feed. We'll drench the map. Ask yourself why. Stamina, swing low on the two. Through the grassy dew situation, thicker than glue. Snares, alloprest, detest me. Feel that, the chemistry. Ill wrap, distill that, extract the net.

I should just say that. He rented a place in New Hampshire himself. He donated all of the proceeds from Milk Money and also this live concert that the band performed in, according to Mike Tucker, the saxophonist. He donated all of the proceeds from this concert in front of like 300, 400 people in Boston to charity. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so the charity, all the proceeds went to the Extraordinary Needs Fund at Boston Children's Hospital. Oh, wow. Which again is like a pretty, just...

I find it hard to poke any holes in that part of this. Yeah. And then they produced another album together, actually, whose artwork has been floating around the NBA dark web. The album is called All Things Considered. Ha ha ha ha.

It's a black and white photo of Sam Presti. That's him in the far background. Yeah. So he's like this Waldo character who is just in the back with a chessboard in front of him. And again, the metaphors kind of speak for themselves at this point. But yeah, a guy who had become known for his decision making is sort of like trying to hide in the background of his own follow-up album cover to Milk Money.

And time for this band was short, by the way, ultimately. Everybody after these albums came out and then disappeared, everyone went off in their own directions. Mike and Matt and Sam did not stay close. No. I mean, there really is no relationship. But it wasn't out of disrespect. It was just like, we didn't have the album. So you sending me that was awesome. I was like, this is...

This is crazy. And I had no idea about his career, to be perfectly honest, because I'm not a sports person. And then I get a random call. It's like, hey, man, this is George from...

from Oklahoma City Thunder. I work with the Thunder for Sam Presti. Sam's going to be in town like next week and he'd love to like meet up with you. Just wondering what your schedule is. And I was like, Oklahoma City. I was like, is that a college team? Is that, I know Sam's like doing basketball. And then we reconnected. And when he came to Boston, we met up at a club that I was playing at. He was telling me how like

has always had a very long vision and he'd just see like talented players who might not be like the superstar, but he could see something in them and see how he was going to develop that.

He made all of his players take a financial management and awareness course. He was like, "Yeah, man, you know, everything's so expensive. You know, a gallon of milk is like..." You know, so he's still... And he's, you know, Sam grew up in a working-class family. Like, he grew up with a single mother. His mom was a nurse. You know, he really worked hard for everything he's got. You just told a story before about Sam talking about, like, the price of milk.

That's actually hilarious. Yeah. And the album's name is Milk Money. But not unlike Sam Presti in the Milk Money era, I also had a vision.

And I decided to not give this up. And I tumbled further and further down the Sam Presti jazz rabbit hole, listening to the eight tracks on Milk Money on like a truly disturbingly endless loop. The jazz rabbit hole sounds like, that sounds like the music show I need to make. It really does. Hey everybody, welcome to the jazz rabbit hole. It's your host Wyatt Cenac.

Tonight, we're going to go down the rabbit hole of the CTI record label. That's right, you're listening to the Jazz Rabbit Hole with Wyatt Cenac. And on tonight's show, my guest Pablo Torre is going to text Thunderguard Alex Caruso at 1.15 a.m. the night before Game 2 of the NBA Finals to ask if he knew about his boss's jazz rap albums. And he will not respond. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

I'm sorry to Alex Caruso, by the way. Like, again, it's just, I just couldn't, I was like, again, I'm a dog with a bone on this thing. Did you go to Alex Caruso because you thought that maybe somewhere in Alex Caruso is a 20-something white rapper? It's interesting you went to him and, yeah. Yeah.

Not Isaiah Hartenstein. Didn't want to profile in any particular way. Sure. Just felt very important that I consult Alex Caruso specifically. Yeah. But I didn't give up.

I continue to scour the internet to find anybody, musicians particularly, that Sam Presti might actually have stayed in touch with because I wanted to know what happened to that guy who got buried by his own design. And I spotted another name, a name that I do think, Wyatt, you would recognize as, again, a musicologist, an expert in this particular era. And this mystery guest did, in fact, respond to my request for comment by agreeing to an interview with

And we're going to meet that person, Wyatt, after the break. On the Jazz Rabbit Hole with my special guest, Pablo Torre.

You're vaguely familiar with what I do, I guess? Yes. I found out. Yes. Amazing. Amazing. When I cold tweeted you, I was like, I had the desperation of a man at the bottom of a rabbit hole. I don't know if you could smell that on me. No, man. It was too early for that. I was like, damn, it's 630. Yeah. I was in the bathroom when I tweeted Branford Marsalis for the record. Hey, it works. Could you introduce yourself? My name is Branford Marsalis. I play music.

Oh, come on. That's it? Bruh. I'm a musician. That's it. Multi-Grammy winner, do the right thing, saxophonist, fight the power, public enemy in 89. None of that. None of that. Brantford. You know, it's like Sam. It's like Sam.

So whether or not you realize this, there are a zillion ways that you may have already heard the legendary tenor saxophone of 64-year-old Branford Marsalis, who, beyond all the other stuff I already mentioned, has played with Miles Davis and Sting and The Grateful Dead and The Tonight Show Band, among many, many others. But I also remember Branford, maybe most vividly, from his cameo on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1994.

But the reason Branford Marsalis is friends with Sam Presti, it turns out,

goes a lot deeper than jazz and rap. I mean, first of all, it is entertainment at the end of the day. But there are people in this profession who genuinely love what they do. And then there are other people who genuinely love the attention that can be generated for them because of what it is that they do.

When I'm meeting other musicians, I never lead off with how many records I've sold. I know people who do. Hey, man, how many units did you sell? Are you serious? I mean, that's the conversation because, you know, I'm from New Orleans. I'm a country boy. But New York is a city for very ambitious people. And so I would say, so how are you doing, bro? How are you doing? And then they would proceed to tell me every gig that they have that month.

And then I would say, well, that's cool, but I didn't really ask you what you were doing. I asked you how you're doing. My passion is for the thing, not for the notoriety. And that, to be clear, is also the sort of New Yorker and podcaster that I personally would like to be. Which brings us back to basketball and jazz, these two institutions that are often compared to each other and happen to be colliding right now.

as the Oklahoma City Thunder, built by Sam Presti, and the Indiana Pacers, coached by Rick Carlisle, are quietly making their case for a very jazz-inflected championship, even more than if the actual Utah Jazz had made it. In music, there's the visible part, like the solo, people see the solo or the singer, but then there's the invisible part, and that's when the musicians have to use their skills to support a person who is in the front.

Now that is called comping, C-O-M-P-I-N-G. Piano players do it, guitar players do it. Sometimes the horns do it, but it's like in horn parts. The horn parts support the singer that's comping. Thanks to Bruce Hornsby, I have a sometimes physical chat, but a lot of texting between Rick Carlisle and myself.

Out to Towns to tie. No! Rebound fought for. Loose. Bridges has got it. Clock is ticking. Out of bounds. It's Indiana's ball with .2 to go. So after game one against the Knicks, I wrote Rick and said, man, I've never seen anything like that. You know, your kids are amazing. And he writes back and says, you really like these guys. They love comping as much as they love soloing. And I was like, this is the hippest dude

on the damn planet. Damn. That's just not something you're going to see in a conversation with somebody outside of the music business. But he's a smart cat, man. He always has been. And so I'm finding out so much already, which is to say that the NBA finals of the year 2025 AD are also the Brantford Marsalis finals because you have this way in to both sides. Yeah, it's kind of crazy.

But this is the scent I've been tracking, is that you had a connection to Sam Presti because of the research and the amount of just rabbit hole diving I've been doing. I didn't realize that you also knew Rick Carlisle. Yeah, Sam's a jazz fan, and Rick is a music fan, but Sam, he's a music fan too, but he's a jazz fan, and we...

struck up conversations, and he's also talked to Wynton about jazz and the relationship between team building. Like building a team is very similar to building a band. You have to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each player, and you have to set up a construct so that you challenge the musicians to eliminate their weaknesses, where the impulse will always be to double down on one strength.

Because it is certainly much easier to enforce what you already know than to go to the painstaking reality of addressing the things you're not very adept at. And it's pretty amazing when you look at both of those teams and how they've been constructed.

We keep inventing ever since LeBron went to Miami, the big three. They don't really have a big three. No. That's the other story of this finals. Beyond the Jazz is literally this. They're teams. Correct. Because even though Shea is the MVP, he doesn't have the persona where he's like, I'm the straw that stirs the drink. He's not on that vibe.

the big three thing was the basic math. It was top-heavy. And what you're seeing, in a way that I didn't consider actually until you articulated it, was the way in which jazz as a metaphor is actually even more meaningful. Because jazz as a metaphor, historically, in my understanding, had always been basketball is free-flowing, improvisational, and

all of the sort of like flowery language, you're talking about something interesting, more interesting than that to me. You're talking about guys need to get a hold of their ego and sublimate themselves for the greater mission. Absolutely. And it's free flowing as long as everybody understands what the construct is and what the rules are. In jazz, you have a basic chord. It's the same chord you hear all the time, like G7. Every song has a G7.

And then there are notes above that where you can extend the harmony. And piano players just doing that. And I'm like, why are you doing that? He goes, well, man, it's in the harmony. I said, but it's not in the song, bro. Harmonically, it's correct. Musically, that was some dumb shit you just played. And they tend to be pissed off when you say it because they only know how to play one way.

By the way, now I get why you and Rick Carlisle get along. I get it. I know enough about Rick to know how you guys may be bonding. Man, he's smart as hell and he don't care. I love him. He's brilliant and he does not care. Those are the two scouting reports I often get on Coach Carlisle. I love him. What kind of a critic are you? I'm the worst. They ask my colleagues. They hate when I show up. But I've learned to keep my mouth closed. So they like me more now.

But they used to come and say, "Well, what do you think?" And I'd tell them, and then they'd be like, "Man, you're an a**hole. Get out of here." But if you ever went to a string quartet concert and watched, they are making constant communication with one another. It's like if you watch the NFL Combine and they say,

This guy can run the 40 in 4.2 seconds. That's amazing. And his vertical leap is four. Can he play football? And that's the music thing. It's like, man, can you play music? It's great that you can play the hell out of the saxophone. There's a lot of saxophone players who play saxophone better than me. I'm not trying to be humble. I know this to be true. But I play music better than them. So I win.

It's part of why Sam Presti is fascinating, because Sam Presti, beyond his discretion and privacy, which is now very well known, I actually am curious as to your read of him as just a guy that you had never met before. Sam loves his job, first and foremost. He doesn't love what it brings him. He loves that job. And the thing I love about him is if you didn't know what he did, you wouldn't know what he does.

he wouldn't introduce it. He'd never bring it up. That's my kind of dude right there. They were coming to New Orleans to beat up on my lowly Pelicans. The play-by-play announcer, Joel Myers, is a buddy of mine, also a big jazz fan. And we spent a lot of time talking about records. And we were going to meet for dinner and Sam found out and said, "Hey man, I'm coming to dinner with y'all." I'm like, "Wow, don't you have more pressing matters to do? Like what you're doing now?" And

You know, and he was in New Orleans and he came through and it was great. And we had a meal and we talked about nothing about basketball. And there's nothing else to the story. What is your scouting report on Sam the musician as you've come to understand it? He's never come in and sit in with us. So there's no way to judge. I mean, I just know he's a big fan of the music. I don't even know he played drums. Perfect example. He never brought it up. He never brought it up. That's wild. Had no idea. Okay. So I'm going to do something.

Yeah. Yeah, man.

I'm going to play you something. All right. And I'd just like us to both listen and then we can discuss. So would you mind? No, I would not mind. Sam, I'm going to rip you, bro. I'm ripping you, man. Got to do it.

So I just need to acknowledge here as a human being who makes things, how absolutely terrifying what I'm about to do must be for Mike Tucker and Matt Morin and Sam Presti and the rappers in that recording studio in New Hampshire in the mid-90s. Because asking one of the greatest living musicians to critique the long-forgotten music that you had made before you were legally allowed to rent a car is kind of a nightmare. I must admit,

Especially if you are an extraordinarily private NBA executive who never wanted anybody to hear this. And especially when Branford Marsalis' self-scouting report as a critic, once again, is this. I'm the worst. They ask it of my colleagues. They hate when I show up. But now, it is time for Branford Marsalis to find out. The album is called Milk Money. Mm-hmm.

Sam Presti is the artist, and this is the introductory track. Excellent. Music transcends race, religion, sex. It transcends all of that. It's a reflection of the human heart. I mean, that was like some Buddy Rich. He was just firing, going all over. So he can play. You know, you say what it means, you say what it means, you flip it.

I mean, flip for real. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. Well, yeah, that's what I tried to do is, you know, because I had all the music in my head that I wanted to do, but I had to track everybody down, you know, so the only way I knew how to do it was just get the people that were close to me that I thought could carry out, you know, and kind of expand on the things that I was thinking about. When I got Mark Panaski...

What's running through your mind? Sam understands what the job is and he keeps the beat. But there's a few guys that would play that groove and add extra things, really nerdy extra things like playing parts on upbeats or playing against because it calls attention to them in a certain way and all the musicians go, "Whoo!" And every time I hear it, I'm like, "Why are they doing that shit?" Just play the gig, bro. James Blackwell doing some cuts.

It's more R&B, but it has solos and it uses interesting chord structures, so it falls more in line with jazz than anything else.

You know, the trumpet player was clearly has been checking out Miles because he has the muted trumpet and he's playing it the way Miles plays it. I just love the fact that Sam can keep a groove. That sounds like the 90s, the 90s vibe. I demanded to mention that you played sax on "Fight the Power." Oh yeah, I was, you know, that was Spike Lee's idea. And Spike called me, we were neighbors.

In Fort Greene? Yeah. I think the most important part of it for him is that we were friends and neighbors before he became famous. And he said, "I want you to play on this song with Public Enemy." I'm like, "You kidding? Okay, great. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be great. It's called 'Fight the Power.'" But it was Spike's idea. I got two more tracks to play for you, if that's okay. Sure. Our next track in Music Class with Branford Marsalis is titled "16 Baltimore Ave."

So, two songs, both by James Brown. One is called "Cold Sweat" and the other one's called "Superbad." And it's kind of like a mashup of those two. The saxophone player was a big fan of Mike Brecker's. Michael Brecker was a guy that he used to play that. Way too many notes though for that groove. And when I first got to New York,

I was more of an R&B player than a jazz player. And there's a scale called the pentatonic scale. And that's all I could play was the pentatonic scale. And the first thing he played was the pentatonic scale. And I went, oh, that's me. That's where I was at. You're at the front of the class and this band now looks to you and they say, Professor, what did we just do here? You say. I would play records for them. They're more efficient ways to do what you're doing.

And I would certainly play the James Brown records. There's an instrumental record that James Brown's band did. It was the JBs. That was the name of the record, the JBs. And they had a song called Pass the Peas on there. It was really great. And then there's another record that the trombonist Fred Wesley did called Fred Wesley and the Horny Horns. And they really do know how to

play that style of music and still leave enough space for the music to breathe, rather than flood the zone with flurries of sixteenth notes. But the rest of the band was very disciplined. I mean, Sam played the parts. He didn't really try to deviate. The bass player stayed with it. The piano player

Soloing leaves a little bit to be desired, but everybody, you know, man, it was good. It was good. I enjoyed it. I got one more track for you. All right. This one I think you may be familiar with. ♪

So now I feel like a cruel scientist. Yeah, I want to know what you think. Let me know what you think. I mean, look, so here's what I know, right? That's Coltrane. Yes. This is a standard. This is something that as I listened to it, I began to feel bad playing it for Branford Marcells. Wow.

I'm imagining them in the box that I'm in watching your face and I began to just sweat a bit. So because you're also, by the way, for people who are not familiar, of course, with what you have also done rearranging that song, could you just fill us in? I'm demanding that you fill us in on like your familiarity with this song. Oh, yeah. It's a song I wouldn't play, first of all. Because? It's just, it's like one of the running...

jokes we have in the group is that bands that lean towards rock and roll or R&B, every time that they play what is considered a jazz tune, it's always in a minor key. I don't know why, but it's either Mr. PC or it's the Miles Davis song, So What. So What

What about the drum solo in that one? Well, the thing that was most interesting about the drum solo is that that's a thing we call trading fours. Because the song is a 12-bar form. I'm trying to simplify it. And it's in 4-4. So for you folks out there, if you count 1, 2, 3, 4, when you get to the next one, that's a new bar. So it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 4.

3, 2, 3, 4, 4. And they were playing four bar phrases. The saxophone player would play for four bars and then Sam would play for four bars. Now, a lot of times when drummers would play that, they always make this big sample crash on the first beat that the saxophone starts to play again. I thought it was really cool that he did it.

because the other way is just super cliche to me. And it was really cool that he didn't. He just went, swing. He was like, oh, that's kind of cool. That was a great idea. I mean, Sam, go ahead, man.

But there is one more aspect near the end here that Branford brought up that I do think is worth mentioning.

Because a story about an executive's secret former life as a drummer at a liberal arts college also relates to something that Branford and his late father Ellis, the musician who most inspired Branford and his brother Wynton, would talk about a lot. And it feels especially relevant today. The essential destruction of the liberal arts college system

in the United States was one of the worst things that he felt could ever happen because in the 1950s there was no such thing as pre-law. So a lot of these lawyers were taking theater and reading Shakespeare. - Yes, yes. - And it brings a whole different side out of you. But now it's like, you know, pre-law, law, pre-med, med.

And then they say, oh, doctors don't really communicate like they used to. Well, they don't learn the stuff that they used to. They don't understand the value of poetry and the value of a liberal arts education. And liberal arts colleges are dwindling everywhere. The fact that Sam is an executive and he also had this music career where he was playing music, it's going to make him a better executive. Because everything you learn, you carry with you.

All of which reminds me of something. Something else that Dara, the Thunder superfan, the crate digger who found this physical, used CD and enabled this entire episode, had found out. We always say, like, impress who we trust, right? He makes a trade, he makes a draft pick, we just sort of blindly believe it, even if going into the draft we had no idea who this guy was. But on the same sense, like, we don't know who he is as a person.

Everything he says, it sounds like he's rehearsed it over 20 times. I like this album because it's sort of him personally, to a certain extent. Like... Yes. I hate to say this, but I think like Daryl Morey, if this was him, he'd be like, should I re-release the deluxe edition or something? You know what I mean? This is some guy that he's been the only constant in this organization, but I don't think I've ever really seen him laugh at anything, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, and to be honest, I have no idea how the NBA's Executive of the Year, one of the best executives in all of sports, is gonna react once he hears this episode that he did not want to exist. And I have no idea about that because Sam Presti, as was entirely expected, did decline to comment, which brings our music documentary here back to how we started. What'd you find out today, Pablo?

I would like to tell someone that I know in real life, hey, do you have that sax on you? And to immediately be serenaded by. All right. Well, you asked for it. That is so much better than I thought it would be.

We've turned the tables on Sam Presti now. We have scouted the young Sam Presti. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for doing that, Brantford. I hope he's not mad at me. Well. I hope he's not mad at you, but it was a pleasure to do it. It was a pleasure to listen to the music and talk about my man, so that's cool. Yeah. Another line in your bio is that you're now officially a Pablo Torre Finds Out correspondent. Now, see, that I brag about. See? Now, see, that's the thing. I name drop that shit. Everything else, nah, but I name drop that.

You've been listening to Pablo Torre Finds Out, a subsidiary of White Snacks Jazz Rabbit Hole. Wait a minute. Brought to you by Metal Ark Media. Oh, there it is.