E21: Media misalignment, subjects controlling narratives & more with bestie guestie Draymond Green

here to the fans hey everybody it's the all in podcast wet your big young spielberg coming at you on a friday morning afternoon drive time the number 11 podcast in the world it's the all-in podcast with the queen of quinoa david friedberg rain man himself with his hot new track from young spielberg i am the rain man david sachs and of course wedding his beak the absolute dictator wetting his beak with his merch merch game is strong chamoth how's everybody doing on the backs of us becoming the number 11 podcast in the world really good really wow look at that enthusiasm really great no i think we had an intermittent uh uh uh sexy poo is not apparently you know with

with all these with all his weak uh beak wedding he hasn't had time to pay the internet bill you can go ahead and upgrade your dsl from from 56 kilobits i think you can afford it okay he's hit his bandwidth limit because he was watching himself on tucker over and over again this morning i do i do need to say this that yesterday we do have first-hand evidence that david sacks after appearing on tucker carlson then spent the next hour watching himself appear on tucker girls literally got up from the poker table my god she used to play poker with his besties because he had to watch himself less than six times on tucker he must have been watching 20 30 times no no

headphones just listening to the iphone looking at it holding it up to his ear just so he doesn't miss a word optimizing his performance what was it like to go on fox news with this a dream for you sax is this a is this a bucket list see jason this is why you're such a scumbag because i i asked you guys i said hey like uh tucker show's inviting me on should i go you know and you guys are like yeah yeah it'll be great for ratings for the pod you should definitely do it and then after i do it the first thing you guys say when i walk in the room is oh my god you went on tucker how right-wing are you do you realize that all your deal flow just got cancelled yup yup all your deals by the way that was the funniest part jason had pre-meditated totally basically getting you to

appear on tucker so as to impugn you and destroy you goes oh i'm gonna get all your deals now all is fair when it comes to early stage deal flow yeah and then he starts tweeting you know he's like the first one to show a photo of me split screen with tucker i was waiting i was i was literally watching it it's time for the great takedown actually you did in all seriousness you did great um i think it was worth doing and he framed it as i don't know if people saw it you can look up tucker carlson bestie david sacks it'll come up number one and um he said you were um essentially taking a very liberal classic liberal point of view so

he basically set the stage for you to not be a far-right wing nut case you were actually defending liberal principles of people should have the ability to have freedom of speech why don't you talk about what it was like yeah i mean so so you're right i mean he made the the connection in the comparison to net hentoff who was like the famous aclu free speech lawyer and uh and i really appreciated that because i do very much see myself in that mold of of somebody like hentoff he wrote a book called free speech for me but not for thee um sort of a famous line because everybody wants free speech for themselves and they're allies but they want to deny it to people they disagree with and you know they never seem to realize that

censorship is a problem until it gets turned against them and so you know the point i made about the these reddit kids who are censored is that look this this was not what they there was some raunchy speech in their message board uh we all know that but it was no different than any trading floor trading pit or boiler room on wall street right it's the same kind of language yet they were taken down and censored by discord for hate speech why because they became very threatening to you know powerful insiders and um you know but how many of those those reddit kids uh saw it as a problem when you know trump or his supporters got or or parlor got de-platformed a few weeks ago they could never have imagined that that same censorship principle could ever get turned against them and and so we all have a blind spot towards censorship when we like the results and you know hentoff's point is always look it's not about the results it's about who

are you giving the power to to censor to and that's what you have to be really careful of in relation to that how delightful has it been to not have trump on twitter putting aside you know censorship even for you as a republican uh conservative but liberal socially i will note uh you're very liberal socially you live and let live uh pro lb gtq of course uh and but to not have trump on twitter has been all that cognitive space has come back we get it all back silence silence is is is bliss uh what do you guys think what did you guys think about um what

is her name marjorie blah blah green who just got completely censored what what exactly happened yes sax is that censorship yeah if you're a crazy loon who believes that particular shooting was a false flag what do we do there no i mean that's not that's not censorship it's just she got censured i guess um because her colleagues thought she was out of line that's okay i mean if her colleagues want to vote for that that's fine so she can still say crazy stuff you just can't do it and have this certain job yeah i mean look let's face it when when politicians say crazy stuff it helps the other side i mean you know marjorie green or whatever her censorship who does that help it helps the democrats um you know quite frankly uh does trump being off twitter uh

does that really help democrats i don't think so i mean um you know you could argue that that biden or or that trump is the one unifying opposition to trump is the one unifying force in the democratic coalition so the the more trump is out there the the more it bonds the democratic coalition together um so yeah i mean censorship has this way of like backfiring and uh you can't just look at it in terms of narrow short-term political results speaking of censorship i want to get your take on something else i think these last two weeks have been a complete sea change in venture capital and let me give you the setup it's all of a sudden seemed like

there's been a decision that's been made where the ecosystem of companies will basically use their own platforms and their own mediums to completely control the narrative and the dissemination of information about them that the media in the effort of company building may have taken a big step back um you know i think uh the whole sort of like thing on clubhouse was really interesting i think uh this guy who just joined andreessen horowitz who actually hosts a show on clubhouse is really interesting um i think there's some like really interesting emerging managers who just have these incredibly different ways of sharing what is his name he's been hosting good times at 11 10 or 11 p.m every night on clubhouse mark andreessen comes to

it every night and of course elon came interviewed vlad and then last night zuckerberg showed up uh in order to get the blueprints for clubhouse to then put it into instagram and facebook but what do you guys what do you guys think of sort of like this entire sector of the economy basically trying to i guess organize and end around yeah i don't know traditional media it doesn't seem like it's just venture right i mean look at look at trump you know he avoided having the traditional press conference as the the channel for dissemination of his point of view and communication of his uh objectives and he went on twitter every day and he just tweeted um and i think you know anyone who's been part of a business or an operation that's had to deal with you know media

gathering facts that uh that you don't consider to be true and you can't really counter their point and then they publish and it's static and it's out there um you're frustrated and in the in the the world that we have today which is many alternatives for going direct to our customer and going direct to our audience through social media and having control over that message uh it's appealing to make the switch away from traditional pr and going to social i mean chamath you don't put out press releases you go on twitter and you make a statement about what your intentions are and you publish your one-pagers and i feel like everyone's trying to do this and there's all this like trend of big companies now too which is how do you develop a quote-unquote social media presence you can speak directly to your audience and your customers without having to go through the press i find it very hard um to get the point across um by going through traditional medium right it's not that it's not that it can't

be done but i find it harder and harder and the reason is because they're in such a ferocious competition with social media and so they have to be just as click-oriented and newsworthy um as the next best tweet that's that's trending at that time so it's it's an almost impossible task well naval had a great line about this which i think he tweeted a long time ago which is that the internet commoditized the reporting of facts and so at that point the the traditional media went wholesale into opinion opinions into opinions and so now they all have an agenda of some kind and especially the tech press their agenda basically is hatred of tech i mean they hate the people they're reporting on i mean jake how you know this right i mean yeah i mean having been a journalist in this it's really interesting to hear your opinions and if you look at trust among

uh republicans all-time low in the press and then just all americans don't trust the press right now they think there's hidden agendas and it really is a confluence of events what happened was the internet caused um the revenue streams of the press to get just violently compressed or eliminated so you know you had craigslist take the classified business google and facebook took the ad business in subscriptions netflix spotify et cetera so you have all that revenue is gone and what that meant was they uh didn't have the resources to do fact checking and then the publishing schedule because of blogging which i was involved in required that people file two three four times a day just to keep up and so when you're filing even

just twice a day there is no time to get quotes from the subjects so we have all as people who are subjects had quotes uh attributed to us that were like where did you pull that quote from like oh three years ago you said this or whatever and that you don't even know you're going to be in the story like the hit piece they did on you chamoth some sports writer and sf gate did some hit piece on chamoth did they ever call you did they ever say would you like to respond that's how it used to work until you learn when you get a degree in journalism right you call the subject you interview course and it used to be you filed once every two weeks or maybe if you were in a weekly news a news like a newsweek or a business week you filed once a week magazines

you filed once uh or twice per episode per issue or maybe once every other issue or feature writer now they have to they have to publish so much by the way jason you said don't do any fact checking you said something really really important it's the craziest thing where these guys will not even call you and say here's what we're running or here's what we're going to say do you want to work through this with us do you want to tell us are there any inaccuracies we're really seeking the truth nobody's really seeking the truth they're seeking clicks yes and so here's what happens yeah the your salary is now determined by your number of followers on twitter as is your book deal and your sub stack then becomes your negotiating position versus your existing

publication so someone like kara swishers who is not full-time at the new york times probably makes a half million or a million dollars a year doing her podcast with them in the editorial page i would say somewhere between 500k and a million all the other writers there are looking at other people who've gotten significant followings and saying i have to get a big following how do you get a big following well sax figured that out he he wasn't didn't have a huge following on twitter in the last couple months but since we did the podcast sack started having an opinion and picking a side and really owning his opinion and but in fairness and also being super and super intelligent and thoughtful about it of course but anybody picking a side gets rewarded and if you go down the middle you don't get rewarded because people go that makes sense but then if you're not people then people should just be using facts as a jumping off point as opposed

to like weaving it into the narrative so that other folks get confused meaning you know it used to be the case that a newspaper has an opinion page well no now the whole newspaper is opinion correct because the facts you can just get from the ap right there's no point calling the new york times to figure out what the hell is really one of them they should be doing is deep analysis yeah like the new york times article that you brought up a couple of weeks ago chamoth that we talked about on the pod was uh about the the the trust fund kids who are giving away all their money you know it wasn't an analysis of how many people with this amount of wealth are giving away their money it was anecdotes to make the case that this is the story line that they kind of wanted to progress and you know that is i think the where you're able to kind of stay within the bounds of

traditional journalism but still you know get a narrative across that is a bit sensational and it is a bit kind of you know inspiring and freelance all you need to do having been on the inside of these discussions is when you have one person it's a profile as an example when you have two um it's still a kind of a profile with an example but once you get to three you got a trend piece and so what your editor say to you is if you can get me a third person who's a trust fund kid now we got a trend piece and we're in the clear so let's do that and do the anecdotes instead of actual research which then takes time and resources and if you look what andreessen horowitz has specifically done with clubhouses and it's really freaked out some new york times reporters i won't say which ones because every time i mention this one reporter she pulls the female reporter card and she pulled it last night where she said i'm a female taylor lawrence mark andreessen

i'm not going to say who it is because she gets really upset it's taylor lawrence but she i mean she yeah she tweeted it so i don't think she's hiding from this she doesn't submit it and she put it in the public now bringing up her name she will i guarantee you tweet well can i say something about being harassed by jason calacanis because i'm a woman she's saying that mark andreessen and andreessen horowitz blocked her from their clubhouse room when you're a block from a club's room you don't get access so she said i'm gonna make my own shadow account she did make a puppet account now she's listening in and she got upset at me because i told people in a room hey there's a new york times report in the room just be careful because this could wind up in print she called that harassment and gender basis and the the thing they're complaining about now is

that all of us are trying to go around them and just tell our stories directly and so they're all enraged they're saying how dare mark andreessen or you know a16z you know not talk to us it's like well why should they i mean you know my experience with the press has been that about 75 percent of the time when they ask me for comment on something it ends up being a hit piece um maybe not on me but on some something i care about and they they they twist what you say or take one little quote out of context to support the article and you end up giving credence to an article that you completely disagree with and so and so all of us have just stopped taking those calls i mean

we just know we just know there's such an agenda behind most of these um calls that we just like don't take them anymore yeah that's that's why we're going direct yeah i'll say one thing about taylor lawrence i i've learned a lot because i feel like you know being 44 i'm kind of out of the no yes and i've learned a lot because she's she has her finger on she processes i mean it's really it's been really fun reading her uh reading her stuff the other thing i'll say is on the end recent thing i think what they have finally stumbled into like i remember when you know andreessen started about a year before i started social capital and i remember the whole push was you know multi-services right and they were going to be recruiting and sales and this and that you know i suspect that all of that was kind of like pretty meager roi and not that it just burned a ton of fees but i think

this thing that they're doing is really smart because if they effectively build their own distribution arm through newsletters sub stack podcasts you know clubhouse shows whatever that's a force to be reckoned with because then if you're a venture investor you either have to be like them with their own version in which case the the brand event andreessen really matters or you're on this path of where the trend of ventures already going which is solo gps and individual people are the brands and there's going to be very little space in the middle so for example like i do think that like you know the all-in podcast helps for example david in kraft um or jason ewan launch but you guys the syndicate is going crazy but and you guys also stand alone as individuals um but you know if you're a traditional firm you know pick your organization which neither has brands nor has distribution what are you doing well you're probably forced to just

pay the highest price and so those returns for those folks in the middle get really bad i think over time and you at some point have to decide are you an individual person right and there's like some amazing up and coming gps we know them lockheed groom folks like that or are you are you andreessen horowitz with this massive distribution i mean and now we have to just i think face the reality that we are in competition and i think that's what is making the press even more and that's what makes the situation more complicated i'm not saying the press is targeting people they consider competitive but the press is not getting vlad elon or zuck for interviews but because mark andreessen has you know clubhouse now they put themselves on the suggested follower list

just like twitter put ohm kara swisher and some other journalists on the suggested follow-up list for twitter what that was was it was payment basically like a million followers now when dreesen has a million followers bellagi all these folks from indresan i believe have like a million followers so the press is complaining about that as well because they can then dominate them in terms of getting subjects so they've lost the subjects none of us get on the phone with the press with very few exceptions and where is sway or vox or ezra klein when compared to our podcast right like we're right up there with them if not ahead of them i mean we're the number one tech podcast so it's it's pretty crazy when you think about how much their world has changed and now they're directly in competition with andreessen horowitz all in podcast you know pick the firm doing a venture thing and that's going to make this even more contentious i appreciate yes i

i totally agree with that but i also i do think fundamentally that all of us wouldn't have felt the same need to go around them if we didn't feel that there was such a strong agenda just to bring what have you guys heard of gel man amnesia effect michael okay so michael crichton you know who wrote jurassic park and like a true polymath and genius right yeah airframe very good by the way i mean so many brilliant things he uh was even a hollywood director true multi-talented guy anyway he described the the gentleman amnesia effect as follows he says you open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well so in this case it was a physics paper by on gel man okay um

he said you know this yeah yeah he says he says you read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues often the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backwards reversing cause and effect i call these the wet streets cause reigns stories the paper is full of them okay in any case you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story but then you turn the page to some other section to national international affairs and you read the rest of the paper as if it was somehow more accurate totally um you turn the page and forget what you know which is that the journalist just gets so much wrong and and i think you know and all of us kind of suffer from gelman amnesia sometimes because we still i think take when we read something in the paper we take

it at face value and i think but we we all know that when it comes to tech reporting or whatever there's so much misinformation that gets put out by these official channels and i think at the end of the day what's happening now with these end run around the traditional media it's all a response to german amnesia i think it's a problem of complexity um you know i remember years ago i would when i was younger i would read the paper or read magazines about science and engineering and i was you know really interested in these topics and it was only years later when i actually realized how wrong so many of those articles were as i started to read the original scientific research papers but it takes a skill set and it takes a significant amount more time to really go

into depth into those papers and to actually read them the same is true as you point out with like you know geopolitical issues like the complexity of what goes on yeah um here's where when i was a journalist we would have about 10 to 20 percent of the information about what occurred when we published our first story and then maybe every subsequent follow-up we get another 10 which means if we were really hooked into a story and we did five versions of that story we might get to 40 50 understanding whereas when the four of us are doing a deal and then you see this impact you know the press is getting it completely wrong and that was fine if you felt the press was fair

right but what's happening is now there's a distinct feeling with subjects that they're being treated unfairly and what i do when somebody connects to me and they say hey can you comment on robin or whatever i said i can't but i do have a great story for you about a world positive startup and i kept doing this with teddy who kept asking me to give information on friends of mine you know the guy from uh recode or whatever who covers like philanthropy and every time they contact me i say yeah you know i can't comment on that but you can talk to the founder but i have three world positive stories are you interested in any of them and i just do that kind of to troll them and they've never in five years taken me up on profiling a world positive so if the press wants to turn this around a very simple solution is one for you one of your

hate stories so if you for every time you want to take down a company maybe write about one company that's doing something good there's some company doing something in carbon sequestering right now that is super valid and world positive write about it and the only time they write about tesla is when elon trips or you know something uh somebody dies in a car or they write about uber because of some tragedy sorry i just want to say like jason like just going back a second like your point is one about bias which is you know creating sensationalism sell stories it's what consumers want to consume at the end of the day so there's certainly you know a market-driven model there the point i was trying to make earlier there's also a separate problem around complexity which is complex issues take time and take depth to truly understand and so to really understand what's going on in the middle east or what's going on inside of a company like facebook requires more than a five paragraph journal article it requires some

hours of conversation and dialogue and i think by the way the craving for that depth which delivers truth and understanding is what you know podcasts can provide and clubhouse is providing long-form content that allows you to go into the nuance and into the texture and into the depth of what's going on in the world as opposed to having the five paragraphs littered with ads buzzfeed article that says something sensational but it simplifies something to the point that it's often wrong or completely misses the real depth of what's going on and you know it's like and i think that i i think they're both they're both they're both kind of playing into each other and then i want to give a prediction they're both what you're describing are both issues and i think they're related in the following sense that if you were to go to like any of these reporters like the people that jcal mentioned a couple of names okay if you were to filter their bylines

and see all of their not not one story but look at like all of the headlines for all their stories over say the past year you will definitely see a trend they will all they will all have you know like negatives for certain reporters it'll be 100 negative about tech zero percent positive aaron griffin i think is the reporter who's one of the top tech reporters at the new york times it's just like coinbase coinbase away yeah exactly so when's the last time they wrote a positive story so there is this huge agenda there and um and i think it prevents people from getting into the complexity because it's a lot easier to write you know prediction and i'm gonna make a bold prediction here the media companies are gonna you know they're obviously picking a side they obviously

went subscription now they're dealing with sub stack clubhouse podcasts all chipping away i think what's going to happen is you're going to see media brands built around certain podcasts and they're going to work subject first in other words the subject of the story are going to create media properties so if you look at what we've done with all in and obviously i have this week in startups if we did the friedberg on science podcast and it was just freedberg explaining a science topic and then we did chamoth on public markets and then we did sacks on you know alt-right conspiracy theories and we just had five pounds or it could be something else i don't know guns whatever i don't know we're pro-life i don't know what saxon's into but you know what no sax could

do something on sas so saxon sass freeburg on science chamoth on thirst traps this weekend then we have all in that's five five full pods of an hour and a half each if each of you did your own pod and i have my pot and we made the all in network the all in news network i guarantee you we would be within five years you know right up there with cnn and ms as a musician well one thing that jason i've been talking with now is i really do want to start um a twitch channel and i think part of why is i'd like to really actually have more conversations about you know companies and stocks and with youth with the utes yeah with the youths

and like you know really get into the details and like also when we you know partner with a company bring them on the show so that we can spend an hour or two and talk about things in detail it's totally lost and and the crazy thing that i realized for me is you know to your point jason like you know we have enough distribution now we're where millions of people can see it and if that has real impact because you know you can allow people to judge and i'm not necessarily saying we're better or worse than anybody else but if we're not using it for uh the per the express purpose of selling ads necessarily and getting paid i do think there's a better likelihood that it's that the outcome is better well i mean a big part of the success of this has been the banning of guests and the banning of banning of ads and banning of ads people really have responded to that and i think if we put the twitch channel up and we just throw in all in throw in this weekend

startups and then you know uh a saks you know point counterpoint show and i i'm being sincere friedberg just freeburg on science and you know that's five shows and we just say every friday there's gonna be five shows like this is your weekend and we're gonna loop it and there'll be a q a i guarantee you we could get five other besties to do shows you know and we would didn't didn't you guys originally like so for the audience um that that doesn't know this originally the all-in podcast was uh chamath and jason they were talking about doing a show together um and then covet hit and they uh i think you guys asked me on the pod zero to talk about covet stuff

um but what was the original goal you guys had you know did isn't that what you wanted to do originally was to have kind of a direct audience and a direct conversation about you know whatever it is you wanted to talk about where you could have this kind of long-form dialogue um you know what what did you guys why did you guys want to do it in the first place i mean wasn't that kind of the idea i'll tell you what what's sort of like my general viewpoint is which is that um like we are atomizing our affinity so i think that like we've gone from believing in institutions and now i think we fundamentally mistrust institutions then we spent 30 or 40 years believing in companies and now i think we basically don't believe in companies anymore and now we're sort of at the at the at the bleeding edge of what where belief and trust exists which is at an individual

person level ownership ownership so so like you know i and i think that when an individual has the potential to not just be about something for themselves but also for themes that other people care about that's when you get real heat and obviously the most impressive example of that is elon because you know e represents exploration engineering science climate change you know memes all all of this stuff um not release not really uh i think the other things are really what matters no um and so and so what it shows people is like i just want to find affinity around a few key people and what he is is not the end state he's the beginning of the beginning

right so what's going to happen is all of us will say i don't trust institutions so whatever they put out is just going to be corpo i don't trust companies what they say is going to be corpo i'm going to take my best shot at finding folks that i think are real yep um and i'm just going to get that's the thing that's why i wanted to do this with jason and then with the four of us i think what happened almost accidentally is it's like a real plurality of views and um and you don't have to agree with all of us and frankly no nobody does and we don't generally agree

100 but i think that's what's happening so i think we're another much smaller than elon but another example of you're going to want to find your own truth tellers you know folks that you will get behind and and and i think that you know business people that's where they're going to emerge because if you look at that first generation of star kim kardashian the kanye west of the world that's arcing you know then people went to like the mystery beasts and that's still building so you have the business celebrity building you have sort of next generation celebrity building and i think that's right let me just ask you guys one question because you know i think the the intention with with journalists was kind of to be arbiters of the truth or discover as a

fact and to deliver that fact um to their audience and when you have this direct relationship between the source and the audience as you do through social media and twitter and whatnot there isn't an arbiter there isn't a third party and everything that then is said by the source is taken at face value how does that play out in a world where you know trump may say things like hey there's election fraud um when the facts don't line up and now you have this ability to not have an arbiter and these people anyone that now has a direct relationship with a large audience can say anything they want and kind of drive large change without those things necessarily being rooted in some you know relative kind of objective um sense so sax well i mean i think it's a

marketplace of ideas and everybody's competing and the the answer to bad speech or bad ideas is more speech and better ideas and um i mean that's the reality is it is very frustrating to see you know people propagating things that aren't true however none of us has a monopoly on the truth we can't say for sure what it is and so we arrive at the truth through sort of a free marketplace of ideas um there is no better solution than that you know there is no magical way to entrust a small elite of people with you know the right to censor and tell us what the truth is without essentially you know creating a worse situation and um you know that

that's the fundamental problem so yeah look we're we're gonna we're we're going to this era in which um there there is no um you know if you go back like 50 years ago you had walter cronkite saying and that's the way it is and everyone believed him and then the new york times was the paper of record and people believe that's fit to print right exactly and so but that's been steadily eroding for decades and now the internet is the final erosion of that and um and look i think it's not an ulti it's not a bad thing because in order for journalism to work you need all the journalists to buy into a certain code of journalistic behavior and ethics which is all about objectivity and the press doesn't buy into that anymore they don't believe in objectivity anymore no yeah i'll tell you something saks young writers i found when we were trying to hire young writers for insight as an example they all wanted

to write anti-trump you know pro-woke whatever they had some acts to grind and i said you know you should really write for an opinion page but you haven't done any journalism yet so you should probably do journalism for 10 years and then the second decade you earn the right to be on the opinion page let's put in some reps do 10 years of this and you know it just never uh actually wait do you guys hear something you guys seen that movie from and there's that moment where the movie just suddenly the scene changes and everything's different what's that is somebody at the oh what's going on that's the heavy line wait what somebody's calling the bestie phone did you give the bestie phone number to somebody oh my god it's somebody wait what's going on

who's there you up you up you what's going on okay let's see is anybody there hello hello whoa draymond green in the house what's up nasty gusty guests what's going on what's up besties where are you are you in a are you in a uh coronavirus covid quarantined somewhere in an nba bubble where are you i am i mean i'm in dallas stuck in the hotel with bad water pressure the worst that honestly that is the thing if you had to give me the most luxurious hotel in the world but with a tap a faucet for water pressure no thanks i would rather sleep

i would rather sleep in a box with a great with a great shower the water pressure is everything everything all right on the call obviously uh drafted by the golden state warriors in the second round 35th overall in the 2020 nba draft three-time nba champion 2016-17 defensive player of the year two-time nba all-star five-time all-defense uh and drafted behind michael kidd gilchrist dion warriors harrison barnes tyler zeller miles plumbing and i don't know how many people got drafted ahead of you draymond but i know that you can repeat them in order is there anybody ahead of you who has achieved even a fraction of what you've achieved in the nba

draymond there's 34 guys drafted ahead of me and i definitely can still name all of them and saying that i think there are a few um anthony davis he's done okay he got one ring damian lillard no rings but a stud though he's very good player but no rings i'm just saying and bradley bill brad bill okay also no rings i got all the guys in the rings category but then i don't have patrick mccall in the rings category patrick mccall has the same amount of range as me so who you know you know respect to those guys i named although they don't have the rings i got major respect for those guys we were thinking about what to talk to you about coming on the pod and we have a series of questions just about being an nba player and what you've learned and how good you've become i just i'll start

it off with one question which is it seems like every year you get a little better at something how do you do that do you like say over the summer i'm just going to be better at my screens i'm going to be better at x y or z or do you just try to get incrementally better all year long i mean you always want to try to get better all year long but the reality is with this season with the way not just this season in particular in nba season in general you don't have much time to get better so you're kind of just getting better on the fly and when you're in your workouts during the season you're just trying to maintain because there's such little prep time but during the off-season you really lock in on a couple of things and try to get better at those things and you know i think i've become a much better ball handler i think i see the floor much better i think i've gotten better overall as a player the one area that i've wanted to see more growth in

is my shooting and you know when i'm shooting a basketball on my own i know for sure i've gotten better at shooting um like you know you come in the gym with me i shoot the lights out every time but it's it's about getting over that mental block in the game you know i think that's the thing people don't realize is you know i shot the lights out for years in a row and you know i had a year where i think i shot 39 from three but then you go through the struggle and once you lose it mentally it's hard to get it back and so i'm fighting that challenge now although i know i can make the shot

so when you get in the game mentally you got to get over that hurdle what do you do you do like meditation or do you have like a coach who does like positive visualizations or something like that or is it just reps and working through a shooting slump i've definitely incorporated some meditation on the calm app thank you shout out oh jesus christ did you give him no more come on you describe that [ __ ] on the only podcast are other players in the nba struggling right now i mean with like covet over the last year and the shutdown and the fits and starts and everything i mean is it kind of tough to get in the game mentally for folks and is it it's brutal it's brutal um you know you talk to guys around the league um there's even some guys and i won't throw anybody under the bus but

and i'm talking about one superstar in particular who i've never seen him out of shape and he's so out of shape right now everybody no comments james hard it's not luke or jane's heart but i've never seen this guy to shape um and he's out of shape right now and i actually explained it he's like man the bubble like oh it's just been hard and i completely understand that i mean what it's brutal and this season currently you know i don't want to sound like um just this over privileged guy who's complaining about uh being able to make a living because there's so many people who've lost their jobs and i don't

take you know being able to go to work for granted at all but this season has been extremely tough you know whereas an nba day normally is like maybe four to six hours like every day right now it's like 10 to 12 hours wow and you know it's covert testing you for 11 a.m practice we have to be at the facility at 8 45 a.m oh wow and then you have to be back at this facility to test no later than five [ __ ] in between four and five pm and so you you kind of have these long drawn out days and about maybe two hours of that is actual work time you know and then you're just

trying to do some recovery things to kill time you can't lead a hotel you know for myself one thing that i've always found in nba season is it's a ton of pressure obviously and it's very very demanding like you can't really do much else as you guys know i'm always trying to coordinate with y'all about playing poker around the sketch you can't really do anything else but one place that i found is normally i'll take like a day trip to aspen you know or do different things like that a day trip to l.a to kind of clear your mind and get a release you don't have those releases now you can't take a day trip you can't get away even on off days you have to go to the facility and test

and so even just seeing that facility that they although you may not even go in to work out but you drive into that facility every day mentally it's exhausting and so it's been a very tough season to say the least i think a lot of guys are struggling with it and saying that you know we all want to continue to earn our lives it must be better to be what you have to do must be better to be playing versus being stuck at home with with the league shut down right i mean it's got to be better for sure yeah i mean it's better for all of us obviously uh you know from an economical standpoint we all want to continue to make money uh you know and provide for our families we all want to continue to take this lead to new heights so it's always better uh for us to be on the court than off and but that comes with certain

challenges and you just got to deal with those challenges and try to continue to press forward before you came on we were talking about the media and we're talking about how all these industries used to rely on the media to tell their story and now all these industries are finding ways to go around them and it's even happening in venture capital right in the business of sports i found this thing that that i thought was really interesting um ronaldo signed a one billion dollar lifetime contract right i think this was like two three years insane but then it turned out that in one year he generated 474 million dollars of value for nike just through social media because of

the number of followers he had which i think is just absolutely nuts um what do you think about the media what do you think about your ability to tell your version of the facts through the media i think um we've definitely grown in that area as you said in you know in all uh business whether it's basketball whether it's venture you know just all over the border everyone is growing in that area and kind of start taking the bull by the horns and try to tell their own narrative um you know if you want me to be quite frank with you i hate the media and i've even i could possibly be a part of that group one day you know but i hate the media and the reason i hate the media is

i don't hate particular people you know i have relationships with a ton of people in media great people i hate what media entails in today's day and age you know it's all about um who can stir up the most commotion what happened with this guy uh what happened with that guy um it's less about man this guy is struggling on the floor and more about james harden was in the club yeah you know so how much controversy can we stir up about james's heart being in the club as opposed to if we really wanted to talk bad about james harden when he was on houston rockets he was bumming it

now we all know james harden isn't a bomb player but he was completely dogging it with the houston rockets he's completely turned it up and turned back into james harden as he's gotten to the nets but you can easily if you want to nitpick at james harder and talk about james harden not playing well but in turn we're going to talk about james harden being in the club that night and he was at little baby's birthday party and although you know i i disagree with some of the things you were doing why is that all that right it's all about it's all about clicks and and selling ad dollars against that we were just talking about that before you got on look at what happened to kyrie in in the span of literally a week kyrie had both sides of the same coin one was he violates the shelter in place or whatever and was like at a birthday party with his family and then he gets suspended and on the other side kyrie had bought a house for george

floyd's family yeah and so it's like both are true but you have to go through these two news cycles where first he's just a piece of [ __ ] and then he's this amazing philanthropist what's the point yeah i i i agree i don't i don't get the point like and like like freeburg just said it's it's all about clicks yeah and i think that's short-lived you know at some point everyone's gonna get tired of your clickbait and so yes it may drive you revenue right now it may um you know bring more subscribers right now but in the long term people are going to get sick of that

at the end of the day authenticity always wins out when you create great products when you give everything great to whatever business that you're giving that's always going to outlive the [ __ ] and so you got and that's why you're starting to see so many so much turnover with media people and leaving this job and going to this place and leaving other places because people get sick of that [ __ ] and so i feel like all of these guys are driving themselves out you're constantly you're killing your relationships with players you're killing your and when i say players i'm not just talking about nba players you guys are the players in the venture space we're the players in the in the basketball space you're killing your relationships with the players so eventually you're just going to be stuck there tweeting out [ __ ] making [ __ ] articles that no one will co-sign to and then no one wants to [ __ ] hear you anymore

oh boy looks like we got our bestie in rotation now yeah i gotta get clapped that's a little rant a little dragon oh man your first bestie rant that draymond we've all we've all had our moments we've all had draymond have you watched or listened to any of this podcast before of course are you [ __ ] kidding me i have a i have a question actually so so yeah and i'm not sure if the viewers know because from jason's introduction that we actually play poker with you right right that's how i got to know you and you know obviously it's been a real thrill and uh because you're a great guy and it's also really interesting to get a window into your world but i'm curious like what do you get out of hanging out with us or you know these these losers yeah so you know and uh and then you know maybe use that as a segue and

also talk about what you're doing in business these days because i think that's interesting what what i get from hanging out with you guys is number one incredible friends um you know i think that's what's been the most important thing for me is just building friendships that will go far beyond any of you guys doing any deals that have gone far beyond me doing any deals or me playing basketball and that's the thing that i cherish the most um you know obviously it started with besties bringing me into the poker game and introducing me to everyone and then all of you guys welcoming me with open arms and you know i always say in the groups in our group chats uh anytime that there's a debate going on i made sure to throw my disclaimer out there hey i can't talk anything with you guys i know everyone can talk circles around me but this is how i feel on sad topic tell us about the tell us about the temperature in america

the temperature in america uh is [ __ ] up and and i think you know where we are today as a country um it's no different than where we were 30 years ago 40 years ago we just live in a day and age of social media where we can see everything and so the same battle cry that dr king was crying uh 50 years ago it's still currently going on today it's the same exact thing or 60 years ago it's the same exact things that's that's taking place today and our country is one and in one of the most [ __ ] up spaces it's ever been in and then saying that it's in just about the same

place that it's always been in it yeah and so you know we've supercoated [ __ ] for so long that it seems now like oh police killings are an all-time high of shooting unarmed people um you know racism is at an all-time high it's not an all-time high it's the same that it's been it's just on the it's it's being pushed to the forefront now yeah as opposed to it being on the back burner before and so um that's that's just kind of where we are as a country um you know do you think sentiment's gonna shift draymond i mean you know the protests that happened in this country over the last year obviously happened during covet and um and i think it magnified them

a lot more uh than you know similar protests that have taken place historically but you know are we seeing like sentiment shift in the united states in terms of policy and people's behaviors and and attitudes right now uh i think some people behavior but i don't think anything is going to shift um in part and partly because we live in a fake ass world where no one can say anything you say anything you get castrated for you're i i think um you know and telling your truth which in order to create the change that we need in america people have to be able to speak the truth

and if you can't speak the truth without getting [ __ ] destroyed and a part of the [ __ ] castle culture that we all have to deal with then how can you ever create change through a lie lies are is what we've been facing for hundreds of years but yet when you get in front of a microphone you have to be very conscious of what you say because it may piss this group of people off or it may pinch that group of people off and then you're never allowed to tell the [ __ ] truth so how will we ever move forward as a country if no one can tell the truth and you only get canceled so you cancel who tells the truth and we [ __ ] push forwards all the lies we'll never

move anywhere as a country so i don't think we're going anywhere seems like in the nba we went from the players saying listen i don't want to touch that michael jordan was very clear in the last dance like you know i'm a i'm an athlete i don't want to talk about politics i don't want to lose half the audience and then you had you know melo um and uh you know lebron and a bunch of folks see uh chris paul i guess was in that group too dwyane wade when they came out and said hey listen we got to talk about this and we got to talk about race in america and then that culminated with the black lives matter um branding of everything in the bubble and that kind of historic moment what's the what's what was the vibe inside of the nba when the player said listen this is important to us if

we're going to get back on the court we need to make this front and center this is our priority and then you let's face it you got a lot of owners in the league maybe who are old white guys maybe they don't want to bring this kind of heat they don't want this kind of debate they want to just play ball shut up and dribble all this nonsense what was that moment like when you guys said no this is what we have to do if we're going to get back on the court i think i think guys have just had enough and more most importantly i think um now more than ever guys truly understand the power of the athlete you know exactly closing the loop on what we just said you we control the narrative you control the narrative absolutely and and so we're just kind

of in a space where we understand this ship don't sell without us and the things that matter to us has to matter to the league now right and saying that i think uh we have a commissioner that supports everything we stand for and when you have a commissioner like adam silver who is in full support of everything that the players stand for it's never trying to fight us it's never trying to put a muzzle on us and tell us not to stand up for what we believe in that that's a very powerful thing and that's why the nba is the most powerful sports league in the world because we have a commissioner who's on board and who not only supports what the players think and what we believe in but he takes it even a step further you know and and you don't see that

you see the nfl tell guys you have to stand you know or or stay in the locker room adam silver don't do us don't do that to us and that's why there's always friction between their commissioner and their players david what did you think about the storm the capital when you were watching that what was going through your mind we we see the two different sides of america the first thing that went through my mind was i wonder if that was a black lives matter protest or or black lives matter protesters stormed in the capital how much of a blood bath it would have been it would have been one of the biggest bloodbaths in american history you know and and so

immediately when i saw it the first thing i thought of was like wow how how is this even happening like and let alone it not happening no one and by the way i don't wish death on anyone but i know that if those who are melanated people storming into the capitol building it would have been bloodshed everywhere that would happen absolutely and so it just kind of um really once again just revealed how there's two sides of america and as i said before until we tell the truth about it we'll still will continue to live in the day and age where there'll

be two sides of america draymond when covid first started and we went into lockdown and we were all texting with each other talking about like how crazy the world had become one of the things that stuck with me and still sticks with me is the comments you made over our text chain about how it feels like you felt growing up can you just explain what you meant by that and like just share that with our audience that's listening because it was such a striking comment we were all like oh my gosh like i can't go outside i can't like go to the store like this this world is crazy and you were like this is what it was like and it was just such a striking maybe you can just share a little bit about what you meant by that because i think it paints a little bit of a picture uh you know for folks to understand a little bit about you know kind of you know what america can be like

and what it's like growing up in in in parts of the us well number one i want to point out that i told all y'all the first day we went into lockdown we also go to cowboy and no one listened to me that was a good call it was a good call you were right we should all go where to come oh yeah no but um when i said that in the group chat uh what i said what i said in the group chat was honestly i was in my condo in san francisco i live in a high rise great view of the bay bridge great view of the water you see all the san francisco south champs everywhere and and i said to the group chat after a few weeks of lockdown i said this you know guys i have to be

quite frank with you this feels no different than me growing up in saginaw michigan yeah and what i mean by that i said this feels no different than me growing up in saginaw mission the only difference is i know where my next i know where my next meal is coming from you know and i'm i'm in a much better place living space than i was but this show's no different we're unlocked in i can't go anywhere that was me growing up in saginaw michigan locked in couldn't go anywhere didn't know that there was a world that existed outside of saginaw michigan and basketball was able to take me different places but i i didn't know anything existed and nothing seemed accessible to

a young black kid growing up in saginaw michigan so once i was once i was then locked in the house along with everyone else in the world it just took me back to a space of wow nothing else is accessible to me this was exactly what it was when i was growing up as a 10 year old like nothing was accessible to us we didn't have anything yeah that's how and so when we went into lockdown like i felt right at home i felt like the kid growing up in saginaw again nothing was accessible to me but it's such a poignant point draymond because so many people don't you know people don't have that experience but hearing you say that it provides perspective that there are people living that today um and it's not just about a coveted lockdown but it's about a

different world um that we don't get to see so i really appreciated you sharing that i it honestly was very poignant and kind of struck a nerve with me when you said it absolutely i think you know one one thing another thing i said in the chat and i am included we we all got got a chance to see what it felt like to be those people you know obviously right i lived that life growing up but once you remove from it you're removed from it right like i you know you try not to never forget but let's let's be frank you know if you you grew up with nothing uh coming from india and or sri lanka and going to canada you had nothing you understand and you know we all understand

from a different perspective but there are still people currently that live that live that life today and they gave all of us a glimpse of what those people go through on a daily basis the one the one thing about this pandemic is that i've had these moments day where like i actually now am a little bit more connected to my past i did this um i did this podcast with this guy patrick o'shaughnessy and he ends every podcast and he says you know uh what is the kindest thing that some somebody's done to you and i had pushed this memory down into the [ __ ] recesses of my mind except in this last year i've remembered all these kindnesses because i've i've now i've these are

the moments where i felt the most insecure and i and i told the story about this kid who you know when i was like 11 or 12 he was eight so he was in my sister's class and their family gave us a mattress two mattresses and some clothes you know some plates and like a frying pan and a pot literally when we got refugee status and when i said it on the thing i started bawling and then i kind of collected myself and then getting a little clamped even hearing you talking well and the next the next morning uh nat said how did it go and i told her and i exploded and

i was crying and crying and crying and crying and to your point like it is so easy to forget where you come from but it's also easy to forget that there's a simple [ __ ] externality in this case it's a it's a virus you can't see that gets trans and it makes us all the same in one fell soup in one nanosecond and if that doesn't make you sort of like empathetic to everybody not nothing will but that's one silver lining in this whole [ __ ] debacle is it's an opportunity for for for a lot of folks to reconnect with their own self you know and be a better absolutely

there's something you you paused on draymond during the pandemic when you weren't playing and you guys obviously with the injuries and everything didn't you weren't in the bubble so you had a lot of time to be with yourself did you have any like during this great pause you know i don't know revelations about yourself your career and what you want to do in the second half of your career because let's be honest i mean the run the warriors has had has been transcended i mean you guys have checked off every box you personally have checked off every box especially for a guy who was drafted in the second round to be a champion and like the way you've developed and the leadership i mean everybody in the league knows when you're on the court that's the team and

you have that leadership the ability to see the floor and direct the offense direct the defense did you come up with anything we said this is what i want out of the future my life because we saw you dabble with you know tnt and the desk and you killed it we've seen you miked up we see you coaching now it seems like there's a 2.0 draymond like maybe a little evolution here of your thinking about maybe the third act and the second half of your mba career on the court uh you know i had a lot of time to really sit and reflect uh you know i grew a lot in my personal relationships which i think was important um you know and and i think i also grew up grew a lot as as a business professional as well um and speaking of uh you know the tnt stuff and i was i think you

know we've kind of always or i've kind of always heard like man when you when you finish playing you'll have a great career in tv but the reality is you know we've seen some players uh you know that were really good players get out there and not be very you know be very good sitting at the desk or or you know um color commentating the game and so it's not as easy as most people think it is people think just because you play basketball hey that you know basketball and then b that you're going to help you you're going to be able to translate or or help give everyone else an understanding of what exactly it is that you see and and so

getting up there and actually being able to do it and then the reception that i got which was people you know in my mind i've always said i want to be tony romo of the nba tony romo is one of my favorite people to watch do color commentary because he makes it very simple for you to understand he tell you tony romo sit there and call the plays out that a team is about to run just by seeing the formation and they do exactly what he said they're about to do it's the most incredible thing and and speaking of which we were talking about earlier which was the media one of the things that pissed me off most about the game of basketball today is i can't turn on a sports talk show and actually learn about basketball and that [ __ ] pisses

me off all i can turn on and talk show about is they're about [ __ ] but the reality is we have so many people talking and and speaking about the game of basketball they don't know [ __ ] right and so you can't turn on the tv and learn and so the one thing i'll say i want to bring to that world is i want to be able to teach the game of basketball and then for people to then contact me once i was sitting up there at the desk and inside on inside the nba and doing all of these different things to contact me and say the way you break the game down makes it so easy to understand that was a huge win for me and it gave me a

lot of hope to want to succeed more in that area well i'll i'll say something different um which is what i see is like just in just an incredibly beautiful human being because like you're able to humanize that but then you can go and speak on these other things that's actually what we need more of because all of a sudden now it's very hard to put people in a box and it shows that we are all multifaceted it's just that sometimes we don't get the exposure meaning like i would say i have different facets of my personality because we've been friends for so long and that's a gift you gave to me you just said being in that group chat with us which can

be a cacophonous [ __ ] mess sometimes that group chat should that group chat can never be never to but the point is like and this goes back to this first thing like we can now really like be authentic and show all these different facets of ourself and it's just like to me that's what's really important because then people see that there is more than you know like like the the most the best rebuttal to like that whole shut up and dribble which was so [ __ ] offensive is literally for you to be great at basketball great at broadcasting great as a you know social you know person who can comment on the social times of our moment great businessman and then i'm just going to put one thing out there right now eventually great [ __ ] politician because this is like now you want to talk about somebody no but you want to talk about somebody who can galvanize interest and there's an open governor uh um someone someone on our podcast no longer running apparently guys guys

i'm going to make a prediction that our bestie will be the governor of michigan or the governor of california love it before before the time he's finished love it there you go thank you i appreciate that maybe uh i mean i you know i love the state of michigan that's home uh you know but i i think california will be home for me for the rest of my life so yeah possibly california hey draymond let me ask you a question uh you're you're on twitter i understand you have a twitter handle sometimes you check it out did you see chamoth's shirtless picture with the shirt off

and david did you see the first trap did you see a tail trooper tell the truth i mean he looked away if we all know shamaf i'm sorry he probably sent it to the [ __ ] group of us i definitely saw the picture actually i i i'm the one who posted it to the to the group chat no that's not posted my comment my comment was chamath kardashian question because you put you put the camera in front of your face you were like you you it looked like this it was like you did this thing like that day-date taught me how to do this he's like oh yeah we're nearing the end of our podcast jason uh do you want to tell day day what we're gonna do okay so uh some people have given some reviews or just feedback on the pod on the besties maybe

even you draymond and so we thought it would be incredibly uncomfortable uh and funny for us to read some of these so uh sax why don't you kick us off with one well there's a really good pie chart here which um nick nick and show which shows all in pod talk time and it's basically mostly and then jason with both david's filling like a tiny little piece and then so it's one third the majority of it is chamath and jason talking over each other um bored elon musk posted that i guess yeah uh here's one from brooklyn gal 212 on saks one star review sax go ahead and read this one-star review from brooklyngal212 yeah she says that david sacks ruins every conversation on this call

you forgot the period all right here's one about chamato yeah timothy this one okay uh it's from howard axelroark um with a pebble okay with that with a pill it says every time chamath does something to make me like him he does two things to make me hate his guts it sounds like me and my playing career everyone [ __ ] hates me man it's crazy draymond i will tell you when when i first when i first thought about putting a tweet out for like the first time you were the one who said man everyone's going to talk [ __ ] but forget the haters like that's just the way it goes when you start oh yeah [ __ ] them yeah [ __ ] the haters all right here's one for a superfan aaron sent this one into the email jason at this point i fully believe you have bought laminated and framed kathy griffin

severed trump in that picture how many gallons of siemens filled onto it was incorporated oh my twitter offered two blue chuck marks you'd have three your zealotry has made even bill maher blush and the other besties cringe when you can't take even a slight ribbing it's so bad now the besties have started their own side chat without you at your funeral the besties will show up not out of respect for you but for your family oh my god my lord jacqueline sacks oh my lord okay david yours is like oh wait wait i need to do this hot take hot take ready the hot take hot takes not deeply researched three stars jason and chamath make good points but the

other two are such whiny nerds one of whom is clearly right wing wannabe vanilla isis jesus oh my god did he just call you a terrorist i think uh i think he's referring to freeburg which david definitely not me definitely they both have the same oh jason you want to read the next one this is incredible evil jason people jason okay here we go this is from adam keem he posted this on january 30th so not long ago he gives me a full one star which i think one star is like number one right five stars is fifth place first star is one place jason calikanis is a monster monster wow after listening to jason on the latest podcast i am floored period his personal tax and his complete support of the manipulators in our market should tell you something this guy is evil let's move on what's mom david is trash that is all which david freeburg always

free burger always free oh no here's here's one i'll read if metro mile and or becoming new head of usa vaccination doesn't work out for david friedberg he could still have an amazing career as a kermit the frog voice actor [ __ ] here's uh here's marcus aurelius a13367156 saying to me stop sniffing your own farts what the [ __ ] does that mean it means that you are so enamored with yourself jamal that you think your farts are fragrant oh my god all right okay i'm going to read i'm going to read a draymond green meanwhile there you go oh no try my green shoot like he's sitting down in a chair [ __ ] off oh my god read the next one read the next one this is from sugar sugar sugar draymond green is so attractive to to me i don't know why because he's legally ugly wait a second did she neg you i think she's trying to slide into the dm's and nagging you with that

you know the brutal by the way the brutal thing about that the way the bruno moves the brutal thing about that is is not that one sent to me she's like man draymond green is really attractive i said what the [ __ ] are you talking about i said i am so much better looking than trayvon green he'll never guts gold bluffs gus draymond green still shoots like he got the door to the explorer we invite draymond we invite draymond on this nice podcast don't even tell him have him roast himself this is he's never coming back bless my guts oh my god this is just so hard it's so hardcore oh my god that was really abundant draymond that was really fun to have you on thank you thank you i appreciate it thank you i love you guys i love all of this you [ __ ] nervous for not talking circles about around me on this podcast leave that for the chat

all right thank you i'll be a big boy all right i love you appreciate you very much hey guys love you besties i love you besties rain man david and it said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy besties we need to get back