The Phoenix Suns sold for HOW much??

My friend, Kenada Edwards, cbssports.com at not of the scribe on Twitter. Happy holidays to you. I bet you didn't think we were going to start with the Charlotte Hornets, did you?

No, we rarely do. So I was, I was, I was prepared for everything. Were you?

Not bad. But thankfully, but thankfully I was up last night watching that game because I was, I was entertaining. A very entertaining game.

Actually. We, we placed bets here every day and I had the Hornets plus at plus three 35 in the money line. They had played really well the night before the game before. And I thought Gordon Hayward is actually playing. So let's take advantage of these moments when we see Gordon Hayward in short pants and take advantage of it. That's a good win because I love Sacramento. They've got their issues, but I love that team. And somebody is trying to downplay DeMonte Sabonis, 28 points, 23 rebounds, seven assist performance.

And I don't know how you can downplay that because there are other, not everybody does that. That's like baby Jokic stuff. It is, but the thing that you got to remember, there's this running joke with the Charlotte Hornets, unfortunately. When you have the struggles that they have, when it comes to defense and rebounding for a while, it was every team set their three point record against the Charlotte Hornets.

Right now it's every big man. If you want a career night and probably have your agent talk to the team tomorrow, circle the game against the Charlotte Hornets, because they're that bad at defensive rebounding at that point to where you're going to look like prime Dennis Rodman on any given night against the Charlotte Hornets. They're that bad at defensive rebounding at this point.

Yeah. Sabonis though, is one of my favorite players in the league. And I don't know if you're a fantasy basketball player.

I'm not, but my son and I, my son reads box scores to me every day. And we laugh at Sabonis' box scores. It's almost like when Jokic did the whole Wilt Chamberlain thing the other day, where he had 40 points, 27 rebounds. And what was it, 10 assists?

Yes. And he, we had 20, I'm surprised Jokic didn't go for 40 that night. I was watching that game and he had 20, he had like almost 20 by halftime. That was the crazy part was like, he could have really hustled and gotten him like 40, 40 rebounds. And he didn't, but that's also because he was busy just carrying the offense for a large while.

So that game as well. At not to describe on Twitter, Kanata Edwards is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. I want to bring this to a bigger picture. The NBA has a Robert Sarver problem. We'll get to the new owner coming in. Had it Robert, right.

But no, I actually, I actually think it's present tense. Nobody should be surprised that an owner who is in and of itself, in and of himself, a culture problem has a culture problem within his organization. As the news came out yesterday, the investigation that there were others in the organization because the owner sets the tone, just like I'm not surprised.

Daniel Snyder wasn't the only bad actor within the Washington commandos. So your thoughts on this organizational problem, because it, I mean, we don't have to go back that far. We had problems with Mark Cuban's team in Dallas. That's where I was exactly where I was going to go with this is that we've seen this before where Dallas had swore they were going to clean it up. They were going to clean it up. And it took a Jessica Luther sports illustrated piece to show that, Hey, this wasn't getting cleaned up properly. And I think the thing that we probably, and I think this is the thing that the NBA basically made their mistake on was they were expecting, Hey, we're clearly, we clearly have a buyer involved. We're going to let him take all the trash out. And we just have to hope that no one goes sniffing around because once we got started to say, Hey, I'm interested in selling, make me an offer, then that would be it.

We wouldn't have to worry about this. And instead the folks that were involved with this who were unsatisfied mind you, and made it very, very clear that they were unsatisfied with this entire investigation on Twitter, basically went back to Baxter homes and the ESPN team and told them, Hey, look, this is still going on. This hasn't been addressed. So this is a lot. A lot of this had to like, a lot of this should have been handled the first time.

And it's not. And now it's coming. The consequences are coming back to bite the NBA for not doing thorough enough of a job and saying, Hey, get these guys out of here while you get, while you get, while you get this team sold and let James Jones run, run everything.

So like, I have a mass, like a lot of this is on the NBA. A lot of this is on the, on Robert Sarver, thankfully, or I would say miraculously somehow after this, uh, story comes out, we get, uh, we get, uh, news of a new owner, which was, which I found very interesting. Yeah.

We're going to talk about that in a second. I think what we really have here is a corporate America problem and the, or the, you know, sports franchise owners or organizations. I mean, they're big corporations. They employ a lot of people and invariably, uh, they have a lot of bad actors who have somehow got their way to points of power. And they use that power to keep other people down, which happens basically everywhere, but we don't really follow most, you know, the inner workings of most corporations.

We follow teams because they play in leagues and they have rules. So, you know, there is no commissioner of the banking industry. I mean, there is somebody who runs it, right. But there's no Adam Silver is not going to leave the NBA and he's going to be the commissioner of the big, you know, of the big banks.

It just, that's just not going to happen, but we have all sorts of things going on. And let me get to you, get to the, the new owner. It's apparently Matt Ishbya. I'm not sure I got the name right.

I probably didn't, but that's typical for me. Former Michigan State basketball player didn't play that long ago at Michigan State is a billionaire from the mortgage industry and they're buying the Suns and the Phoenix Mercury for $4 billion. The Suns are, I don't even know what to say to that. Can you finish the sentence here? I don't, I didn't even know how to react to that.

I would tell you this. This has a lot of domino effects because now because now the going rate for those two rumored expansion franchises that are going to come into to play at some point, whether it's Vegas in Seattle or Vegas in Vancouver or whomever. Mexico City. Those yeah, Mexico City as well.

I forgot about them. They're going for $4 billion. The asking price is $4 billion. If you are somebody in a smaller market, let's say the Orlando area, the Charlotte area, the Memphis area, the price of the brick has also gone up to where at last check, Charlotte was valued by, I forgot who it was. It might've even been Sporta core Forbes.

I can't remember, but it was at like 1.6, 1.7, 1.8 billion. That's probably going to have to go up to about two. So you're talking about that. And then on top of that, those added franchises, the buy-in the TV contracts, a very lucrative place to be right now might be owning an NBA team. So I think when we start thinking about this in grand scale terms, and we start talking about, Hey, clean up your act business wise, we're finding that, Hey, the money doesn't necessarily care.

That's the scary part. When we have all these conversations about all this stuff and it all coming together is that, Hey, you can be, and it's straight out of the NFL playbook. We really want to be honest about it. You can behave as badly as you want. And it doesn't necessarily matter because why?

Because people are still going to pay, TV companies are still going to pay. And we're like, unfortunately the collateral damage doesn't really matter. And it doesn't matter at all. Yeah, it doesn't.

I mean, as long as you stay out of jail, it just doesn't matter at all. When, when Daniel Snyder ultimately sells the Washington commandos, he's going to, he's going to sell them for $6 billion or whatever. I mean, that's just what it's going to be. If the sons are worth 4 billion, what are the Lakers worth? And for 10, 10, right. I mean, it's hard to believe that the Lakers could get $10 billion for their franchise. Dallas has been valued in the NFL at like six or six, it might be $8 billion for the Dallas, Dallas Cowboys.

I mean, they're, they're at least two times more than the, than the Phoenix Suns. I'll be interested to see how much, cause the Glazers put are putting man, you up for sale. I'll be interested to see how much Manchester United gets.

Liverpool, Fenway Sports Group is going to sell Liverpool. How much are they going to get? You know, our nation state's going to get involved.

That's a different story. By the way, what was your feeling on when the commissioner basically said, yeah, for, you know, limited investment, I think it's a cap of 20% will allow sovereign wealth funds to buy into the league. I was, I was like, okay, so we're probably going to see a Manchester city in the NBA sooner rather than later. That was the first thing that came to my mind was we are going to get a, and more importantly, we're going to see a ownership group get in bed with the Saudi or Saudi Arabian nation. And they're going to put that 20% in. It's just a matter of who decides to open up their franchise to that first.

I'm really, I'm going to be really, really interested to see who it is and what the reaction is going to be to them. Here's my feeling on this. There's bad money everywhere. And if, if you, if the NBA can successfully limit the investments to minor investments, you know, 20% or whatever the figure is, whatever the threshold is, if they can do that, great. But ultimately we're going to be at a place where sovereign wealth funds are going to own professional teams. PSG, the two best players in the world cup final, both play at PSG, wholly owned by Qatar, right? I mean, wholly owned. One of the, one of the surprising teams in the premier league, a team that I have a blast watching. I'm not necessarily a supporter, Newcastle United, wholly owned by the Saudi, by, by live golf. They've lived golf owns the, and that may extend itself to Liverpool and Manchester. No question. No question. That may end up being the thing, because when those two teams go for a combined 12, 20 billion dollars, because those are probably the most profitable franchises worldwide.

Like it's going to be silly to see how much of this money gets spread amongst those two teams where you could see Manchester United go for 12, Liverpool go for eight. And mind you, and this is the other thing, you know, who's a partial owner in that Fenway right. LeBron. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. So you're talking about. Good investment, LeBron.

Exactly. It's a great investment, especially when he owns the Vegas squat, when he owns the eventual Vegas team that everybody knows that he, that Fenway sports group is going to own. So a lot of this is going to get really, really interesting. And the money makes such strange bedfellows, but at the same point, it's sad that like only like people that like to follow the money, like you and me are really interested in seeing how people are going to squirm and react to this.

I just like I talk, I talk a lot. I haven't that much in the last five months, but I talked a lot about live and I've never once complained about it being wholly owned by the Saudis because there's just bad money everywhere. And we can't just decide that this is bad money. It is. And the other stuff we're OK with. I mean, it's there's a ton of bad money, not just in sports, but in corporate America. And we can't just decide that this is worse than the other one. You could just recognize it for what it is. I think there's a ton of other arguments why live golf is bad and it has nothing to do with the Saudi royal family.

All right. Finally, you still think that Brooklyn is a fraud? I don't think they're a fraud.

I don't think they're a fraud. I want to walk this back. I want it slightly. I still think they're going home in round two. OK, put it that way. I still think they're going home in round two. I just I will stop.

I will. I will basically stop saying they're a fraud. They're probably the third best probably the third best team in the east. Unfortunately, do I think they can beat the other two in seven games? Probably not. Unless they get a center.

They get they get a half decent center. Then we can talk. Until then, I'm not so sure, because at the end of the day, can you trust that Brooklyn Nets squad to get a key rebound against Boston or or Milwaukee? And if the answer is yes, then OK, we can talk about it.

But if the answer is no, I'm not sure what you can do. That is Kanata Edwards at not of the scribe on Twitter. You're good with Justin Verlander at 17 billion dollars a year for two years. It's a two year deal.

It's a two year deal. Yeah. And I'll pitch more than the ground. We both know that. Wow. Yes, he will. He will. I wish I wish Jacob DeGrom well and in anonymity in Texas where nobody cares. Nobody cares. I cannot. I appreciate your time, man. Merry Christmas and talk to you soon. Absolutely.