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00:00Joining us this morning, Vanessa Perdomo, host of the Business of Sports podcast.
00:03I'm Bloomberg and Eben Noby-Williams, deputy editor of Sportico.
00:06Eben, let me start with you, if I could.
00:08It's great to talk to you once again.
00:10I'd love for you to put this in context.
00:12Christina mentioning the kind of historical import of this just a moment ago.
00:15This was a team that had an okay regular season.
00:18We heard the players last night at that trophy presentation
00:20talking about how they were seeded going into these playoffs.
00:23This wasn't something that was kind of preordained going into them, was it?
00:27It was definitely not preordained.
00:29I'm proud to say that I did stay up last night.
00:31Leary-eyed as well.
00:32All right, you win.
00:33Yeah, yeah.
00:34Not many things that have made me regret leaving New York City more than last night, for sure,
00:40just looking at the celebrations out there.
00:42Yeah, I think you see it in the way that people reacted.
00:45This was not a team that I think many expected to be this good this quickly.
00:50And look, the Yankees have won championships more recently, obviously.
00:54So have the Rangers.
00:55So have a lot of teams in New York.
00:56But basically, none of them have had the kind of citywide impact that this Knicks run has had.
01:02So I think in some ways, you're getting a sense that New York is a basketball town at its heart.
01:07And I think you're also getting a sense that 53 years for one of the most valuable basketball teams in
01:12the world,
01:12one of the most valuable sports brands in the world,
01:14is a really long drought for fans to have to wait between championships.
01:19Evan, I want to play off of that.
01:20Vanessa, I want to go to you and talk about just the comeback story.
01:23I mean, this is New York.
01:25New Yorkers come back.
01:27We get knocked down.
01:28We come back up again.
01:29Is that kind of the reason why this resonated so much, too, with people in New York?
01:34I think it's definitely one of the reasons that everyone in New York kind of got behind this team in
01:40such a big, big way.
01:42I think when you look at the wins, when you look at the come-behind victories,
01:45I think it's one of the reasons why actually a lot of people outside of New York, you know,
01:50became on the Knicks' side throughout this tournament and throughout the finals, throughout the playoffs.
01:55Because of the way that they were able to grind out these wins, I think it was a perfect representation
01:59of New York.
02:00And I think that everyone in New York, you know, was able to get behind the team.
02:04I think, like Evan was saying, we've seen other championships recently.
02:08But the thing with the Knicks is a lot of people in the city, this is their team.
02:13We really have one team, one basketball team.
02:17The Nets are obviously in Brooklyn, but they're sort of new.
02:20So I think that this, for the city of New York, was everyone was behind this one team.
02:26And they really, really, truly represented the city in a way we haven't really seen in a long time.
02:31It's been really interesting to walk around, you know, I'm new to the city,
02:34and just to see people, no matter where you go, this is what they've been talking about it.
02:38And just across socioeconomic levels, cultures, language barriers, people like understand GoNicks.
02:44It's been awesome.
02:45You bought a jersey for your dog.
02:46I did buy a jersey for my dog.
02:48You should know that. I don't know that we have yet on there.
02:49Yeah, I'm fully bandwagoning, but it was cute.
02:51Everyone should be on that.
02:52Right? Like, I wanted to, I should have brought him on set.
02:55Anyway, all right. Evan, I do want to ask you, I went to school in Texas.
02:58My roommate was a huge Spurs fan.
03:00I imagine they are not feeling great today.
03:03It kind of seemed a bit of a fait accompli after going down 3-1.
03:06Did they have a chance to come back?
03:08And then you saw Victor Wemignano talking about this was, I think you said,
03:12the biggest learning moment of his life.
03:14He's only 22. What's next for him?
03:16Yeah, I mean, I think in some ways this is a little ahead of schedule for the Spurs.
03:20They had one of the youngest teams in the NBA, and they beat the Thunder,
03:24who a lot of people thought were going to kind of cruise their way to the NBA title.
03:27This was a dream matchup for the NBA to get the Knicks on one side a 53-year title drought
03:34in the biggest city in the country, and then on the other side, get to showcase a young
03:3922-year-old superstar who is going to be the face of this league, one of the faces of this
03:44league for the next decade plus.
03:46I think both of those things work out well.
03:48I think if you're the Spurs, you learn a lot from this.
03:51It was clear that some of these players were early in their career.
03:54Even if you're not a basketball fan, I think you saw that towards the end of these games
03:58in this past week.
04:00But I think if you're ahead of schedule for the Spurs, you still have one of the most
04:04dominant and freakish athletes maybe the NBA has ever seen.
04:08And getting these reps when he's 22 probably makes him better when he's 24 or 25.
04:13You forget how young these players are.
04:14Sorry, I didn't mean to be honest.
04:15You forget how young these players are because we've seen them for years,
04:18and they just read so much older, especially when they're in these press conferences.
04:21But like, 22? Come on.
04:22And Victor, we've been hearing about for, it feels like, for a decade almost, right?
04:27Because he's been a prospect for so long.
04:29But yeah, it does highlight how much more basketball we're going to see him play
04:33over the next 10, 15 years.
04:36Vanessa, let me come back to you.
04:37You mentioned the Nets.
04:38I live close to the Barclays Center.
04:39This is kind of like the sad side story here.
04:42The fact that this win, I think, has coalesced a lot of New York around the Knicks.
04:46And I sort of wonder where it leaves the Nets, who have been, I don't want to say suffering,
04:50but really having a bad run of it here in recent seasons.
04:54You know, the thing about the Nets is, like I mentioned, they're decently new to New York City.
05:00You know, they came within, you know, the last 14 years.
05:03They're not new to the NBA.
05:04They came with a lot of, you know, history in New Jersey.
05:07But the thing is, they kind of left that history behind, actually,
05:11in the way that they marketed the team.
05:12So they don't have as many natural New York fans as they would probably like.
05:18And they have had a hard recent years when they did have, you know, these generational players,
05:26Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, James Harden.
05:29They had a few years ago, and it didn't pan out for them really at all.
05:34What truly probably one of the worst outcomes you could probably have with players like that.
05:41You know, they're behind.
05:43And I don't know if it really is a story.
05:45You don't need to compare them necessarily.
05:47They are obviously in the same city, so people will do.
05:51But this is really about the Knicks' victory.
05:54I think that the Nets, they will prevail.
05:57But I think the good thing for the Nets' owners, Joe and Clara Usai,
06:01is that they had a winner in the New York Liberty about that long ago.
06:05Evan, I want to go to you about the future of the team.
06:07I mean, Jalen Brunson, MVP, a great leader for the team.
06:11So many of them came together like a big family.
06:14You heard James Dolan talking about them, you know, saying,
06:16we're going to bring another championship back.
06:18It's not going to be the last one.
06:19You won't have to wait that long.
06:20What does the future of the team look like?
06:23I know trades are part of the game.
06:25Yeah.
06:25I mean, I think if you keep this core together, I think the future is probably very bright.
06:29As we said at the beginning of the show, this was not a roster that at the beginning of the
06:33playoffs,
06:33everyone said, oh, this is going to be a championship roster.
06:36So I think you have the ability to bring pieces in.
06:39It's New York.
06:41It's Madison Square Garden.
06:42All of the kind of aura around this team will make it easier to bring other players in.
06:47Personally, I'm more interested in the ownership future of the team.
06:51There's a lot of changes underway at Madison Square Garden Sports.
06:54As you guys know, there's a potential split between the Rangers and the Knicks.
06:58There is increasing chatter that the Dolan family may end up selling one of those two teams.
07:04That has been rumored on and off, I feel like, for the past 20 years.
07:09But yeah, as sports team valuations soar, the Lakers just sold for $10 billion.
07:14The Knicks following this championship would probably sell for quite a bit more.
07:18And even with the recent stock surge, the public markets don't value the Knicks in the same way
07:23that I think a private transaction would.
07:26So I'm very curious to see if this championship does anything to change the trajectory.
07:32And honestly, what that trajectory is for what Jim Dolan is thinking about in the medium
07:37or longer term for the ownership of the Knicks.
07:40Evan, let me pick up on that.
07:41I think that's so fascinating.
07:43So Jim Dolan presiding over a lot of different companies here.
07:46There's Madison Square Garden Entertainment and sports.
07:48And then there's the Sphere, which I think has been attracting a lot of his time and attention.
07:51And I should say he's done very well this year as well.
07:54So he's presiding over a lot of different enterprises that have had a real run here.
07:58What is the calculus that he's going through here?
08:00I can imagine him standing on that stage, bathing in the adulation of all of these New York fans.
08:04That's kind of novel for him.
08:06It's not what he experienced at the beginning of his tenure, sort of running, owning the team.
08:10Perhaps that might compel him, one might think, to kind of stick with the Knicks going forward.
08:14What's he going to be thinking through here in the months ahead?
08:16Yeah, I think one of the things this split does is it makes it easier to bring on kind of
08:20a big chunk of outside capital for either of these teams.
08:23And as you guys know, that has basically been one of the biggest business stories in American sports in the
08:28last five years is that all these leagues have changed their rules.
08:31You can now bring on institutional capital that can own, depending on the league, something between 30 and 10 percent
08:36or zero percent of your team.
08:39And what we've seen in a few other times is that there's you start down that road and you start
08:44looking at valuation and you start talking to people, owners, institutions.
08:48And then you think, oh, you know what?
08:49Like, what would it look like if we sold this whole thing?
08:52And then suddenly a small transaction turns into a much bigger one.
08:55So I think on its face, I think he's trying to keep his options open.
09:00But again, as these team valuations soar, it doesn't seem impossible to me to think that at some point and
09:07maybe at some point soon, Jim decides to sell one of these teams.
09:11I have no clue which one that would be.
09:13I think you could make an argument for one or the other.
09:15The Knicks are certainly more valuable than the Rangers.
09:18I think some people might say the Rangers are more undervalued than the Knicks are in terms of the markets.
09:24But the constant kind of changing around of what MSG and its sister companies and parent companies, the constant stock
09:31splits, et cetera, I think have gotten us to a point now where 10 years ago it would have been
09:37very hard to sell the Knicks.
09:38And once this stock split, if it does happen and the Knicks basically become a separate publicly traded company, it
09:44becomes way easier to sell the Knicks.
09:46And that's not lost on me.
09:48Vanessa, before we let you go, ticker tape parade.
09:50We're doing our own version of it here.
09:52Volunteer. Sign up for the ticker tape parade.
09:55This is not my best skill. I'm not sure what my best skill is, but this is not it.
09:58Time to practice a few days.
10:00I've never attended a ticker tape parade.
10:02I don't know if you have. What should folks expect?
10:05And how big is this city going to throw a rager on Thursday?
10:10The last ticker tape parade I had been to was the one for the New York Liberty in 2024.
10:17Listen, the city showed out then.
10:20Men, people come out, you know, they come out of work, they get out of school.
10:24And this, I mean, this city hasn't seen a championship in 53 years for the Knicks.
10:31They haven't seen a men's sports team championship since 2012.
10:35This city is going to be on fire.
10:38I would expect record-breaking numbers for this parade.
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