KJ Live - The Program NYC

what's going on kJ? Good to be on here, man, my pleasure. What's up kJ? Happy to be here, brob man, everything is good. I'm joining the sum of those far fellas. Uh. It's been a great summer. Just loved these finals that just took place. Um, a lot of good basketball. I don't know if you guys had a dog in the fight, but it was nice to see the Warriors get back to the their sales and uh and not got another championship. Which quick thoughts on on the finals from both of you. Jared,

you go first? Oh man? Um, you know look, I was secretly rooting for the Warriors. UM. I don't know how secret was, but I was. I was just happy to see Clay, Steph and Drake you know, do it without Katie and remind everyone that they're not going anywhere. So um, that was. It was fun to watch Steph, you know, get his own Finals m v P. And you know, he's top ten all time. I don't even really think there's there's any question about it anymore. Okay, okay,

top too. I g what's your thoughts on the situation's gonna go. I'm gonna go even more aggressive to try to get the sound bite, and I'm gonna say he's top five all time because he changed the game of basketball. I don't pretend I got enough best friends for die hard Warriors fans, so I don't pretend to be one. But um yeah, an echo Jay's point. You know, as you get older, uh and I'm certainly getting older, you

appreciate things more and more. And I think we're still in this window of appreciating greatness with Staff and and Clay and you know, I think it was just great to see them add the legacy and Jonathan Cominga's got New York ties. Uh, so so that was cool as well. Uh And um yeah, no, it just you know, it was. It was a great finals, and I think the Warriors deserved it. No, I think they did. I think they went out and they earned it. They definitely did. This team.

They weathered all those storms that they went through in

the last couple of seasons. Man. And really, just like Steph, I mean, he's incredible to me because I just all the guys I've ever seen play, I mean, just his ability to maneuver thirty forty ft out, just the level of comfort he has, you know, a half cord and through the legs behind the back, I mean the handle you know when he's off the bounce but forty ft away, it's just like dagn It's I mean it's not only that, like he's running off picks, you can't catch your breath

for one second, the shots going up, Like I mean you literally what where? What do you want him to do? Pick? Exactly? It's it's crazy too. Everyone talks about his shooting and he's the greatest shooter of all time. He might have the crazy him and Kyrie, he might have the craziest

handle in the NBA. And and like it's crazy that alone, and then also right after they want to I can't remember, as Mark Jackson or Van Gundy who said it, but you know the fact that when Katie came there and Steph said, you know, hey, man, you know you can take the last shot. You know this can be your team. You can do whatever to do to get these championships. How many guys who are already top ten, top all time at that point in their career would be willing

to do that. And I think this championship kind of gives him those roses and people recognize that. So it couldn't be happy to do, no doubt. Man, Man, you're aw some basketball officiados. I love it. I let us see it. Man. Let's fast forward and talk about why you guys are here today, which is one of the

reasons I wanted to bring you on. Shout out to Gay Pleasant for hooking this up, but I wanted to get just to the core, uh, the motivation inspiration behind the program New York City that you guys uh co founded, Right, I want to I want you guys. You guys can go, you know Jared the Then Griffin just kind of tell me what the the mission we're at your core for this program? What is it gonna solve what are you gonna how are you gonna help? Yeah, I mean I

think that's a great question. kJ. Um. You know, look, Griffin and I uh grew up playing in in the rec league, UM New York City leagues when we were you know, eight all the way to sixteen, um, and uh, you know, we would battle against each other, and um, we love the experience of being able to you know,

play play against other kids. But UM, I think we felt even back then, not not that specifically me, I definitely wasn't good enough Griffin at least want on to have a D three college career, but um, there didn't seem to be a place where, um there was kind of like the central hub of basketball for New York, right and in a city that claims to be the

mecca of the sport. Um, I kind of always felt that that was crazy, that there was nothing where you could just um, you know, be a part of this great basketball culture, walk into a gym, get great instruction, um have have you know, elite amenity is that kind of stuff, and um, you know so so really with the impetus of it was we thought like, hey, why are all these New York kids who are super talented

like not staying around. Why are they leaving to go to the i mgs of the world, to the Oak Kills, right, Um. And the answer was like, there was nobody really doing what we're trying to do on a large scale and hasn't been um. And so we thought about this, you know, years ago when we knew very little about the world, and UM, you know, I got back together, you know, coincidentally at a wedding last summer and still had the same idea, and I realized that the hole in the

market was still there. I'm all that all that Griffin, um continue to kind of like back that up. But that I would say was the real start of of where this this all began. Well, let's touch on that for a second. Let's talk about that, because that's interesting because there was a time when New York City was the mecca and had all the players and you had the guy they were there at the forefront of everything,

the moves, the style, everything was based out of New York. Now, what identified a period of time that this that started to dissipate or that sort of started to go away Because I'm kind of confused. I always felt like, how did them guys get so good in the first place, How do you get to the Mardel? How did you get like Ron Art? How do you get these guys in the first place? You know what I'm saying? How

was it established? And then what happened? I guess if you've got something for me on that, Yeah, yeah, no doubt. So it's funny you said Lamar odom because an iconic moment was when Lamar came to the Rutger the year that jay Z had his team and the Rutger and he did the sham God. Everybody knows what a legend sham God is. Then did the tenth on the layoup with jay Z and attendance with Lebron James standing up.

That's such a sick moment. That's and and I think John Ran a couple of months ago did the same move, laid it and then did the same dance as Lamar. So you know that should tell you everything about New York City basketball culture. Right rewind ten fifteen years from that moment, and you got Chris Mullen and Mark Jackson. We run fifteen twenty years from that, and you got Dr J at the Rutger Um. New York had a

certain swagger. You turn on the Big East Tournament, more than half the kids went to New York City High School fifteen. So I mean you worked with with with lab like you know years ago. UM. I think a big reason why it was the Mecca was there was two teams. There was Riverside and there was gall Shows and everyone in the country knows at and you had hundreds of kids vying for twenty spots. And if you

weren't on Riversider gauchos, you weren't. I don't know if you can curse or not on podcasts A s H I t UM. So I think what's happened in the last ten twenty years. I think Jared brings up a good point. One is there's just not that many nice gyms in New York right. The ones that are out there, they're only reserved for NBA players. UM. And then you look at these other states that are catching up to US Jersey, they have huge high school's, huge campuses, huge gym's.

That's one factor. Another factor is, UM, there's more AU teams and there are good players in New York. There's more coaches saying they're quote unquote AU coaches not to throw any shade at anyone UM, and you just have a saturation in the market. Right, it's not the same

thing that it used to be UM. And then I think three to Jared's point, like a lot of kids who come up here that are super talented, they're going to O Kill, They're going to you know, mont Ver, They're going to i MG at a young age, and all of a sudden you see them in March Madness and you're like, damn, is that kid from New York? You don't have that same kemba sham got kareem read

story where they come up all the way through. And so the project that we're building is sort of designed to address all that, starting with the construction the facility, uh, and then how we're going about the business, which we can both talk about a little more. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox sports Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app search f s

R to listen live. Now, how big is this facility and what is this like, where is it going to be located in? What is sort of I guess the membership structure because obviously you guys are you're gonna have a structure, right, a membership structure. But that or how's that gonna work? Somebody can explain that, can Yeah. Um, so we are closing in on space. UM, we're we're

looking at somewhere between fourteen and sixteen thousand square feet. UM. You know, we're we're hoping that uh, this location, UM, you know comes through for us. It's in Long Island City. UM. We're still you know, working out the least negotiations and stuff, but ideally will do it there. UM and UM, Yeah, there's gonna be a membership business, right so um similar to like an equinox or um, you know, crawn chenny sort of gym. It's basically gonna be a gym membership

around basketball, right. UM will have one on one coaching who love leagues, who have camps. Um, we'll have a lot of these sort of you know ala carte programming if you want to call it that, UM, that families and their kids can take advantage of by um paying either annualized or monthly dues. I think we were still

figuring out what that's gonna look like. UM, to have the opportunity to you know, be able to use the gym and call themselves a member UM and then you know, use our our our facility and and our melodies UM as much and as often as they want, uh UM. And so that's kind of gonna be the basis of the membership model. But UM, something that Griff and I are really really proud of is we actually started a

charitable trust UM. And what we're hoping to do is UM have corporations and individuals donate, and then we're earmarking actually a certain percentage UM of our memberships for inner city kids. So UM, you know, we haven't talked about this yet. Carmelo Is is obviously UM a big part of what we're doing, and UM we're hoping to work with him to figure out, UM, which kids and families

are deserving uh to be in the gym. UM have access to facility, might not be able to afford it, but obviously UM are a talented enough but be our our good people and UM have just as much you know, claim and right to be there as anyone else. And and we're hoping to really you know, UM, put put everyone together and UH make make this UM you know, equal opportunity and and and uh really UM have a diverse group of kids in our gym. Let's talk about your team. You mentioned Carmelo is on it, J J J.

J Reddick, I saw is involved in some capacity book Richardson. Um, just for minutes to talk about the team and what everybody's kind of involvement is in the project. Yeah for sure. So obviously, Um, you know Jared and I are the co founders. Uh. You know Mellow somebody that was a huge gift for us, right, you know he's wanted to You see the clips of him working with high school kids and how much he puts into it and how much he cares and yelling at the rafts in the

Baltimore games with Will Barton next to him. Um, he loves this. And um, you know with Kayen being uh at Christ the King right here in Queens and you know Mellow having wanted to build something great to give back to the youth not only in Brooklyn but in all of New York City. Uh, it just made a lot of sense. Uh. You know, it's a partner with him on this, and you know, we're lucky enough that he believes in our vision and he really wants to be involved. And uh you know we think he's going

to be a really integral part of the project moving forward. Um. JJ is amazing. He's a great friend of Jared's. He's got two young boys, right who are just getting into that age where they want to get really good at basketball, just like their dad was. And you know, he sees a void in the market, right there's no real centralized youth league in New York City. There's no hub where he can go get them better every day. Um. Kenny and kJ Smith obviously Kenny from left rack legend in

New York City. Um. kJ his son who played for Damon at Pacific, then went and played at U n C. Has just been such an integral part of the business, connecting us with folks like Cole, Anthony uh and a lot of other great people to get involved, uh, you know, and then on the grassroots level, right, you know, just working with guys like Book. You know, Book has coached twenty plus McDonald's all Americans. When he speaks, kids listen, right, um,

because he has the track record to prove it. Chad Babble, right, who runs Made Hoops, that's Nike's you know, six to eighth grade youth division. And Dad puts on the biggest events in the country for the best kids. Darren Duncan, who runs the Battle where Brownie Jr. Just played a few weeks ago and Queens against all the best Try

State kids. Uh. But we're really building not only a great team on the NBA side, And you know, I think a big reason that New York has missed the last twenty years is there haven't been that many role models, right, you know, Sebastian Telfair, Lenny Cook, some of the guys who maybe we're supposed to get to the NBA at that level didn't. And so I think what we're trying to do is bring in the NBA guys who have ties to New York and show these kids you can

touch and feel what it's like to succeed at that level. UM. And then on the grassroots side, getting the best guys and and and and girls into the facility who have coached the most successful kids in New York. I just feel like we're building a powerhouse team, which is what it's going to take to accomplish this project. Absolutely. I mean, you guys have got some key pieces, some key figures, some influencers UM that have respect in that basketball community.

Book richardter Is some ide that have tremendous amount of respect for you know, spoke with him on my show. Um, I had an interview with him on my show as well. Um uh, let me ask you guys this now, when this facility get built, are there gonna be weekends where you work with like book and some or Chad and bring in made hoops for a weekend, or you guys

have some a U stuff you're gonna do. Or is it going to strictly be uh with with your current your members and focus on that, or will there be like larger camps and clinics that you guys might host or you know, block off some courts? How many courts first of all? And then and if you guys can just touch on that for me, yeah, for sure. You want me to take it ja or you got you gotta cool. So in terms of the facility we're building right um, we're gonna have one gorgeous regulation court and

it's gonna host big games. If you're on that court, you're somebody. Um. The stadium seating map that we have right now, we're gonna have about a thousand plus seats in the bleachers and then we're gonna have court side seats running up and down both sides of the facility underneath one set of bleachers. We're going to have an additional court. It might be a half court, it might be a mini full court to service younger kids. We're

not sure yet, but basically a shoot around area as well. Uh. In terms of how in terms of how we're going to structure the business, in terms of how we're gonna structure the court time, it's really split in three right. Jared laid out our membership model really nicely. There are hundreds of families who are willing to pay for instruction that just haven't been able to get guys like Book to work with or teach their kids or j j uh.

And that's gonna be a big part of what we're going to be doing day to day during the week is having that group instruction in those camps and those clinics on the weekend. There's no real centralized youth basketball league in New York City, right, which is crazy, So we want to be the spot to have the dopes youth league in New York. I think we haven't brought

up yet and we can nowur later. Uh. The Academy. Right, we're literally building a prep school right here in New York City so that kids that or team fourteen years old don't have to go to Okale, don't have to go to Montvert. They can have this facility, they can have book they can have a top education right to get ready to go to the n c A A UM. And so the Academy team is going to be a big part of the facility right when they practice, when

they have home games, UM. And then I think we should host big events, right, maybe not an entire e y b L circuit, but the championship of y b L, or the championship of the Battle of even the championship of the Catholic School League, right, which still holds weight in New York. Because we're gonna have the facility, because we're gonna have the seating, I think we're absolutely gonna be able to do all that in that space and kind of be the hub for all of it. Wow.

So it's until the vision would be to host like high profile games, grassroots or or stuff like that at your spot in Long Island City. How far is Long Island City from like Brooklyn or where you guys grew up in Queens area. I love that you think we grew up in Queens or Bronx were No, did I bea Bronx or we're Manattan boys. Baby, That's horrible, that's horrible. That's horrible. But I'm ashamed. I'm I went to we went to school in the Bronx. I mean, we'll take

that that. I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed. I'm sure I shouldn't know better. I was. Actually when I was living out there, I was staying in Soho, so I was with great laugh, like near the world, but we're the site of the old world tracing. But so I kind of I would take this. I would take the subway. Then I would take a bus to get to St. John's every day. So it was like a forty five minute to an hour ride just to go. So I'm a little turned around. What time I fell asleep and

I ended up in far Rockaway, I don't know. I don't know if you guys know where that is, but I woke up and it was like, we know, we know where that is. It was sketchy, got definitely a little off the beating bath. But Long Island City, how far is that from like Manhattan, So it's about a fifteen minute drive actually over the Queensboro Bridge, which the way for families in Manhattan. Um, the families in downtown Brooklyn can shoot right up the b que. It's also

about fifteen twenty minutes. Now you're asking how far? How far? With traffic? Those are two questions in New York and l A. Um. But but you always, we always understand I talk about stuff. It's always a factor in traffic, you know, I'm giving it about thirty forty five minutes of just whatever. And I always get myself an hour before I go or an hour or two, just depending

on how far I gotta go. Yeah. Plus, I mean look, I mean I don't know if you can see the logo on Griffin sweatshirt, but our logo is inspired by the subway lines, right, So we um there there's a lot of public transportation from all different borrows that run right into where hopefully this location is going to be. So we feel like it's pretty central and easy to get to. And it's a great point because like, how far we really go to do something like this? Right?

I think that's that's something we really asked ourselves and thought about a lot. I'd love to hear more about the academy that you guys are building, just the foundation of that that you haven't obviously there's an educational component involved. Would like to hear about that as well. And you do you plan on like joining New York City leagues or you're gonna do like a total prep school league

as far as competitively speaking, Yeah, great questions. I'm gonna let gee, this is like his his bread and butter, so I'll let him watch poetic Let's get I'll China later. I'm flattered. Uh. Also, it's also the trickiest and most challenging but rewarding part of the business. So I'll try my best to tackle it. Um. I think something I love what Jaredoise says is we know what we know, we know what we don't know, right, um, And we're still learning a lot about what this academy is gonna

look like. But the premise is this a lot of kids, as you know, that grow up here, and we've mentioned it three or four times, they leave at a young age, right because there isn't that uh centralized school. Right. Whether you want to call it an academy, whether you want to call it a prep school. The point is that competes on a national schedule. The Catholic schools in New

York City can only play the Catholic schools. The p S a L can only play the p S a L. Yeah, Like for examples, started kJ, Cole Anthony Right, there's a great example of what we're trying to accomplish. Cole was that Archbishop Um, I think until his junior year and then you know, basically said to himself like, look, playing against the Catholic schools is great, but like I need this national exposure. I need to go play you know,

the Brownie sons of not Brownie's son, but um. That was kind of his thinking, right, And his dad was like, look, you're gonna go to oak Kill and get a real prep school, you know, education and basketball experience and get that national exposures so you can get recruited the way that all these other kids are because there's just nowhere in New York that does that. Right now, Sorry, Graft,

keep going, You're good. That's a great point. And so what we're doing, kJ is we're working closely with Chad, and we're working closely with book right, and we're gonna work closely on it with Mellow because he has a

ton of experience in the space. And you know, we're gonna build New York City's first prep school academy team, and so on the educational side, we're talking to a few different independent and private schools that are top schools in the city on creating an online only curriculum for the players on our team to actually go get those core credits needed to be n c A eligible. We think a big advantage of doing an academy in New York City versus elsewhere where you see them is the

education system here is second and none. And so if we can get an online curriculum from one of those schools for the kids, were automatically the best educational basketball academy in the country. And then from a competition standpoint, we're gonna look to identify, you know, twelve to fourteen and the most talented kids in the Tri State area. Right. A big reason we're doing an academy team versus an AU team is there are a lot of AU teams in the Tri state right, so we want to be

agnostic to all of them. We want to identify the best kids. We want to give them the best education.

They're going to be coached by book guys like Chatt will help us with the schedule, and then they're actually going to compete nationally on behalf of New York, right against the other top powerhouse teams in the country, kind of restoring the city's reputation that hey, we still are in the Mecca and we still got the talent here um and we really think, no disrespect to St. John's, but we can be New York's team right Like on Friday nights at the facility, that's a hot ticket because

the nationally ranked Academy team is playing a home game in New York. So we're really excited about the potential to the Academy holes. Wow, that's a so on behalf of New York restoring the Mecca. That means you go have some dudes out there there. Y'all gotta have some guys, so some you know what I mean, you gotta have I mean, listen, we you know Griffin was at the

Battle a few weeks ago. The amount of talent just specifically on New York teams that was in that building, Um, you know they were they were given it to Brownie's son like there there is that there's some dogs who are still here in the city. Um, you know, look, we we think that kind of one of the bigger problems is on Griffin mentions earlier, there's a big fracture and there's a large amount of teams um in AU in New York, right, so you don't get all of

the talent on one team. You get one guy here, one guy there. Right, those teams don't end up making big runs because they're just not deep enough. But if we can kind of unite everyone and say, look, you can play for your AU teams, but come play or high school ball for us, and and show everyone what

still exists in the city. Like, that's kind of the you know, the the lofty goal that we're trying to put together a nationally um competitive team that that can go go go out there and try and win championships. I saw, no. I mean, you guys obviously have the right pieces in place to start that. I think in order just to go and develop something like that, you

have to, you know, start young. So if you get them, you know, the youth development, you know, it's all about developing dudes when you get into when we were in sixth grade or fifth grade man, and then seeing it all the way through that to me is the best way. And if you really want to have that special, special kind of feeling with championship team U C l A that I play going. We had a bunch of homegrown town and what that did was it endeared us to the fans. It made us kind of like, you know,

l A's team. Man, we got so much love. It was almost like we were, you know, Lakers or you know, we're so you know, we were almost like you know, pro team out there just because of the fans, and you're nailing a cage. I like the program that's a special name to us because we look at college basketball, right and everyone always talks about Duke's got a great program. You see How's got a great program? Right. Kids are just coming in young, build them up, then they go

next next wave. Right with our membership model, you know, starting with young kids right, um, all the way up through our high school team. Like the hope is that it will feed into each other. And you know, when you're ten, eleven, twelve, really starting to figure out what kind of basketball player you are, we're gonna have them in the gym getting them better understanding their game and hopefully preparing them to you know, hopefully be ready to join the team when you know, when they get to

be that high school level. And um, you know in the namesake like making a program that's dope, that's super were dope. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox sports Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live. So you let's touch on you guys backgrounds just for a little bit. Um is far on the basketball in business side,

So you guys are both pretty accomplished. Just wanted to get an idea of you know what you guys careers have looked like up to this point, and you know, and just kind of why. I mean, I know you guys are passionate about this, but why at this time of your life did you decide to jump over here? I guess we could start with Jared Yeah, sure, Um great questions. Uh quick background, So you know, I grew up in New York, went to Riverdale Country School. Um,

I won a state championship my senior in soccer. It's pretty much my biggest athletic accomplishment. I figured I needed to get that out there. It's no problem. Yeah, UM went undergraduate University of Pennsylvania. UM. You know, I got a great education. Was very lucky to attend that school. And UM, I have always wanted to work in sports. UM. You know. I worked for Jeff Schwartz UM and Excel when I was a sophomore in college as an intern

the year they had Blake Griffin. So that was cool. UM. And you know when I graduated, I really wanted to be an agent. UM. That didn't work out, but I did end up getting a job working for the Miami Dolphins, UM in their corporate marketing department. So it wasn't, you know, necessarily what I was looking for, but it was a sports job and I got to see how a franchise runs right, specifically on the business side. UM. Came back

home and actually worked in real estate for a few years. UM. And then for the past five or six years, I've actually been at a startup. It's a sports ticketing company actually called Fivo, and UM I've run investor relations for them for three or four years now. So UM, that actually is like a good segue to now right. I feel like I've put a lot of great things together on my resume that actually are are culminating in doing

something like this, Like like you said, passion. You know, to me, I always wanted to do something that I loved waking up every day knowing that I'm gonna be excited to go to work. And you know how many people actually get to say that, right? Um, I feel like, you know, I've had a successful career. I'm thirty thirty five, my wife's about to have our first kid. You know,

I feel established. I feel like my network, um is as really uh one of my major assets and the ability for me to reach capital and also get to the sorts of people that um really are our stakeholders in New York. That that's that's really coming at the right time now to be able to kind of put all of this together. Um. So for me, you know, that was it. Plus I just love basketball. I mean I watch any any basketball at any level at any time. My wife has routinely hit me with the clicker and said,

I can't listen to another basketball game. So, um, you know, for me, this this is this is where my heart is for sure. Yeah. Um, A lot of parallels honestly in terms of the why. Um, In terms of my background, I grew up in New York. Uh. My mom was a blues musician, which is super dope. Ye. All the talent skipped to generation, so I knew I'd have to do something different. Um. I grew up in Manhattan, went to high school in the Bronx. Uh played Division three basketball.

I thought Year would just say he played college basketball, but he had to say Division three college basketball. Wait, where where'd you go to? Where'd you play? I've played at a school called Alfred Uh, and I was I was the worst player on the team. So let's skip over. Let's skip over those you were there, bro, That's all that matters that I was there. Um. Coming out of college, Uh, you know, I spent most of my twenties working on a really cool shopping app called Fancy. That's actually how

I connected with LAB. We worked with tons of NBA players, tons of entertainers. They were investors in the app, they were customers. Um. I started out packing boxes in the mall room. I ended up running business development there. Um. So I made a lot of connections, brand partner connections, NBA connections, music connections, and kind of always connected the dots on that, Uh, through having my own consulting agency

the past couple of years where do the same thing. UM. I think more relevant to this conversation is my first unpaid job out of college was helping Greg Marius, who recently passed away five years ago, run the EBC at Rutger Park tournament. UM. And so I would be in Soho and then I would go up to Harlem every night and help him run that street ball tournament. And

I really fell in love with New York City grassroots basketball. UM. I went from that to to gm NG and putting teams and Dykeman and gersh and every single major streetball tournament, bringing James Harden in French Montana and Clarie Kardashian to come watch the games. Uh. It was really my life, uh, you know, culminating in putting teams in the TVT tournament on ESPN every summer. Uh. You know where I've met

a lot of St. John's guys. So um, you know, I think this project is really the culmination of, you know, ten plus years of living and breathing New York City grassroots basketball and then some of my connections from my day work Um, and to Jared's point, you know I think why now? Well, Um, you know, I always know someone in life is always going to have more money than you. In my case, a lot of people are

gonna be better looking than you. Uh. You know, someone's always going to have more than you, right materially, But you could always leave the biggest impact and legacy doing the stuff that you love. And we love New York and we love basketball, and if we have the chance to be the guys to bring both back, Um, that's something that I'll spend every waking moment of my life doing. And I think I'm blessed to found a business partner who feels the same way and really wants to do

the same thing. That's dope. That's super dope. Y'all are locked in, man, y'all sound locked in. I'm just I'm just curious. Uh. Also, like some more details. I don't know if you guys how much time you guys got, but you know, I just wanted to kind of pick your brain. You say, state of the art facility. Um, what does that mean? Like state of the art facility, like in today's language? What does that mean to you guys? State of the art you got the dick cool for sure.

So I think you gotta look at kids, right that are top kids and basketball playing kids, and what they want and what they like, right, And so you want to you want to build a gorgeous court, right, you want your to be state of the art. You want to have a cool street artist come in and design it with your logo so it feels super dope. Um. I think we want to have a juice bar, right because you know right now, in the past decade, there's a certain kick in terms of being healthier down at

a younger age. So you tell kids when they walk in, you know, we don't have Derrito's in here, we don't have Captain Crunch in here. You know, we have juice, right, Um, and maybe some middle ground and too. Um. I think having a turf training area, right, you know. I think when we've talked to parents right that have elite kids, one thing they ask is not who the basketball coach is gonna be. They definitely ask that who's the strength and conditioning coach going to be? You know what I mean?

So you know from Cardio to cry out two waits to all that it's really important for us to the cryo. You gonna have a cryod chamber up in there. We're gonna have a cryod chamber. You're well, man, yeah, yeah, better head let you lead with that. Do you know how sick of cryo chamber is at this time of life? To be able to have access to kJ, we gotta leave some surprises. Okay, let the cat out, all right.

I got excited about that. Now, now you're good. And then you know, I think we want our locker rooms to be state of the art as well. Um, you ask what state of the art means. I keep saying state of the art, but um, you know, I think you look at like you know, NBA two K and a gaming room in a film room, right, and even potentially a classroom depending on how much office space we

have to compliment the gym. Um, you know, what we really want to do is build a place where look go ahead, Jay, yeah, I mean just in college level man, Like we we are trying to you know, emulate a Duke a Kentucky that kind of you know, top tier equipment that kind of look um almost like our own mini little stadium, you know, little MSG whatever you wanna call it. That's that's really what we're what we're arriving for. Dope. I've seen I've seen like a couple of stadiums, smaller

that kind of like that one down in Atlanta. I think that group has one that's sort of cool and they've got some stuff. So that's kind of where I was getting at the state of the art I kind of had. I was wondering it was going to look like that or not not look like that, but just have all the bills and whistles, which it sounds like it will. Um. I think that's that's a huge plus.

The other thing I was also curious about as far as like the training curriculum or the actual is there a training curriculum that you guys are gonna put your stamp on that, you know, Book or whoever your coach is are are going to kind of implement with the guys or you know what, did you guys have thoughts on regarding that? You know, I think that's a great question. Um. Like, like Griffin said earlier, we know what we know and we know what we don't, and I think we'll leave

the basketball instruction and training up to the professionals. But you know, again, Book has been doing this for decades, UM, and it clearly works. So you know, we'll lean on him a lot. We'll lean on Chad Um and the other coaches too. Yeah. We we definitely want to make

something that's ours, um. But I'm sure they'll take from from many of the years of playing and and a lot of the things that are going on across the country and um make it ours and uh yeah, Well, Griff and I will be at the gym, you know, definitely yelling and hollering, but we will we will be firmly out of the way when it comes to basketball instruction. Well absolutely, I mean that's that's the way, that's the

way to do it. That's how you you know, you actually let people who you hire to do the job do the job. I mean, that's just comes down at that's dope. UM. I guess one more question. I had something you guys touched on earlier about UM kids in the inner city scholarshipping. I believe it was what you guys said, how many kids and what is your idea or vision behind that initiative? UM. Yeah, I don't wanna, you know, put our foot in our mouth. I don't

think we have a number yet decided. Um, like I said, it's gonna be a percentage, and we definitely are gonna earmark UM a large amount of that UH for inner city scholarships. UM. You know, we'll talk to Mellow, We'll talk with with the team and try and figure out we would love to have a nice balance of UM, you know, scholarship kids and and paid members. So it really feels like like a family in there. But I don't think we're specific yet on what that looks like.

But UM, you know, the idea is, you know, UM Griffin and I are both very blessed to have grown up in Manhattan attended UM is bron Science Private. Griff I went to private school. Grip everyone to public, but Bronx sign is one of the best schools in the country right, UM, specifically in the city. And UM, you know, I look back on my life and and feel so blessed to be in the position where I'm at UM and all the resources that I was UM able to

use to get where I'm at and not. It's it's not lost on me that a lot of kids don't UM and specifically in the inner city. UM. There are plenty of smart, hard working kids who just don't have the financial means to accomplish these things with the resources that you know, people like UM, I was given when I was growing up, so it was really important to

me to figure out a way to give back. UM. You know, my family has been extremely philanthropic my whole life, and and UM, they've instilled in me from a very early age, like you know, it's great to do well, but do well and do good at the same time. UM, And you know I feel very strongly about that. Absolutely absolutely wells UM. I appreciate both of your times today. I feel like, you know, I have a really good understanding.

I hope the audience has an understanding what you guys mission is and the motivation and the inspiration behind it. And we're looking forward to supporting and getting behind the program. UM, ladies and gentlemen. Jared Fphron and Griffin Taylor