Hour 2: Soto Regrets?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them, that's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:09)
I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:17)
Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title and more. Advertise on LinkedIn.
Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to linkedin.com/campaignterms and conditions apply.

**Michael Kay** (0:31)
This is The Michael Kay Show podcast.

**Michael Kay** (0:34)
I gotta get more Kay.

**Michael Kay** (0:35)
Listen live weekdays at one on the Espn New York app and your smart speaker.

**Michael Kay** (0:41)
Welcome back to the show. If you're watching on the Espn New York YouTube channel, which is brought to you by the great people at the Parisman firm. So I'm doing the show from the hotel in Chicago. Take a look out the window. I have never seen rain like this. It's unbelievable. You can't even see the skyline of Chicago. It is coming down so hard.
I looked at the forecast. It says it should be OK for tonight, but man, it is absolutely pouring here in Chicago. I love a good rain like that. It's actually kind of cool, kind of cozy. I don't know. But this is my favorite town other than New York City in the entire country, probably in the entire world. I was walking around this morning. It's just, it's the best. So it kind of stinks for me because this is a great walking city. And obviously, in this sort of weather, you ain't walking anywhere because you would get absolutely drenched. Just came from Philadelphia. And I am I am more certain than ever, especially after the the information I was getting about the LeBron stuff, where he's going to like live in New York City and is going to commute to Philly. If the Knicks did not win the NBA title, I could almost guarantee you that LeBron James would be a Nick today.
He would have fit in nicely under the second apron. Look, he took $4 million, an $8 million two-year contract. So it wasn't about the money. And it wasn't about being on the West Coast. And it wasn't about his family because his wife and his daughter are going to stay back in LA because his daughter is an ascendant volleyball player in high school. It was about he wanted to play for a team that had a chance to win the championship. And with the Knicks, if he goes there now and they win again, well, so what? He didn't have anything to do with it because they won without him. And if they lose, then it's going to be put on him. So the perfect scenario for him would have been that the Knicks fall just short and he would be a Nick today. We'd be going nuts about Lebron James being a Nick. And everybody keeps talking about he never wanted to play with the Knicks. He never wanted to play with the Knicks because at no point when he was a free agent were the Knicks in a position that they could have won. But if they fell short against San Antonio in the finals, Lebron James could have been looking at himself as the missing piece, right? Now he can't look that way. That's why he's not a Nick. But there's a part of me that would have loved to have seen him be a Nick. The excitement that he would have been for Madison Square Garden fans playing on Broadway on the biggest stage. Everybody loves playing at Madison Square Garden. The lighting of that arena makes you look like you're on a Broadway stage. They don't light up the crowd. They light up the floor. You are the star. And to see Lebron James finish his career on Broadway, it would have been absolutely amazing. Now, if you ask me, well, would you rather them fall short and then win this year with Lebron? No, no, I'm elated that they won. I would be elated if they win two in a row or three in a row. And it tells you what an unbelievable job the Nick front office has done.
Because they are the team now that teams are chasing. This was a stumble bum franchise, a laughing stock, a dumpster fire. And now they are the team that everybody's aiming to take off the mountain. It's extraordinary, the turnaround. Absolutely extraordinary, the turnaround of the New York Knicks. And this was the first time that when Lebron was a free agent, that the Knicks had a chance, that the Knicks were good enough that he would join them. Because when he went to LA, they weren't good enough. They were a laughing stock. When he went to Cleveland, they weren't good enough, laughing stock. When they were, when he went to Miami, and Donnie Walsh and Dolan made the presentation, they weren't awful, but they certainly weren't good enough to win a championship. So you understood why he never came to New York. It wasn't because he was afraid of the spotlight. The guy loves the spotlight. He lives for the spotlight. He went to LA.