Transcript of South Beach Sessions - Brook & Robin Lopez New

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Welcome. I am very happy, excited to talk to both of these guys about their relationship. Robin Lopez, Brook Lopez, you know how many years you have in the league together, right? Do you know the combination number of years in the NBA? Do you know the number?

I was always a fuzzy, so I left all the math stuff up to him.

Uh, he's 16 years, he's 18 years. It's a remarkable story. Twins. Uh, congratulations on all your success. I know you guys want to talk about comic books and Disney. We will get to that because I suspect you're overgrown toddlers in this way. Your love of Disney is, uh, is very strong. I haven't seen a lot like it. We'll get to that in a second, but I wanted to talk to you first about your relationship. So, uh, Robin, what would you tell me, is your relationship with Brooke? How would you articulate it to somebody who's a stranger?

How would I articulate it? Um, I would say it's very active through Facebook Messenger. Um, we have, we don't have our own one-on-one, we do have our one-on-one chat because everybody, you know, everybody has chats, but the most active chat we have is a group of 3 or 4 friends. We don't really message each other one-on-one, but through that group chat, um, we rib each other. There's nothing super genuine exchange. I don't think anything needs to be, but, um, yeah, that's what I would say. Yeah.

I mean, it, it's funny cuz like he said, it's, it's never really direct, even if he's in the chat and, and I need something from him or I have to say something to him. It's, hey Ryan, or hey David, how about this idiot over here? Can you tell him this? Or I need this guy to do this, why won't he listen to me? You know, stuff like that. For some reason, of course, we're closer than close can be, but we just— we also don't really speak to each other that often.

Just kind of makes us out to be cowards, I guess.

I don't think I'm understanding though, like, because insults are the language of intimacy among men very often. I don't— are you guys, uh, I don't I don't understand why you wouldn't be talking directly to each other.

I don't know. I guess you're going to get some exclusive stuff here because this is exclusive to even the two of us. We can really air it out right now. Like, what's the deal, Robin?

What's the deal, Robin? I've been waiting years to hear that.

Wow. A real non-answer. Not even an answer, just a non-answer. I don't know, maybe it's just that I don't ever want to seem like, you know, I'm asking him for something or bothering him or being a burden at all, you know? We always know that we'll be there for each other. We got each other's back at a moment's notice, drop of a hat. If anything needs to be done, anything needs to be taken care of, you know, if something were to go down and, you know, us two kids grew up in North Hollywood and then have pretty much, you know, had silver spoons the rest of our life. Not silver spoons, but we've been comfortable. We've, you know, we—

Copper spoons?

Copper spoons, yes, yes. Our mom, you know, sacrificed everything to, you know, make our lives comfortable and to make ends meet. But, you know, if we were to somehow end up on the street somehow and it went down, we'd be there for each other. That's what I'm trying to say.

What it kind of reminds me of, because Definitely growing up, I think you were the aggressor. You were the bully. Yeah. He doesn't deny it. Yeah. What it reminds me of is Married with Children. I think somebody, a creator on that show, like succinctly summarized the family saying they're always at each other's necks. And of course I'm paraphrasing. They're always at each other's necks. But when somebody attacked the family, the family would respond, you know, as a whole.

Yeah.

But even though you're 1 minute younger, you are the little brother in this.

I'm the baby brother in the whole, yes. The dynamic, yeah. Yeah, to my mother, to my older brothers. Yes.

And so how does that work? Take me through the earliest forms of this, like when you're the little brother growing up, uh, how does that be— I mean, you're, you're a minute younger, you're not really the little brother, right?

Well, I think, um, uh, I, I would say there were just certain situations, like, I guess, like socially, for example, like I was the one who kind of spoke for us or spoke first in certain situations, right? Like, you were the more meek one, the quieter one. And if we were friends, I would speak first, you know? And, and I did. I, I felt, even though we're twins, I felt like I had to do certain things for him, you know, being the big brother. And then I learned he'd been taking it and using it to his advantage for a long time around— it must have been 7th or 8th grade even, maybe, where for the longest time he would have me— and this is an example of everything— he would say he didn't know how to hook up the Sega Genesis. We played Sega. We were Sega kids growing up, and we had Genesis for the longest time. He didn't know how to—

down from our brothers.

Yes, hand-me-down. He, he didn't know how to hook up the Sega Genesis, couldn't figure it out. Brooke, would you do it? And so I would always set it up. Yeah, sure, little brother, my twin little brother, I got you. Lo and behold, I have to stay home and stay at school one day a little longer than he does. I come home and this guy's playing Sega Genesis all by himself. I'm like, okay, so he knows how to do it. He's just been taking advantage of this little brother aspect we have, you know, even though we're twins, older brother, younger brother. Totally took advantage of it.

Baby the— baby the little brother.

What did the fights look like growing up?

Oh, they never got too physical. They're usually throwing shoes, throwing basketballs.

I don't know how many coaches, professional players, like GMs, like, like guys we looked up to in the league growing, like growing up when we finally got in the league, they'd be like, oh yeah, I remember you guys. You guys, you'd be at the St. Joe Classic, you know, and you'd be under the bleachers throwing shoes at each other like time and time again. It was always throwing shoes.

We were on leashes when we were younger. Our mom had us on leashes.

Yeah. She said, she said we would get in the gym or get wherever we were going and we'd immediately run in opposite directions. So the leashes were the only answer.

Wait a minute.

How old are you? You were on actual leashes because she had to control the amount of adrenaline and hyperactivity that was going on.

Yeah.

So what's the age?

I mean, we were toddlers at least. We got off the leashes, obviously, eventually.

Eventually we managed to take the steps in life necessary to get off the leashes.

But we were still terrors. We were still absolute terrors. I don't know how many mascots, like, I remember chasing when Alex was at University of Washington. I remember chasing the Husky like up the stands and pulling his tail so much. It got to the point where the Husky like turned around. And number one mascot rule, you can't talk. Number one mascot rule.

I pulled this guy's tail so much it turned around.

Hey, kid, stop pulling my tail. So we were just— we were running around all these arenas and, you know, gyms just like we owned the place. It was— it was a disaster. So we needed the leashes, but not a lot of terrible fights.

Me and my brother— there's a story of me chasing my brother. He pulled a knife on me. I chased him across the street in my underwear. I was, uh, you know, I— you guys have to have some family memorable story closed in public.

I clothed in public, I think. I remember, I think we got in very physical altercations like twice, and there was maybe one punch exchanged.

Yeah, I was lying on my bed one time. I must have said something. I must have mouthed off, and he came over.

You would never mouth off.

Yeah, thanks. He came over and just square socked me in the face, and I didn't even respond really. I was more stunned than everything. I was like, what are you doing? That's not how we play. That's not how this thing works. Like, I couldn't believe it.

Yeah, at least in part because that's not how the little brother— I mean, you— I don't know whether you winced when he said meek when he described you as—

No, no, no. I immediately thought of Dorothy Gale described— Dorothy, Dorothy described herself as meek and look where Dorothy ended up.

Okay. Yeah.

And so he's surprised that you're hitting him in the face just because that's not something that you had ever summoned the— it's not just not how you play. It's also not your dynamic that you're the one punching him in the face, correct?

Right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's definitely true. And, and we also had one of those things too, I'm sure as many brothers do, you know, we grew up together and, you know, we may end up like, you know, as little kids like wrestling or pulling each other's hair or whatever it is. But then, you know, and it's the end of the world, but then a minute later, you know, it's back to normal. You're best friends. And, you know, our mom never had to solve the problem because we just, solved ourselves, you know, we didn't know anything else.

Our older brothers would have us box for, box for their amusement.

Yes. Yeah. They, they, that maybe that's how we got some of that, you know? So that's why we didn't fight is because they would put us in a little makeshift ring in their room and they would put on like, you know, they'd give us our walkout music, you know, they were old, like '80s, early '90s, like wrestling fans, you know, and we'd be, and they'd give us our walk-in music and You know, mine was Speed Demon by Michael Jackson on Bad. And then his was Another Part of Me on Bad. And they would have us both walk in and they'd give us their old, their old, like, you know, ARC, the, you know, AAU, like, you know, rec league thing out here, their knee pads from it. And we'd use those gloves and they'd have us go at each other. These are older brothers, all role models, everyone we looked up to. They just have us fight in this makeshift boxing ring.

Isn't that life, though?

That's life.

I would assume that you guys fought playing basketball. I would assume that one-on-one things would get competitive enough that something would rise up.

Our mom would have to run out to the driveway. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Oh yeah. She'd be— yeah, she'd be in the kitchen window or something. The way our house is oriented, she'd see it from the kitchen dining room window. Our tempers were rising and she'd have to run outside to mostly protect her garden.

But even, even as pros, you guys would play one-on-one in the offseason, correct? Like even deep into your career. Who's, who's got the upper hand there in the history of you two playing each other?

In terms of fiery tempers or?

Well, I just mean winning the games.

Winning the games. I mean, I would say that Brook probably won more. But I do remember he never liked when I won. So even as a pro. So there must have been times that I won.

It was—

it must have been times that I won.

That's— yeah. It's funny because like, I obviously I don't take losing well. I don't enjoy losing, you know, I'm— I can't imagine many pros do. You know, you can't get to that level, at least some level, you know. But, but it's different. Absolutely. Playing against you, you know, like even, even like at Stanford practice or, you know, when, when we were on the Bucks together in those practices and in games, you know, in actual NBA games when we would play against each other, I feel like there was always an understanding between coaches or teammates or refs or whatever it was. And it always got a little extra. They kind of just let us go at it. Almost, you know, it was like, I don't know if it was for their amusement, like it was sport within a sport, but we, it would definitely be a little extra thing than normal. Just, you know, winning and losing a game in basketball.

How many times did you guys play against each other professionally? Have you actually played against each other very often?

At least twice a year.

Yeah. Because we were, we were in different conferences for the longest time.

So are there any memorable stories in there in the playing during NBA games against each other?

I remember the first time it happened. I think we were both rookies. Booker was playing for the New Jersey Nets. I was on the Suns. We had traveled to— where was the stadium? We were traveling to New Jersey.

High Zod.

We were both coming off the bench. And the second that Lawrence Frank told Brooke to walk towards the table to check in, Terry Porter turned around and said, Robin, you're in immediately. Because like Shaq and everybody like Shaq and Amar'e, they were all placing bets, you know, who was going to score first, who was going to score more points and everything. Yeah, that's kind of the way it stayed throughout our careers, honestly.

Absolutely. Like teammates and coaches, they loved watching us play against each other.

No question. The NBA season can be kind of monotonous. You know, you have back-to-back games in January, you're looking for something to kind of differentiate it or motivate you. And that was unusual enough to be fun, exciting.

And it didn't have to be good basketball. It just had to be ridiculous. And we're, we're wonderful at that.

We have the monopoly on ridiculousness.

I want to get into your ranking of your best rivalries with mascots in a second. Speaking of your ridiculous, but how would you articulate for me, Brooke, what the Twins connection is, the connection of being, uh, so, uh, biologically connected that you're twins.

Right, right. Um, you know, they always talk about that twin telepathy, and, and, you know, I'm not sure I've ever had an experience where, you know, I can validate that, but there's, there's no doubt that so much of our life we've experienced together, and especially formative years, you know, from when we were babies to what, 18, we lived in the exact same room. You know, we were everywhere together in the same place. And so, so many of our experiences, if you were, you know, we, we go certain places and we instantly think of the same Simpsons quote. Or, you know, something like that from the same, from the same experience. And we don't have to be at the same place to do that now. You know, it's just, we immediately have the same thought about the same thing. And it kind of sounds simple, but like, we're really like that mentally connected. And of course, when we, the one place it was bad for us is because then we usually pull out those Simpsons quotes and get someone to laugh. And they don't know that, you know, we're ripping off the most popular TV show of all time usually.

But that really, that backfired when we went to The Simpsons table read and realized we couldn't have a normal conversation with any clips.

Any of our jokes. All our jokes are just ripping off The Simpsons.

Yeah. Uh, tell me about The Simpsons table read. I mean, you've ended up in some pretty, uh, I guess literally cartoonish circumstances because of where your interests lie.

That was incredible. Um, it was, what was the name of the episode? It was the, the The King Who Came to Dinner or something. Yeah, it was Kang and Kodos. They go to see their planet. It was one of the later season episodes, but it was an incredible experience. The entire cast was there except for, um, Marge wasn't there. Yes, um, Julie, Julie, Julie Kavner was on the phone. Um, Matt Groening was there. I was excited to meet Tress MacNeille because Tress MacNeille, I mean, they all voice a litany of, you know, Um, not so much, you know, Julie, Julie Kavner doesn't so much. Yeah, but, um, Tress MacNeille, she voices so many different cartoon characters. The one I was excited about was Gadget Hackwrench from Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers. But just that whole, that whole afternoon where, whenever it was, was so surreal because to see them turn it on and off, it was, it was like a live episode.

It was, it was like watching a live episode. You could close your eyes, you know, and just see the episode in your head as they were actually doing it live. And it was cool as an added bonus. There's no way this was planned. No way they could have possibly known. I don't think they would have known, you know, how into theme parks and Disney we were then. But, but the beginning of the episode, if you're not familiar with that one, is The Simpsons going to Itchy and Scratchy Land. And it has a number of parodies of, you know, different Disney attractions, you know. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Like, there was a Jabba the Hutt thing, uh, just so many different things. It was like, wow, this is like a little cherry on top. Like, this was absolutely meant to be.

Can you guys explain to me, before we get into the obsession with both comic books and Disney, uh, what are the roots of this love of animation? Like, where does this start?

I would say that— so first of all, our family. Of course. Um, our older brothers, they both loved comic books, they loved animation, they loved, um, James Bond movies, the novels as well. Um, we had an aunt who was an architect, and I— we would usually spend Thanksgiving at her house, and we'd be able to draw on her drawing— on her, on her drawing board and everything. Our grandma would send us an art box every—

that was our famous favorite Christmas present.

Every Christmas they'd have markers, construction paper, colored pencils, and everything in it. So we loved— we just, because of all that, we just loved drawing, we love writing and stuff. But I think the time we grew up into— we grew up once again in Southern California, North Hollywood, um, the Valley, um, in the early '90s. So you had the Disney Renaissance going on, Warner Brothers was doing its thing with like, um, the Batman: The Animated Series, Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, and all that. Um, then Disney had the Disney Afternoon, which is really big for us, Saturday morning cartoons. He's wearing I don't know if he meant to do that, but he's wearing a Tailspin shirt right now. And then we would go to the parks, you know, once or twice a year. And I think for regular people, you know, that would, you know, maybe, you know, do you develop a love based on that or at least an appreciation. But because we were twins, we both encouraged it in one another.

It was, it was an echo chamber. Yeah. Like the, yeah, these are our formative years, you know, when we're, when we're growing up and learning what the world is and what our place is in it. And, and we're experiencing it side by side every step of the way.

Like I said before, so we're talking about how Tailspin is awesome, how Wildcat on Tailspin, how much we love him. And we don't realize how unusual that is because it's completely normal to each of us.

That's the baseline. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. What would be your answer to the roots of that?

It's growing up in that era, in this setting, in this place, and being able to go out and, you know, be where so much of this is created, you know, and then going to the parks with our family. You know, I think that's such an important part, too, you know, doing these things with our families. And then we'd go back home from whatever movie we saw or whatever TV show we just watched or going to the park and we talk about, "Oh man, that was so cool." And then, "What if they did this?" Or, "What if they did that?" Or, you know, I can remember being a little kid when the Batman, Batman: The Animated Series episode Heart of Ice premiered, you know, on one of the Saturday mornings. You know, when we first saw that, And then after that, we went to go see the Queen Mary. And I remember like that whole, that whole tour of the Queen Mary, you know, we were obviously invested in that too, but we were also talking about that episode and, oh, like that was so cool. Like, what if they did this, you know, with Mr. Freeze or da da da.

And that was like our whole life.

Oh, so you guys are both creatives trapped in athletes' bodies then is what's happening, correct? You guys are just—

We like to think so.

Yeah.

You're just, you happen to be in sports, which doesn't necessarily reward that. I don't know that many coaches have any interest in your creativity. Like, I don't know the meticulous military nature of what it is that you do for a living. It's, it's funny to think that, well, you were given these 7-foot bodies and so you go out there and play basketball, but it sounds like there are animators trapped somewhere in there.

No doubt. There's no doubt. I mean, maybe like someone like like Jokic or, you know, a big, a point guard trapped in a big's body could use that creativity to, you know, help create something. Maybe Joker's, you know, some bridge to that.

Joker's talented enough on the floor to be able to express himself in that manner, yes.

That is true.

Can you explain to me though, because the obsession specifically with Disney is something that I believe I haven't seen in a whole lot of places. You have a property. How did it come to be that you have land on Disney World property?

You know, it's obviously, I'm sure that's like every little kid's dream, but you know, it was never necessarily a plan of mine, you know. And, you know, I always imagined, you know, I'm born and bred Cali guy. Like we said, we grew up in LA, you know, We did, you know, middle school and high school in Fresno. We went to Stanford. Like, we're all up and down, like, through and through Cali guys. So I never really imagined, you know, having a place in Florida or living out there. But I remember it was during an All-Star break. It must have been my 5th or 6th year in the league, and I was injured, you know. So I was— visiting my girlfriend in North Carolina and we were hanging out and my older brother Chris like sent me a Yahoo article. He texted me a Yahoo article and said, hey, like, Bro Bear, they're building property, they're building houses at Disney World. You should check this out. And I was like, oh, that's cool. Like, you know, I was again, like I was in my 5th year in the league. I was like, I don't know, you know, if it's realistic to buy something like that, but like, I'll, I'll look at the link.

And, you know, I looked at the link and it was just the coolest, like, virtual walkthrough of houses. Like, it's literally, it's, it's, uh, just to the— it's just by Fort Wilderness, you know, Fort Wilderness Resort and Campgrounds.

Everybody knows exactly where that is.

I know, I guess. Yeah, Magic Kingdom. It's down the street from Magic Kingdom.

Talk about— yeah, they talk about— yeah, the North Star, you know, the The Pacific, the Atlantic, and Fort Wilderness. That's how people navigate the globe.

Right, it's Polaris and Fort Wilderness. That's right.

Cape Horn and Panama Canal.

What was I thinking? I was trying to bring everyone up to our level.

That's right, that's for the content on the show.

You know where everything is.

The point is though, you're close to everything. How does that come to be?

Yes.

And how do you deliver the news to him? Hey, you're not gonna believe this, 'cause I imagine it brings you right back to childhood,, but I have the ability to make all our dreams come true. I have the ability to get land on our most magical space.

Absolutely, absolutely. So when I find out about this, again, I reach out to my financial guy, Rit, and you know Rit is, I guess he's 2 for 2 on these irresponsible decisions I've made. He said yes to me, I don't know if he agreed with them, but we go down, we tour the development, and we find a plot of land, 'cause there's prebuilt houses, and there's plots of land where you can build. And like Rit and I talked about, we're like, oh, we got to do this. We got to build. And so here, like I tell Robin, and it immediately half becomes his house too. You know, he's absolutely in on it. And what was so fun with the house is having it on Disney World property, it gave us a chance, you know, to flex some of those Imagineering muscles that we'd, we'd, uh, well, he always talks about like, we come home from Disneyland, you know, wouldn't it be cool if they did this?

Wouldn't it be cool if they did that?

Yeah.

So he kind of looked at it as like, if I were designing something in the parks, you know, this, this is what I do with the house.

And so the main section of the house is, I try to keep it pretty traditional, pretty, you know, um, um, classy, you know. But once you get into different rooms, I, I figured, I was like, all right, I am a Cali guy. Disneyland's my home park. I want to bring Disneyland to the East Coast and theme each room after a land in Disneyland, you know. So I have my Adventureland Lounge, my Toontown Suite, a couple Old Tomorrowland and New Tomorrowland Suites. Gotta do— there's so many different versions of Tomorrowland. Gotta have multiple Tomorrowland Suites. The guest house is Critter Country and Frontierland. Still Critter Country.

The Frontierland room is mine.

Yeah, he really went into the— so He really took the theming to— I mean, I went all out, but this guy, he went even further. He was in there. He was putting arrows in the walls, like actually creating holes. Like he, he pretty much put bullet holes like in the walls of that room. Like he wanted to get it as authentic as possible. And so it was just— it was a lot of fun to put together. And I hope it can be at least also a bit of a resume for my post-playing career. You know, maybe Disney Imagineering will We'll take a little walkthrough and look at it and say, hey, there might be a little something there.

Any secret passageways, compartments, or what is the pro— oh yes, yes is the answer to that question.

Absolutely, yes. Go on, go on, go on.

Oh man, um, well, there's a secret room, there's a secret passageway.

Yes, I, I would— there's absolutely a few secrets, and I would love in some capacity it doesn't even— not even charge or anything down the road, but I just, I want people to be able to experience it at some point. Like, I tell our friend Brandon all the time, like, what the end goal, like, is with the house. I mean, other than just being a beautiful place to live and raise my family, I would love to be able to finally create this experience of having an escape room-like experience, but the whole house with a story, with multiple stories. So you go themed room from themed room, you know, experiencing all the little secrets in each room and all the, all the secret tunnels or hidden doors, whatever it may be. And so then at the end, once you solve all that stuff, you get to get to the big secret reveal at the end of it.

Uh, you said your financial advisor said yes to two financial, uh, risks. What was the other one?

Oh, it was the, it was the other Disney house, uh, in Anaheim.

Of course.

The other Disney house.

Mills Warren. That one's Mills Warren. The other one is Lucky Samson.

The other Disney house is a funny phrase. I know. What are the details of the other Disney house?

It's all about location for that one. That one was a pre-built home. We, as a lot of us, when COVID hit, a lot of us were at home by ourselves and we were, you know, doing our online shopping. You know, that was a way to kind of, you know, still feel good about yourself, keep with our interests, you know, kind of just take care of ourselves mentally. I— and this is all making me sound so, like, ridiculous with my money in here.

But anyway, no, it's not. You're saying there are two— you've played 18 years in the league and you've bought two homes because you want to be near Disney.

It's important to you to be near Disney. That is absolutely right. That's right.

So you've treated yourself after 18 years of physically torturing your body. I can't imagine what the feet of you two are like, just your feet, because of what it is that you've given to the game. These are your rewards. You've bought yourself two homes very well on property.

Yes, practically. Obviously there's nothing on property in Anaheim, but we did the next best thing. And pretty much, you know, the same verse that we did in Orlando, written, I did, we just did it during COVID And we, you know, we found a place online, did a little virtual tour. We flew out safely during COVID checked it out, you know, did a little walkthrough, loved it. And I've loved it ever since. And we're like, this is the one.

Well, you gotta give us some tips and hacks, some dos and don'ts. Like you guys are veterans, you're masters. You've gotta tell people how to properly do Disney and how not to properly do Disney?

You want me to do that?

You're there.

You're there almost every day.

I might be, my perspective might be so warped. I want, what's something like, cause I can't, I'm fortunate enough where I can go in and I love it. Like, cause like, like my wife and I will be like, hey, you want to take Julian and go do the Haunted Mansion real quick? And we'll literally go in and do one ride and be like, all right, let's go home and get him down for nap or whatever. Like, and I'm so fortunate. So like, it's like a dream come true. So you take this, you feel this one.

We get there at the, you know, just about when park opens and we're there till park close. I'm actually really impressed that Julian, when Julian's in the park, he doesn't complain at all. He's— how old is he now? He's just over 2 months, right?

Or 2 years?

Just over 2 years. And he doesn't complain at all. Like, and we were there for a very long time. Um, I think that's the best way to experience it because especially at Disneyland now, because it's so, so many people come like after 5, after work. So you have so many locals coming to the park.

Aren't there rides you guys don't fit on?

You would think so.

So there's one ride where technically— one Disney ride where technically we can't even do. It's in Tokyo, Tokyo Disney Resort, in Tokyo DisneySea, their second gate. It's called Raging Spirits in the Lost River Delta area of the park. And it's a roller coaster. It's the same—

It's a lift of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril from Disneyland Paris.

The same track layout and everything. But what is the height limit there? 170 centimeters, something like that? I know, it doesn't matter. We can't do it. We're like, what, 210, 213, something like that.

I'm just kidding, you're right.

Chris might be able to do it. He might be close. He's— or you know what? I think we might have even tried to get him to— we might have brought him up because he was like, if you guys can't do it, I don't want to do it. But we tried to bring him up and he— they might have got him right at the— yeah, this is what they do everywhere we go in Tokyo. They see us at every ride and they go, no, you can speak Japanese. Yeah, I can. I've been learning it so I can tell them, yes, we can ride this ride.

You met your wife at Disney World. Yes. What is that? What's the backstory there?

We, when we got in the league, we would, we would pretty much, we started going every summer because we'd, again, Disneyland was our home park. We went once in 1990 as a family and there's like little, like tiny, some of my first memories are of Disney World.

There was a basketball, the AU Nationals. AU Nationals were in New Orleans, right?

Yeah. And so our, our mom drives everywhere. She loves driving. Great driver. So we drove from L.A. to New Orleans and she figured since we did that drive, we'll just go all the way and she'll take us to Disney World. And so that's what we did. And so after we did that, we, we, we always wanted to go back. Obviously, we just, we couldn't afford it. We couldn't afford doing it. And so one of the first things we did when we got drafted is we went right back there. I mean, we did all the international parks, treated ourselves a little bit. But, um, so every summer we would go back and we'd bring friends and we'd, uh, do Disney World and we'd stay at a different resort. And on one of those trips, um, I met her, uh, at Animal Kingdom, just off a passing glance in a store. Um, and she was on vacation too. She's from North Carolina. And so for them, It's, you know, still their drive. They would drive down all the time. But, you know, that's her home park. And so, you know, it met from there. I just gave her my number, you know, asked if she wanted to hang out at all or anything like that.

And it went from there. You know, we, we first hung out first night, I think, in—

let me think.

Oh, she's gonna kill me for this.

It's not good.

I'm trying to think if it was Studios. I think it was Magic Kingdom first, actually, because I remember we, we had a great time, like, and we went on Splash Mountain, which, you know, favorite attraction. Like, it was just, it was a dream, and it just went from there.

She also has to understand your Disney obsession, correct? That's a deal breaker if she does not. It has to be accepted, it has to be loved, it has to be—

it is, it is. It's not at the It's obviously— I mean, I don't know anyone who's, who's, you know, at our level, but, but she's, she's on board with it for sure. She's accepting and she's very understanding when it comes to certain things. Like, I couldn't have gotten more lucky.

What is the number of days a year? I'll leave this questioning alone in a second, but what is the number of days a year that you will go to one of the Disney parks?

Both of you.

Hmm. Once again, our answers are probably different because Brooke does live right by there. I have an app that tells me how many, like, theme parks and like I track all the rides and everything. So let's see the stats for—

while he pulls his app up, I was actually good this season. You know, I tried to be responsible a little bit because, you know, my teammates and, you know, they depend on me actually showing up for games. So I ended up going about once a month this season. You know, which, you know, all things considered, that's a strength. That's exactly right for you. Proud of yourself.

Yes, exactly.

I'm very proud of myself.

You are a disciplined professional about your work life, and you didn't get tempted by the little cotton candy over there right near your house.

Exactly.

Oh, you are a good big brother.

We finally grew up, right?

You're going to give us some stats there.

I'm trying to. Yeah, I'm trying to pull up the 2025 year interview.

All right. Well, we'll wait for you. That's fine. I've got— I've got We've got plenty more questions here as we wait for that. Give me your mascot rankings in terms of your favorite beefs, rivalries. Favorite beefs and rivalries. I don't know how many you have. What is the total?

Oh, I think I've fought with all of them except—

Battled them all.

Yeah, except for Crunch the Wolf from the Timberwolves.

He's a lone wolf.

He is, yeah. He does his own thing. I admire it. I think number 1 would probably have to be Benny the Bull. Just because I got to play in Chicago as well. So not only was he one of the first mascots that I feuded with, but we also got very close. We became best friends. And then that was all ruined again, you know, once I had to leave the team. So that one's very personal. Who else would I put? I'd probably put the Raptor. The Toronto Raptor would be on that list. Hooper, the Detroit Piston, was the first. He was the first mascot.

It was that silly string attack.

Yeah. I'd round it out. I'd say Stuff, the Magic Dragon from Orlando. And I'd say Rocky from the Denver Nuggets.

A good, solid top 5.

I think so.

What's— how has the wolf escaped your gaze? What has happened with the wolf? Why will the wolf not engage with you? You might— there's a blemish on your resume. Why have you not—

well, why have you not— why have you not found a way to—

like, You gotta find a folding chair, brother. I know, right?

But why is there only one that you haven't feuded with? I would think that you would be obsessed with feuding with the one you haven't gotten.

No, the opportunity just never came up.

That's too bad.

I'm sorry about that.

You're gonna have to buy some Timberwolves season tickets. See if your luck changes then.

What are some of the things that people wouldn't understand that are just daily inconveniences for you that come with your physical size that the world is just not built for? Built for you?

That's a good question because everything seems kind of normal to us because we've been this tall for so long. Um, I think the, the biggest one for me is just flying. I've always got to fly first class or business class.

It's more of a, you know, but I would assume that there, you can't go to a normal hotel and just shower. Like, you can't, the, the, the shower head's not going to be where it needs to be.

Big deal unless you're on a cruise or something.

I mean, you have to remember, too. You have to remember, too, like we're, you know, we've been this tall for what I think. I think we were 6'7" our freshman year in high school. And then we had a growth spurt from 6'7" to 7' between freshman and sophomore year. And I can remember coming into the same classrooms at San Joaquin Memorial and hitting my head on the doorway, you know, first day back at school. And I never did that again. After that, you know, that was it. Like, I've ducked ever since then.

It's embarrassing.

I know, right? Like, but that taught me. That was it. My body, like, immediately adapted. It was kind of crazy.

You only have to concuss yourself one time to learn the lesson, right?

Yeah. Mm-hmm. I mean, I guess not to get back to theme parks, but like, like you mentioned earlier, like trying to fit on rides, like there's like, it's funny because there's kind of an art to that for us. Like, we know which ones like they're always saying cross your legs and do this and do that. But for us, like, we've, we've kind of figured out like how to, you know, how exactly we have to position ourselves to get on each attraction. You know, it's a little tight fitting. And I think, I mean, obviously day-to-day life is the same way.

People ask about beds, you know, I usually curl up anyway, so I'm not all the way extended.

Kids, kids are always looking to sort of fit in. I remember having a conversation with Kevin Durant, Kevin Durant, excuse me, who said like in 5th or 6th grade he was praying that he would be shorter. He didn't want to keep growing. What was it like to be a 6'7 freshman in high school when you're just sort of trying to figure out testosterone and everything else?

I think in that regard, we were fortunate to have older brothers because we want— we always wanted to be like them even when they were younger. I know, I think they picked up basketball probably like our oldest brother, eldest brother probably picked up basketball sometime in elementary school or something. But we'd been playing basketball as long as we could remember because we would go to their games like we watched them play. We wanted to be like them. Some of our earliest memories, I remember going to the Campbell Hall gym.

Yeah.

And watching Alex play basketball.

So it wasn't awkward. It was— it was your normal because your older brother sort of pioneered you in. And so it wasn't something that was abnormal.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Like, I can remember. Oh, man, it broke my heart. I remember our niece, Alea, like, she's tall as well. You know, Alex, his, his eldest daughter. I remember, and she's tall, I think I just— she's tall as well.

You said that.

Yeah, but I mean, I'm just, I'm just, I, I wasn't sure because, uh, I like, I'm just trying to say because the story, like, she— I remember when she first got taller than her mother and she was still, she was still, you know, kind of little. And, you know, she was, she was crying because I don't want to be taller than Mommy. I can't be taller than my mommy, right? Like, you know, I was like, I was thinking about that. I'm like, man, like, you know, it's, that's something I never thought about before. Right. Like that's the person who takes care of you, raises you, you know, like, and like to be bigger than your mom. Like, and so it's like, it is something that's very interesting, but yeah, I, I don't think we ever really had like an issue with that. I don't know if it was because we were just like introvert dorky too or something like that. And maybe we weren't aware, but like, we, I think we were pretty, pretty comfortable for some reason. I don't know.

Your mother was a swimmer, correct? Like, where, where does the love of sports in the house come from?

Probably mom and dad. Like, on her dad's side, I think there was a pitcher. One of his, one of his brothers was a pitcher for the Orioles or something in the '70s. But definitely like our mom, it helped that she knew exactly what we were going through. It was both a blessing and a curse because, you know, when you have those morning practices in high school and you don't want to get up, she would be able to count, you know, well, we would go through those torturous swimming practices. If you ever see a swimming practice, those things are brutal. Yeah, they're swimming, you know, back and forth, lap and lap, getting out of the pool, doing crunches, push-ups and everything.

She would talk about getting up early in the morning and do it and then coming back late at night, you know, getting back in the pool. And we— it's our mom's side of the family in general.

We had no quarter.

No, no, no. We had no chance. She's more intelligent than us too. You know, she swam. Our grandma was a gymnast. Our grandpa on our mom's side of the family played basketball as well. He— let me see if I can get this just right. He, he played a bit. Was it the Steel League?

Like in an industrial league?

Yeah, some industrial league in the Midwest. And he played for Allen Bradley, which was where he worked, you know, of the Bradley Center. And he got an offer to join up with the NBA when it first started, but it didn't pay enough at the time. You know, he had his family to support, so he couldn't do it. But years later, I was, you know, when I first signed with Milwaukee, I was reminded of all this. And it was very cool because I got to, you know, I went around the city with mom and she pointed out, you know, the hospital she was born at and where her grandma used to take her walks through the park and all the, you know, different Polish neighborhoods, German neighborhoods, everything like that, which was— it was cool, you know, kind of full circle moment to see all this, you know, obviously where I come from, history in general, but sports history as well.

Do you guys have much knowledge or connection to the Cuban parts of your history, the Lopez part of your history?

Not a lot, honestly. No. Our parents divorced when we were, I think, even before kindergarten. So no, you know, I, I respect it. I enjoy being Cuban. You know, I actually went to Havana after COVID when the NBA started kind of doing some of those baseball-style trips where you'd be in like Miami for 3, 3, 4 nights. On one of those days, I flew to Havana for the day, which was kind of cool.

How was that?

What—

that was something I'd always wanted to do. So even to be there for, you know, I was probably there for 12 hours or something. That was really cool to see.

Uh, what do you guys remember in terms of the challenges in your upbringing, like the obstacles that had to be overcome to get, uh, to the things that you wanted to get to?

Um, you know, uh, uh, growing up, um, again, uh, our parents divorced when we were very young, but, um, our mom was a public school teacher and she had the 4 of us boys to feed, 4 of us big boys to feed. But I think she sacrificed so much and worked so hard. We never really felt like there was anything to want or need. We felt like we had everything we had. I mean, she was teaching full days at school, coaching swimming later on. I can remember going to some night classes with her, you know, when we were really little. And at the same time, you know, ferrying 4 boys around, you know, getting, getting Alex to his practices and getting Chris to his practice.

2 of them on leashes.

Right. 2 of them on leashes.

Yeah.

Doing literally everything. And I mean, she, she, she made it. I mean, I just listed off all of that and she made it seem effortless, you know? I mean, she, she got it all done for us. Again, we didn't worry about anything. How did she do that? Robin?

Oh, I think part of it, you know, I was going to go to our oldest brother Alex, who's probably 11 years older than us. 12.

So yeah, he's 76 and then we're 88. Yeah, right.

Oh, it's not 77. It's not Star Wars 76. Okay, whatever. But having him as an older brother, you know, he was old enough where he could kind of help out around the house too. He and his friends. But also as far as basketball goes, he was somebody, you know, I think, I think had the position, had the roles been reversed, had we been the older brothers and he'd been the youngest, I think he would have been in the NBA because he was somebody who, you know, he was trying to— they were trying to figure out what do you do when you want to play professional basketball then with him. He was the firstborn. So, you know, it was like, how do you get in? How do you go about getting an agent? Things like that. You know, how do you go about joining a summer league team?

So he was just too soon. It was just he didn't have any of the map laid out for him? Like, why couldn't he have been the pro? 11 years doesn't seem like that long a time.

I think it was just, you know, we didn't really have the connections for some reason. It just, you know, it— I don't know, it didn't work out. You know, I think absolutely some of those mistakes and misses— I wouldn't say mistakes, but misses, you know, on, on, on, you know, our family's part, just not knowing or being ignorant. Ended up benefiting us.

I'm not understanding, though, mistakes just in terms of what it takes to get all the way to the pros, what it is that you have to do, how meticulous and against the odds it is to get up there.

Yeah, I wouldn't say again, like, I feel like mistakes is just the wrong word. You know, it's genuinely like not knowing, you know, the process, you know, because it's not like you know, all love. It's not like, you know, he's a can't-miss prospect or anything like that, right? It's just understanding, you know, how to access, you know, some of these— the things that we needed or he needed to help him get to where he could have been.

One of the things that's happening throughout the sport is that a lot of players are getting hurt because of just how taxing it must be to defend the way the game has spread out and the way they've changed pacing and everything else. It's not a normal thing for people your size to take 16 and 18 years of punishment to the limbs of jumping and running and stuff. What are the physical manifestations that people wouldn't understand about what has happened to your body over the last 16 years and 18 years?

In that regard, I've been very fortunate because I remember having a conversation with Dwyane Wade when we played for one year together in Chicago, you know, talking about he always has to be really careful with his ankles, you know, taping them and everything. And I stupidly chime in like, you know, I never hurt my ankles or anything. And he's like, yeah, you never do. You never move making fast, you know, quick moves out there on the floor. So I'm, I'm, you know, I'm relatively lucky. I hurt my back, like I pinched a nerve in my back, maybe my second year in my career. And that affected the nerve going up and down my right leg. So I kind of had to like relearn how to play basketball with my athletic— without athleticism. Because I think I was told by the training staff it took like 6 or 7 inches off my vertical or something, something stupid. So from that point on, I just didn't rely on athleticism. I tried to, you know, rely on intelligence, savvy, things like that.

It's a hard way to do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, especially when you're as dumb as me. But so I was fortunate in that regard. I never really put myself in any super dangerous situation because I always had a solid base.

So your feet and your knees are fine? Like, I would think it's the feet is I would think the feet would be the thing.

I got a plate and 6 screws in my left foot. That's also from, I think, my second year in the NBA. So I hope I came out unscathed. As far as I know.

Yeah, I, I had a number of foot surgeries on my, on my right foot. I must have fractured that thing 3 or 4 times at least, you know, and I had a screw put in there again, you know, 4 times on the fifth metatarsal all the way on the right edge of my right foot on the outside. And it just— the screw kept bending because enough blood couldn't get to that exact spot to help promote the healing, you know. So it just, it kept bending, it kept fracturing until they finally, you know, like the fourth or fifth time in, went into the inside of my foot in the arch and they like cut a piece out essentially from just, you know, a few inches up from my big toe and lowered the arch on that side of the foot. And that changed everything and fixed it. You know, I still occasionally get a little like, you know, phantom feeling pain or something like that. But, but I know it's all good now. And then obviously I've had my back stuff too. You know, I hurt my back at Stanford. I did my back again a few years ago with the Bucs and You know, fortunately, both times the surgeries were super successful and I immediately felt better, like literally like coming off the table, like standing up, like, you know, the sensation you mentioned down my leg was gone.

But it's absolutely just constant maintenance for me, you know, every day doing my core exercises, you know, when I get in the weight room, doing my— getting through my workout, getting in the pool. Doing my swimming, making sure I get my stretching, and even when I sleep, just trying to sleep in the right positions, getting into bed sitting down, then laying on my side, and then rolling over on my back, doing everything I can to make sure I don't mess up anything in my back or try to just stay—

Back pain is the worst. Oh my goodness. And it'll just cripple everything. It'll just debilitate even your happiness if you're in back pain. Yeah.

Absolutely.

And like, I, I'm— it's funny because like, again, like I'm fortunate, like I'm completely good in the back, but there's still times where like I'll feel something and, you know, immediately, like if it's like bad, bad or if it's like just a— but like I'll get up and I'll be like, oh man, it's a, you know, a little, little rusty today, you know? And like, I got to go in and get my work and, you know, get it all loosened up and everything because it's—

whoo.

What kind of meticulous do you have to be? Like every day you have to spend how many hours on the precise maintenance care of your body to make sure that everything's humming?

Man. Yeah. Now I just finished year 18. I'd say, let's see. I mean, I can just go through like my routine from the past season, you know, coming into the facility, I get in my red light, do I do 12 minutes red light pre-practice. Then I go get on the table, get my back work done, get my hips worked on, get in the cage, do some stretching in the cage, help again loosen up the core, everything in there. Then I go through my weights workout. Then usually on court, whatever we have on court, practice shots, whatever it is, then we're done. Probably back on the table, get everything like kind of loosened up from the work. And then I'd say cold tub and then more red light, do red light again. And then that's not including obviously back home, you know, doing back exercises or NormaTec or, you know, Venom or all that other stuff, whatever it is, hyperbaric chamber.

Boring. You get tired of it or it's just, it's your life now. It's your craft and it's what you have to do.

Exactly. It's exactly that. You know, it's, it's, it's what I have to do. And, you know, I think about the alternative of not doing this or, you know, not playing this game at a great level.

And, you know, it's an easy decision, but it's a lot of work for what amounts to 30 minutes of action every couple of days. It's a lot of—

it really is.

It's hours.

Yeah. I have been told, you correct me if I have this wrong, that you went from hothead early in your career, that you had some temper issues, to by the time in Chicago at the end, you're preventing a mutiny because you're the reasonable voice in the room.

Do I have that? Can you imagine that? Yes.

Do I have that? Okay. So take me through, take me through that timeline, what you did to become a savvy veteran after being immature at the beginning.

I just extended the fuse. You know, I think I was fortunate to be drafted by the team and organization I was drafted by. I got drafted by the Phoenix Suns. You have a lot of veteran, very veteran-laden team. Steve Nash, Grant Hill, guys who have been doing it forever and doing it forever intelligently. But Steve Kerr was in the front office when he drafted me. And Steve Kerr was a big part about, you know, helping me with my mental game and everything, helped me develop that. And I think, you know, it's just also the natural progression of the game, learning what helps you out there, you know, figuring out— I think part of it was probably, especially very early on, it was just, you know, frustration because you come to the NBA as a rookie and everybody, everything's moving faster, but their brains are moving faster. They're making better decisions at a faster clip. And you're kind of trying to keep up, struggling to keep up. That can be infuriating if you're not at the same clip. But like I said, I had great, great vets around me. I had a great staff around me, and that's why I'm very thankful.

So you're— but your temper was born of the frustration of it's hard to keep up?

Well, I think not necessarily that. I always had a temper, and part of it was competitiveness. And I think part of it, yeah, and something like that's not going right, you know, things aren't going right. And so once you, you know, you figure out how to control that, to kind of harness it, you see guys now, they harness it.

But how did you figure that out? How did you—

A lot of talks, just a lot of, you know, a lot of talks with guys, you know, kind of figuring out what exactly your role is on the team. Like, and, you know, Phoenix, my Phoenix years were kind of tumultuous, you know, with injuries and, you know, coaching changes and stuff. But I wouldn't change it for anything because it prepared me for the rest of my career. You know, once I finished those 4 years, I felt like I had seen, you know, just about, you know, everything, you know, everything you can see in your career.

So what are the details of you making sure that there wasn't a mutiny? Like, how did you— how were you able to talk everyone in on that one?

That was just— I think so. Let me think. But I had 4 years in Phoenix. Year in New Orleans, 2 years in Portland. So that's 7, right? That's 7 right there, right?

I don't know if I'm right on that.

I'm not helping you. I told you that. I told you I'm a fuzzy. 8 with New York. And then by the time I got to Chicago, you know, 10, it was 10 or 11 years at that point because it was, it wasn't my first year in Chicago. So Jim Boylan had just become the head coach. Why did you look at me like that?

That's that twin telepathy. Yeah, whatever, whatever his thoughts were there that would get him in trouble. I can't say that.

Yes, he looked at you, but you know what I'm talking about, right?

I showed that restraint that Steve Kerr taught me. So Jim Boylan had become the coach. I think Fred Hoiberg had been, I think, unfairly fired early on in the season because we had a young team who had a lot of injuries. Larry Markkanen wasn't playing regularly yet. Zach Lavine wasn't playing regularly yet, but that was a while ago. So anyway, so Jim Boylan had just become head coach and His idea to try to, to try to bend the young fellows to his will was shock and awe. So the first practice he controlled was a shootaround in Indiana. And typical shootarounds, you know, they can go for like 30 to 45 minutes or something. That shootaround was 2 hours. And people were doing pushups during the shootaround and everything. I don't think it had too immediate of a result because 3 games later or something, it wasn't too many games later, we played a back-to-back and the second part of the back-to-back was at home. We got absolutely waxed by the Boston Celtics. We must have lost by 40 or 50. I think it was the biggest loss in Chicago Bulls history. And, you know, after that, you know, after that, You know, you kind of, as an NBA player, you're kind of like 50-point loss.

You know, there's things to learn from that, but it's one of those nights. I go home, you know, I get my food, get my, you know, stuff done at the arena. I just head home. And I don't know if you noticed, I have an Android, which is gonna be pertinent to the story because I'm at home, I'm watching, I don't know, Frasier or I'm watching The Ten Who Dared, or I'm watching Notorious or something. And I get a call from Justin Holliday and he said, Robin, the guys and I, the guys and I have talked and we're not going to show up for practice tomorrow. Oh, like, wait, back up. What happened? And I guess everybody, everybody in the NBA, they're always team chains, but I'm rarely in them because I don't have, I don't have an iPhone.

The green bubble. They always complain about the green bubble.

They always complain about the green bubble. You're the lone wolf. So yeah, I suppose so. Makes you think. But, um, so I get that call. I'm like, okay, hold on, hold on. We can't not show up. Just not showing up is like incredibly, you know, unprofessional or something. We have to at least, at the very least, like, if you guys are, if you guys want to do this—

Brooke's so professional, his body language has gone to shit.

He's squirming around all of this. He does not like any of this.

Whitney.

So I tell them, like, if we're at least going to do this, we've got to show up to the practice facility and say this isn't a practice day. You know, it's a back-to-back. We've got to show up and, you know, say we're not, we're not going to be on the court. We're going to be getting work at the facility. And I eventually talked them down to that. I think Lowie Markin was also in agreement with me on that. But the problem was like, we got there. We got there the next morning. We were in the parking lot just outside the practice facility. And we had said it was going to be like, you know, at 8 o'clock was when we were supposed to show up. We were all going to come in the practice facility. Some guys had already gone in the practice facility. It's just, you know, very young team.

Very young team. No solidarity even on whatever the unity had to be.

Some guys had already gone.

The facility.

And so we went into the, we went into the film room, I think. And I don't know if Jim Boylan called, you know, changed his, you know, got, got the line of scrimmage and changed his, you know, his read or whatever. And we weren't even going to practice today.

So the big uprising and coach, coach wasn't coming in either way.

Oh yes, that's what he said. Yes. But yeah. Yeah.

I'm going to wait for you to see if you can find that Disney ride because I do want those metrics. But I want to ask you guys some rapid-fire questions here. Just fill in the blank on some rapid-fire questions. The best teammate you've ever had is blank.

Ooh. Giannis KG.

Wesley Matthews.

That is 2. I'm going to allow it. That's okay. The toughest teammate that you have ever had.

Toughest in what sense?

Toughest like— Yeah. No, no, not challenging. Somebody who you admired his pain threshold or how, how, how physical he was, whatever it is that you admired about getting on the floor.

That also might be Wes, honestly.

Reggie Evans.

Good answer. The best Disney IP there is.

The best Disney IP there is. Okay. That's a great question because I think the best IP has been their most neglected.

And it's not the sense that I think I know what you're going to answer.

I think one of the most unfortunate, like one of the most, I mean, obviously it's a fortuitous thing. Mickey Mouse blew up and he became huge, right?

Yes.

Yeah. But I think that's a double-edged sword because he can't have any character. And there was a point, you know, like in, like in the early, late, late 20s, early 30s, he was a rapscallion. He was a rascal. But if you read some of the newspaper comics from like the, from like the '30s to the '50s, he's like a globe-trotting adventure. Like he's, he's, he's, he's like, I can't believe I'm blanking on this, but He's such a, he's such a fascinating character that, you know, he's, he's an action hero. He's battling spies and Nazis and, um, he's battling, um, mutinies, like, and he's, he's such a wonderful character.

It bothers you that he became so big that he lost what would be the richness of a multi-layered character?

I think there's so much you can do with that, that Mickey in his world. With Donald Duck, because that also intersects with Donald Duck in his role. Donald Duck is still able to kind of be Donald Duck for the most part, for the most part. But you also have like Uncle Scrooge in that world, and there's so many wonderful characters in that universe, wonderful storytelling devices.

I aired, I aired so terribly because I wanted to do it rapid fire and I did Disney, and I can't— I know, once I get you guys started, uh, what was your answer to that?

My answer was a Duck Mice character.

The Duck and Mice characters, they're, they're not neglected, but they're not what they can be because it's just like Superman or Batman. You have, you have the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, but you also have these Batman cartoons. Like there's a Batman show where they're all caught where it's about the Batmobile, the Batplane, they're anthropomorphic, they're talking and everything. You have a, you have an Adam West series with, um, with Diedrich Bader. Voicing Batman in the vein of Adam West. Like, you can have all these different versions of Batman, and there are some different versions of Mickey, but I don't think they go to the degree that they can.

I love how much you guys love this.

I genuinely do. That's something we really want to do. It's not just with Disney stuff. We've all— we still— we want, you know, we want to be able to tell stories. I think that's what we love about the parks, about movies, cartoons, comic books, and everything. It's those stories, you know, they resonate with us so much. They resonate with everybody so much. They're cathartic for us. They're cathartic for the people who write them. And that's something that we want to do.

We want to do it with the next career.

That's what the goal is, to be able to retire from basketball and then tell stories, whether it's in the theme park medium, television, movies, cartoons, comic books, whatever it may be.

That's the dream.

You're going to keep playing?

I do.

I do.

I still want to play a few more years. My goal was always 20. The way I feel, you know, knock on wood, like we'll see past. I would love to play till the Sonics come back. I want to play one game, you know, in Seattle, either there or against Seattle.

I always told myself that too. I know, but that's what we thought. Seattle was going to come back in like 2012 or something.

My biggest fear. So when we got drafted, we got drafted in '08. That was the first year of the Oklahoma City Thunder, first year, no Sonics. My biggest NBA fear is that I'm going to retire and the next year the Sonics will come back. And that like 20 years or whatever will be the dark ages of the NBA, the Lopez era without the Seattle Supersonics.

Why the obsession with playing in Seattle or against Seattle?

What is the— I actually neglected to mention earlier on our little timeline, there was about a year and a half, 2-year period when our brother, I did say he ended up going to the University of Washington to play basketball. And so he got a little homesick when he was there. So our whole family moved up to Whidbey Island, which was like an hour's, you know, an hour's ferry ride from Seattle. And it was just the most beautiful situation ever. It was gorgeous. And so at that time, you know, that was the year the Sonics went to the finals. The Mariners had Griffey, A-Rod, Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez. I mean, we can go down the whole roster. Look at his hat. Like it was like a lot of exciting stuff was happening. And so, you know, we still have a lot of fond memories of that.

Doesn't help that as great as the Oklahoma City Thunder have had so many amazing, incredible players, but they've also had terrible uniforms. They have a terrible like logo and everything.

The branding, it's night and day. Yeah.

Yeah.

Why a goal?

I'm sorry.

Oh, no, I was just going to think. The, the, the person I was trying to compare Mickey Mouse to was Jimmy Stewart. Yeah. Because you have Jimmy Stewart like in Winchester '73 and he's completely different. He's completely different from, you know, Jimmy Stewart and like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or something, or Harvey. So that's, that's—

if you and I had comedic timing, we would have walked out and just allowed him to keep talking just by himself here, just talking about—

unfortunately, we're no Mickey Mouse.

You said though, uh, and I'll let you go after this, you always had the goal of playing 20 years? What kind of— like, that's crazy.

What?

That's not a normal goal.

Like, to get to the league is one thing.

To play for 20 years.

Right.

I—

for me, I think it was just seeing so many players that I grew up idolizing play for, you know, right around 20, like guys like Tim Duncan, Kobe, Vince, you know, KG. I'm pretty sure he was up there at 20. I think, you know, all those guys got there. I was like, You know, I want to get there too. I think that's really cool.

I thought I was going to play. I was stupid. I thought I was going to. I remember I got to them. I remember my interview with Steve Kerr. I remember he said, how long do you want to play in the NBA? I'm going to play for 7 years. I'm going to retire. I'm going to be doing, you know, movies, television, cartoons, whatever. That's what I told him. Yeah, I swear I remember that.

You didn't get cut.

You know, he drafted me.

7 years. He wants to play 20. You wanted to get back. You wanted to get into the cartoon life. Life after basketball. You guys have been stuck in these athlete bodies for a while. Go play with the cartoons. Thank you guys so much for being on with us. I really did enjoy this. Did you find your metrics?

I did. Yes. So I spent 24 days at parks, at 16 different parks. Let's see, Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disneyland, Alton Towers, Universal Studios Hollywood, Epic Universe, Disneyland Enchanted Forest. That's a great park outside of Portland, like a little-known family park.

So we'll fill in the blank here. The best of the parks is blank.

I, I still think Disneyland or DisneySea. DisneySea is like the popular answer. I'd say Disneyland too.

Yeah, Disneyland, but Tokyo DisneySea is right there if Disneyland didn't exist.

I know people have the argument with Disneyland versus Disney World, but Disneyland, like, be just beyond even having Walt's touch. It kind of, it was once again the double-edged sword that it couldn't expand for, you know what, 50, like 45 years or something.

They— DCA opened in 2001.

2001. So because they couldn't expand, they had to figure out how to take all that land and put like all these wonderful, latent, hidden surprises like around every corner and nook and cranny. And you don't quite get that any other parks except for Tokyo DisneySea.

The best of the rides, you already said Splash Mountain. Is there anything better than that?

Splash Mountain's it for me.

Pirates of the Caribbean Disneyland, Indiana Jones Adventure, Tower of Terror at Disney World.

You have a problem with this list?

No, no, I love—

because I love the Indiana Jones pick specifically, but obviously Pirates too, because Indiana Jones for me— and I love Rise of the Resistance, the Star Wars ride. In Galaxy's Edge, the new, the relatively new one, like incredible experience, 3 different ride systems in one. Obviously the characters in it are an issue, but, but like I absolutely knocked it out.

But easily fixable.

Yeah, yeah, totally. But to me, to me, the like the, like the, the combination of a thrill ride in those ancestor attractions of Pirates and Haunted Mansion, like the all-time 2 stone cold theme park attractions, like It's pretty much everything, you know, derives from inside in some way. Like Indiana Jones is like that combination. Like, it's such a perfect package. Like, you actually believe they built that temple.

You have an authentic lightsaber, do you not? Like, do I have this right? Do you have like a collectible lightsaber that would be— do I— am I wrong about this?

We don't have any movie-used lightsabers. We do have What movie props do we have? We have Sark from Tron.

We have a couple of astromech droids, R2 units.

Yes, those were used at the parks.

Yeah.

C-3PO was used for—

What is the most prized? What is the— what would be the most prized possession from among these that you have?

That—

so the two that I would pick, I would say either Jose from the Enchanted Tiki Room, the lead tiki bird, and then the other one is the Captain EO costume Michael Jackson wore. In the 3D film music video Captain EO.

We didn't even talk about Michael Jackson. I mean, you guys said it was your walk-in music back when you were— but we didn't even talk about your Michael Jackson obsession.

As far as I know, there are 3 costumes. I know that Disney has one, Lucasfilm has one, and then we have ours. Um, ours is the only one with the cloak that he wears in the movie, and ours is the only one that lights up.

Do you know Captain EO? No, this is the— this—

yeah, I know, right?

That's what I said when I started talking about Fort Wilderness. You deserve—

you earned that.

I remember that.

Michael Jackson costume. Michael Jackson. Did you say 'shame on you' to me? Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, produced by George Lucas.

I'm so sorry. Why are you shaming me in front of the people?

Whose show is this?

Thank you guys.

We're going to talk more about, about Mickey Mouse and Jimmy Stewart.

Thank you guys, I appreciate it.

No, thank you. This was a blast. You know, we had truly a great time. Truly a great time.