Unnamed Journalist

That morning I get up. As normal, my producer sends me an email for the Heat show that night and says, hey, you're interviewing this guy, Sam Bankert-Fried. He's the founder, the owner, the CEO, whatever you want to call it, of FTX. And the arena being FTX, tonight's a big opening night. It's going to be all in Miami shirts everywhere. Everybody's going to be excited.

So you need to interview this guy. So I get there and I get to the seat and I see him standing there. But what I see is this man in like a dark t-shirt, sort of a black t-shirt, cargo shorts. His hair is much more disheveled than I saw in the pictures. Like I knew he had big hair, but I mean, it's everywhere. And it just looks like it hasn't gotten combed in two weeks.

I walk over and the handler comes, hey, Will, how are you? And I'm like, okay, this is really him. And he's standing there and he's kind of unassuming, quiet. He goes, hey, how are you? And I shake his hand. He's hand-baked my food. I said, hey, Will Manso.

And Pablo, I kid you not, the first thing I notice is right here on his shirt, along the shirt, is what appears to be the world's largest toothpaste stain. Like he was brushing his teeth in the morning, the big chunk of toothpaste fell. He didn't know what to do, so he blabbed it on and scrubbed it. And that's the way he kept the shirt on.

His shorts look like they're never been washed or ironed, fixed. I mean, he looked like he just got out of bed.

So by luck that day, or by luck or by chance, by whatever, that day, every seat in the arena had a, you in Miami, the FTX slogan, T-shirt on the seat. So we go back to him and not to tell him that, hey, you look like a vagabond and you look terrible with this on your shirt. We say like, hey, these shirts are so cool. They're everywhere. Everybody's wearing them. Why don't you wear it?

You're the CEO of the company. And he was like, oh, awesome. That's a great idea.

so they come to me hey will manso standing by with the ceo of ftx who's so excited to be here courtside for his first heat game and we're here courtside with the ceo of ftx sam bankman free kind of looks to join us here on this opening night you will notice that he has the shirt and you can see the outline of another shirt under that's the original toothpaste shirt you're

In the moment, he seemed like the sweet, unassuming, like you almost liked him because he was just so like not like Joe Cool or like trying to be like whatever. I do this all the time.