Pablo Torre Finds Out
How Shane Battier Learned to Lead, and Shut the F*** Up (PTFO Vault)
30 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What insights does Shane Battier share about his upbringing and identity?
Hello, it's me, Pablo. So we've done, doing the math, 327 episodes of Pablo Torre, finds out, since we launched in September 2023, and it is the end of 2025, and I could not be prouder of our...
tiny little and extremely overworked newsroom that has created this bizarre sports news magazine show that is television but also obviously an audio first podcast because we've punched above our weight I think especially this year
But the stuff that we did before the previous, you know, hundreds of episodes, we have some favorites that we are now concerned that you maybe have not heard yet or maybe don't realize are even better when you listen to it a second time. And so during the holiday break, we're bringing you our favorites from the PTFO vault.
And we also have a newsletter, by the way, www.pablo.show, where I'll be doing some stuff over the holiday break, especially please subscribe and support our approach to independent sports journalism. But most of all, thank you. Thank you for making this show not just a weird experiment, but a community of people who support the kind of mission that we're on.
To hold to account extraordinarily rich and powerful people while also taste testing, you know, athlete branded weed. We contain multitudes, as does our vault.
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Chapter 2: How did Shane Battier handle anxiety during his early basketball career?
Please enjoy. Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. And today we're going to find out what this sound is.
Right after this ad. I love when a guest has a notebook.
I do. I feel like such a boomer. I mean, I'm getting old. I'm 46 years old.
Chapter 3: What lessons did Shane learn from Coach K at Duke University?
I forget things. But if I write it down, I have notebooks upon notebooks of just maxims and quotes. If I put it in my phone, it's gone. You have the good kind of pen, too, by the way. That thin... The Muji pen. The Muji pen. That's right. That's veteran savvy. The finer things in life.
Chapter 4: How did Shane Battier adapt his playing style in the NBA?
But I wonder if you've used that Muji pen to write down at any point the quote I wanted to actually start with. Okay. Which is, of course, from Mike Krzyzewski, Coach K, head coach of your Duke Blue Devils, who said this, quote, Shane was an alien. I wanted at the end of his career to crack his head open and see if he was really human. End quote.
I think that's a compliment. Pablo, I was psycho. I was a psycho, a psychotic, neurotic person in my time at Duke.
And great steal by Forte. He'll go for two.
Chapter 5: What was the significance of the 'No Stats All-Star' label for Shane Battier?
No! What a play! That's one of the great defensive plays you'll ever see right there, Dave.
When Coach K recruited me, I was part of a very talented recruiting class. Number one class in the country. Elton Brand. William Avery. Yeah. Right? Chris Burgess.
Chapter 6: How did Shane Battier's career evolve after leaving the NBA?
I grew up watching you guys. Right? And we were going to a team that had, at the time, 10 McDonald's All-Americans. We had 10. 10. Which is crazy. So you say, like, why would you go to a team that has 10 McDonald's All-Americans? And Coach K... People always ask me, like, what's so great about Coach K? Coach K can peer into your soul and know what button to push.
Chapter 7: What unique experiences did Shane have while playing basketball with Barack Obama?
Finding the heart of the team is huge. I call it a spirit. He has a different spirit. Once we get him in our program, I have to give him some more latitude where he feels comfortable in instinctively following that spirit.
And he knew this when I was in high school. So he came into my living room and he said, you know, hey Shane, I'm not going to promise you playing time. I'm not going to promise you shots. I'll promise you one thing. the opportunity to earn playing time every single day. And if you're good enough, you'll play.
Chapter 8: How does karaoke reflect Shane Battier's personality and experiences?
So he had me hook, line, and sinker. And I'm like, I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you and I'm going to make you play me.
You're going to stab people's eyeballs with that fine ballpoint Muji pen. I would. I would have.
I would have. I used to throw up before every game. Every game? Every game. My freshman year, I started. And literally, I'm going out to the jump ball circle. I'm so anxious. I want to play well so bad. I would run back to the bench, grab a Gatorade towel, throw up in it, throw it back out, and then they toss the ball.
And just to be extra clear about this, Shane Battier barfing his ambitions into a towel before every game as a 6'8 Duke freshman was a thing that pretty much everybody who cared about him found intensely unsettling, I am told.
And this was true of his college girlfriend, who was now his wife, and it was true of then-Duke assistant coach Quinn Snyder, who is now the head coach of the Atlanta Hawks. Although... there was one notable exception.
I think Coach K loved it because he's like, it matters to me. He cares. But Quinn Snyder was like, this is not healthy. You cannot do this. And so he literally would like breathe with me. Breathe. Yeah, breathe. He's like, Shane, breathe, breathe, breathe.
But when it comes to barf, the first thing that I personally think about when I think about Shane, whose brain, by the way, not unlike Coach K, I also plan to just crack open here. is a different liquid.
And it dates back to the first time that I ever met Shane, which was at a bar during the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference about maybe a decade ago, which would be around sometime after he played pickup with Barack Obama, which we'll discuss, and probably also around when he was just winning championships with LeBron James, who would call Shane, quote, the number one smartest basketball player and person I've been around, end quote.
But that night, during that conference, Shane Battier introduced me to something else.
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