Pablo Torre Finds Out
Mr. President’s Mind: How Shane Battier Learned to Lead (and Shut the F*** Up)
Thu, 05 Jun 2025
LeBron called him the smartest hooper alive. Coach K called him an alien. Obama called him for a Hall-of-Fame pickup game (and a historic BBQ). But two-time NBA champion Shane Battier has been measuring the immeasurable inflection points of his career all along — from growing up "mixed, tall and poor"; to puking at Duke, guarding Kobe and witnessing LeBron's GOAT-defining game; to failing at ESPN and building a cabinet of relationships… including his therapist. Pablo cracks open the brain of the legend known as Lego, to find out if he really is human after all. Plus: Patrennessy, Laptop magazine and karaoke. Lots of karaoke. • Subscribe to "Glue Guys" with Shane Battier & Alex Smith https://www.youtube.com/@GlueGuysPodcast • The No-Stats All-Star (Michael Lewis) https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What makes Shane Battier a unique player?
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. 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.
But I wonder if you've used that Muji pen to write down at any point the quote I wanted to actually start with, 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. No! What a play!
That's one of the great defensive plays you'll ever see right there, baby!
When Coach K recruited me, I was part of a very talented recruiting class, number one class in the country, Elton Brand, William Avery, right? Chris Burgess. 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're saying, like, why would you go to a team that has 10 McDonald's All-Americans?
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Chapter 2: How did Coach K influence Shane Battier's career?
No, that is a hard shot for even the best player, unless your name is Steph Curry or Kevin Durant. All right, Devin Booker. And the one thing that, you know,
i was able to do that a lot of people can't do i detached myself from the outcome i didn't i didn't care i didn't care if a guy made a shot or not i really didn't i cared where they took that shot and i knew if they took the shot in the wrong area in the area where they they struggled the most given enough time, sample size, they would beat themselves.
And so I just had to sort of lead them to that conclusion. And so you can teach somebody kind of the squares in the court where it's just hard to make a shot.
A two over batting eight. Rebound by Bynum. Relentless pressure. He's going to put that on you every single possession. And you know what? You got to give Shane Batty a lot of credit.
When you look back at how you got to be this way, that's the part where I'm like, I don't know if you can really teach that.
Look, I grew up. In a middle-class part of Detroit, I was very poor. The roof leaked when it rained. I remember what a government cheese sandwich tasted like. I had patches on my jeans and all my clothes. We had no money. I learned the phrase, Rob Peter to pay Paul, like when I was in kindergarten. We were very, very poor. I was the only kid in town that had a black dad and a white mom.
So in an elementary school of 500 kids, I was the only black kid. I got a pick on pitcher day, everyone else got a comb. On Martin Luther King Day, I was expected to know everything about black culture from the dawn of civilization. And I was a foot taller than everybody else. So I was the kid who always had to carry a birth certificate with him at the Little League game.
So I was an outcast wherever I went. So I was mixed tall and poor. The only place I really felt at home was at recess. and playing kickball and playing dodgeball and playing basketball and baseball, all the sports. And I realized when I help my friends win, I'm no longer the poor kid, the mixed kid, the tall kid. I'm just the kid who helped my friends win.
So I didn't care about what I did or how I looked. All I cared about is did we win? And did I help my friends win? So I'm gonna do whatever it takes. I'm gonna do whatever it takes to make sure my friends look good and that we win. I took that lesson from kindergarten. So it was born out of desperation. It was born out of just, I want to be loved. I want to be accepted.
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Chapter 6: How did Shane Battier handle pressure and anxiety?
That is also a thing that we hear, Pablo Torre finds out that we believe in. Shane Battier, thank you for turning this podcast into a very happy camp.
Pablo, you're my man. I can't wait to do Patronacy with you when I see you next time. Oh, God. I just felt the need for a towel.
This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.