BD: You do a good job in that. You've been bringing a team for over the last 10 years to the Drew. Your love for basketball is on a whole 'nother level, you know what I mean? Just from when I've known you, from high school, all the way until the league, you would go play basketball with no shoes on. I swear to God, you would. Talk about your experience with the Lakers, the Bulls, coming into the league and how your love of basketball drove you through to figure out who you were.

MWP: Man, I think for me, basketball is something that kept me out of trouble. So I just said, “Do I wanna go to jail or do I wanna do something positive?” And basketball was it. My connection to basketball, it's a little bit different. Somebody might have love for the game, but basketball, to me, is about not going to jail, not dying, not selling drugs. That's what I think of when I think of basketball. And when I'm doing anything in basketball, it's a personal connection. When I'm doing my basketball app, or if I wanna coach the Knicks and I become so passionate about it, because it's bigger than just a job. It's bigger than just a game for me. I reflect on everything that I've been through when I'm doing anything in basketball. That's why I put my passion into it. It's just a different connection with basketball.

BD: When did you decide basketball wasn't the struggle anymore? When it was, like, I'm in the league, I'm in my damn near seventh year, you know what I mean? You're an All-Star. When did you start making the transition and what made you make the transition to say, “You know what? I'm not gonna die. I'm not gonna get shot. I got all this money. I've actually crossed over to the other side and made it.”

MWP: That's a good question because, when I got to college, my first major was architecture. I knew I always had the love and the passion to do well. When I left college, I applied to be a math major, but then I was going into the draft, so I just didn't go back to school. I just failed all my classes. I didn't care what the professor said. I always wanted to do well in school and I always wanted to apply it. It just took me a while. One example would be, when I would be home in my neighborhood, I would do math problems because I didn't wanna be selling drugs. I bought like two math workbooks and I would just be doing some problems while everybody's doing their thing. Once again, I wasn't the greatest student in math, but it kept me out of trouble, you know what I mean? So I try to always...I have a different kind of relationship with basketball and anything numbers, because I always think about and reflect.

BD: Even playing against you, you knew time, score, what everybody was doing, they stats. You probably walked up to somebody, like, “Hey dawg, you get another rebound, you have a triple-double,” and the dude wouldn’t know it. You're wired. It's like he's engineered to understand the game in totality, and the game of basketball is all about numbers, right? You've basically taken basketball, you retired and now what are you doing?

MWP: When I first retired, it was a couple phases. So in 2009, when I got to the Lakers, I knew that I was gonna be done soon. So I started a corporation, Artest Management Group. I didn't really know what I was gonna do with this corporation, but I said I'm just gonna start it. I was preparing for certain things. My son came to me in 2014 and said, “Dad, I invested in Tesla in 2012, at $30.” I said, “What the hell is Tesla?” He was only 12 years old when he did. So my son is like super genius, graduated at 15 1/2, computer science major, finance major, product designer, building blockchain stuff. Only 19 years old [now]. Got a scholarship to Irvine. Had Princeton, Harvard, Yale, all this stuff.

So when he came to me in 2014 and said, “I’m investing in AMD,” I said, “What the hell is AMD?” “It's a semiconductor.” “What the hell is a semiconductor?” “It's the stuff that you put in video games.” I go, “Wow, that's great, son.” So I said, “Can you speak to my banker? I wanna put some money into it.” And my son was speaking to my banker and got me motivated to get into finance. Eventually, I was trying to focus on digital analytics. I didn't have enough background to really dig deep into programmatic marketing or any other technical parts of marketing. So I figured I would learn it and then just stay at a high level and kind of put teams together. So that's what I'm doing now. Everything is finance, analytics, trying to keep it involved with sports. That's where we at now.