Welcome to the Edge of Sports podcast. I'm Dave Ziron. So excited to have on the show this week,

basketball aficionado, a basketball coach, and one of my aces. His name is Aria Shirazi we're going to have them on in just a moment but to talk to Aria about basketball is truly a treat and I'm actually doing it just to clear the palate because after that I've got a lot to say about Kyrie Irving and the Brooklyn Nets. So let's get started with Ariya Shirazi.

Ariya Shirazi, thank you so much for being on the Edge of Sports podcast.

Thank you very much for having me.

I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, we're going to talk some serious NBA.

But before we do, I mean, one of the ways I introduced you is as somebody who ran the

New York Marathon, which to me is an athletic feat of unimaginable proportions.

Can you just tell the story?

Because you're not a marathoner per se, and yet did this and that to me is amazing can you tell

that story please briefly yes no I was not a runner I have I had never been a runner competitive

or meditative really and in 2015 I got kind of a freak opportunity to get a spot without

having to go through any of the processes as far as qualifying or running a certain amount

of races or volunteering to run the marathon for that year and kind of the catch was that

it was 10 weeks out.

Wow.

Ten weeks to put it together.

So I accepted the opportunity and everybody I told thought I was crazy because I'm not a runner

and thought that there was a good chance that I would either

perish or just enter myself pretty badly.

I got to ask, Shiraz, I got to ask, because this team is kind of amazing.

I totally understand why people said to you, you have two and a half months to train for this.

...