Between Bites with Nina Compton and Larry MillerTrajan Langdon | Between Bites Podcast with Nina Compton & Larry Miller S2E3
On episode three of the Between Bites podcast with Nina Compton and Larry Miller, New Orleans Pelicans general manager Trajan Langdon stops by to talk all things food; from his childhood full of fresh fish in Alaska to fine dining while traveling.
Trajan talks about his first impressions of New Orleans cuisine, his favorite dishes when traveling in Italy, and his passions outside of basketball.
Pro would the Bigot.
And welcome back Season two between Bites, Nina Compton and Larry Miller, presented by Caesar's and Party of Your Repelicans podcast Network. Today we are joined with the Boss, General Manager of the Pelicans, Trajan Langdon.
Welcome, thank you, thank you for having me. This is exciting.
I've ever done something like this before, so I'm looking forward to it.
Well we're looking forward to it too. Because it turns out you love food. We understand almost as much as we do now. You did not have the most direct path of anyone to New Orleans growing up in Anchorage, Alaska. What were you do? You do you have childhood food memories? Are they food loops and chalk about your cookies? Just like everybody else?
Or it certainly wasn't then what it is now. Yeah, it was pretty simplistic. But the one thing that stands out, obviously everybody that's gone to Alaska understands it's surrounded by a lot of water, and it's there's a lot of hunting, and there's a lot of gaming and obviously a lot of fishing. And I didn't do any hunting or my family, but my uncle was a commercial fisherman. Oh wow, So I did a lot of I was out on the boat a good amount river fishing, deep water sea fish, deep sea fishing, and I just remember all of the fresh fish, and I just I didn't appreciate it when I was young because it was boundiful and plentiful and three four times a week. And it's not like my parents had specialty preparations of it.
So it was just the lays of fish on your plate.
But it was good, fresh as a best.
Fresh is the best. And I again I didn't appreciate it like I do now, but just plentiful fish and crab legs and all of that that you just kind of look back at and you're like, wow, I was really lucky growing up.
That was a good life.
That was a good life. So what was a traditional meal growing up besides the fish? Like, what was your mom's specialty?
Well, so my mom's from My mom's from Brutin, Alabama. Okay, so not far from here. And I think it's very interesting it comes full circle. She really liked making john balayah. And obviously I didn't know about creole cooking. I didn't know about Cajun, but I knew it was a Southern dish and she loved you know, we had you know, we had some fish you put in sausage, reindeer sausage. We had the shrimp from up there, so it was also really fresh and you know how to do the spice and stuff.
So it was actually really and I want to move to I know. So as you progressed with your playing career, you go from Anchorage to Duke. How big of a culture shock, both with the food or did you by this point had you opened up your mind and said, I'm just gonna eat my way around the world wherever I am.
Yeah, you know, I I did a couple of trips growing up. Obviously we traveled on my high school basketball team. But when you travel on a team, you usually just eat out of your hotel.
You know.
We went to Fort Walton Beach, We went to Vegas, we went to Arkansas.
You know, I had different, you know, weird things like we went out to a pregame meal at Italian restaurant in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and our our.
The pasta dish of the day was Chef Boy r D.
Which was a very interesting experience that you literally run out the cannon, put it in.
Them, so, but yeah, I was.
I was pretty open growing up on trying stuff and before I even got to duke. Probably the thing that opened my mind the most is I was on Team USA and we'd went down to Argentina and played in a little town called Santa Rosa and La Pampa, and the head of Basketball USA Basketball at the time, I was down on the trip with us, and our first night, he's like, we're gonna go and go to a great steak restaurant when the best steak restaurant in town. Argentina's known for the great steaks, and I was see in Alaska growing up. All I knew was medium well and sticks, you know, just just a normal flank steak put on the plate, cut it up. He didn't no season, right, So we get down there and you have a vision of what a steak is going to look like, and they bring out this big, thick steak. Wow, and it's seared on both sides. But I don't know it at the time, and I cut into it and it is just red and bleeding, and I go and we all look at each other and we go, yeah, we're not So it was potatoes and green beans.
We did not touch that steak.
So but yeah, by the time I got to Derhamo, it was interested in to seeing what that would be. But it's a lot of it was then It's a lot of fried food, a lot of catfish, had a whole lot of vegetables, a lot of biscuits, so it.
Was different, a lot of grits.
But I had been kind of awakened to that power from my mom being from the South, so I was I was ready to try it out.
When you obviously with all the traveling you've done related to basketball still in your life, once you've made the circuit of a season, are you looking in when you go to when we travel, when we're on the road, are you looking to go back to a favorite Are you looking for something new when you have the opportunity to dine out.
Because that's hard for us.
Yeah, we travel, Yeah, so obviously we have particular if I'm with a team, we have particular cities we go to. You got the pro cities, but then when I'm scouting, you have maybe a little small time where it's Lexington, Kentucky, or it's Knoxville, Tennessee, or it's Oxford, Mississippi. Those places I try to go find out something new, or I'll hit a coach there and say, like, what's the best meal in town? You've lived there for ten years, right, what's the best spot. So I'm not looking to go to something regular. I'm looking I want to enjoy something. I want the inside. Now, if I go to a place that I regularly know, like Chicago and I've only only go there once or twice a year, yeah, I'm going to go back to maybe a stable favorite like Gibson's Italian that I love there, but something that's a little bit more regular, but also symbolic of the city with a nice few, nice ambiance, but also great food.
I love that. So you just came back from Italy.
I did. Yeah, family and I did two weeks in Italy.
It was fantastic, which which city's video?
Two flew into Rome, spent a few days in Rome, a lot of carbonara there. Then we trained to Florence. Spent a few days in Florence, trained to Venice, a couple of nights in Venice, and then flew to Sardinia Nice and went to the south of Sardinia a little bit about thirty minutes outside of Caayati, and we were there about four days before coming back. So a lot of good food, a lot of good pasta, a lot of Tira massous, a lot of good pizza, and a lot of good wines. So it was our boys are fifteen and our youngest one is twelve, so we had a blast.
Are they gonna be in basketball or yeah?
They're playing now.
My oldest is a sophomore and at Newman, youngest is in middle school at Newman and they both play. They both like it, and tried to put them into other stuff and they just kind of filtered out of it, and they've been around hoop their whole life.
I was gonna say, you can't fight genetics. Yeah, the you know, as you started playing in Europe and now you're having this is different than traveling to Seattle or Seattle Portland to play for the first time. This is you're in another country, another city, other languages. As you were a growing culinarian, did you ever have any of those uh you know, bless your heart moments where you ordered something and it was absolutely not what you were thinking you were going to get.
So yes, I have. Yes. So my first travel.
Outside of so I was I was fortunate too, because I had gone to Greece. I had gone to Athens, Greece with Team USA a couple of times I was in college, on top of the Santa Ros, Argentina trip.
So after my three years in.
Cleveland where I played NBA, I got a chance to go to Italy and I wasn't nervous about it.
I was like, yeah, let's go.
Like I knew a little bit about Italy, never had really been, but I knew I knew Europe, and so it was exciting. I went in there kind of having a pretty good understanding of what I'm going to get into, but also being open to the culture and the especially food scene.
Right.
And I was in Treviso, which is about thirty kilometers north of Venice, a little small provincial town, but quaint lived right downtown. So I walk around a lot after practice and try to figure out, Okay, where's the place to eat? What are the best places? I didn't really ask my teammates because I wanted to explore it. And there was this thing called baccala and polenta. Every every you know, they have it written on the chalkboard outside baccalm planta or pizzai or baccalama. What is baccalon This must be really good. We're in Italy, right, and you go to these. So one night I was walking around and I found this spot. It was packed, it was just full, like that's sit down, and like, what do you want? I said, I want to everybody's getting it. I can see it on everybody's plate and they bring it and they're just like it's.
Going to be great.
And I look at it and I smell it, and I'm like, you're like, no, that boccala.
Is not for me.
You got to know it's coming.
Before you got to know what it is. And I you know, you could see it and look decent, it must be great.
And yeah, I had a b and that was did you ever revisit that dish? Again?
Left the mark? Did not?
So that And then later in the year in Italy, a teammate of mine said, I'm gonna take you. We're gonna go. We're gonna go to a fish restaurant. So over there they don't call it seafood restaurant. Obviously everything's fish restaurant, whether you're a Turkey, Greece or Italy is everything's fish.
And so I'm like Okay, great.
He's like, we're gonna go to Venice, go to this nice fish restaurant and we're gonna have langustine. And I'm like, what are we talking about? Like, you'll figure it out, You'll know it's the best thing in the world. So I go sit down and go by. You know, they have a huge lack aquarium and they're all swimming around and I'm like, we're gonna eat He's like, we're gonna eat that, and I'm like, they have that?
Know what that is?
That It's like something that's completely foreign to me. But that was something that was eye opening. It was great, Like obviously now I'm a lot more understanding of what that is, but that at twenty six years old, that was the first time I'd ever heard about a langostina or seen it or taste it.
So it was that was that was fun.
That's special. I think food really connects people back to memories. So when you try something for the second or third time, it transports you to that growing memory.
And what happened when you came to New Orleans?
What was the your mindset?
I mean, obviously you had an important job to do, but we're not here for that we're here to talk about where you wanted to eat. What were your first impressions of New Orleans cuisine.
So I knew a little bit about it, right, I had been down here. I've traveled down here before. I came down here to work, but I wanted to get out and explore a little bit more. And I really thought that, Okay, I knew I wanted to try out the Creole in the Cajun, but I don't think I knew what all different kinds of foods were here too. Besides that, obviously different restaurants with different cuisines in a mix of it too, like sometimes you have Indian with a Creole flair, I have, you know, another tackle cultures feel like you know, obviously French is embedded in this cuisine too, but you'll have a mixture of it. And so that's been fascinating, entertaining exploring that as well. And that's what I've enjoyed that I didn't know before. But it's just coming down here and seeing what the city had to offer. I came down here and not expecting anything in particular either, So it's been fun.
That's fun. Do you stay here in the off season, Yes, do you really, I would tell a commuter from the mountains of North Carolina.
Now, the boys played a little bit of travel basketball, so we don't. I mean, we try to get out of here in July August, and because of work, it takes me to Vegas the first two weeks of July, then try to get away.
To the beach in late July, and then.
We usually take our vacation first week or two of August, so it gets us out of here for the majority of those two months.
How often, Well, you're fortunate enough to be like us and work in a very flexible, fun, always moving work environment. But when you cook at home and we're having a family meal, who's doing the cooking.
Was not close. My wife's a professional chef.
Yeah, if she needs to gig, yeah, she did when I when I worked for the.
NETS up in Brooklyn, she did a nine month course at.
Culinary Institute and so okay, the same place that Bobby Flay went to. And then she did an externship at Catch for four months and they actually offered her a job and she was like, I'm not.
Right now, maybe later, but she's like that's cute. It was fun, but you know, but she good.
I mean whatever whatever thing that she can think of that she can do. She can do all cuisines. I mean she knocks it out of the park. So it's not even close. She really doesn't even let me enter the kitchen. So so when's dinner, Yeah, we'll bring the wine.
Absolutely.
I was gonna say that's the same thing with us that we'll have days where I say I got this, I'm gonna cook dinner and I get fifteen minutes in and she's boxing me out, like saying, I'll go ahead me this.
Yeah, I'm gonna do it better and quicker.
Sometimes it's a little bit painful because I don't want to get in his you know, but blist his bubble. But I'm like, Glary, this is not the pen needs to be hotter. You need to do it like this. And I'm like, I'm supervising dinner, and I'm like, sometimes just let him be right.
Speaking of hiring line cooks or point guards, as you were winding down your playing career, how did you look at the different paths you could go with the studio host front office. When did you decide that you thought that you wanted to continue in basketball?
Good question, So in the summers when I was playing. My last seven years, I played in Moscow, but I, my family and I we would spend our summers in northern Virginia. That's where we had a house, and we knew when I was done playing, we would transition back and live. We were five ten minutes from DC, so we're basically in DC. I thought a lot about what I wanted to do.
I did. I thought I wanted to stay in basketball.
I had a good conversation with Coach k I was my coach at Duke, and I just said, this is a transition that's coming for me.
What would you suggest?
And I knew, obviously with the basketball routes, either you're going to coach or you're going to scout right away, right And I said, I think I want to do one of the two. And he said, well, before you do one of those two, because if you do, you're going to have to be all in.
That's just the way it works.
Don't go all in until you've figured out that that's exactly what you want to do. Take a year, explore different industries. I can connect you with some people. You can sit down have talks, you know, spend some time maybe go to certain companies and spend a day or two. So I did that in different industries and thought it was interesting, and actually met a guy in DC and he put me in the studio and for a couple of times, and he said, how does that feel getting behind the mic. Let's go back and forth and see how you feel whether you're you know, play by play guy or a color guy.
So I did explore for about a year.
Also in that year spend some time with some NBA people, did some coaching things as well, and I think after a year I just it was like, I want to be in basketball, but I don't want to coach. I want to be on the front office scouting side, and the idea of doing stuff from thirty five through six thousand feet and looking down and putting together a roster and trying to figure out chemistry and camaraderie and personalities and see how that fits to But I don't want to be I knew right then I didn't want to go back into the every day on the hardwood travel. I've done it for twelve years and.
Well, plus you got to deal with all the cocky young kids. You can tell them how it really was back in the day.
Yeah, and they don't want to hear that.
So when you started scouting, how did you I mean, is there a training program that you follow around the Sun's best scout? How do you pick that up? Is it easier you think, to be a former player scouting or just some student of the game who came up doing nothing but scouting.
So I think I went to the best school because I was hired by the San Antonio Spurs just from I worked for them as a scout for three years and as a pro scout because I felt that was They actually gave me the choice, do you want to do collegiate scouting or do you want to do pro? And I said, love to do pro, but I'd like to continue doing international since that's where I played for so long and I have the connections in the networks there and I don't want to I don't want to lose that. I also want to continue to travel to Europe. Well I can't. So that actually worked out really well for.
The three season.
And just to understand, obviously when I was there, we won a championship.
So to see how.
From the front office side, how you put together a roster, The thought that goes about it, the managing of it, the construction of it, actually execution of contracts, talking to agents, decisions that are made, why they're made, how they're made, and in the end, you know how they ran up to Pop at the end of the day and he's making the decisions and you think, Okay, we're going to do this. This makes a lot of sense. For No, he's going to go one to eighty from that. Why And then you figure out, oh, I didn't know that. I didn't think of that. That's pretty cool. And so a lot of those things that I learned, you know, I carry forward to today, especially when you're trying to build a roster that you want to win a championship with. So but I do think I take a lot of things from the time that I played. When I'm watching players, their body language on the floor, how they respond from play to play, the motor that they play with, the desire, the passion, the competitive nature not only from play to play, but from game to game, and understanding how that's gonna how that.
Impacts the rest of their team. Right.
You know, it could be just small little things that I know, if I was that person's teammate, would impact me and would impack my whole team right that maybe the casual observer, the casual scout that never felt that within a team camaraderie would understand. And so I do think having that feeling and also playing on a lot of championship teams in Europe, you understand, Okay, when time to go in a season, when's the time you can relax? And in a game too, Okay, now I know, now's the time this person needs to step up and make a play.
Are they going to or are they going to facilitate because they're hot.
They they've scored fifteen points in the quarter, they understand everybody's coming. Now is the time to get rid of it, let other people do the thing, or they're going to try to be a pig and go for thirty quarters. So you know, I've felt the majority of those things on my teams, and I do think that helps, you know, as I assess these players at different levels.
So I have a question, if you had to go one one with one player past or present, who would it be?
If what do you mean if I had to go with one.
Go against one one one with anybody past or present.
So when Michael came back. Michael is my favorite player. Growing up, it was Magic and then it was Michael Michael Jordan. Of course, when he retired in ninety eight, I was at Duke so time before I went right before then he came back and played.
When he came back.
His first year back was my third year in Cleveland, but I wasn't really in the rotation early and the two times we played the Wizards was early in the season, so I didn't even get to be on the floor against mine. Oh, so that's probably the guy that I would want to compete against. I got to play against Kobe.
How was that?
I wasn't close.
I mean, he shot twenty six free throws against us at the time in Cleveland, and when I got matched up.
On him, it was I'm just gonna lay off your hopes a summer. I'm not letting to go to the basket. But it was fun.
I mean, Kobe's two years he was two years younger than me, and he's just that's how special he was. Like the first time I heard about him was my sophomore year at Duke and the coach was saying, there's this kid named Kobe Bryant work ethic reminds me a ton of you when I recruited you in Alaska. He is kind of be special and I was like, all right, if you say he's going to be special, I believe you. And then fast forward a couple of years and you're like, whoa, this guy is two years younger than me and way ahead.
Yeah, it's it's pretty magical to watch people transform as somebody in the locker room and then they're on the floor and they just create magic. It's it's something we watched the last dance and it brought me back to me being a kid just glued to the screen on just everything, and it's you know, when people talk about basketball, this is passion. This is your life. This is what you eat, drink and sleep, and you get to do it every day. So it's it's a blessing when you have that talent and people just sharing for you.
Yeah, it's you know when you you know, obviously, when I have my kids and we talk about different things, different athletes and different sports, and there's, like you said, there's a lot of people in different industries that are gifted at what they do.
It just comes easily.
It's in innate feel at something but then when you apply hard work and passion to that talent, then it becomes special. But there's a lot of people I didn't have. I was gifted in a certain way, but I didn't have that gift. But I did work my butt off and I was passionate I had. I was successful, yes, But when you're innately talented, incredibly talented and gifted, like you said, and then you have the hard work and the drive and the passion, then you create something special.
I agree.
So if you weren't, if basketball wasn't your passion, what is your other love?
You're saying for hobby or for employment?
Because you know, people say if I wasn't a chef, what would I be? I said, I would be a DJ because I love music and music makes me happy. So if I'm in the shower, I make sure I put music on like it sets my day, and for me it really We play music in the kitchen and everybody gets hyped up, so for me, I feed off that energy.
Really good question. So growing up I love math.
As a math major at Duke, probably would have gone to business school and followed the route of investment, I want to say, at Wall Street. But some kind of investment person right in business, some kind of business, because I think I could have been good at it, and I think I would have enjoyed it to a point. I think I could have done it for twenty to thirty years. But I think that's the rout I would have taken. The one thing I do when I go on the road and the one in June. My biggest enjoyment is I don't waste a meal. I don't waste dinners. I'll have a breakfast, whatever, lunch, I'll figure it out. But when I'm traveling, I have a nice dinner every time. And my scouts laugh at me every time because when we're in Chicago, I have a we have a scout there from going to a game. I'll be like, yo, the games at eight, we're going to do dinner at this place. We'll make the game, we're gonna have, We're gonna have a nice dinner. It's an early game at six thirty. I'll book a nine o'clock meal and we're gonna go and we're gonna have a nice meal. Regardless if I'm here in the States, and especially if i'm Europe. You know, Europe, I'm I go to Slovenia here next week with one of our assistant trainers, we're going to be in Mobiana for three nights.
And I'm oh, yeah, it's easy.
I know, it's beautiful. I went with my my mom a couple of years ago. It is absolutely stunning and it's something that people don't think about as a destination, but beautiful wines, just really untouched. Yes, and I really appreciated that time I got to spend there.
Yeah, really easy, good people, not pretentious. No, Yeah, so I think it may would be something in like restaurant managed. Just being around don't do it, okay, you know it's like for me, it's like ownership and I'm overseeing it.
I'm not in the day to day because I've heard it's really difficult.
It is.
You're a great GM.
Don't change careers and just keep on doing what you do.
I'll do that.
But I do appreciate somebody that enjoys a good meal because that is something that we do the same thing when we're going on the trip or like where are we going to have dinner, breakfast, lunch? Sometimes we overfeed ourselves. But you know you'll re live once, right, sure?
Do you?
When was the last time. You just said I'm gonna grab a gas station tuna sandwich.
Well i'll do that for lunch.
You know, I'll catch a random breakfast and I want in France, i won't catch your rand.
I'll always have a.
Proper I'll have a proper, proper propate croissant or something. It might be simple, might be a double espresso and a chopper croissant, but it's it's gonna be good.
It's gonna be good, Yeah, that's for sure.
Yeah.
Not often do I just do a random because I want to feel good too.
What about with the kids if they say, I mean, I'm guessing that you don't take them to McDonald's every day.
No, no, we don't do that, but i'll, you know, so for example, if they want I really stress not eating fat fast food my wife and I but on a random occasion, if they want to go through canes and grab some chicken fingers or whatever, they can do it.
I'm not doing it. I'm not doing that.
But you don't wake up and find out who's serving caveat on top of a saft scrambled egg for breakfast. You're you're you're willing to yes to lower your culinary shield.
Yes, okay, So since we're talking about food, what is the one thing that you cannot live without when it comes to food? For me, it's cheese.
M one thing that I can't live without.
It's a tough one. It's a tough one, all right. Top three, Top three things that I I've never heard. I've never had the question I can't live without? I've heard we do the question you got one meal left? Okay, it's it's probably a postable and I'm probably doing that. Okay, I'm probably doing that.
With your time in Italy, could you dramatically see the difference between Pasta's there and pasta Is here?
No questions?
It's really really amazing how different Italian American.
I obviously that was my first time in Italy when I was there playing, and then when you go back there and you spend a couple of weeks, it's it's pretty eye opening as well. But my time there was in the Pasta's great and the pizza is fantastic, But more than anything, it's just the produce, the first produce, the salad you have. It's just the flavor that you get out of everything, and you're just like the olive oil, the bosomac, all that, the mozzarella.
You're just like, this is just I can.
Actually stuff my face with the huge big salad yes and be good. Yes, you know, with the tune on top, and I just it's super simple, but it's really hungry.
Again, Yeah, I agree. I think you know when you eat. We're going to Rome next month and I can't wait because we're just going to eat our way through everything. As many gelato cones as we can have. We're gonna have it every day. But it's something that they really enjoy and it's simple. It's so simple, and they use the best ingredients and that's something I really appreciate.
Yeah, we had We told our oldest son like, this is the place where they have carbonara, like this is what it's known for. And we had some amazing carbon there and just some you know, for dinners. We scattered out, but then lunch we would just go to random places and some of the random places were like whoa, this is really That's the thing about it.
The random random tretorious and it can be amazing.
Yes, Gage to thank you so much for taking the time.
It's a pleasure. And the next time we have bolonies on the menu. We will give you a ring.
Please give me a ring.
We will.
I'll be back before that time. It's been too long to come here and die, so looking forward.
To love to Thank you so much, thank you, big.
Great wit, big big everybody
And
