A Radical NBA Idea, Wemby’s Musical Comp, Despising Duke, and Baseball’s ABS Revolution With Chuck Klosterman

[00:00] For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. [00:07] Tremphaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tremphaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tremphaya, proper training is required. [00:30] of Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimphia today. Call [redacted phone] to learn more or visit TrimphiaRadio.com. [01:01] . [01:06] The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by Sam's Club. We are also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. [01:12] where I put up a new Rewatchables episode on Monday. It is the official end. [01:17] of CR month. We did LA Confidential, me and Fantasy and Greenwald and CR... [01:22] And that's it. CR Month no longer with us. We're doing a one for us next week. We're finally doing Eddie and the Cruisers. So you have six days to go check it out. It's all over the place now in a bunch of different streaming platforms. Speaking of the rewatchables,

[01:36] Wednesday morning, [01:38] April 1st. [01:39] 10 a.m. Pacific. You can go to the ringer.com slash events. [01:45] And buy tickets for our live show that's going to be in San Francisco on April 8th at the Tony Renby Theater. [01:51] It is going to be on a Wednesday night. [01:53] We've never been to San Francisco before. [01:56] It is going to be me and CR and Mallory and Van, and we're going to be doing Basic Instinct. Second time we've done it. Way more categories this time. We've never done it in front of a live audience. [02:06] I think this will be a hilarious podcast. I'm just warning you now. And we really hope we see you in San Francisco. So theringer.com slash events. [02:14] Come see us in the Bay. [02:16] Maybe we even hit a Giants game the day before. Who knows? [02:20] Giants-Phillies. I think CR likes the Phillies, but we'll see. [02:24] Anyway. [02:25] Basic instinct. Can't wait to see everybody in the Bay. Coming up on this podcast, Hall of Famer of this podcast, BS Podcast Hall of Famer. [02:32] BS Pod, Hall of Famer. [02:35] Chuck Klosterman. And it's his kind of year. We're going to talk college sports, pro sports, music, AI. We're going in 19 different directions as always. Let's take a break. Pearl Jam. And then [02:46] Chuck. [02:47] This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by Sam's Club. It is that time of the year when you just got to get in your car and go somewhere. I've done that plenty of times in my life. Nowhere gets you ready to go quite like Sam's Club. [02:58] snacks, the gear. [03:00] Super low prices on gas. They got a bunch of stuff that keep you and the whole crew rolling. [03:05] And here's what you got to do. You got to join the club of yes and.

[03:09] at samsclub.com slash yes and yes. [03:13] You must be 18 years or older to purchase a membership. A membership is subject to qualifications. Visit samsclub.com. [03:20] slash yes end. [03:22] for details. All right, Chuck Closterman is here on [03:52] March 31st, 2026, the last time we saw you, you... [03:57] had a football book coming out. [03:59] And we were talking about how it was a great... [04:01] Chuck Closter in time of the year. There's a lot of things happening. [04:05] I feel like that's the case right now. [04:08] As we head into April. Is it the time of year for me? Yeah, I think this is a good time of year, I guess. You know, NCAA basketball tournament. What else are you referring to, though? NFL draft. NFL draft. [04:17] I guess that's coming up. Sure. Yeah. Basketball playoffs about that. Whoa. I lost my voice. Basketball playoffs about to happen. Yeah. Um, [04:25] And then, this is right. March, I feel like... [04:29] It's the calm before the storm in a lot of ways, and it's when... [04:33] we kind of go nuts with different theories about things. We get angry about things. Like one of the reasons, we didn't even know we were gonna do a pod today. You texted me last night.

[04:41] you had an idea about tanking. But this is like March is the month where we complained about tanking. Baseball brought in this ABS thing that I can't wait for you to talk about. But why don't we start with the tanking? Because you had an interesting idea. Well, okay, yeah. So I've been thinking about tanking. I just, it's an interesting problem because I feel like in some ways, [05:02] It's almost an unsolvable problem. Like I said in my text, like it's a little like when they, you know, they're trying to stop teams from following at the end of the game. So they're like, we're going to remove the one on one. Everyone gets two shots. [05:15] But there's still no other option, right? That's the only way to get the ball back late in the game sometimes. You still have to do it. There's no way you can stop teams from following. I don't know – [05:25] There's really a way that you can stop teams from trying to lose if we exist in a system where there's a draft like this. And, you know, so you look at Silver's ideas. I didn't think any of them were that great. Did you like any of them? I didn't. I mean, the flattening the odds a little bit. [05:43] There's something there, but I didn't think any of them got even 40% to where we needed to get to. Well, I don't think, I mean, they might be good ideas even, but not enough to actually change anything, you know? And you had talked one time about like penalizing teams with like cap space, but I would guess the players union would lose their mind about that because there would be less money available for the players then. [06:05] I thought Mark Cuban's thing about making the game 40 minutes was interesting, but kind of imperfect. I don't know if that would have a huge factor. I also, I don't, you know, you had this idea, I think.

[06:18] of like going from 82 to 72 games, right? That's kind of your thing. But see, I wonder what your response will be to this. I don't think that will work for this reason. Like the example, if I recall, you used is that, well, for like a guy like Devin Booker, it would go from $75 million a year to $72 million a year for him. So your argument was kind of like, yeah, they won't really miss it. Yeah. [06:42] But... [06:44] The real kind of bedrock issue here is the guy's not caring enough about the games. It's hard to compel people to care more by paying them less. [06:53] Like, even though you say, like, well, he shouldn't miss three million dollars or he wouldn't. I mean, like, let's say, like, you went to, like, Sean and Amanda and said, I don't really like the performance you're doing in the big picture. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to let you do one less a month. Yeah. And they might be like, oh, and you'll be like, but I'm also reducing your salary. Right. Nobody has ever decided, oh, they're reducing my salary. I better get more invested. It was a flawed argument. I agree. Yeah. [07:17] So I don't know if there is a way to fix this. So then I started wondering, what if there was a way to fix this? [07:25] to enhance [07:27] The tanking experience. If this is an unavoidable problem, [07:31] Maybe make the problem into a benefit. So like what I was saying to you is, OK, so since the All-Star break, I feel like the best night for the NBA was last week. The night when like the Celtics played the Thunder and like Joker had almost a 20-20-20 triple-double and Murray scored all those points. And I think it was an overtime game between the Wolves and the Rockets. It was great. Right.

[07:54] But the second best night since the break was when BAM scored 83. [07:59] I thought that was a fascinating thing. I know there's people out there who see this as some tragic thing, but I thought it was much more interesting than pretty much any other NBA game that has happened in quite a while. So what if this was the situation? And this is a crazy idea. I don't believe it will be implemented. So once the All-Star break happens, from that point on, we look at who has the highest scoring night that year so far. [08:29] biggest scoring night prior to that. Like, [08:31] Let's say it was like, let's say Cat had 52 or something. And let's say that the highest score by any individual team had been 148. [08:41] I say that from the all-star break on until the end of the year, [08:46] If you become, if you put up the highest point individual total, [08:50] you get 5% of the cap space from the team you did it against. Or if your team scores the most points in a game, 155 or whatever, you get 5% of the cap space of the opponent you did it against. And this would just be an ongoing thing that whoever at the end of the year, then has the highest point total for an individual and the highest point total for a team would get 5% of the team that they did this because at least it [09:20] bring in the idea that you're going to embarrass these teams for doing this, that they're going to sort of be humiliated when like Lucas scores 72 against them. And then you play a few weeks later and someone scores 78 or whatever. The rule would have to be that like, you know,

[09:35] You have to win to do this. You can't. Otherwise, a tanking team might try to do this. Like just put a guy at the other end of the basket and see how many points you can score. But I think it would be interesting if they like created this situation where for the last month of the year, we were just seeing players and teams trying to put up insane numbers for this kind of little benefit that they get from kind of destroying. The tanking teams could still lose. They could still lose the games and get in the lottery and stuff. [10:05] want to watch these games. [10:07] If you felt that, well, there's a chance tonight that like, oh, you know, Donovan Mitchell is going to try to score 80 points or whatever against the Jazz. I think that would be much more interesting than the situation we're in now. [10:18] So you're tapping into a couple of things that I like, which is why I wanted to deep dive this. [10:23] First of all, I'm already on record. I like the BAM game. I fully supported them going for it, and I thought the far bigger issue was the disgrace of the Wizards season that's happening, and I like that they were kind of humiliated. I thought [10:35] I thought it was totally fair game. I appreciated it. And plus, at the end of that game, the Wizards actually did play hard. Right, right. And that was the only time that they played hard for how many months? Right. Was the last 10 minutes of that game. Well, so something else that happened that you didn't mention when you talk about, like, incentivizing teams to actually care even though they're losing. [10:54] So in the NBA Cup, when they had the total points thing before it got to the final eight, [10:59] you would see these teams really trying, even with a minute left when they're up 12. [11:04] Right. You would like all their best guys were still out there for the team that was losing their best guys were still out there. They're still running plays. They're trying to score with eight seconds left. And it was kind of cool because there was some sort of end game.

[11:17] So I wonder if... [11:18] If they're able to put in-game kind of penalties and rewards in all these different ways, like what you laid out, [11:25] Or like if you lose by 20 points or more, [11:29] Like Milwaukee, I saw some stats. [11:31] I think they were like 17 and 23 at one point. Now they have one of the eight worst records. But I think they've lost 20 plus point losses in the past. [11:41] I think they have something like 14 of their last 17. They just got killed. [11:45] So if you had something in there, like if you lose by more than 15 points, [11:50] Um, there's also some other penalty that comes with that. [11:54] You could either do it, there could be bonus pools for every team. Your salary is your salary, but you also have some sort of a commitment [12:05] to quality of your performance for the season. [12:09] So if the Wizards are like, we're just blowing these games, we're throwing them away, and it actually cost them part of their salary because they didn't care, those guys would obviously care more. Or if you add with the teams... [12:20] Every 15-point loss, you lose five ping pong balls or 10 ping pong balls. [12:25] I mean, 15 is kind of a low number for that. You can lose by 15... [12:30] trying hard. I mean, you can still lose, but you know. So you'd be down 12 with a minute left and it'd be like, oh no. And the coach would have [12:37] all his guys in, he would actually care about not losing by 16, because they would lose 15 ping pong balls. Even that would be more interesting than what we're doing now. The reason I kind of like this idea that I put forward is because...

[12:51] I like what you're describing are ways to sort of mitigate the event from happening. I'm almost saying like the event's going to happen. How can the event become more interesting? And I love it. [13:03] I love one-man teams. I love when some guy's trying to score as many points as possible. I think it's really interesting when an entire roster sort of converges on this idea where you get this guy in the same basket over and over and over again. I think it would actually, like, I would guess you probably, like, you probably watched that Heat game down to the very end. Oh, I had it on the second quarter because I got a text that Bam had 30 in the first quarter, and we had just gone home from dinner. It's like, what happened? Yeah, I didn't get a text until the third quarter or something. [13:33] It shows in your life who are the warning people in your life. [13:39] But I just – I think it would – I also imagine – like I said, the deal is that it doesn't keep compiling. So if the Wizards had this happen to them four times in a row, they wouldn't lose 20% of their cap. It's only whoever ends the year with the highest point total or the highest team total. Oh, they would get penalties. So you're talking about rewards and penalties. [14:03] Yes. The other way to get penalized. Like, let's say, you know, in this situation like with BAM, how it would be now, the Heat would get 5% of the Wizards cap space. That way it would move over to them. There would be no, you know, eradication of cap space. So the players union couldn't say, well, this is going to actually hurt the players because there's less money available. Right. But let's say now, let's say this rule existed now on the last day of the year still.

[14:29] there would be a chance for someone to steal that. If someone could get 84 or more, then, you know, so it would be like. So that would be like the Thompson-Girvin last day of the season. It would be like that night, except in every city. The last night, the very last night of the NBA season. It would be like the purge. It would, yes. And also, it's like I say, it'd be for the individuals and for the team. Yeah. So, you know, so like it wouldn't. So there could be some teams who maybe don't have a superstar, [14:59] points, you know, against this team. And I don't know. Like, in a way, I feel really weird advocating this because I'm kind of in many ways like such a traditionalist about sports. I'm like, oh, but [15:13] The NBA is becoming more and more of an individual sport in every way, the way it is played, but also the way it is considered, the way it is discussed. They may have to say like, okay. [15:25] We're going to have to accept that a lot of the fan base is, [15:29] is much more interested in the individual than in the team. [15:33] and there's got to be ways to sort of make, you know, like, how can we make that? I don't know. I just I think it's very... [15:41] nothing will make me flip to a game faster than an insane point total going on. Even more so than a really close game. Like, a really close game, I will too, but [15:53] When it's somebody like a, when someone's putting up some like an insane number, I just, I think that that is, there's, there's something very unique and cool about that. So it could be, you could basically do a monthly.

[16:04] Right. So you could have six months where the highest point total of the month gets some sort of reward. Highest for the team, highest for the player. I always think whenever I hear these, like because they would do this when they were talking about what would be the rewards for the NBA Cup and things like that. And people always forget, like, if you're the players, if you're on the team. [16:22] And it's like if you win the NBA Cup, your team gets a bonus lottery pick. You get the 15th pick. Why would any player on the team care about that? They wouldn't. They would care about the incentives of money or some sort of like you get two extra home games the next year instead of on the road. [16:41] Things like that. They care about themselves, money, less traveling, less being with their family more, having more bye weeks. So you'd have to cater it that way, I think. [16:51] Well, yeah, it could be like a sale. Let's say for whatever reason they want to make the NBA Cup really contested. So they're like, if you win the NBA Cup, you get the number one pick that would actually de-incentivize the guys who currently care the most, which is the guys at the end of the bench. [17:06] I'm going to lose my job if we get the number one pick. I mean, now those guys are like, I could actually use that money. Well, one thing I was talking with somebody about that I haven't talked about in the podcast is why it's so much easier for football to have parity [17:21] And, um... [17:22] and just kind of have a team's fortunes flip in one year, where in the NBA, it's really hard. [17:28] And people think it's because of the salary cap for the NFL. [17:31] But it's really the schedule. [17:33] The schedule is the big secret sauce of the NFL. And you saw it with the Patriots last year and Washington the year before. Fourth place schedule.

[17:41] You're just playing the other worst teams... [17:44] you're not on TV that much, you're not traveling that much, and you can flip it, [17:49] in a smaller sample size. We only have to play 17 games. And I'm wondering, like, with the NBA, [17:55] Could part of this be [17:57] All right, well, how would they do that with the NBA? Well, you actually could. You could reward... [18:01] teams could have more home games the next year. [18:04] if they succeed and they could have home games taken away, [18:08] the worse they do. So if you're like the Wizards and you're just tossing away the second half of the season, [18:15] Would the franchise be as excited to do that if that meant they had 37 home games next year instead of 41? So some teams would then have 44. You would just lose revenue. You could have like 44. Yeah, so some team could have 45 home games the next year. [18:33] I mean, to the NFL's credit, I mean... [18:35] they have been thinking about parody since the early 70s. - Right, since we've ever cared about the NFL. - That big thing. - Yeah. - It was, you know, at a time when I don't even think, [18:45] Anyone was worried about it. Like, I don't think in 1974 there were a lot of people expressing despair that, like, there wasn't enough parity. But he knew that that was the central thing, that if you make a franchise feel like every eight to ten years they have a legitimate shot to win a championship, no matter what their ownership does. I mean, it has changed everything. The smaller number of games probably is a factor to... [19:08] In that, you know, a team can start 6-0 or whatever, and they suddenly feel like they're almost there, you know, even if they end up finishing 500 or whatever. And there's lots of reasons why this has happened. I mean, it's just – it is strange how, like –

[19:26] the NBA often makes me mad in a way other sports do not. You know, I mean, because I shoot when I was, we were young people. I remember often almost seeming to advocate for the NBA. Like it felt like the conventional wisdom was the NBA was bad. You only wanted to watch college. And I liked the NBA as a kid and stuff like that. But it's hard to, [19:48] I mean, it really maybe disproves like pro basketball is a young man's game with a young man mentality, because when I it is so crazy to be I'll see a game that I want to see and I'll turn it on and three of the guys aren't playing and it doesn't seem that the guys who there care at all. And it's like, how do you motivate? [20:06] Guys, like, it's just not... [20:09] Enough. Somehow being in the NBA and playing these games is not enough to motivate these guys. And I don't know what to do about it. It's a weird thing. I mean, football has the other upside that you can't coast. [20:23] You will get hurt if you coast. But you can coast in basketball. You can coast in baseball. I like your point about [20:30] how that shifted with the NBA where, cause it's been making me mad basically ever since I had a column wet post college. So like late nineties on, [20:39] Just complaining about the NBA became like its own content vehicle. But in the 80s, and I'm slightly older than you, but you remember this too. [20:46] The NBA was like this cool alternative. They were like Dinosaur Jr., [20:52] where it was like you found people in your life that liked the NBA and you would like click with them and you would,

[20:58] You would be... [21:00] glass half full the whole time. You'd be explaining to people why this was a cool league, and you really loved it. I used to have a joke even when I had my ESPN column in 020304, I would joke about how I was one of the last 20 NBA fans, right? And it was always about like, you people don't get it. This league is so much better than it gives credit for. And now it's the opposite. Everybody's just mad at the NBA at all times. Well, okay. So I would say outside of [21:30] What other periods, [21:32] Has the NBA not been in crisis? [21:34] They always are. [21:36] There's always something happening. Yeah, I would say late, I would say late, the early 90s. [21:42] When it was going the best, but we still had magic HIV and we had Jordan go play baseball as it was going the best. I also remember sometimes in the 90s, you'd watch a playoff game and it would be 64 to 71 or something. It was like, this is wrong. [21:58] Well, wait, think about that, though, because Zach and I talked about this on Sunday night. [22:03] When they changed the three-point line, that was the first time you felt like the league was responding to criticisms. [22:10] about, but then if you go back, you can go back to 76, 77, 78, which we talked about a little on Sunday. [22:17] And the big crisis back then was violence. [22:20] Even before the Kermit Washington punch, if you go back the first merger season, there's all these fights. And guys, and some of them are on YouTube, like Kermit Washington, Dex John Shoemate.

[22:31] Stuff like that, where it's like fights. Kareem punched, I think, Tom Burleson, and he punched somebody else. Yeah, and he punched Ken Benson, broke his hand. Bob Lugnere, I think, hit two guys. Detroit was getting all these fights, and it was like, holy shit, we got to do something about this. And then cocaine was in the 80s. So really, this has been 50 years of this. It's always, there's always something. Like, I remember writing in the early 2000s. I had watched a game between Vince Carter and Allen Iverson, [23:01] Even though as much as I say I like one-man teams or whatever, it was not the best application of that. It is sort of just set up in a way to be – [23:12] dramatic it's almost like and now they've almost used that as their calling card like it's [23:17] this idea that you can follow the NBA without watching games. Right. And you know, that's, you don't really hear that said about other sports. Well, the thing, the NBA has become like our family member. That's had a lot of issues over the years, but we still love them, but they make us crazy. And it's, [23:32] It's almost like the son in parenthood, the Steve Martin movie. It's like, oh boy, the NBA is another harebrained scheme. [23:39] When the games are good, like sometimes in the playoffs, they're so good. Right. It's like, and it's so, you know, it's like, why can't they're like, [23:49] It doesn't always have to be this good, but it should be able to be half of this. And sometimes it's not even close to half of it. I mean, it's like the intensity is just gone. Well, that's what's crazy about this year is you have these four guys who are having like these spectacular seasons, right?

[24:05] On top of Wemby, who we'll talk about in a second, who has just now emerged as this generational guy. [24:11] And then you have all these big markets, [24:14] that have a chance to win the title or markets that haven't had a chance in a while and you have OKC going for back-to-back, [24:21] And there are a lot of good stories. Even like the East playoffs, we have 10 teams, 10. [24:25] Even if you play the 10 seed, like, are you crazy about playing the Miami Heat in a playoff series? Like, probably not. And yet here we are talking about what we could fix for the first 50 minutes. I don't know what this is about the NBA that makes us always want to do this. [24:39] I mean, it is something about the nature of the game, because like I say, it has never not been this way. [24:46] Yeah. Like it has never, you know, when you and I first started following this, the games were like, you know, the championship game being showed everywhere. [24:54] after the news or whatever, on takeaway, it was like, that was its own kind of crisis, right? It can't become a major sport. People don't even care enough to watch it live. They had that little window when everything seemed to change and [25:05] It was the kind of emerged, maybe over to baseball and all these things, but, you know, [25:09] I bet if we went through all our old podcasts, how many, whatever number there is, how many we complained about the league. The number of times we're talking about problems with the NBA, [25:20] would come up, I wonder, 25 times. But there are 25 examples of us having a conversation like this in the span of our relationship. Well, this was one of the things I wanted to talk about today because I was talking on Sunday about [25:35] this expansion thing, which has just been so weird for Adam with, with the,

[25:40] Basically saying, yeah, 20, 20, they're leaking out. They're giving the expectation they're going to be adding these two teams. And meanwhile, they don't have the votes for the teams yet from the 30 owners. And they don't know if anyone even has remotely the amount of money they're looking for. [25:55] And [25:56] I think one of the things that's bothered me about it and some other people is [26:00] to push forward with expansion when you haven't fixed all this other stuff. When we have this tanking crisis, [26:06] And you also are putting out solutions that nobody seems to like. [26:10] Right. And, and, [26:12] Also, do you have some markets in your league that I don't think are that stable? [26:17] You know, and my question that I asked you that I want to talk about is, do you think [26:23] Adam Silver's job, [26:25] is to run the NBA as a businessman, or he's supposed to care about [26:30] the spirit of the league, raising the level of the league, making the league a better place for fans, which goes back to the old Stern argument we used to have. It was like, is Stern running this league for the owners? [26:43] or the players. And we knew with Stern, it's like, he's running it for the owners. Goodell, [26:49] just... [26:50] all the way through has been, I'm running this for my 32 owners. [26:54] Even right now, they're going to add the 18-game season with two bye weeks. You can already see they're laying the groundwork for it now. Nobody thinks this is a good idea. Not one person. We all like football, and we'll put up with it. But nobody thinks this is going to make the game safer. This will make the product better. But they're going to do it because he works for the owners.

[27:14] Adam makes it seem like he cares about the spirit of the game and the players. Do you think he does? [27:21] Well, I'm sure he does care, but he does work for the owners. It's maybe like Mountain Landis or whatever could be like, I'm doing this for baseball. I don't care how it affects you. But it's a kind of unrealistic thing now to imagine that a commissioner would feel like would be empowered enough to do that. But would you want a commissioner that cares more about the state of the game or the state of the business? Because it seems like we always get the latter. [27:51] Well, we would want it for the state of the game, but that's not like, I mean, that would be like if, you know, who would you rather have, you know, running target? [28:00] Somebody who's concerned about how much money Target makes or what will be the best consumer experience. We would all say the second category, but that's not how it is. Right. But shouldn't we admit that's not how it is with the NBA? Because I think the commissioners try to pretend they care. But what's interesting is baseball actually seems like they have cared about the sport and they have cared about the product. [28:20] And they have been able to make these fixes, which we'll talk about later, and the NBA has not. [28:24] Although, I mean, yeah, but you think the baseball fixes were... [28:30] for the, I mean... Well, they came out of necessity because the sport was in trouble. Exactly. It wasn't like, I don't see that as someone being like, what is, I think that from a traditional baseball perspective, that they probably kind of contradict that, but...

[28:45] feel like we got to have people watch these games. We got to have people care about these games. The NBA is, you know, has, has, is so kind of into the idea of like player empowerment and it's a player's league that they have to be much more vocal about acting as though this is for the benefit of the, of the guys on the floor. I guess I don't, I, I don't, I assume that, that, you know, [29:08] adding two franchises, I mean, it just, it doesn't seem like that will help the product. I mean, there's no way. Nobody thinks that's a good idea, except for people who live in Seattle and Vegas. And I want Seattle to have a team. I just don't think. [29:22] I think there's a better way for that to happen. Why? You've always wanted Seattle to get the team back so much. Why is that? I mean, I'm not saying that they shouldn't have one, but why is this such a thing for you? [29:33] Well, a couple reasons. One is... [29:35] I think it's a great sports city. [29:37] I thought they really, really were great with the Sonics. I thought, I honestly felt like that was one of the seven or eight NBA fan bases. And they had real history in the 70s, 80s, 90s. And I felt like it was actually a basketball town, where basketball was the most important sport. It really was. And... [29:53] They won a title. I think if you're taking a team away that won the title, you have to really have a good reason for it. [30:00] And I thought the reasons they lost the team were... [30:03] outrageous. It basically came down to the Starbucks guy, Howard Schultz, [30:08] Not being able to build an arena and just being like, all right, fuck it. And just selling to this OKC group. [30:15] pretending he didn't know they were going to move the team when of course they were. And then Stern, who's now no longer with us,

[30:22] really kind of wanting the team to move to prove a point to everybody else. Like if you don't build an arena, you're going to lose your team. [30:30] I really like having a team in Oklahoma City, though. [30:33] But that's fine. You could have had both. I think their geographic location has been a benefit to that franchise. A hundred percent. And I think you could argue maybe Kansas City would be another team that could do really well. And even if you look at a map, like they did this when they were talking about the teams moving, the conferences moving. [30:49] And it's like, shit, well, how are we going to have 15 East teams? And you look at the map and – [30:54] There's just wide pockets of the country that [30:56] don't have an NBA team even near them. And then clusters of these other teams. [31:02] But [31:02] The bigger picture for me is just talking about [31:06] expansion is a financial decision. And I, and, [31:09] I think that the league looks at this thinking, well, look how much money we made from the media deal. We'll look at how much money we'll make when we sell expansion teams. And to them, that's the success. [31:20] But for me, the success is, well, you have to have, [31:23] fans feel good about the league and the product and what they're watching, and they don't. [31:28] So to me, that's a 50-50 thing, and they're only caring about the 50-50. [31:32] the business side of the 50. I just thought of something crazy. Yeah. [31:37] Would this mitigate tanking? [31:39] What if they went back and... [31:41] to a regional draft. [31:44] so like if you were in the east you're in the like when will chamberlain ended up in philly from the big east yeah or the acc or the ancillary conferences around there like the teams in the midwest could draft from like the big 10 and the mac and stuff like that like you know like the lakers and and and the warriors like they'd have to you know pick from like you know the teams in the west coast no but then you'd have owners you'd have owners moving basically what happened

[32:14] school kids and moving them into their region. Well, maybe... That sounds like a lot of corruption. You can only... [32:21] If you're a high school basketball player, you can only play college in the state you're in or from a state that geographically touches the border of your state. [32:32] So we can just enforce a regional aspect to basketball. Be tough for Minnesota. If a kid grows up in Nevada, he's got to go to college at UNLV or in California or something, and then he can only play on the West Coast. Everybody would be like LeBron then in Cleveland, where his whole life is in one spot. I still thought the best idea I've come up with is having a lot— I really like to limit mobility. You're very regionalist. I like to hurt the lives of these guys. [33:02] favorite idea that I've come up with that I think could actually work, but they would never have the balls to do it, is having the lottery for the first... [33:09] Basically, you have your top five teams. Whatever you figure out the lottery, the order... [33:14] And then they all put in their name for who they would take first. And then the consensus first guy, it's like the number one pick is Cooper Flagg. And he just walks up to the podium. [33:24] He's like, these five teams could be your home, and now we're going to find out where Cooper Flagg wants to play. [33:30] And we kind of shifted almost Bachelor style to the player. [33:34] I still feel like that idea could work. [33:37] Or what if it was like the draft was over many days? So like the first 30 day draft. Well, like, yeah. Like, so, so the first pick happens on the first day, let's say it was a do whatever. And they pick whoever they take. Okay. That guy can go to that team.

[33:51] Or he has... [33:53] 24 hours to negotiate with every other team with the salary going down incrementally. [34:01] The only way he could get his match money is by going with the team who picked him. [34:07] But he could go to any other team for a fraction eventually. That could be ultimately very dangerous. That money thing, that's another thing I've always thought they should do. The longer you have the player on your team. [34:21] like Steph Curry, you actually get tax and cap relief after a certain number of years so they could try to keep players in the same city more. I mean, this is another issue. The player empowerment, which has had mostly good benefits, I think, for the last 15 years. But the worst benefit has been... [34:38] give these teams that [34:40] Once their guy decides they don't want to play for them, [34:43] They're stuck making these... [34:46] pretty terrible trades. Utah's trade for Mitchell was actually, they got a lot of good stuff back. On paper, you'd probably do that. But they also traded somebody who's one of the best 10 players in the league who hadn't even hit his prime yet, who was under contract for three years. And that's exactly the kind of guy you'd want to build around for 15 years. And then you look at the flip side of Sacramento. Fox hates being in Sacramento. The team's a train wreck. I don't blame Fox at all. And... [35:14] And then his agent, the ringer's Rich Paul, [35:17] starts pushing them to make a trade, and kind of steers them to San Antonio.

[35:22] Because he thinks that's the best thing for him. So he has every right to do that. Fox has every right to want to get traded. [35:29] but there was only one suitor for Fox who's really good. [35:32] And I don't think that's a good system either. [35:35] I mean, in almost any walk of life or any kind of employment, if you do things that improve the situation for the individual, it's going to hurt the collective. Right. I mean, like in college basketball right now, one thing that I've noticed is a lot of people saying, oh, you know, we complain about NIL money. We complain about the portal. But look how good these games are. [36:05] that's because [36:07] All of the good players are at the same 16 to 25 schools. I mean, in the past, there were a bunch of reasons, dozens of reasons why an exceptional player could say, end up at Wichita State. [36:22] Or end up at Davidson or something like that. And then, yes. Yeah, where did Beasley play? [36:27] But Beasley went to Kansas State. Yeah. [36:29] Yeah, Kansas State. That's never happening now. Oh, well, I mean, it's still... I mean, Kansas... If you're in a power conference... [36:37] It could still happen, I guess, but to me, it's more for the mid-majors, kind of. It's like if you've got this great talent evaluator who finds the kid that other people don't realize is going to be great – [36:51] there's still, it's just like, he's going to end up at Texas or Tennessee or something in a couple years anyways. Like, they'll just ratchet up. We have the portal, and you have unlimited money. I honestly don't mind it. I think this is where college sports should go, where we have

[37:07] 20 to 30 years. [37:09] colleges in football and basketball that are almost operating like a pro league. And they have different roles. And then everybody else is an amateur athlete, basically. That's because you dramatically prefer the pro game to the college game. I still feel like amateur athletics should still keep some sort of umbilical cord to the past. And right now we don't have it. [37:32] Well, you should keep it or should like... No, I like people going to college just to get a degree and be part of the campus and staying there for a few years and playing the sport because... [37:45] They're a big part of just going to the school, having roommates for four years, living off campus. [37:53] It's almost like that's not cool anymore. I know. You're saying you don't like what's going on now. [37:59] You don't like the situation. I like what's going on for a certain select group of colleges, but not for all 300. [38:08] Well, but the reason it's not happening to all 300 is because of those select colleges. I know. So that's the issue. I'd like to go back to just we had two awesome conferences and then everything else was just like college sports again. [38:21] I guess that's not happening. [38:24] Yeah, well, I mean, I know I kind of, I feel like in a sense that is what's going to happen. I think that when these major conferences break off from the NCAA and stuff like that, and then there'll be, you know, so then, but then it will just be like, there'll be the pros,

[38:39] And then, [38:41] the semi froze and then so that, so you'll be, I mean, the, [38:45] there won't be that much differentiation between the two. [38:49] There isn't now. These guys in the tournament right now who are allegedly freshmen, [38:55] Okay. [38:57] The moment their team gets knocked out, [38:59] You think they're still going to class? You think they're still on campus? They're done. The whole farce of that, we should just own that and make that this is pro sports already. [39:11] We pretend it's not, but it is. And I just think we should differentiate it better and go back to, I know there's no way to do it because there's no czar of college sports. There's nobody who could be like, why is UCLA playing teams on the East Coast? This is the dumbest thing we've ever done. These kids are flying, you've cross country kids flying 3000 miles. [39:31] to do a meet when they're supposed to be taking classes. Like, how did we end up doing in this spot? It's nuts. Well, yeah, I mean, it's so weird. Even now, even thinking about the academic consequences of this seems like just almost irrelevant. Or football going until they're adding more playoff rounds. Football's going to go until February. So you're going to have a same schedule as the NFL. We got to take a break, and I want to keep going on this. [39:56] This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. [40:00] What makes basketball so exciting? [40:02] all the superior skill on the court. This has been the case my whole life. [40:07] The craziest thing, I mean, Wemby, stuff he's doing every game, there's two things.

[40:11] three Wemby moments a game where you're like, I don't know if I've ever seen that. The number one thing for me is when he does the screen and roll, he's going to the basket, somebody throws him an alley-oop, and he just catches it and dunks it without jumping. It's an alley-oop, but it's not an oop. It's just kind of an alley-oop. [40:27] And every time he does it, I'm like, I've definitely 100% never seen that anymore. It's a superior play. Superior plays aren't just for the NBA, though. Try Michelob Ultra. [40:36] the official beer partner. [40:38] of the NBA. [40:39] And, [40:40] A crisp, refreshing, superior light beer. It's the beer of Max Kellerman. He just told me that. Plus, they're giving you a chance to win courtside seats, custom merch, and more. Michelob Ultra, superior, is worth playing for. Enter now at MichelobUltra.com. [40:55] slash [40:56] fourth side. [40:57] Michelob Ultra Courtside 25-26, no purchase necessary, open to U.S. Residents 21+. Begins on October 1st, 2025, ends on June 30th, 2026. Multiple entry periods, see official rules at MichelobUltra.com slash courtside. [41:11] for free entry, entry deadlines and prizes and details. [41:15] So you mentioned college basketball in the last, when we were heading into the last break. Duke-UConn felt like just an old school, I remember where I watched it, [41:24] kind of basketball ending. Everybody loved it. It was fun in social media. The memes and the [41:32] Bobby, Danny Hurley, just [41:34] Seeming like a maniac. Danny Hurley's wife, Bill Murray, is somehow involved. It just kind of kept going and going and was awesome for all these people.

[41:43] different reasons. But the fundamental thing people seem to love [41:47] was that something bad happened to Duke. [41:51] End. [41:52] I really do think they might be the most hated anything that we have in sports right now. I know people delighted that the Patriots sucked in the Super Bowl. I know people hate the Yankees. I know there's people that hate the Lakers and the Celtics. [42:06] But they also have their giant [42:08] groups of people that love them too. Is Duke the most one-sided hate versus like right now that we have in pro or college sports? Well, it's an eternal thing. Like the players can change, the coaches can change. It doesn't, people feel that hatred toward them still. Like with these other, with any pro franchise or whatever, you know, once a team really fails for a while and, you know, people, you know, the Patriots or whatever, it's like, [42:32] And if when they struggle, people will be like, they'll never forget with Duke. Like the guys who hate Duke, they'll hate them all the time. But what's weird is I was in college the last time people actually were kind of rooting for Duke, which was when they upset UNLV. Yes. And then within a year that flipped, I think Leitner had a big thing to do with it, which we did a 30 for 30 about once upon a time. But Leitner is like kind of the before and after his whole career. By the end of his career, he's... [43:00] People are like, I hate Duke. And it's just stayed that way. Even when they upset Vegas, I mean, Vegas was an incredibly cool team. So I felt like most people liked UNLV over Duke, even though they were the favorite. So it's not just that Duke...

[43:17] is so often the favorite in these things. I feel like you're remembering that wrong a little bit. [43:21] Because Vegas was like the... UNLV was the big bully. They were killing everybody. They were doing a lot of trash talking. Oh, yeah. I remember there was a lot of the older media was getting really upset about their behavior. Are these guys role models? And then... [43:37] upstart scrappy duke did like the hoosiers norman dale trying to beat them and then but that flipped in a year yeah but we were younger so i mean because my memory of this was that the two most popular teams from that period was the vegas team and the michigan fab five fab five i think and they were both kind of criticized in the same way but then you know this kind of goes back we were talking earlier how like we used to defend the nba and now it kind of drives us crazy yeah i think i [44:07] Hypothesis. But basketball is something that [44:11] is made for a young mentality. And that, that the sort of the individual nature of only having five guys on the floor, the fact that their personalities are really present and all these things, it makes it desirable to the way you view the world when you're 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, that you kind of like, you, you want to, you want that sort of, but then when you become and you mature and become an [44:37] the way things work in football as more rational and reasonable, maybe how things should be, and that you should sublimate yourself to some larger idea where basketball doesn't,

[44:47] make that same requirement, particularly among teams like we're talking about, like the really entertaining teams. Wait, let's let's. [44:55] Let's build this out because I think you're right. [44:58] I think part of it is basketball, as I've always said, is the most naked sport. [45:03] Right. You're just... [45:05] You've got five guys on the court. You can watch them at all times. You can watch them on the bench. You can watch them... [45:11] when the action's not happening or when it's happening. [45:13] You can see how they interact with other people. [45:16] It's almost like a microcosm of... [45:19] being in somebody's office, you know, or being at somebody's Thanksgiving table. Like, what's happening with the Rockets lately? [45:26] I have real thoughts on the Rockets, even though I've never been in their locker room, and I've never talked to any of the players this year, but I watched them on TV, and I'm like, [45:34] Those guys aren't connected. They don't like each other. I wonder if it's the KD burner scandal. No other sport works that way. Baseball is the only one that's as naked. [45:44] But I think with baseball, we don't really see them interact other than celebrating after [45:50] home runs or strikeouts and [45:53] In general, like... [45:54] It's kind of an individual sport. They're all in it for themselves, but collectively, it just kind of makes sense. Basketball is not individual. [46:02] And I think that's the difference. That's what hockey, we always know they're on the same page. They'll play with a broken anything. You know, they're going all out. There are honors at stake at all times. Like we don't worry about hockey players, but basketball players we talk about constantly. [46:17] Well, it's like basketball. You said basketball is not individual.

[46:21] Well, it's not individual, but it is. But you still need your teammates to succeed in basketball. [46:29] Yes. Right. You know, it was interesting this year. I went to a Blazers-Suns game, and I was really startled by the Suns bench. [46:39] I was shocked. The guys were all standing. They were so engaged. It didn't really seem like a college team. It made me think they could be better than I thought they were. [46:52] There's a few teams like that where you can... [46:55] I love this. The kind of stuff I, I still love going to basketball games and it's the kind of stuff I look at. You can learn a lot just from the behavior of teammates who aren't playing. [47:04] And what happens in the huddles and things like that, that I just don't think in baseball you would notice in the same way. [47:11] Yeah, well, I mean, totally. I mean, it's the... [47:16] baseball is a, just like, um, [47:20] There's less there will be personalities, but less. I mean, like in the NBA, it's like having no personality is a kind of personality. Like Duncan had a personality because he had no personality for a long time. Kawhi Leonard had a personality by having no personality. Oh, yeah. You say naked. That's actually a pretty fucking good description because it's like almost any. [47:41] persona you have, [47:43] It becomes something to be understood through, where in a lot of other situations, if you have no personality, you just sort of disappear into the shadows. That's Darren Peterson. That doesn't happen in this. Yeah, people are worried about Darren Peterson, that he has no personality and he just seems – you're the point guard. You're not enough of a leader and a connector.

[48:02] But his personality is basically Kawhi Leonard, and it's worked really well for Kawhi Leonard. And I do think you can be that way. [48:09] It's like Boozer's been I thought he was really interesting to watch The last few weeks And they had this terrible loss But I always felt like [48:18] He was calm at all times. Even if you watch what happens after the most devastating... [48:24] you know, steal. His brother does the steal. Crazy 40-pointer. [48:29] And all the Duke guys are frozen. And he's like walking. He's trying to figure out, okay. And he starts walking toward the ball. He was the only one that was like thinking – [48:39] Oh, we still have a game. And I always thought like, [48:41] That quality is going to serve him really well. And granted, I've never seen him in person. I'm just watching him on TV. But that's why we love basketball. I have no idea if he'll translate to the NBA. I was so fucking wrong about Cooper Flagg. I guess. I'm just like, because my thing is like, I only watch the games. So when I would watch Duke last year, and I'd be like, oh, he's good, but he seems like the second best player on this team. So I was like, I just like that. I thought he's going to be a very, very, very good pro who's not. [49:09] going to be this sort of like, we'll probably never win an MVP. I now think he probably will win an MVP. I really think that competitiveness, it's the thing that I always use, whether to try to decide who's going to be a great prospect. You're probably right. But when you brought that up the first time, I was sort of like, I hear that about so many guys' competitiveness. I mean, that's like, it doesn't, it seems to me like a filler aphorism you use about somebody. But there's two kinds of competitiveness. There's like, oh, he's a competitive guy.

[49:38] There's certain guys that you can just tell minute to minute, [49:43] quarter to quarter, half to half, whatever, [49:46] Really give a shit. [49:48] And I don't know how you quantify it. You can't figure it out in the combine. I felt that way about Castle. [49:54] Castle was my favorite guy two years ago. It was a bad draft. It wasn't the hottest take ever. But [50:01] I really liked how he carried himself, how hard he played. And I felt like he was in a weird situation. [50:07] on that UConn team because they were really good. They had players all over the place. There was probably more he could have done. So I think when you're projecting guys, you have to think like, all right, fundamentally, ultimately, is this guy a badass or not? I feel that way about Burry's on Arizona. I just think he's a badass. He's going to go in the league and I know he's going to succeed. [50:25] And I wonder if sometimes it's that easy. I mean, quarterbacks, we're never going to figure out. Well, yeah, I was going to say, so Indiana's quarterback, using your kind of sort of like judging their personality. My stupid Bill thinks. Well, one thing I like with him is he's... [50:42] Apparently, by all accounts, super smart. [50:45] Mm-hmm. [50:47] And I wonder with quarterbacks, do we underrate that in some ways? [50:51] Because think about like even the ones that like Favre's a bad example, right? Favre's like, [50:56] just, [50:57] pretty dumb gifted guy. [50:59] Rodgers super smart Brady super smart Manning super smart like some of the best guys we've had over the last 30 years Dan Marino not an intellectual I mean there's so many like Dan Marino was football smart though these guys that can remember every play that they

[51:18] you could bring up a play like week two, your third season, you're in San Diego and they're like, oh yeah, third quarter. [51:25] There's something about their brain that's different. [51:27] And it seems like Mendoza has that. I mean, it's an incredibly difficult job, and it's an incredibly situational job. Whereas, like, you know, like, love the running back from Notre Dame. Wherever he goes, he's going to be able to basically do what he does. You know, and some places have bigger holes in others, but, like, what he did in college and what he does in the NFL will be the same. For quarterbacks, that is not the case. You're almost always going into a totally different thing, and they can also sort of, you know— [51:54] At the college level, you can kind of twist these offenses around where a guy makes these same three reads every time. And if he can do that... I mean, I remember watching Kellen Moore at Boise State. I was like, there's no way this guy's not going to be a successful NFL quarterback. I've never seen him miss an open receiver, but... [52:11] That was because he was in a situation where he had a lot of open receivers running across the middle at all times. I got to spend a lot of time with Peyton Manning last year at this conference we were at. [52:22] Not to talk out of school, I don't think he would care of me talking about this. But I'm really fascinated when I talk to these guys like, [52:29] when they see the other quarterbacks, what they see and don't see with either prospects or guys in the league. [52:35] And if you talk to any of those guys, they always say like the number one thing, [52:39] is when you go to the line... [52:41] to be completely prepared in your brain for anything that's going to happen, and then to be able instantaneously to realize everything that defense is doing.

[52:51] And all these guys are like, it doesn't matter how talented you are. [52:54] If you don't have that quality in a split second to know everything that's going to happen, it doesn't matter how good of an athlete you are. Right. And, and, and, [53:03] Learning that, getting better at that, just I'm going to the line. [53:07] I'm completely prepared. I know everything my offensive line has to do, my receivers. But I also know the seven things. And that was one of the reasons Drake May kind of sucked in the Super Bowl. Seattle was basically doing two things over and over again. And he was too young. He wasn't ready for it. He couldn't unlock it. [53:24] But I just wonder, that goes back to the brain thing. John Gruden used to have that show where he'd talk to the quarterbacks, and that was always intriguing. Because what you were really watching when you watched that was like, how smart do they seem when they describe these things? Right. But then if you don't have the athleticism, you end up being Steve Walsh. Or Josh Rosen. Or pick a guy. You still have to have the modicum of athleticism to get by. [53:54] Thank you. [53:55] explain the things they can't execute those are the guys who ended becoming quarterback coaches usually you know but right right right keller moore maybe being one of these people over there um [54:04] It is such a... It's just unlike... Because you'd ask one time, why are we still so bad at... [54:14] like deducing what quarterbacks to draft. Like Ty Simpson right now. [54:20] Yes. Now he's the polarizing guy. Some people think he might go way higher. It's a little like Jackson Dart last year, and he's become the guy everybody's been talking about.

[54:29] Yet he's played 15 games in college. [54:32] It is, I mean, it's such a demanding thing. And I do think that it is, like I use situational. I think it's unusually situational. But there are probably... [54:45] A lot of quarterbacks who could succeed in certain scenarios and almost none who could succeed in other scenarios. I mean, it's I, you know, we'll we'll now someone like Ryan Leaf or whatever, we almost put. [55:00] the totality of his bust on him. [55:03] Right. So that like all his problems really were him and, you know, and and breaking the law and all these things. But it is interesting to wonder if he had gone somewhere else entirely and been around totally different people, if he would have had a completely different career in life. I mean, I don't think that's unthinkable. You know, I think that is. Well, look at Mendoza. He's going to. [55:25] Vegas, [55:26] They have money to spend. [55:28] They hired a coach that is a very well-regarded offensive coach, Kubiak. [55:34] Seems like he's going to be able to have some semblance of an offensive line coming out of the gate. [55:39] Um, [55:40] But even if you look at him when he was at Cal compared to Indiana, he was not the quarterback at Cal. He was in Indiana. That's the problem with this stuff. Well, that's like Wadler in Illinois in a year. It goes from I'm not a top 100 guy to – [55:54] I might be the fifth pick in the NBA draft. Sometimes I do wonder with this stuff, like I've just watched it with my own kids.

[56:00] And my daughter is like about to be 21 and my son's 18. And they've changed so much year to year in all of these different ways that, [56:08] that it makes me think like this draft process is nuts. How would you [56:13] - How do you, you're pegging these kids who are 19 and 20, and assuming when they're 23 they're gonna be the same people? How do you know? You have no idea. - But we do this in lots of things. - Yeah. - We still find it impressive, [56:25] When some, you know, 40 year old person, it turns out, you know, they went to Harvard or they went to Yale. Well, that meant they were an incredibly ambitious 16 year old who was really smart at 16 and had parents kind of pushing them. [56:39] That's how you get into those schools. It is not a reflection on anything about you as a person outside of what you were like as a teenager. And we kind of do that with tons of stuff. I mean, like with, you know, with sports, it is kind of a glaring situation because the careers are shorter. So what you are at 18 actually isn't that far removed from you at 28. But still a lot, still a lot, though. [57:09] a lot of stuff and [57:11] Seems like he's unraveled a little bit. This guy was a top five lottery pick. Yes. [57:15] And... [57:17] I don't know if he was a sure thing because he was a guard. It was a combo guard, but he was somebody... [57:23] you know, an incredible athlete. [57:25] People really thought he was... [57:28] I had a chance to be like, I don't know if at all NBA guard, but definitely an all-star.

[57:32] goes to the worst possible Detroit situation, right? At one point, they lose 20-plus games in a row. [57:38] He's playing with Cade, who's better than him. So he's got to figure out how to play with him. Last year, right as it's about to happen for him, [57:45] And he's really starting to play pretty well. [57:47] Breaks his leg. I was watching the game when it happened. And now is in a tailspin. And now is probably out of the league. And it's like. You think he's done. You don't think. Like if I said. He's out of the league for now. I think he could come back a year or two years from now. Maybe. Will he ever be an NBA starter again? [58:04] That I don't know, because he's lost a lot of... [58:07] Could he be an NBA rotation guy? Sure. We've seen... I mean, he was a rotation guy. We saw Ron or a test come back. I mean, anything's possible. But my point is, like, [58:16] If you just played his career 30 times... [58:20] This was probably the worst outcome, going to the worst possible team, having the worst possible injury. [58:25] And there's another outcome where he goes to the right kind of team with the right kind of infrastructure and, [58:30] is having a really good career now. So I don't know. This is the tough thing with the draft. [58:35] I think very rarely... [58:37] with drafts. Like Hashim Thabit's a good example. [58:40] I hope he's not listening. [58:41] It was just a terrible pick. It was terrible in the moment. I was writing about it. He went second. And I think it was the draft that had... [58:49] had had a Curry and Rubio and maybe even James Harden. I think all three of those guys were in that draft. [58:55] And the Grizzlies were like, we don't know what to do. We don't really need a guard. And they were just like. [58:59] They took the beat and it was crazy when it happened.

[59:03] That was like, oh, I know this is going to be a bust. But there's other ones. How do you know with Michael Beasley? The guy was averaging, he was one of only three or four guys ever to be 25 and 10 in college. [59:14] The stats were saying he might be an awesome pro. [59:17] He was just a little dubious off the court. So you roll the dice and... [59:21] He had a career. He played on. Exactly. Yes. It was not the career I'm sure he thought he was going to have. If I worked at a team... [59:34] If I was like in a front off, like a GM or if I was an owner or whatever, [59:39] I would spend all my time talking to people about this. I would be like obsessed with how do we figure this out? There's got to be some way to crack it. And I don't think there is. Well, but okay. So you, like you said about, you know, Ivy, like, okay, we play his career 30 times. You think this might be the 30th outcome? Yeah, maybe like 29th. There might be one worse outcome. [1:00:01] So let's say you did your career 30 times. Hmm. [1:00:05] So what outcome are you at? I did think about this once. Would I have... [1:00:11] Because I was basically a late bloomer professionally. [1:00:14] But I was probably coming out of college. I probably would have been a first round pick because I'd had, I'd written my sports column for all four years and, [1:00:23] I had a perspective. So the first topic of the Omaha world. I don't know. Whatever. I'm just trying to do a dumb analogy. Keep going. I want to hear this. And then it's like, oh, I'm going to work at a newspaper, and I'm going to be on the bench for whatever, and it didn't work out. And I basically...

[1:00:39] had like not quite jaded ivy but that would have been yeah that would not have been the best outcome for you [1:00:45] I would say the original outcome. If you would have immediately got a newspaper job, even a column, [1:00:53] coming straight. I think that would have been bad for me. College. I don't think we'd be talking now. I don't think you'd have that house. But think about this. [1:01:01] And so it's actually a 30-year anniversary of this because it was near the end of March 96. [1:01:07] where I left the Herald because I knew I was stuck there forever and [1:01:12] I'd probably made a couple mistakes on my own, but I left and I didn't even have a plan. I was [1:01:18] So I'm 26 years old. [1:01:21] I'm not working or writing for everybody. And eventually I have to start bartending and, [1:01:26] I don't think I wrote anything for like 10 months. [1:01:29] So my career was like over. [1:01:32] And I'm sure there's some NBA, NFL, baseball. There must be, I can't even imagine how many people are like, God damn, like they're at this fork in the road and then they end up just doing something else. But then we're wondering, should I keep going? It's, you know, it's tough to admit this because you want to think. [1:01:49] Anything that happens to you is because of merit or hard work. But the biggest factor is luck. [1:01:56] I graduated from college in 1994. [1:01:59] If I had graduated in 93 or in 95, there is zero chance. [1:02:05] that I'm here right now talking to you. There's no chance. I think that if I had graduated in 93 or 95, I don't know if I would have ever written a book.

[1:02:14] But but because I graduated in 94 and certain things were lined up that year, everything is different. And these dudes, I mean, it's just well, it's not the same. I think Cooper flag is good no matter where he goes and what happens. [1:02:27] There's certain guys that whatever happens, it's happening. But although, I mean, let's say... [1:02:36] Thank you. [1:02:36] So you're saying that you think he could have gone to any franchise and it would not have been? I would argue he's in the worst position possible this first year in Dallas. He goes to a team. [1:02:48] that the fan base is so scarred and upset about the trade that just happened that even as the new season is starting, they're still mad and booing the GM and chanting that he has to get fired. That's how you start. [1:03:00] AD gets hurt right away. Kyrie decides he's not coming back. Basically, AD is at some cost. They [1:03:09] tanking, [1:03:10] None of that was good. He's playing out of position, trying to learn how to be a point guard when he's not a point guard and... [1:03:16] But what if he stays there? What if it's five years from now and the Mavs have never improved? Well, you could argue it's all he's putting thick skin and scar tissue on himself for when they actually get good. But we don't say that about Zion. We don't say like Zion's put on scar tissue. Zion has different issues, though. Well, exactly. But I mean, but. [1:03:38] I'll tell you what, coming out of college, if we could somehow go back in time and someone said you can put money on Zion being great.

[1:03:46] or Flagg, I would have put money on Zion. Well, I look at... I think most people would. Well, from a talent standpoint, yes. I would have bet on Flagg. [1:03:55] Because I thought the way Zion played made me nervous, even though I thought Zion was incredible. But all the in-the-air guys make me nervous. I'm sure you did stuff about Zion coming out of college. I'd be curious. I thought he was awesome. Yeah. But I thought I was all in on flag. I just thought. [1:04:11] I actually didn't think he was going to be this good offensively. [1:04:14] But when you talk about situations... [1:04:17] It's funny, like the best situations that anyone entered the league in, [1:04:21] of the guys from the last 12, 13 years are Tatum and Brown and Boston. [1:04:27] And I wonder if it's one of the reasons Brown's been so... [1:04:30] he's gotten back, like he's in year 10 now, he's gonna make an All-NBA team. But he goes to that first Celtics team and they were good. Remember, they made... [1:04:38] He made the Eastern Finals his first year. He didn't even play that much. He was playing like 12, 13 minutes a game. [1:04:43] He was a bench guy. He got to watch. It's almost like Mahomes sitting on the sideline for a year. Better than Wemby's situation. No, Wemby doesn't count. Wemby's like. Well, I mean, I think he also got put in a perfect situation. [1:04:56] It was pretty good. Duncan is probably the standard for this. Duncan joins a really good Spurs team. They tank for one year. He's next to David Robinson. [1:05:05] He's got Popovich. [1:05:07] That's about as good as it gets. As well as when Minyama's playing, I still feel like they're kind of bringing him along surprisingly slowly. I love it. I mean, I love that 29 minutes a game is the best. And I would be very...

[1:05:22] Wait, hold Wemby because we're going to take a break. My hope is that they get into the playoffs and they're like, we're going to unleash him now. He's playing 35 minutes a game and we're going to see what kind of numbers he puts up now. Because it does seem as though they are still like... [1:05:38] He's like a horse, and they're still not letting him run full speed. They just will not. Just little glimpses he'll gallop. That's it. [1:05:48] I have thoughts on this. We're going to take a quick break. [1:05:51] So every Wednesday, I look through the NBA slate. I try to find us a really fun parlay that we could all do together. And of course, we always do it on FanDuel. I love betting on the NBA on FanDuel. Easy to build by bet. I know I'm going to get my winnings instantly. So we are... [1:06:06] In the last two weeks of the season. [1:06:08] which means... [1:06:09] We can throw together a lot of big favorites. [1:06:12] that are going against teams that are no longer trying to win. [1:06:15] and add them together. [1:06:16] with a team that we like. And I keep looking at that Atlanta-Orlando game, and Orlando's in something of a free fall. [1:06:23] coming off a 60-point loss [1:06:26] And Atlanta seems like the easy pick in that game. And yet I wonder, is this like a playoff game for Orlando? So that might be one I do, or Boston-Miami, if everyone in Boston is playing. It'll be one of those two. But the bet will be live in the Fandle Sportsbook app Wednesday. [1:06:42] Don't forget to use a profit boost token. [1:06:44] to increase your potential winnings before you place it. FanDuel. [1:06:48] Play your game. [1:06:50] This episode is brought to you by Boar's Head. What if we told you the taste of deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli? Well, Boar's Head just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means planning your whole day around it.

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[1:08:35] He's so tall. [1:08:37] And there's so much room for error. [1:08:39] When he lands or steps on things or he's up in the air. [1:08:43] that I think they've decided during the regular season, the less time he's on the court, the more we're gaming the system our way. That's something bad. Now, he's worked on it. I've talked about how he's worked on falling. [1:08:54] You know, he's worked on... [1:08:56] Just being careful, like when to kind of jump in traffic, things like that. But he can't stop his body once it's up in the air because he's so fucking tall. [1:09:05] And that's how... [1:09:07] That's your worst case scenario is he's up and he lands and he's so big and he lands the wrong way and he bends the wrong way. [1:09:14] And I just think, I think what you said before the break was right. Like, [1:09:18] It's like a horse they're going to unleash. I don't think it would be more than 34 minutes. At some point, he's got to go for it. It's like you can't say he's too fragile to ever use. He's not fragile, though. He's been pretty durable. With exercises or whatever, because that was always the big fear with guys that hurt their feet or whatever. I mean, when Windmar started writing about him a while ago and talking about all the... [1:09:46] Wemby's basically, I don't know, like musical prodigies or... [1:09:51] what other artists, whatever people would want to put in, like somebody who realized early in life that they're going to be special. [1:09:57] And basically all these decisions that he made from... [1:10:02] almost being a pre-teenager on, [1:10:04] Like all this stuff is going to happen to me. I got to be ready. He's like learning how to fall. He trains his legs, all the exercises he does. Learning how to speak English is,

[1:10:13] His English is the best, I think, of any foreign guy that's come in the league who's been a star because he was practicing it forever, knowing that at some point I'm going to be a superstar in America and I have to be bilingual. [1:10:24] Um, [1:10:25] It's been calculated. Calculating is the wrong word. [1:10:28] But the way it was calculated... [1:10:31] He was really smart. [1:10:32] He's a little Taylor Swift-like. He made a decision at a very young age that everything about my life is going to in some way be involved with success at this one singular deal. Everything about me, even the things about my personality that have no relationship to basketball, they can't in any way contradict basketball. I can't get really into something that could somehow damage this. I can't love pastries or whatever. Whatever the case may be, whatever choice he's making. [1:11:02] Wait, I really like that Taylor Swift thing. That's a good one. I haven't heard that one before. [1:11:08] I think that's a really good analogy. Somebody who had success early because he's overseas. People know who he is by the time he's 14, 15. [1:11:16] And he's already competing. He recognized his bank successful. It wasn't like he was not in the basement. He's on the main floor. He's not working out in the basement. And also, somebody who's been stared at, [1:11:27] Because he's incredibly fucking tall. Somebody who's just been stared at differently every moment of his life, basically from age 13, 14 on. When did Taylor Swift hit? Like 15? [1:11:38] I mean, she was very... 14, 15? [1:11:41] she was meaning i think she had records 13 but yeah i still i don't love how often wendy's on the perimeter i love it so much more when he's closer to the basket but i guess that's just how it is it's just crazy to i know but that's there's chuck that's their super sauce i know they have this like hammer yeah this hammer that when it's like the biggest game of the season or it's a game seven or they're down three two in the road in a game six like

[1:12:06] they can start moving him closer to the basket. The other team panics when he's [1:12:10] within 10 feet. [1:12:12] If he's posting up, the defense is just completely changing every strategy they have once that happens. I mean, I guess, yeah, I still don't know how complete – [1:12:22] his post-up game is. [1:12:24] Like, like how I mean, he looks good when he does it, but it's the regular season. And sometimes, you know, I would I would really be interested to see, like, what his bank vault of moves is. Well, he's got he already has a little bit of that Embiid. [1:12:38] I could just shoot a 20 footer over you and you can't block it. He's got like a little jump hook and then he's got this, [1:12:45] hook with this little turnaround where he leans over the guy, but he's usually like seven inches taller. [1:12:51] And the guy can't block it because Wemby's basically in his face. He's got this little George Gervin spin move the other way. That finger roll move. I've seen all those things, but I want to see him like it would be interesting. Would you want like a turnaround? Just like, well, I don't know. I would just like to see what it looks like if there'd be a quarter of basketball where he's playing against a big dude and he's on the block and they just keep going to him, going to him, going to him, going to him and see what it's like. Like, could this happen in a playoff? Have you seen him in person? [1:13:21] In person? No, I have not. I have not seen him in person. I... [1:13:25] I would highly recommend to anyone who likes basketball, [1:13:29] It's the must-see in this sport right now. And it's the biggest must-see we've had in a long time. [1:13:35] I don't really remember the last time. Curry was probably the last one where I'd say, you just got to go see this. You got to go watch him warm up. You got to go through the whole thing. It was funny because we were doing all that face of the league stuff.

[1:13:47] I forget when that was. One of the dumbest conversations ever, and it's still dumb. [1:13:51] But I think the overriding face of the week, face of the league, everybody's like, who's the face of the league? Could Jason Tatum be the fan? It was like, this is stupid. Why are we doing this? [1:14:01] And my attitude at the time was, you know it when you see it. [1:14:05] You know, when it's happening... [1:14:07] And it's happened this year with Wemby. He's the number one attraction in the league. He's, you can feel it in the games. People are going early to watch him warm up. He's, nobody leaves their seat when he's on the court. [1:14:18] And he's the most compelling guy they have. And it happened in the span of six months. [1:14:23] Hmm. [1:14:24] Yeah, I guess. I guess the face of the league thing, that's just that just seems to be like what they talked about when there was nothing else to talk about. [1:14:32] Right. Because sometimes they just have things that they've got to fill up space. And it's like, well, it's... Because nobody can really even properly, like you say, properly describe what that means. You know? It's like, you know it when you see it, like pornography or whatever. We don't say that with like... [1:14:49] We weren't saying that about music in the late 80s with alternative music. [1:14:54] Can Michael State be the face of the [1:14:56] Face of the week. [1:14:57] Music does have its own version of that, which is defining something as the biggest band in the world or the biggest artist in the world. And it's right. And artists and bands feel like they can sort of say that sometimes, even if it only lasts like. [1:15:12] two months. There's a Counting Crows documentary or something. That was mine! I don't think it's that one. This is an earlier one where he was talking about going to Japan. We were like the Beatles there. We were the biggest band in the world. Maybe you were that weekend or whatever. I didn't see that.

[1:15:32] Um, [1:15:34] You have any other Wemby thoughts? Because I had a couple other quick things for you. Well, I think it is interesting that he sort of like defenses half of the game. So he should be the MVP. He's like already sort of in a way kind of very formally making his argument without like it's not like he's got a lot of bravado. He's like trying to like logic it out. [1:15:55] And I think now, you know, in – [1:16:00] 20, 26 or whatever, I think that argument he makes is better than it's been in a while. [1:16:05] I wouldn't have said that in the past. It seemed like offense was 80% of it. But now it is different. When the games get serious, the [1:16:19] Defense intensity is pretty central In a way that I remember I assume that [1:16:29] Shea is going to win MVP, right? I think he is. And that's, I don't know who I'm voting for yet, but that's what I'm waiting for. It's tough to vote against. I mean, I watch him play. I feel like long stretches go before I see him miss a shot. I know he misses shots. [1:16:44] I know what his field goal percentage is, but whenever I watch him, he seems to never be missing jump shots. They just seem to all go in. It's shocking when he misses. [1:16:52] That thing you said about Wemby on defense... [1:16:55] I was saying this to somebody the other day about, [1:16:57] Because we never got to see Russell, but [1:17:00] We read all the books about Russell and we saw the documentaries and

[1:17:03] clips of him and how everybody over and over again would be like, there was just nothing like this. He just blocked everything. [1:17:09] He drove guys out of the league, guys who had like, oh, this is my little... [1:17:14] my little, uh, sky hook that I have and Russell be like, I'm, you're just never making that against me ever. And the guy would just be done after that. Um, [1:17:22] I've never seen a better defensive player than Wimby in person. Now, I've seen... [1:17:27] defensively impactful things that Jordan and Pippen together, [1:17:33] Seeing that kind of feels in my head like what Wemby's like now. Watching those guys together when they were aligned, I've never seen anything like that. And Wemby is like that for me too. I did see Manupo. I saw Mark Eaton. I saw some of these taller guys and how they can even go bare to a lesser degree. [1:17:51] So it's not like we haven't seen versions of this, but this is the most impactful I've seen. You know who Larry Brown says is the best defender he's ever seen? Who? [1:17:59] Wilt Chamberlain in 1985. [1:18:03] Really? [1:18:04] That he watched him play a games at UCLA against magic and all these dudes. Yeah. At one point he blocked seven consecutive shots. [1:18:14] At whatever age he was, 40, whatever, something. It's finally circled around for Wilt. [1:18:21] where now all the [1:18:23] All the bad stuff with the world experience kind of fades away over the years. And now it's just like incredible to look at everything. And then the positive stories last, the stats last, all that stuff. I mean, his stature in my mind is rising. I now think that prior to...

[1:18:39] The merger and sort of when the NBA changed in the late 70s, I think Chamberlain is the greatest basketball player of all time. We've been arguing about this since I've known you. [1:18:46] Uh, [1:18:47] Quick topic. [1:18:48] ABS. We can probably end on this. [1:18:51] You had a whole bunch of interesting things. You had some weird theory you wanted to throw to me. Yeah, but I didn't want to go longer than 90 because I wanted to save stuff. [1:18:59] for next time. But we should do ABS. [1:19:03] which has completely changed baseball in five days. It's changed the experience of watching it. I think it's made it better. [1:19:09] it's, [1:19:11] something for everybody. Like my buddy, Hench, who's a complete maniac. Um, [1:19:17] And I'm on multiple Boston threads with him. And I think I'm on four threads with him. [1:19:23] but is always like getting up, loves getting upset and riled up about stuff. ABS is like, [1:19:29] His Venn diagram, because there's always something to get upset about. Either the initial call can be the worst call and you're mad at the umpire that you can't believe you missed it. [1:19:38] The challenge that you got a strikeout and then the challenge happened and now the strikeout's gone for your team. That's terrible. The guy who does the challenge, but he missed it, [1:19:49] The guy on your team, like Roman Anthony had one. [1:19:52] you know, he does this and it's like, no, you were actually wrong. And now I've lost the challenge. [1:19:57] And it just brings all this stuff to it. But what's interesting is how the fans react to it. [1:20:01] Especially in the home games. Where it's like. [1:20:04] oh, that's not a strikeout. And they'll show it and it's like, not a strikeout. The fans like cheer, like a,

[1:20:10] Like a hit happened. [1:20:11] I think this has been a home run. I love ABS. [1:20:14] Well, my position on this is pretty clear. I don't like the employing technology for officiating. I think it's dumb. Okay, let's hear the case. Did you like it for tennis? It made tennis better. [1:20:31] I mean, tennis is kind of an interesting example. It's one I never think about. I just... [1:20:39] I don't think we need to do it. I don't think it's necessary. I think that the that I mean, and this will also make no sense. It would almost be different if we went to complete technological officiating, that there were no umpires, there were no referees. We might be going there. Well, that's going to happen eventually. Somehow that I guess I would be. [1:21:02] a little more comfortable with because it would almost be like saying like, well, okay, the sport is different now. The sport, there's no human element to the way the sport is sort of governed. But what's the good thing about it? What's the good thing about having like the Red Sox? One of the reasons they lost Saturday's game was there was this umpire CB Buckner, who's just an all time bad umpire. [1:21:21] And I think he only got 88% of the calls, right? [1:21:25] So one of every nine pitches he just missed. [1:21:28] And it's like, how is that better than just having an automatic strike zone where we just know each one is? I guess. I mean, it's just part of it, I would say. It's just part of it. That these games are played by people and they're governed by people. In the same way, there's going to be errors in baseball.

[1:21:51] There's going to be errors in officiating and in umpiring. [1:21:58] I feel like I'm arguing against you, but I like 90% agree with you. I'm just saying I like ABS, but I think this is – [1:22:06] not ruined basketball, but made basketball worse. Like this concert doing a stuff. Or, I mean, it, it, there, [1:22:16] I mean, this is it. So it's I'm making an argument that even it feels weird to make, even though it's what I believe, sort of, which is that when I see. [1:22:28] The [1:22:30] The idea that it's a pitch, right? Yes, it can be the difference between an out and a walk. I realize that, but it's a pitch. And it's sort of... [1:22:39] That so this is too complicated to just handle with us. [1:22:45] We can't do this. We can't we can't fucking watch a baseball and make a decision. And these games that ultimately, yes, money is on the line. People are gambling. These guys care a lot. They are exhibitions. These are social constructs. Do we really need to use cameras and lasers and all these things to understand whether or not it's two and two? [1:23:09] Or the guy's out. It seems dumb to me. Like, it's just, it's, you know, we're... [1:23:16] Like, like, I'd love to come up with some like perfect analogy for it. But it's like, I mean, you know, well, this is not a perfect analogy, but it's something similar. It's like sometimes you hear people wonder why music from the 60s and 70s and 80s seems to just not go away.

[1:23:46] kind of look back on and use. But I think part of it has to do with that, you know, [1:23:52] when it was... [1:23:55] When there was less ability in the studio to fix everything and make everything perfect and like use, you know, find ways to to make the vocal ideal every single time. Like the the things that we heard in music that were imperfect. [1:24:11] are actually the things that sort of humanized it and made us drawn to it. And now we're seeing this sort of this perfect version of music where every vocal is perfect, where every, you know, where they will just punch in the guitar or the keyboard or the drum or whatever it is until we have a perfectly sculpted thing. [1:24:27] Something about that subconsciously we understand is, [1:24:31] to be sterile and sort of distanced from us and not really human. And I think that now the reason it's not a perfect analogy is because one is art and one is sports. But and these are, you know, I think that things that we do that distance the sort of the visceral human element from sports probably make us feel less about it or care less about it. The outcome, yes, will be more accurate. [1:24:57] We will have a more sort of a precise understanding of who actually won this or who actually lost. But it's like, I think that. [1:25:10] It makes it less important and less meaningful and less real. [1:25:15] So I mean, that's a kind of a, you know.

[1:25:18] This is, you're not the only one who feels this way. [1:25:20] I think the difference is [1:25:23] How do we avoid calamities and things that swing games like, [1:25:28] Versus how do we strive for 100% accuracy? And I think the NBA is in this... [1:25:33] In this mess right now. The first thing to do is remove the idea of the word calamity from what we just described. I know, but it's... How is it a calamity? Remember Mike Renfro? That was the last discussion we had. I know. It was really weird. This all starts with Mike Renfro. We had that discussion. I feel you walked away from that, or we walked away from that, with you sort of making the argument that, like... [1:25:54] It would have been better if we could have used instant replay in that scenario. [1:25:58] Yeah, because Houston could have beaten Pittsburgh. [1:26:00] we would not be talking about it at all if that had been the case. If we had instant replay. So you like bad things because then they're more interesting. Well, sometimes, yes. Sometimes things are meaningful because they were imperfect. And if you had ironed it out flat, there is absolutely no way we would be talking about Mike Renfell this many years later if they had been like, we checked it, it was a touchdown. Even if Houston had won that game and beaten the Rams in the Super Bowl, [1:26:30] would care about the way we do about the human problem that was the manifestation of a guy having to make a decision about something he saw in real time. [1:26:40] That's what sports is. [1:26:41] I know. And in the NBA, you're really feeling it because... [1:26:45] They only have its replay for some things.

[1:26:48] But then if there's like sometimes goaltending, they'll just miss and then they'll replay it after the commercial. Be like, whoa, they missed the goaltending on KEDA. [1:26:56] It's like, guess what? We all lived. It's fine. Well, yeah. And then it's like block charge. Let's look at this for four minutes. Like, I just can't believe how stupid some of this stuff is. [1:27:06] it's okay if we called the block charge wrong let's keep the game moving [1:27:12] I mean, yes, we're like, we're doing this. We care about these sports. I know someone could listen to this and be like, well, they don't care about the outcome. Why are they watching these things? But like, it is crazy to me when you're watching a thrilling basketball game late in the game, a guy hits a jumper. They're now up one. Oh, we got to stop to see if it's 0.7 seconds on the clock or 0.4 seconds on the clock. Yes, I know if it's 0.2 seconds, you can't catch and shoot. There's all these reasons for it. [1:27:42] and be like, okay, now let's go do our taxes for 10 minutes and then we'll come back and make this decision. I don't think it has improved sports. I don't think that these things have been a real – because they still sometimes get things wrong and then they seem doubly uncomfortable. We actually looked at the thing again and it didn't change anything. [1:28:08] Why the... [1:28:08] It's funny because some of the people that hate all the advancements like technology are already predisposed to hate ABS, stuff like that. [1:28:16] I'll admit, I haven't watched any baseball yet this year. So maybe if I saw this. No, you got to watch it. I like the fact that you say that the player has to hit his head and do it himself. You got to do it immediately. I definitely think. I think it was actually. Maybe Nick Wright had this idea. That in the NBA, when a player twists his finger like, go check it.

[1:28:38] Like that should be enough to trigger it. [1:28:40] Because so many of those guys are wrong. Right. I mean, those guys are wrong all the time. And then you lose like you lose two points if you're wrong. [1:28:48] You lose the challenge. Like, you know, like Luca will ask for something to be changed. It's an automatic loss. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like Luca. I mean, I'm sure you've talked about this before. It's demented. I can't imagine a guy whose game I should like more who as a player I hate. Luca is my least favorite player in the world. [1:29:11] He complains on every... He has a really terrible Clippers team. It was like that. They had Chris Paul. Oh, yeah. And Blake Griffin. They're mad about everything. He's worse than all of them. He is worse than that entire team. And sadly, Joker's starting to become a little that way, too. He used to never complain. I see him more and more complain about it. Well, Joker has reasons, because he's just getting annihilated game after game. I think he's just fed up with it. [1:29:41] the shit out of him. I guess I believe he is right when he complains in a way which I never believe in Luca. I never believe it. [1:29:49] What's, [1:29:50] Because you tapped into something interesting talking about [1:29:54] you like the human element of it's okay if we screw up some calls. That's what human beings are like. [1:30:00] Sora just basically was a huge bust, right? I don't know if you followed that at all. [1:30:05] But OpenAI spends all this stuff on Sora. And when it's happening, it's like, look how amazing this is.

[1:30:10] We'll be able to take all of these [1:30:12] characters and things you like and you could make videos out of them right away and everybody's going to love this. [1:30:18] And it turns out it was just an incredible amount of money. [1:30:22] And a lot of time and energy and all this time that the company was spending to make this video product that people didn't really like that much and weren't using that much. [1:30:31] They were like, cool. And didn't really want. Didn't really want. Which is the metaverse, too. [1:30:36] Zuckerberg spends tens of billions of dollars, whatever he spent, to try to create this alternate [1:30:43] universe people could go into and people were like, I'm good with the one I'm in. Thanks anyway, though. [1:30:48] And it's just like, these are like steps, right? So like they're creating this universe where we can live this other life. And people are like, well, that sounds kind of fucked up to begin with. And then if they even try it, if they go into it, they're like, well... [1:30:59] I guess this is something. What's going to have to happen is they're going to have to keep failing and making these steps and failing, making these steps and failing until they come up with something that when people use it, they're like, oh, this – [1:31:09] I've always wanted this, as it turns out. [1:31:12] You know, it's like that's how it's going to be. Like no one's going to want this stuff until they see something and they're like, oh, I guess I didn't realize that it was my dream to have this sort of experience. I mean, you know, I I remember with all these things, the Pentevo came out and it was described to me. And I was like, when am I going to need to freeze television? Why would I ever need to stop television? Like, you know, it's like it seems so idiotic to me.

[1:31:41] And then all of a sudden, at one point, I used it in the way, and it was like, this is actually what I needed. And now, if I'm ever at a hotel, and I can't freeze the TV, then I'm angry about that. This technology that I couldn't even envision 30 years ago, I'm now upset about if I don't have it at all times. [1:31:59] I think the funniest one for all of these that's impossible to explain to anybody under 30 years old. [1:32:05] is how we never knew the score of games we were watching. Like if you went into a bar or you walked into the living room and your dad was watching a game and there was just no score and no time, there was no context to any of it. And then occasionally they would just flash it. But that, that has inadvertently, I'm glad we have that, but yeah, [1:32:24] it has inadvertently led to greater social isolation. And here is why. Because it used to be if you walked into a bar and the game was on, you'd have something to talk about with the person right away that would never be seen as a weird question. You'd be like, what's the score here? And they would tell you. And then maybe you could tell if a guy wanted to talk because he'd be like, oh, it's 21-14, but Steve Barkowski's hurt or whatever. [1:32:54] now it's like you have nothing to ask the person you have nothing to that that was a big loss yeah [1:33:00] Cigarettes was another one, a huge loss. Cigarettes were an unbelievable social connector. They never... Lung cancer, a million bad things, severe bronchitis. You want to talk to somebody separate? You ask her, do you want to have a cigarette or whatever? If you don't smoke that much, maybe she only smokes. You act like you do. I used to go to shows in Fargo when I was first covering music there. I didn't know any of the people in the scene. It was kind of weird to stand there. So I would just

[1:33:30] to do. [1:33:32] Or the group outside having stings and you ask somebody for a light and you're off and going. So you lose that and you lose asking people for the score. [1:33:42] And then plus more people on their phones now when they're in public, which we didn't have either. Rink less now. All these things that in a vacuum, you could be like, well, it might be good for society. But when you put them all together, it's just people never talking to anyone about anything and never needing to. And then getting to this weird point where it feels like an imposition if they do. And I'm not saying I'm totally different from this. I just find that I think... [1:34:11] I used to be much more open to random conversation than I am now. It happens so rarely that when someone just starts talking to me sometimes, I think they're crazy. [1:34:21] Maybe this is an insane person. You must get recognized by some people. [1:34:26] Oh, well, you can always tell that. You can always tell. You can usually you can usually tell if a person is coming to talk to you and they know who you are, as opposed to they're just talking to you because they're normal. Right. [1:34:39] It should be normal. It shouldn't be weird for someone to start talking to me in line at the grocery store. But then it happens so rarely now that you kind of think it's weird when it occurs. I don't know. Some people have that natural welcoming. My wife's like this. My wife is too. People just... People talk to you. Like if she sits on an airplane with a stranger, that stranger's going to talk to you. It's a 100% four-hour combo. Yeah. And other people just give off the...

[1:35:05] I'm probably going to just read this book. [1:35:08] Welcome to We Kept the Receipts, presented by Tax Act, where we look back at our predictions, figure out who deserves a victory lap. [1:35:15] and who is completely off base. Tax Act helps you with actual receipts. [1:35:20] like the kind that you can use for tax deductions or credits and the ones that help you get your maximum income. [1:35:25] refund, [1:35:26] every tax season. So, [1:35:29] Um, let's see, I'll give you one good one and one bad one that I had before the basketball season. [1:35:34] I was... [1:35:36] Really bullish on San Antonio being good. [1:35:38] And I think their over was like basically 43 wins. I thought they would go over that. [1:35:43] It was one of my locks. And I just thought this Wemby thing was going to happen faster than people realize. I did not think they were going to be a finals contender. But I did think they were going to be really good. So that was a good one. [1:35:52] But conversely, I just assumed like everybody else that Phoenix was going to stink. It felt like a rebuilding, revamping year for them. And meanwhile, they're going to be like the seventh seed in the playoffs. So not only did I miss this one, but their owner... [1:36:06] taunted me on Twitter about it. So you win some, you lose some. We kept the receipts presented by Tax Act. This tax season, make your max refund the one prediction. [1:36:15] That actually... [1:36:16] Pays off. Visit taxhack.com to learn more. [1:36:19] Conditions apply. See taxact.com for details. [1:36:25] This episode is brought to you by Fox One. Watch all 104 matches of the FIFA World Cup live in 4K for just $19.99 a month with three days free. Build your own multi-view, choose up to three streams, and follow player spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights, and instant replays. The FIFA World Cup, streaming live on Fox One. Offers a subject to change. See fox.com for complete terms and conditions.

[1:36:54] Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get... The best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash collegepc. [1:37:25] Last thing and then we'll go. [1:37:27] This is a quick one. [1:37:29] My son has been going backwards with music. [1:37:32] Mm-hmm. [1:37:33] My son loves music. [1:37:34] Is he back to the 40s now? No, he's been listening to classic rock. [1:37:40] Okay. And he was listening... [1:37:42] So he, I, I almost wish like there was videotape that I could have just sent you each time where he'd come over to me and be like, dad. [1:37:49] Velvet Underground was pretty good. [1:37:51] Mm-hmm. [1:37:52] The other day he came by, he's like, I've listened to all four Led Zeppelin albums. [1:37:58] I think I liked three the most, four second, and just started going through Led Zeppelin. I was just thinking like... Did you tell him there was more than four? Oh, yeah. He knew. He had just gone the first four. [1:38:10] But I was thinking when I really loved music and got into it in the early 80s, [1:38:15] Right. And it was like my dad was listening to Bob Seger and Springsteen and a couple of these other ones. And then. [1:38:21] the Simon and Garfunkel concert album, and then from there, it's like, well, I need my own. Then you start listening and buying stuff.

[1:38:28] And we only really had like 15 years of, so this is 1982 for me. We only had like 15 years of albums to go back and check out. [1:38:38] So I remember like, [1:38:39] Bad Company, Greatest Hits. [1:38:42] I remember getting that. Or like Steve Miller had the greatest hits one. [1:38:47] And Elton John had a greatest hits. Like greatest hits were a good way. We didn't have Spotify back then. Good way to kind of learn the best of different bands. But then we had this incredible... [1:38:57] 80s for music and then the 90s were even better and we had all of our [1:39:02] all this new music that we spent more time listening to. [1:39:05] But now if you're my son and it's 2026, [1:39:09] He has 60 years of modern music to go back and listen to. And I wonder if that's part of the reason there's less of a necessity to listen to new music than there used to be. Because you can just go backwards and have this also happen with movies. [1:39:24] absolutely that is the case I mean it's that that [1:39:32] Um, [1:39:33] Particularly since, like, because... [1:39:37] But modern music, modern rock and pop and hip hop, it's still... [1:39:42] operating in the same kind of modality as the previous music, it's quite difficult for it to surpass it. [1:39:49] I mean, they're using the same instruments with the same sort of length of song is basically the same verse chorus versus still sort of the same structure. Like it's like so you really are competing against the best of everything because it hasn't changed enough.

[1:40:05] I mean, that's why when they talk about the slow cancellation of the future, this is part of it. I mean, it's like if the future continues to be retro reinterpretations of the past, well, it's not. [1:40:16] It is, you know, it's pretty difficult for anything to be more interesting than the interesting thing it's trying to replicate. Yeah. But you're but you are right if it was in the early 80s, you know, the the expectation was, well, you know, [1:40:31] You really only have to go back 20 years. You know, you're getting the beginning of the Beatles in and you're getting all music going forward. So it's like, you know, it was there was a lot of music there, but it was possible. Now it's that much more difficult. Plus, we've also sort of expanded the possibility of things that were once not seen as remotely canonical being things that you're supposed to know about if you care about music. [1:40:56] You know, like it was there are many it would have been very possible. [1:41:00] If, say, you were on the music in the early 80s, somebody would be like, well, there's some shit you don't got to worry about. You don't got to worry about ABBA. You don't got to listen to those records. Well, now, if your son is really into pop music at any point, you would be like, you need to listen to these ABBA records, too. Like, I mean, there was a whole bunch of things that almost anything, any kind of cultural tenacity now seems more important. That it's important enough to revisit where there are many things. Even like talking about Bad Company or whatever. [1:41:30] Certainly a time in the 80s when I would, if we would have been hanging out and you would have listened, wanted to listen to Bad Company, I would be like, what the fuck for? Like, why would we listen to this? Now it doesn't seem that way. Now it seems like, well, there's some meaning. I feel like we just would have argued all the time.

[1:41:46] I don't it's hard to imagine. I don't think we would have had we would have been bonded on basketball and football. [1:41:53] And I think musically, we just would have been completely different with everything other than Van Halen, who we both would have loved. Well, I mean, it depends what age we maybe police. I don't know. There would have been a couple. I didn't like the police when I was. I mean, it depends if we were really young, if we were 13. I don't know if we had been 18. [1:42:11] It would have been like, [1:42:12] Do you like drinking? We're friends. [1:42:14] I was very open to people when I was 80. If they wanted to party, that was all it took. I had friends who had nothing in common with me at all, except [1:42:28] You went to these places Friday night and Saturday night and then sometimes Thursday and sometimes Wednesday. Like that was all that's all it took. That's all it took to be friends. You know, now I don't know how that, you know, you know, it's the best for that is restaurants. [1:42:41] People who work in restaurants, [1:42:43] you're thrown together almost like you're in... [1:42:46] like people in a prison, how like the people in Shawshank would become friends. Just they had nothing in common. They're just like, Hey, you want to hang out in the yard? [1:42:53] Restaurants because you're on the same schedule. And if like... [1:42:57] This guy also smoked Marlboro lights. You just became friends. That was all you needed, that we both go to bed at four in the morning. And nobody wants to work in an office, right? If everybody has the option of working at home or going in the office, everyone would say, I want to be at home because then I can like, I can do my laundry too. I can do the thing. Yeah. [1:43:15] And yet, I mean, I'm sure I would have my whole life, if given the option of not going to the office, I would have taken it. And yet...

[1:43:22] 90% of the people in my life who are important to me, [1:43:27] I met in an office. I like I'm so lucky that I was in the office of spin and office in Akron, the office in Fargo and the office of my college newspaper. Those it's like. [1:43:41] There's this kind of intangible loss to these things. So this kind of shifts we've made in society that, again, like I said earlier, better for the individual. [1:43:50] Much better for the individual in that singular experience. Much worse for society as a whole. These things that help. You know, it's like when the Walkman came out, you know, they were like, oh, the Walkman, you know, it's going to be terrible. It's going to be people walking around listening to music in their own world. I remember that. Yeah. You know what? They were fucking right. That totally happened. That totally happened. When MTV was out, what were the critics saying? Oh, it's going to change. [1:44:20] It totally happened. All the criticisms of television from the 1950s, they did happen. All of these things that are seen as like, you're so out of touch. This new technology is great. Everything people are currently saying about AI, [1:44:38] is going to happen. [1:44:39] Like maybe not to the full totality of we live in a dystopia, but all of the things that we think will probably be a manifestation of this socially, socially. [1:44:50] I think that will bet that they will probably be true. Like that's just because it always seems that way, right? The people who overreact are the ones who are right later.

[1:44:58] I'm more optimistic about that. [1:45:01] We just did, I won't say the movie, but we did a movie that was really big for next rewatchables. [1:45:07] That was really big. [1:45:08] In the 80s. [1:45:10] And we were talking about, uh, [1:45:13] Basically what you said before about... [1:45:15] when these things that would happen in the 80s, [1:45:19] Sometimes these movies you liked... [1:45:21] you liked because they were always on. [1:45:24] And you eventually talked yourself into them. [1:45:26] Right? [1:45:27] And I made the comparison about [1:45:30] And music. [1:45:31] when people listen to albums and we actually had more time to listen and talk about different albums, we also had less stuff to do. Eventually, like the seventh best song in the album to become your favorite song in the album and stuff like that, which is also what was happening with... [1:45:47] some music and TV shows in the 80s. [1:45:50] But now everybody moves so fast from one thing to the next. [1:45:55] I wonder if the same kind of devotion will be there for these different things. [1:45:59] I think about weird shit like that now. I remember I wrote a thing for Grantland, which was about the idea and the problem of nostalgia. [1:46:12] And I [1:46:12] One of the points that I was sort of making, which I do think is true, is that part of the reason that we feel nostalgic for things from the past was not to. [1:46:22] even necessarily because of our experience with it or what the thing was, it was the pure repetition of hearing a song over and over and over again. Or a movie or anything. Over and over and over again.

[1:46:35] And, [1:46:36] uh [1:46:37] You know, I... [1:46:38] Thank you. [1:46:39] I think with music, it is unlikely that that will happen. With video experiences, I don't know, because it does seem like, I know it's with my kids, they still are very comfortable re-watching things that they like. [1:46:52] My kids as well. I think there's a natural thing. I mean, I used to, there were many, many books. [1:47:00] that like novels that I read multiple times when I was young, I can't imagine that. [1:47:04] That happening now, like me reading a new novel and then be like, I'm going to read it again in a year. It just doesn't seem like that happens. But when you're young, you're really like that. You know, I think you're almost teaching yourself how to understand the thing like it like season on the brink. [1:47:17] I read that book. [1:47:19] I bet at least three times in high school. And I do think that a lot of the way I think and write about sports is really based on that text, because I was like, well, this is how it's supposed to be done. This is the tempo, you know, and I'm not saying that's the greatest book ever written, but I loved it. [1:47:35] And it was sort of, it was like... [1:47:38] You have to... [1:47:40] Like the book Animal Farm. I read the book Animal Farm so many different times in my life. And I think that at some point you read these things enough that you kind of think like, well, okay, this is the structure. This is how it's supposed to be. This is how it's supposed to work. I'm glad you said that because I've probably mentioned this in the past couple of times, but when people ask... [1:48:00] like advice for writing like tips what are your tips other than and you just tell them like just keep doing it every day like this is the number one thing

[1:48:09] Never stop. Keep going. Keep pressing. [1:48:11] But one of the things that I loved that I think really made me better is, [1:48:16] I had probably, I don't know, eight to ten books that I would just read over and over again. [1:48:20] and kind of study what they did. And they were books where the writing style wasn't even really like my style in certain cases. Like my favorite book ever was Breaks of the Game, which I really made an effort to read every 12 to 15 months. [1:48:32] just because it would kind of reset my brain with – [1:48:36] And my style was nothing like Albert Sam's style. And the style of that book was nothing like, [1:48:41] what I was writing, but I would get a lot out of it, and I don't really know why. It was the repetition of the choices that he made... [1:48:50] were really helpful to me and, and, [1:48:52] I don't know. It's just, it's, it's like putting on an album you've heard a hundred times and it would just make you think about stuff. [1:48:58] Hunter S. Thompson supposedly used to literally retype Ernest Hemingway stories. [1:49:04] Really? Yeah, because he wanted to know how it felt to write these short, kind of crisp sentences, like how it would be. So he would literally retype them on a manual typewriter. Now, I've never done that, but I understand that idea. When I was a music critic, so many records I reviewed. [1:49:24] having listened to twice or three times, especially in newspapers. Sometimes it'd be like, get the regular... [1:49:30] I don't think I know, like, I really don't understand any record. [1:49:36] Until I've played it. [1:49:38] 500 times? When I mean understand it, I mean not make a decision of whether or not I like it, or if it's good or bad. For me to really like,

[1:49:48] being able to have thoughts on it that are [1:49:52] both meaningful and original, you know, it's like, it's gotta be, it's a lot, it's a lot of times before you really understand things. And, uh, everything about our culture is trying to stop people from doing that. They're like, you don't even have to read the thing anymore. You can just type this thing and it will give you a synopsis of everything that's been written about it. I mean, it is like, like we are moving in a direction where deep understanding of things is not just becoming rare, but like, [1:50:19] irrelevant like stupid like why would you you know [1:50:23] There's more answers, too. [1:50:25] There's more ways to unearth things. I mentioned my son earlier getting into music, which is fun in its own right, because he just comes in with these takes knowing nothing. [1:50:35] So he thinks smashing pumpkins are just better than Nirvana, which is an interesting argument to have. [1:50:40] But he just likes their songs more. And he doesn't understand why they weren't bigger than Nirvana coming out of the 90s. So I was explaining to him all the different. I mean, that's real taste, though. [1:50:51] Like when somebody has an opinion like that, a young person, like that is like it's not found knowledge. They were not convinced to think this. Like my son one time was telling me that he was like. [1:51:03] these late period George Harrison songs are as good as the Beatles. At first I was going to be like, what the fuck? I was like, no, actually what he's, it was like, this is a good thought he's having. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like, it's like he, it's an unsullied thought without any, without reading or hearing anything else. And it was something that like,

[1:51:22] Like, you know, like, you know, when you, like, you know, when you, [1:51:25] Before you take mushrooms for the first time, they'll tell you, well, you'll be able to think anything you want. And in your mind, you're like, well, I can already think what I want, but you can't. [1:51:34] There are things in ourselves that stop us from having certain ideas. So sometimes when a kid is listening to music like that, or your son is listening to music like that, there's like this kind of enforced ceiling of collective knowledge does not exist. So he can actually think whatever he wants about it. A guy interviewed me once for a book, and he was saying like, you know, he was much younger than me. [1:52:04] of Stone Temple Pilots. I thought they were all great. [1:52:07] but I guess Stonehenge Pilots is terrible. And I was like, [1:52:10] No, actually, right. First time, like what you you were actually just listening to the music was people like me who is listening to the music and also taking in all this other ancillary bullshit that was affecting the way I was understanding it. It's like you understand it for real. Yeah. [1:52:26] Yeah, my son... [1:52:28] That's a good point. My son, he even found a Smashing Pumpkins song that I didn't know about somehow. [1:52:33] Called the boy. [1:52:35] And it was one of his favorite ones. And he's like, do you know this one? And it wasn't on any of the albums. And I somehow missed it. I really liked that band. They had a lot of records. Yeah, yeah. So it was on like a re-release thing or whatever. And he was right. It was like one of the best seven or eight Spash of Pumpkins songs that I've heard.

[1:52:52] Um, [1:52:53] But I like that he deep dove. And I think that's one thing. [1:52:57] I think the... [1:52:59] From what I've noticed from my kids, they really like something. They go all in on it. [1:53:04] And then it kind of goes to the next thing sometimes, but then other things stay. [1:53:08] And that gives me more hope. [1:53:11] that, [1:53:11] So circle back. [1:53:14] to the things that kind of resonated the most, which I would hope that's how it keeps going. [1:53:19] I just, it makes me nervous. It makes me nervous. I think you're rightfully nervous. Yeah. All right, we'll end on that. We'll end on that disappointing topic. [1:53:32] Football, how'd your book do? Good? [1:53:34] seemed like it did really well relative to other books it seems to be doing great it's hard as hell to sell books now especially not fiction ones but yes i was very pleased i mean i'd say of of all of the books i have released the this uh like uh release however you look at it was probably been the most fun since the very first one in a lot of ways like it it has went great i think i did like [1:54:04] that's just how, that's how it is. You know, you were like a borderline podcast whore. I was watching it from afar. I was like, wow, look at this guy. Well, [1:54:10] I just went on whatever. I mean, it was like they kept saying, they want you to be on this one. Will you be on it? And I'll be like, well, why not? Because these what also is shocking to me, maybe not shocking, just

[1:54:24] maybe predictably surprising. [1:54:27] A podcast can be extraordinarily popular [1:54:30] And yet completely unknown to every single person who doesn't actively listen to it. Like it is just wild. It was not like there's been nothing else like this. We're like, you know, you could be somebody like you didn't watch the TV show Dallas, but you knew Dallas was a popular TV show. Like you didn't like Nickelback, but you knew Nickelback was huge. There are all these podcasts with massive audiences that every single person I mentioned him to would be like, what? I've never heard of that. I've never heard of it. [1:55:00] And then we know it's in New York. [1:55:03] doing some of these and like you're kind of in Chinatown or like on that Lower East Side. And like every time you see like a dilapidated office building, you go in and it's all [1:55:13] podcast studios? How many podcasts are being put out there? It's just bizarre. It must have been like, you know, when they always say at one point, the city of Chicago had like 152 daily newspapers or whatever. That's kind of what it's like now, where it's just like all these people being able to do this. [1:55:35] It's fine. There's no downside to it, but it's just strange. I think that's a good analogy, though, because you think about [1:55:42] whatever time that was in America when every city had seven newspapers, but, [1:55:47] If you lived in another city, you didn't know anything about the other seven newspapers in like Boston. [1:55:52] Or Chicago. It's kind of what it's like. [1:55:54] All right, Chuck Klosterman, great to see you as always. Thank you for the time. See you later. I will see you during the NBA playoffs.

[1:55:59] Okay. Bye-bye. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chuck. Thanks to Eduardo and Gahal. As always, don't forget. [1:56:07] TheRinger.com slash events. [1:56:10] Tickets go on sale for our We Watchables live show in San Francisco on April 8th. So on April 1st, 10 a.m., go there, get tickets, and we'll see you in the Bay. I'm going to be back on this feed one more time on Thursday with one more podcast. See you then. [1:56:38] We saw. [1:56:40] So I [1:56:41] Thank you. [1:56:44] Must be 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C., Kentucky or Wyoming. If you have a problem, call 1-800-GAMBLE or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call [redacted government id] or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call [redacted phone] for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8-HOPE. [1:57:14] or text HOPENY in New York for Louisiana. Call [redacted phone]. [1:57:20] Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.

[1:57:47] seven.