The Bill Simmons Podcast - Chuck Klosterman on Brooklyn’s Dominance, Fandom, Sports Fixes, and UFOs

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by author Chuck Klosterman to discuss Damian Lillard’s future after another Trail Blazers playoff exit, how player movement has shaped today’s NBA, radical ideas to “fix” various sports leagues, UFOs and ghosts, documentaries, and more. Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Chuck Klosterman Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, if you love The Bachelor, which is an embattled franchise lately, but still, people still love it. We have, I think, the best Bachelor podcast. It is called Bachelor Party, hosted by Julia Lipman. It's been a staple of the Ringer Podcast Network since 2016. She returned this week. She broke down the season premiere with Nora Princiati, and Julia will be on that feed twice a week.

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We have another podcast premiering on my Book of Basketball 2.0 feed. It is called What If? The Len Bias Story. It's done by The Ringer's Jordan Kahn. I was not involved in this podcast other than a little behind the scenes stuff, but we're doing this as another season of Book of Basketball, seven parts. It just goes into

everything. It's one of the most shocking deaths in the history of sports. It changed the trajectory of the 80s in the NBA. It changed the trajectory of the Celtics. It became a turning point for the cocaine panic in America. There's a lot of unanswered questions about it that we dive into. And I think this podcast is really, really good. It premieres on June 9th, which is this week, and it will be on the Book of Basketball 2.0 feed. I hope you're subscribing to that already, but if for some reason you're not, check it out and those pods will be up once a week, the next seven weeks. So usually I've been starting with the NBA at the top of these pods,

but it's a slight lull here. I thought maybe we could get away with just putting up a me and Chuck pod without knowing anything that happened tonight in the basketball games. Right now I'm taping this. It is 4.30 Pacific time. Hawks, Sixers, game two.

It's just about to start. Clippers, Jazz, game one is about to start. If there was ever a day to maybe just say, screw it, we'll cover all this stuff on Thursday. I think today's the day because Chuck and I have to catch up. A lot of stuff to talk about. A lot of stuff.

Brooklyn Nets, Trey Young, UFOs, music documentaries, all kinds of things. So if we come out of Pearl Jam and I'm talking and I'm telling you that it's nine o'clock at night or whatever and this crazy thing happened, that meant something genuinely crazy happened in basketball.

If not, we'll cover basketball on Thursday's pod. We're going to check right now. First, Pearl Jam. All right, Chuck Klosterman is here. We're taping this on a Tuesday afternoon. There's a lot going on. I have to ask you this. We should start here. You have the local perspective on the franchise superstar

who nobody knows if he's going to leave or not. You live in Portland. You've been there a couple years. Everyone there loves Dame Lillard. And now it seems like he's staying. They have to get a new coach. Seems like he has more power. But in this day of the super team and

stars aligning, you just never know when your star is going to leave. What is the mood in Portland with the Dame situation? Well, okay. My analysis of the mood in Portland is what a guy working on my downstairs bathroom, a contractor told me this morning, since I don't really go out into Portland that much, but we talked about Lillard this morning a little bit. There's all these assumptions about him. There is an assumption that he is sort of inherently loyal and that he will do whatever he can to stay in Portland, seemingly based on the fact that he's from Oakland.

I don't fully understand. I mean, in some ways, the relationship makes sense to me, but in other ways, it does not. The thing is, though, that if he starts in any way to express a desire to leave, trade him as soon as you can, because that's just how it is now. I mean, the Harden thing, I think, really is a hinge point in this. This has been happening for a while, but, you know, you can see this a little bit with Aaron Rodgers, actually a lot with Aaron Rodgers.

Like, every day the Packers wait, the less they're going to get for him, because he's going to leave and it's going to happen. And it's just, if Lillard wants to leave, somehow it's going to occur. So if you get the sense that he wants to go, I guess you're going to blow everything up. I mean, you look at the Portland team, it's a very likable team. It's a competitive team. I don't know what you could add that would sort of make them elite

without kind of an obvious idea of taking just some randomly selected player and putting him in there. I think there's a sense he's not going, that he's going to stay here. But it's really based on nothing. It's like there's no reason

to believe it or disbelieve it. Yeah, it seems like when we were growing up and even like post-college, if a guy was unhappy, sometimes you kind of wrote it out and it could work, right? Like Hakeem Olajuwon is a good example. He was really unhappy in Houston. They almost traded him. They decided not to trade him. They kept him. And then he had the best three years of his career and he won two titles and had cemented himself as a top 15 guy. I think nowadays, he probably just would have forced his way out

because there doesn't seem to be a backlash against the player anymore for a variety of reasons we can go into. But now there's, a player really has nothing to lose if he wants to just say, screw it, I'm going to leave. And it's, I just think, I think you're right.

I think it's where the league's going. Once there's a hint that the guy has the foot out the door, it just seems like it's over. What is the modern example of somebody being like, I've rethought this. I'm actually now, now I've decided to be happy here. Once the foot's out the door, it seems like it's done. Well, I think in the past, it was not uncommon for the media to side with the players and the audience and the fans, not to like with Jabbar or whatever,

the seventies wanting to leave Milwaukee. I think that, that the average person looked at that and thought that was completely inappropriate. But I think there were some people on the media who were like, well, these guys are with the league is built around. They should have agency over their life. They should have all this control. Now that's the general opinion. I think that the progressive

idea now seems to be that in any situation where it's a player in management, you should sort of ideologically side with the player. You could give all these different reasons, like when Harden wanted to get out of Houston, you could give all these, like, they changed the whole team for him, they did everything they possibly could, they gave him all these different sort of, you know, collections of talents, and this would put him over the top, but ultimately you're like, well, he should be able to have some control over what his life is like. That seems to be what you're supposed to think now. And if audiences feel that way, like if the fan bases seem to think that, I don't know how you can stop people from leaving.

Because the only real way you could stop people before would be to argue, this will ruin your legacy. People will hate you here. They'll never get over this. And now if you make that argument to someone, the player can be, that's not true. argue this will ruin your legacy. People will hate you here. They'll never get over this. And now if you make that argument to someone, the player can be, that's not true. LeBron left Cleveland. When he came back, they loved him more. There just isn't any kind of residue left over from leaving a franchise. It doesn't seem to change how people are remembered. Yeah. I wonder if Durant leaving OKC is going to be the last time somebody took serious shit for that.

Right. And that was when I got to know him a little bit because I was one of the, I was in a weird, in a weird twist. I was just on the other side of it. I was kind of like, I can kind of understand why he would leave. I think he's chasing some higher level of basketball and he had this opportunity

to play with all these guys and he just really wanted to do it. But the response in OKC when he came back, all that stuff, I don't think we'll see that again. You know, and there's still some residue, right?

The Mavs fans were booing Rondo every time he had the ball in the Mavs Clipper Series. He didn't play that much. Houston, Harden went back there. They tried to, their hearts weren't really in it because their team was so bad. I was Clipper series. He didn't play that much. Houston part and went back there. They, they tried to, their hearts really in it.

Weren't really in it. Cause their team was so bad, but I think for the most part that Durant, okay. See thing will be the last time people would just be furious that somebody left. Well, yeah.

I mean, that it's a, it's a, it's a very delicate thing though, because I think now for people really engaged with pro basketball, they're sort of like, this is how it it is now the game has changed on the floor the game has changed off the floor this is sort of the game we watch now but i do think that it has a negative impact on casual things and that's why i sort of feel like like i told you this when you texted me about this podcast, it's like,

it seems pretty clear to me, the Nets are going to just walk through the playoffs and win the title. And during that whole period of the playoffs, that will actually be interesting. People will be, I think, be drawn to this idea that there's this seemingly unbeatable team. Can they be beaten? And if they are, if someone does take them out,

I think that will be kind of a real sort of exciting thing. But if they don't, if they just kind of go through it and nobody really challenges them, it's going to be odd. I think there's going to be this real sense of why should I follow a sport where they don't care about the regular season at all? They can kind of compile a team inorganically that has incredible success at a very high level. You know, like it's fun to watch them play, but it does seem to me like the NBA is putting themselves in a dangerous position by letting all of these various threads sort of go to their logical extension. Like it doesn't seem like a good thing to me.

Yeah. I mean, if you take it individually, it's manageable. But if you add the five things together, it becomes a little less manageable. Like you mentioned the regular season. There's a bunch of reasons that they're in a bad spot with that. But like, you know, I used to love hockey as much as I love basketball. Um, when I was growing up pretty much all the way through college, but the regular season became so meaningless that I just started watching in the playoffs. Cause it was like, there was just no rhyme or reason to what happened in the regular season compared to what happened in the playoffs. Because it was like, there was just no rhyme or reason to what happened in the regular season

compared to what happened in the playoffs. And at some point, you just look at it and you go, well, I have better ways to spend my time. I don't love hockey that much. I don't need to watch. Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, that was the same thing

they said about the NBA in the 70s and the early 80s. And that didn't stop you from falling in love with it. So I don't think it's, I still think there'll be people who like that. But that was different though.

The issue with the regular season in the 70s was it didn't seem like the players cared. Exactly. But wasn't it the same with the Nets? Like, Kyrie would take a day off against the Timberwolves because he was sort of worried about other things. Right. I mean, that's not a criticism of him. That's just the way he kind of perceives it you know but it would it would be interesting i gotta say like it would be fascinating to me

if like kairi elected not to play and say the first game of the eastern conference finals because it was like i don't know china's in tibet or something like he has some reason that he's there's something happens in the news that he finds real meaningful because he was always missing a game like a road game against the Timberwolves or something. It would be interesting. It would really validate all his claims. All the

things that he presents himself as if he elects, while fully healthy, to skip an incredibly meaningful game. Although if Harden is back, it might not, it might not be that meaningful. It seems like they have two of their three guys playing. They can pretty much beat anyone the way the game is played now. Well, they might have four guys now with the Blake Griffin's rejuvenation.

There might be the big four instead of the big three. I do think someone mentioned this to me a couple of weeks ago, and I mentioned on the pod before, but I'm going to repeat it. Um, if, if the players and the teams don't care about the regular season that much, and they're doing like the load management and they're just throwing games away, or even like near the end of the season, tanking the last two, so they could go a seed down, stuff like that. At some point by osmosis, the fans aren't going to care as much either. Right. Because they're like, well, you know, I bought tickets for a Friday and so-and-so didn't play. So maybe I'm not going to do that again.

I do think there's some real danger with that stuff. Weren't NBA ratings down 49% this year? They were. And there's probably a variety of reasons to it. But yeah, it's a significant number. I think that's one thing. The other thing I was thinking, you know, it's become clear this week that unless Brooklyn, something substantial happens on an injuries front or whatever, that they're going to win the title. They're just,

the fact that they've destroyed Milwaukee like this, I thought Milwaukee was the best chance to beat them. So if you go back to 2019, when Durant gets hurt, but if he doesn't get hurt, I think the Warriors win that year too. And I think they win three in a row. So basically that would mean the last five titles would be decided basically by somebody saying, I'm going to go play with these other great guys, right? It would be three straight Golden State.

It would be the Lakers last year where Davis and LeBron clutched and ranges that and they get to play together. And now this year with the Kyrie KD thing. And if that's where the league is going, then I wonder like if there's going to be as much fascination with the off seasons and things like that, because ultimately there's between seven and 10 great players every year. And if three of them are just going to team up here and two are going to team up here and two there, just what happens to the other 25 teams, which brings us back to the Portland thing. If, if Dane doesn't find the second great person for him to play with,

he's just never going to win a title. And I think you look at the formula now and you're like, there's no other way to do this. I have to find other players as good as me, or I will never win the title. What happened with Dirk in 2011 will never happen again. I guess I disagree with you about the off season stuff. Won't that become amplified because that will become more meaningful than the season. Like what's going on in June and July.

I guess what will the months be now? What will be the, uh, it will be August, September, October. Yeah, just for this year. Yeah, and then it'll go back. That will be a more significant period than December, January, February.

And that's why I feel like the fan base for the NBA now, and in some ways, I think this is being shaped. It's possible that Silver is somewhat consciously doing this, that he's sort of recognizing that it doesn't seem like professional basketball as a visual kind of entertainment can compete with football or with a lot of other things that seem to be rising in the culture. But what they can dominate is sort of this idea of kind of like this constantly online person who is almost interested in the business and the transactional aspect

more than what's actually happening on the floor. So as the way things are going now, I think it will probably increase interest in the off season in the same way the NFL has been able to sort of just, you know, ratchet up interest in the draft and the release of the schedule and all these things that you know i mean it's just it's it is bizarre how what we're moving toward but what we're kind of moving toward is something that maybe is predictable this idea that sports are now more

interesting to people as an economy than they are as a sport. Like they are more like the big Kevin Durant story that was in the New York Times Magazine last week. And like, is that really a story about basketball? Or is it a story about sort of the idea of like what a basketball player is supposed to represent now in the culture. I don't know. I mean, I still predominant, my predominant relationship is still with the games themselves. And, you know, I'm often watching them

with the sound off. So I'm really just seeing basketball. And I have been more, I was probably more engaged with the NBA this year than I have been in, I don't know, 20 years or something. Partially because I was in a couple of fantasy leagues and partially because I was also

just stuck, you know, and that seemed the most like life. It seemed the most like the way normal life used to be or whatever, just watching these games with the sound down. So for me, it's not like I'm losing interest in the NBA, but it does seem like, as always, the NBA is in trouble, as it's been my whole fucking life always, the NBA is in trouble, as it's been my whole fucking life. The NBA has been in trouble. There's never been a time when the NBA didn't seem like they were in some kind of catastrophic crisis.

They exist in that world where it's just always a problem. Yeah, I was thinking about the offseason stuff. Let's say Detroit signs Lonzo Ball. Ten years ago, I'd be like, oh, Detroit signed Lonzo Ball. Interesting. It could be a piece. Now it's like, all right, well, they signed Lonzo Ball. They still have 0% chance

to win the title. I think I'm more cognizant maybe in 2021 of just how many teams have 0% chance. I even look at a team like Portland where you just go they probably have zero chance to win the title i don't know if i would have said that three years ago maybe i was just more naive about the concept of stars teaming up but now that okay well then

let's me let me ask you this okay yeah how many teams this year do you think have a legitimate shot to win the title of the teams that remain? Before this week, I would have said like seven. Okay. And now you would say one. I don't, I just don't see a roadmap for, I hate to be reactionary after two games,

but the fact that they're role players in Brooklyn, like that, they also hit a home run with some of the guys who aren't even the superstars. Yeah, well, their role players are good. That's the thing. Joe Harris is good. Joe Harris is good? Bruce Brown is good. But, you know, it's

kind of idiotic, unless to say that, because before Durant and Irving came back last year, granted, some of those guys are gone now, but that was a pretty good team. You know, a lot of those dudes are out, but they got something back last year. Granted, some of those guys are gone now, but that was a pretty good team. A lot of those dudes are out, but they got something back for them. I mean,

it does seem like that also the way the game itself has changed. That's the thing. It plays into this, whereas, say, in the 90s, when the Rockets put Akeem and Clyde Ricks and Mark Barkley together,

the belief was this never works. Or when the Lakers got Peyton and Karl Malone, it was like, see, this never works. And now it seems like it always works. That's why I do have to – I will see what you think of this. Okay. So one thing I often see people say when they're bemoaning this in the same kind of reactionary way you and I are doing is they're like, you know, Jordan would have never done this. Jordan would have never done this. He would have

done it. He would have had to have, right? Because if we believe that Jordan is the most competitive person, a person who will cheat a grandmother at cards, somebody who'll do anything to win. If this is the best way to win, he would have done it. So maybe this would have always happened. In which case, then it isn't so much a change in the culture, but a problem with how players move. And that maybe the NBA has to find a way to limit this because this is like, I don't know. I have a feeling that sometimes you and Ursula talk about this. You kind of talk around it, though.

It's like you talk about this issue, but not directly. Which is that like, what is the purpose of something like the NBA or any pro sport? I mean, if it is to be a form of entertainment, sort of giving people this kind of agency and freedom is going to dilute the product to a point where it's all going to collapse. But we almost work from the premise now that a pro athlete is supposed to be able to sort of pursue their dreams and make an intense amount of money. And like, that's actually like, like kind of a right, but these are leagues, like these are constructed things. This is a false kind of reality.

And I don't know if this is like, like we were talking about the tennis player in the French Open. Yeah. You know, if somebody says like, how do you feel about this? How do you feel about her doing, you know, I mean, you've got to say, it's like, I support her. You've got to support people who feel sort of uncomfortable and all this, you know. But like in a larger sense, it does sort of kind of work from this idea that like tennis is supposed to exist as it exists. And it's supposed to be this incredibly lucrative kind of meaningful thing.

It's like it exists because people are interested in it. So if we sort of say, you don't have to do anything that keeps people interested in your game, it's eventually going to put the whole enterprise in jeopardy. Now, her individual case is not. In fact, I have to say, I didn't even know the French Open had started until that happened. I mean, it's not like her not talking at these press conferences hurt the profile of the French Open.

But it is an odd thing. I mean, I think it kind of goes back. We used to talk about Popovich not playing guys on a Friday night when a game was on TNT. And he wouldn't play Duncan and Ginobili. And it would be this weird thing. And the natural reaction as a basketball fan was to be like, well, he's not supposed to worry about TV ratings. He's not supposed to worry about the fan experience. His job is to win a title.

And if resting his players on a Friday night is the best way to do it, he should do it. But that suggests that basketball is like a real thing. It's not a real thing. It's like a game that was invented and we put it on TV to make an entertaining product. That's its purpose. So you kind of have to do those things, even if they seem completely ancillary

to the job you were hired to do. We're going to take a break. I have some thoughts on what you just said. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer.

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. All right. So what you're talking about it, when things can shift certain ways and inadvertently hurt the competitiveness of the league. So this happened in baseball, right? In the 2000s, where the money became kind of untenable for how much money the Red Sox and the Yankees and I think there were like two other teams could spend. They could basically just have a payroll that was two and a half times

as much as everybody else, right? With no real repercussions. And we're headed toward this world where it just seemed like for a couple of years there that every single year it was gonna be the Red Sox or the Yankees winning the World Series or whoever else wanted to spend that kind of money. I think soccer is in this position now.

You look at the Premier League and a team like Man City can just splurge. And there's seven, eight soccer teams that can just spend crazy amounts of money and they're just going to have a way more realistic chance of winning. So we've seen stuff. I just don't know how to prevent it with basketball, because if you look at what happened, the nets, it was pretty organic. Durant and Kyrie played out their contracts. They wanted to play together. They went to a team that was in a big market that had saved a lot of cap space for them.

Right? So you have that. They already had a couple of good players. They brought in a coach who is really savvy offensively, who is one of the great offensive point guards we've had, who figured out a way to utilize all these pieces. And then at the same time, the game is shifting toward offense, offense, offense, as Rosilla was laying out on Sunday, where the offensive ratings have just threw the roof for eight or nine teams in ways that have no parallel historically. So you have this teaming of events that happens a little like with the 2017 Warriors and you just look at it and you go,

well, fuck. What could have stopped that? There's no rule that could have changed or fixed any of that, which I think makes a lot of fans, maybe they're not against it, but they're just kind of like, there's a helplessness to some of this stuff

that I think goes back to the 80s where it was like, all right, if you have bird or you have magic or you have Michael, you have a really good chance to win the title. You might have the 89 Pistons path. You might have the early nineties Blazers path, but for the most part, you need one of those guys. And it was the same level of helplessness. Now it's just shifted. Well, there was a period where the way it worked, always that the team who possessed the player could pay him more to keep him from jumping.

You know, I think that's still the case, but the salaries are so high now, it makes less of a difference. I mean, it's sort of like if you're, you know, buying a house for $780,000. And for some reason, it turns out the last minute, you know, you can save $40,000 by buying a different house. It's like, well, I'm already paying $780,000. You know, I think that for a lot of these guys, it was sort of like, well, I'll go somewhere else. It's like, yeah, I'll leave $14

million on the table. It's like, I can't spend the money I have. You know, it's like, yeah, I'll leave $14 million on the table. It's like, I can't spend the money I have. I think that's part of it, just that the salaries went up so much. Well, they can make the money off the court too and make up the difference if they're in a big market. I mean, you can't blame the guys in the present. The guys doing it now, everybody has to do what's best for them in the moment. Like it's, you know, if, if all the ringer employees found a way to get their salary moved up to $300,000 a year, of course they'd have to do it, but then it wouldn't exist. The whole thing wouldn't exist at some point. You know, it's like, you, you can't expect that these players to be like, well, we're not

going to do what's best for us in the moment because this could damage the league in 10 years from now. Pro basketball could be less popular. That's kind of what the commissioner has to do. I mean, I think the commissioner's main job in any sport, it always does go like, well, he just works for the owners. Well, yeah, but the main thing he needs to do or she needs to do is kind of protect the integrity of the game itself. That's why I think it's like,

I think the NBA should, uh, I think it would be their advantage to help out the college game to make the college basketball more vibrant and more robust i think that would be better for basketball as a whole like he's like like people care about these things and spend money on these things because they like the thing they like basketball and if you allow everyone to sort of do what's best for them in a way that makes the thing less desirable. I mean, maybe it won't matter. Maybe it'll just kind of keep going on and perpetuate. Sometimes I think that too.

That's like, so even if pro basketball becomes less popular, it's still a live event. It's still live sports. It'll still have a TV relationship. It will still, you know, like people still want to go to something and it won't really matter how misshapen that even if it becomes more of a niche thing, it'll still be able to succeed. But I mean, I do think football has done a much better job at keeping the game somewhat similar to the game that people loved originally. I mean, it changes, of course, but they keep it more in check in a way that is believed to be or kind of considered to be draconian

and like anti-labor and stuff like that. But these are not normal jobs. I mean, it's like every job is not the same. And the way we look at sort of like the principles of like a coal miner and what his position should be is not the same as James Harden. It's just, you know.

Well, I think football, there's so many guys on the roster that it becomes, you can, there's what, four or five guys who can swing the destiny of a team, right?

Every year. There's the Rogers Mahomes type and we just saw it with Brady and the Bucks, even though it's advanced advanced Brady. But you think of the 2000s, Manning and Brady every year. One of those guys is in the AFC title game, and there's five of those guys. But you can't really team up in football like this. Rodgers couldn't say, I'm going to team up with, I don't know, Julio Jones and, uh, DK Metcalf, and we're going to go play for the chargers. There's no way to do that. Nobody

would be able to construct the cap that way. And I think it's funny how this worked out where the NBA in the late nineties, early two thousands, the long-term contracts were so disastrous for them, right? Where it was like, oh, we got to get out of this. Got to make the contract shorter. And then the shorter contracts inadvertently led to everything that happened the last eight, nine years. I think all of it is pretty natural and organic and there's not much you can do about it. The only thing that I think Silver really needs to fix is the hardened piece of it, where a guy can just basically quit on his team. He's making 35, 40 million a year,

whatever he was making, and he could just be like, fuck it. And I'm going to behave a certain way until they trade me and then goes to Brooklyn and he's super happy again. You have to fix that. There has to be some way to fix that. But isn't that less fixable though? I mean, how can you,

what fix can you employ to demand people to care? Well, do you think the Rockets should have suspended him for 10 games without pay when he just wasn't showing up for anything? They could have done that.

I guess it would have been no difference. He wouldn't have come back and like, well, okay, I'll play hard now. I mean, it was just,

I mean, they could have done that. He probably would have been pleased by it, that he wouldn't have had to show up and that he wouldn't have had to like, you know, kind of go through these motions. And, you know, I don't think it would have bothered him. And I don't think, like, I'm not attacking the guy.

I don't think he's some terrible person. I mean, I just think that he is, like anybody, wants to do what is best for himself. And you can't blame people for doing that. That's why we can't look at these guys, these players, and be like, they got to be different or they got to change. They, of course, are going to do what's best for themselves. This is when someone has to step in from the outside and say, this is how it's going to be now. And, you know, you're going to make him unpopular. I mean, it made Stern unpopular,

but I think what he was, but in retrospect, the farther we get away from like Stern's tenure, Pete Rozelle's tenure and all this, the better it looks to me, the better it seems like they had a better understanding of how to sustain a sport as opposed to sort of just dealing with the machinery as it moves. Well, the counter to this would be like, well, so what? We have super teams all the time. So what if Brooklyn wins four titles in a row?

They out-engineered. They out-thought everybody else. The Durant-Kyrie thing, if you just look at it from those two guys, where Durant was clearly unhappy in Golden State, Kyrie was clearly unhappy in Boston. They're really close friends. And they're like, fuck it. Let's go play together.

And then they basically orchestrated. They brought in the coach they wanted. They pulled out the Blake Griffin thing. Somehow figured out how to rejuvenate him. I'm sure they have a hand in a lot of how they put it together. It's really kind of brilliant when you think about it. It's as brilliant as anything LeBron did. And why shouldn't

they be able to do that? I have a tough time coming up with a counter to it. The answer to me seems obvious. It's like, do people like it? I mean, this is still a form of entertainment. But if you're Kevin Durant, do you care if people like it?

Your goal is just to win the title. It's for him. For him, he doesn't have to worry about whether or not even he personally is like or dislike. He does seem to care about that. But like, yes, you can't put, you can't put the responsibility on like, okay, this is I suppose somewhat dehumanizing,

but if you look at the NBA like a chess board and the various pieces are the players and you know, like, like Durant and LeBron are the Kings and the Queens of this and different players, you know, like you can't look at the pieces and be like, well, it's their job to make this game interesting.

It's the rules of the game. The rule of the game is to win the game. Yeah. It's not a problem for Durant, but it mean, it's a problem. The fact that like, okay, so the NBA playoffs are on, you and I both love them. And yet what are we talking about? The fact that it seems like this is troubling when I'm in my car and I listen

to guys talk on the radio, they seem to talk about two things. What happened in whatever game happened last night. And this is kind of a problem. We're like kind of in this, in this weird impasse where it seems as though um that that where we went from one situation you know in the past where the players had no control where now they have most of the control and something in the middle seems to be the best way to do it. But yeah, you're talking from a competitive standpoint. From a competitive standpoint, but also just sort of from an interest standpoint. I mean, the argument could be made that this conversation is proof that this is good.

Because we're talking about how this is going to play out. What does it mean when it plays out? It seems to be more than just guys playing basketball. Now it's sort of this idea of how the thing is run or whatever. But another part of me is like, I don't, I don't know. It seems misshapen to me. You know what the most interesting, so here's a result that would give you hope, right?

That there's some sort of solution for this. The Lakers, because we had a shortened season, they end up with a seven seed. They're not 100% healthy going into the series. Then Davis gets hurt. They're playing the two seed Phoenix, who's a really good team, who was healthy, even though Paul got hurt for a couple of games.

And they just lose. They have bad luck. So why did that happen? Because the season was shorter and LeBron going down for 20 games or whatever it was really seesawed it for them. They went from being a potential two seed to a seven seed, all these obstacles down in front of them.

They don't have home court advantage for any part of the playoffs. And maybe think, remember when Leicester City won the Premier League that year and people were talking about how incredible it was and blah, blah, blah. But it actually wasn't, it was incredible, but it wasn't as incredible. There was no NBA corollary to it because it could

never happen in the NBA because they play so many games. Whereas in soccer, there were less games, less schedule, which means more variants. And I was wondering with the NBA regular season, maybe that's part of how we solve this. Maybe we need, I mean, maybe it should be like a 60 game regular season where there's just the, the games are just way more important. You can, if you lose somebody for two weeks, it could be really hurtful. If you have a guy just skip out for a week, it could be really damaging and you're a lower seed. And basically the Lakers would be the model for that. Now they would say, we can't do that because we give up, we lose so much revenue. I still feel like though, lose so much revenue standpoint, to have more scarcity of the product, to have it mean more to go to a game,

to have it mean more to watch one on TV, I would argue that's a better path. They'll never do it, but- Oh, of course they'll never do it. My friend, Brant, once brought up a point. I wonder what you thought would think of this. Okay. How interested in baseball would you be if baseball radically reinvented itself and adopted football schedule? Just had a 17-game regular season? Well, actually, I guess not quite football,

more like college hockey. There would be a game Friday and a game Saturday. Those would be the only two games of the week. So those two nights would be the only two nights you could watch baseball and follow baseball. I feel like bars would be insane on those nights. I feel like the, you know,

and every game would be basically your best pitcher would pitch and your second best pitcher would pitch the next night. So every one of these games would be 2-1-1-0. I think that I would follow baseball pretty closely if there was two games a week. And every team is playing on Friday and Saturday. So if you follow your own team, you wouldn't really even see the other teams. All you'd see are highlights because all the games would

be on the exact same time across the coast. So it would be like a real kind of limited experience. I think that would obviously completely change the whole sort of concept of baseball, which is that they want it to be this sort of long

drawn out thing. I think it'd be real cool if it was only two games a week. Yeah, we could say three. It's a three game series every weekend and that's it. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It could be Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday afternoon. Those are the three days baseball happens. It's interesting.

See, I think baseball is in a good spot because baseball, their calling card is basically we're on all the time. Every night we're here. We're here for you. Sometimes the games might be good. Other times it might be a 12-2 game. But I think they're just kind of the comfortable blanket. So now you're...

I thought you were like, baseball's dead. Kids hate it. I'm kind of back on baseball. How did that change? I think because the Red Sox got good again. I think I just started enjoying it. Maybe we're all just crazy. I was more into playoff hockey this year than I've been in the last eight.

So tell me this. When Trey Young was at Oklahoma, I remember you texting like, this is the best freshman I've ever seen play basketball. I still feel that way. Then you hated him for like a bunch of, like a long period. And now you like him again.

What happened? Hates a strong word. Well, you, you were very hard on it. Sports hate it. No, I listen.

I'm pretty consistent on this. When it's somebody putting up stats on a bad team, that's constructed to make that guy look good at the expense of things that actually work for a winning, whatever. I'm just not going to like it. I'm just going to tell you if the next time the situation happens, I won't like it again. I think what happened over the last three months is he figured out how to

become a winning point guard. And I think he's, I'm telling you, I watched it happen. So you think that five months ago, he was a different person. I think he was the first, look at his stats at the first 35 games of the season versus what happened after. So what was he at Oklahoma? What was he at Oklahoma? Well, Oklahoma, that's just, he's a really fun college basketball player who was a one

man show. Was he good? Yeah, but he was a one man show in Oklahoma. Was he great? I thought he was great in one-man show in Oklahoma. Was he great? I thought he was great in college. Okay, so you thought he was great. Okay, so then he got... And then it just seemed as though

you really held something against him because of the Luka and the draft. And you kind of got... You got on one ship and then... And even though Luka's awesome, slightly overrated. I love all good basketball players. I love all good basketball players. I love all good basketball players.

I just don't, the style that he was playing with, I was just like, why are people celebrating this? They lose. Great. He put out, he scored 30,

took 28 shots. Everybody else stood around and watched him. What's fun about this? I think what's amazing this season is how he transformed over the course of the season. Now the shit he's doing is like high level, Steve Nash, mid 2000 stuff.

Like he's picking apart these teams. He was not doing this four months ago. The team's better. The team is better. That's a huge part of it. I don't know if his style has changed at all. It seems like he shoots a higher percentage and as a consequence is shooting a few less shots a game.

But, you know, I mean, a lot of times he would have those horrible games where he'd go like seven for 28 because he had to take like 11 shots in the last four minutes because they were down 20 or whatever. And that probably, but I don't feel like his game has radically, is any different. He does

the same stuff. I completely disagree. And I've argued. He does the same stuff. I completely disagree. And I've argued about other Atlanta fans with this. I think he has a much better sense of the pace of the game and how he can throw his team off by doing certain things. Before, you know, he would just take these 32

foot shots down six with four minutes left and it would be a brick and the other team would score and the game would be over. Like, he's much savvier about the risks that he wants to take. And even like, I don't know, there's a real unselfishness with him now. And his teammates have talked about it. I mean, he, he was, I don't think that was a really happy team until they changed coaches. And I think that new coach had a real effect on him.

How many assists to the average last season? I don't know. I don't know about the stats part. I'm just, look, I'm eye-testing this. I just, there's a, with point guards, there's a certain sense when you watch them that they have a feel for the game, their team, the pace, when to

kind of assert themselves, when to pull back. There's all these mechanics to it that I just didn't think he understood until the last couple months. When did you see the switch flip? When they went on their winning streak, they won like eight or nine games. Bogdanovich came back. Right after the coaching change. He started trusting his teammates to hit shots and then started to figure out

kind of that balance of if I do too much, then these guys don't, then they're not involved enough. And then when I actually need them, they're not going to be ready. And he just kind of got it. And now you think like, like what he did to Philly in that first half, if the defense is saying like what Philly was basically like, we're not going to W here's Danny green. If you can beat him, God bless you. And he's like, cool.

And he just beat Danny green for the entire first half. That's what he should have done. Then they started pressing in the second. And he's like, cool. And he just beat Danny Green for the entire first half. That's what he should have done. Then they started pressing in the second half and he's like, all right. And then he figured out that part of it. It's like, to me, it's like watching a quarterback where you kind of, you can see it with quarterbacks where you're like, oh, he gets it. You know? And that's what I saw.

I mean, maybe I'm nuts, but just watching him. I didn't enjoy watching him the last couple of months. I really enjoyed watching him'm nuts, but just watching him. I didn't enjoy watching him the last couple of months. I really enjoyed watching him. Well, okay. I just, I felt like you were really tough on him for a while. Cause he's talented. I really, I believed in his talent and I didn't, I didn't think, I didn't think he was getting rewarded for the right things.

Weren't you like the Hawks are better when he's not on the floor? Wasn't that your position for a while? No, no, no. There was a stretch for a couple of games when Bogdanovich was in there when everybody was involved and they look better. And it's like, that's kind of illuminating. If your best players that out there and the team seems like they're

responding, but now I've, he's been awesome. And I'm, I'm psyched that we have another good point guard. Cause that was a position that, uh, I was going to go down the tubes.

The other thing is I love the stuff he did at MSG because I think the whole concept of sports villains and just having people that go into an arena and being like, fuck these guys and have a little chip on their shoulder. I feel like that's going away a little bit. And he kind

of brought it back in a way that, and I know a lot of people have talked about it, but I just liked watching somebody go into that place and just be completely unafraid of it and kind of fuck with it a little bit. You don't see it that often. Yeah. Well, and it was odd that like, uh, you know, when, when the game is for play without fans, I like, of course that stuff didn't exist because there was like nobody, like, you know, you were playing kind of in these empty barns or whatever, but when you're watching the game, you know, you were playing kind of in these empty barns or whatever. But when you're watching the game, you know, it was like, it was very easy to

forget the building was empty. Right. Hey, speaking of Trae Young and just the basketball players, because I wanted to mention this. Because we were talking about Dame Lillard. Dame Lillard, what's he going to do? And then people were like, well, I think Dame and you said that whole thing. Well, he's from Oakland.

People here seem to think that's we spent so much time psychoanalyzing these guys like that Durant New York Times piece. And I obviously spent some time with Durant a few years ago and we did all those pods and just, we, we have such a better sense of who we think these guys are. And I was trying to think like, did we think this way in the eighties and the nineties? Like, did, did I spend any time at all wondering what kind of person Larry Bird was? Like, I just, we just cared. We judged them by the basketball stuff. Right. We weren't like, I wonder what Larry thinks about this. Or I wonder how Larry's, how Larry's feeling about things. Like I just, when Larry was upset, when he would like criticize teammates, like he did in the 84 finals or like when he was unhappy in the late eighties, because the coach, they didn't like,

and it was like, bird's not happy with the coaches. Like, Oh my God, bird's not happy with the coach. It was like, felt like a bombshell. And now it seems like we just have this unfiltered connection.

All these players, social media plays a part of it. Um, I feel like I know these guys better. Like Durant last night, the guy, I don't know if you saw the post-game interviews, Jared Greenberg. And it was like his last question. And he said something like, hey, two years ago tomorrow was when you hurt your calf. did you think you would be able to be as good two years later as you are right now? And Durant was just like, what kind of question is that? That's your question? And just started like turning and making fun of him. And on the surface, you'd be like, oh, Durant's being a dick. But it was like, honestly, that was the most KD moment he's

had an interview where he's just like, he was disappointed the guy asked a dumb question. So he made fun of him. The guy reframed it. They made fun of each other and he kind of lifted it. But I guess my point is like, I feel like in a weird way, we know these guys way better than we used to. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I don't know if it just applies to sports. Here's something I think has happened. I'll see if you agree with me. I don't know if you will. But say you look over the 90s, the first 10, 15 years of the 21st century.

Yeah. Television becomes dominated sort of by reality television. The most popular form of nonfiction writing usually becomes some sort of memoir or memoir-like writing. The internet starts to exist and social media comes with it, although not until a little later. I think one thing that has happened that was, I don't know if it, I mean, I'm sure this happened in the past, but it seemed less central to the experience of this, which is this idea now that when people see the behavior of an athlete or an actor or a writer or any kind of celebrity, there's now this sort of natural inclination to project yourself into that person and assume that the decisions they're making must in some way mirror the decisions you would make if you

were them. So we look at somebody like Durant, for example, when he was using all those burner accounts to sort of stick up for himself on Twitter. I think that in the distant past, if there had been some corollary to this, people would have been like, that's weird that he did that, or that's wild that he did that. But now I think the natural move is to be like, okay, if I did that, what would that mean? Well, it would mean obviously that I was insecure about my perception, or it would mean that I'm worried about my brand because I have other sort of monetary ideas, or it would mean that I'm a natural, I'm a real person. And that's just how it feels to be, you know, injured, you know, verbally or whatever. I think that a lot of what

has happened in media has prompted, it's made the gap between the viewer and what is being viewed less. I mean, like reality television, the real world was a perfect example of this, where people would watch the real world and they would tend to look for the character that they felt was their avatar for themselves in that house. Which of these people is most like me? And that was expected. That was part of it. It was like, these shows work, you know, Survivor works or Big Brother works or any of these shows, The Bachelor works, because people will find this character and say that that's me. So now I think people kind of do that all the time. So when

we think about these guys, we feel like we know them better. We feel like we know actresses better because we imagine that they are us in this weird way, or we are them. And that we can explain their behavior by thinking about what we would do in the

same position. Does that seem possible? Do you think, about what we would do in the same position. Does that seem possible? Yeah, but do you think the fact that people have actual access to these people now, even if they're in their replies versus what we had 30 years ago, where it doesn't seem inconceivable that a celebrity could hear from you? It's not inconceivable.

It's totally conceivable. 30 years ago, it was inconceivable. The only way they were going to hear from you is if you went to see them in a concert or if you went to their game or if you ran into them at a restaurant. Or it would have to be some bizarre situation. And when that was the situation,

it was like, this person's not like me. And now the minute they respond to you, you're on the exact same plane. If Kevin Durant responds to a tweet you send to him, he is basically saying, we're on the same level now. This is the same thing we're talking. So I suppose maybe that does make it easier to feel like you have an idea of what he actually is like. Yeah. Well, and especially podcasts have really helped us too. Because a lot of these different people have done those long form interviews

and you do get a sense of person way better than you're going to get on like, if they're on Access Hollywood or if it's like a People Magazine story or something. But like, here's another thing though. It's like, okay, so like you're talking about Larry Bird in the 80s. And we would just kind of look at Larry Bird and occasionally you'd see a photograph of him he

was smoking a cigarette and it would be surprising or whatever and that a picture of him smoking a cigarette is how you would have to figure out all these other things about it you know now if let's say the 80s are happening now anytime larry bird does something well you turn on the television rachel nichols talks about what she thinks he's like, and Brian Wintour talks. And then, you know, Jalen Rose is talking about him with Jacobi. All of these people have given a version of what they think he is like, and the reason he did these things, or like what his personality is. And you kind of unconsciously build a composite of that. Right. I mean, you take all these things, all the speculation that people have said, and then you kind of put it all together, like into a ball of yarn. And then it's like, see, I have this clear understanding of what

this person is like when it's all different people just sort of expressing what they think might be the case. And if enough of those things match up, it kind of becomes true. It's like, you know, there's a line on an old record by the streets where he's talking about, it's like, people say, don't believe everything you read, but everybody does. And that is fucking true. Because even if they know it's fake, even if they know the thing they're reading is fake, it's like, but some people think that. So there must be a reason some people think this. Like it's weird.

It's like, it's not weird, actually. It's obvious. We're taking a break. I want to continue. I have one more point on this. All right, coming back, we're talking about whether we know athletes and celebrities better now than we used to. I was thinking about how important, especially when we were growing up, the takeout feature was.

So you mentioned that New York Times piece about Durant. I said that that piece did a pretty good job of capturing what he's like, because there's like a natural curiosity about him that I always thought was really interesting. The time I spent with him, like he, he's really genuinely curious. Like I remember, um, he got in trouble when he went on CJ McCollum's podcast a couple of years ago and CJ's like, you know, and you, you know, if we can win the title or he said something like that. And Durant was like, wait a second,

you think you have a chance to win the title? And was like really confused and curious about it. That's who he is. I think he's a curious guy. Back in the day though, those takeout features and the most famous one for sports was probably the Kornheiser piece that he wrote about Rick Barry,

which was just, and this was after Rick Barry had retired, but he wrote that one piece and it completely framed how everybody thought of Rick Barry for the rest of the decade. Those takeoff features were so important. And now I don't trust them nearly as much because if you're getting access with somebody for one of those things,

odds are there's some conditions, you were picked for a reason, things like that. I remember when you did something for GQ about Brady and you got in trouble. What year was that? What year was it? Maybe. Within the last 10 years, right?

I think it was, yeah. It was 2015 because Trump was running for president but didn't seem like he had any possibility of being elected. What was the question you asked that they were like, and it got tense? No, because I so they asked me, he was man of the year.

He was going to be their man of the year. And they were like, do you want to do a profile of him? And I was like, well, I want to ask him about deflating. That's the only thing I'm really interested in. Because I think that he's as great a football player as he is. I don't think there's ever going to be a situation where he is particularly forthcoming about how he thinks or feels, because I think he assumes that that would be some kind of competitive disadvantage. Now here again, I'm kind of projecting maybe what I think onto him, just like I was saying before,

but I was like, I want to, I want to talk to him about this. And they were like, sure, go ahead. And he was not informed that that was going to happen. He was, the guy who said you can ask him anything was not the guy who actually talked to Brady about what could and could not be asked. Yeah, because I think people and the people around them are so much smarter about what they say in those pieces. You go back

and they're offline now, unfortunately, but People Magazine, all of their archives used to be available from the 70s, 80s. They would write these features where they would be like, on the set of Three's Company,

there's turmoil. And then you would read the piece and people were so unbelievably candid. You were like, oh my God, I can't believe they said this. I can't believe Joyce DeWitt just completely murdered Suzanne Somers like that. How did she not realize they were recording this? And that was just kind of how it went in the 70s and 80s.

And then if it was in the right hands of the right writer, they could craft a really awesome kind of snapshot of who somebody was. Nothing was going to happen. Right. really awesome kind of snapshot of who somebody was nothing was gonna happen right it's like i mean it's like it's so people would be like if people who read matt the matt people magazine might be like choice de witt's different than i thought she was but that's it like there was no there was no like rippling effect that she had to worry about how this was going to you know that so that that's a big part of it i mean it's it's just like, I don't know, when I was working at Spin in the early 2000s, there were a lot of publicists who seemed to think that it was to their advantage to sort of control the presentation of the artist.

Like that, you know, that we want Jack White to be presented in this way. We want these things about the Beastie Boys to be what people think about the Beastie Boys or whatever. And, you know, it worked about half the time. Half the time, the idea they had was an improvement. The other half of the time, it was worse. And they'd been much better off letting the person be themselves. So it just kind of, I mean, if you're the person who's being interviewed, I think generally you want like,

I hope the piece is positive. So, you know, that's kind of all you care about, I think, but you know. I think documentaries have done, have kind of replaced those takeout features because, and granted, a lot of times with documentaries, they're being produced by either the artist,

celebrity, athlete, whoever, or people around them. But then there's other times where you can, you know, I remember, what was the one you loved, the Oasis one? The Oasis one was good. But, you know, documentaries have this huge advantage in that you can hear what the words sound like when they are said. And see it. That Kornheiser piece is great, and it did completely sort of galvanize the way people think of Rick Barry. But it is possible, if it was a documentary about Rick Barry at that point in his life,

and him talking about some of the things that seemed just incredibly petty on the page, you might have heard him say those things and be like, well, that's probably true, though. Like, what he's saying seems right. I mean, like, you know, I remember a period where Adam Sandler basically said he would never allow himself to do, like, print interviews again. He would only do things that were on television or would only do things, you know, in video

form because he was just certain that no matter what he said or what he expressed would be used by a writer who thought he had no talent to be kind of decontextualized and sort of placed as face value. I mean, that's always the thing. Obviously, the worst thing you can do in journalism is make up a quote, but it's not that far off to use a quote accurately in a context that you know, does not represent what the person was actually saying. And that happens all the time. It happens to me a few times.

It happens to, I think anybody who's ever had a story done on them has had this happen where it's like that, that, you know, that, can't tell if the person is saying this kind of off the cuff or if they're saying this, you know, sort of half jokingly, or if they're talking about a whole bunch of things and this is one thing they're also mentioning. It does sort of give this... The documentary

has the advantage of seeing the person say it and you get a real sense of how they meant it. Yeah. All right. We talked enough about sports. It's time. America's on pins and needles. I can't believe it took an hour to get here.

UFOs are real. I've been waiting to talk to you on this podcast. I've deliberately ignored talking to anybody else. Um, we've done a lot of conspiracy stuff over the years on pods. Uh, I think what that Malaysian flight went down. I think we did an emergency podcast. Like I, you love this stuff as much as I do it under the radar the last year so much shit was going over the last years the pentagon everybody else has basically just admitted that ufos exist and there's lots of encounters that they have no explanation at all for and it seems to be a real thing that is in the world and I just feel like 35 years ago, we would have had a heart attack.

This is all we would have talked about. You know, it is it's a fascinating thing. I mean, OK, here's sort of my take on this. I think for the longest time, 60s, 70s, 80s, even into the 90s, that when the U.S. government saw something or had evidence of something in the sky that made no sense, that didn't move the way it was supposed to move or, you know, it just could not be explained, their reaction was fear. This is the Russians. The Russians have a technology that we don't have. And we can't basically admit that they have developed a pill-shaped spacecraft that can move in any direction at four times the speed of sound or whatever. But then the Soviet Union collapses, and we learn all about their military science and their military technology. And it turns out they were actually a little behind us. They had some stuff, but nothing like this. So then there was this period of like, well, hmm, so how do we explain this?

How do we explain this? And they're like, we just can't kind of come forward with it. So it just sort of sat there. And I don't know exactly why it's coming out now, if it's because these guys are retiring and they're like, I'm going to talk about this before I retire. But my overall point about this is UFOs are like climate change. And that's why it seems like it's under the radar. Because you cannot say, I am the person who's into UFOs, I'm interested in UFOs, and then move to any other subject now.

It would be like if Greta Thunberg came out and she was like, yeah, I'm really interested now in privatized prisons. And people would be like, but wait, wait, you were just saying the world's going to be gone in 40 years, and now you're worried about privatized persons. If you say UFOs exist and you don't think that they're just unidentified things, that we don't know what they are, that these are things from a different planet. Everything else happening in the United States and the rest of the world is secondary. And it's almost too big of a thing to really focus on. It's like you just, everything about the concept of religion, probably everything about the concept of political science, the idea of what happens to any being

when they die, what is sort of the meaning of living in one space when there are places to live elsewhere. It's like, it's almost too much. And I think that people are afraid to take this seriously because if you do take it seriously, it's going to nullify so many other things about day-to-day existence. If you're really going to view these things as alien spacecrafts. mean so much. Just because we can't identify it doesn't mean it's from a different world. But, I mean,

the connection seems to be hard to avoid. If we don't know what something is, we don't know where it's from. Where is it from? So, it makes me think, like, going back to the Roswell days, and I didn't know if I believed in UFOs or not. Like, I believe

in certain things. Like, I definitely believe in ghosts. UFOs, I was always like, in certain things. Like I definitely believe in ghosts. UFOs. I was always like, why are they always in these certain parts? Why, why have we never seen one in like New York? Wait, wait,

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, you definitely believe in ghosts. I do. Definitely.

Yeah. Because of experiences you've had or just. Yeah. I believe in ghosts. Okay. I mean, that's not an, I mean, people believe in ghosts.

What happened to you? I've talked about it. I had a ghost experience when I stayed at that Skirvin Hotel and I was 100%. I completely changed my mind on ghosts. In 2010. I don't know. I don't know this.

I was staying there and it was staying on the floor that allegedly had the ghost. I was like, put me on the floor because I love horror movies. What hotel is this? It's a scurvy hotel in Oklahoma City. Okay. Okay. Are you there covering like the Thunder or something?

Yeah, I was there to go see a Thunder game or a couple of Thunder games, actually. Okay. So you say, put me on the haunted level of the hotel. And the hotel clerk was like, oh, you want to meet Effie, huh? Who was like the ghost they had. And I was asleep. And the thing about me is when I fall asleep, I don't wake up. It's really hard for me to wake up.

You would have to basically drive a bulldozer into the house. If I'm asleep, I'm asleep. And I woke up at, I don't know, like 3.45, 4 in the morning because I felt like somebody was in the room with me. And the hair in my arms were up. And it was like no experience I ever had. And I was looking over the window and I was fumbling for my glasses and turned on the light and there was nobody there. And then I was like, somebody was in here. I know somebody who's in here. And I couldn't fall back asleep. And I started Googling about the ghost. And it was about how the ghost had jumped out the window and where I saw the

person was, or where I thought the person was that wasn't there was right next to the window. And then I didn't fall back asleep. I was just up the rest of the night. Cause I was like, that was the most fucked up thing that's ever happened to me. And it was unexplainable. Do you know what you need to do? What? You need to listen to the song Black Sabbath by the band Black Sabbath off their first record, Black Sabbath.

That is about an experience very similar to yours. Wow. I believe that after that, and then when I Googled it and it turned out the lady had had this baby and jumped out the window with the baby. And I was like, well,

I thought I saw something by the window and I just fucked with my head. But I love horror movies. I love all that stuff. I do believe in ghosts. Anyway, UFOs, I never a hundred percent believed then cause I didn't understand why there weren't more interactions with them. I didn't understand why they're always in these obscure parts of the country and always in like obscure parts of the country and always in the desert. But now that we have these different cameras and we're able to... It just seems like there's

more interactions and it actually adds up. What was the consensus view you were supposed to have about aliens? It was always that the likelihood that aliens exist is extraordinarily high because the universe goes on for infinity and anything that can happen

in infinity will happen. So the likelihood that there is a planet where life exists is mathematically beyond plausible. However, the assumption was also

they would never actually be in touch with Earth. Right. They never fuck with us. Well, the assumption was also they would never actually be in touch with Earth. Right, they'd never fuck with us. Well, no, they'd never know it. We'd never come across it. The expanse of the universe is so great that the likelihood of someone being able to travel across it and happen to intersect with another

planet that has it is just too remote. Okay? I mean, so you thought it was interesting. Like what happened in the desert? There's a famous one in England, what kind of happens in a forest? Um, I mean, I guess it's true. Like there's never been like a UFO in like downtown Omaha, you know, it's like, that would be like, you know, it's like, you know, it never happens in in an urban area.

Or over Las Vegas. It's always in these remote places, so that's why I was always a little suspicious. Okay, so let's try to get into the mind of the alien. So if we are the aliens now, and we're visiting Earth, the technology they have must be greater than ours because obviously we don't have the technology to get anywhere beyond Mars, okay? We still don't, you know, we can't get people there yet.

So their technology must be much greater. If their technology is much greater, it has to be because they've had more time, basically, to develop it, one assumes. So let's say they are 200,000 years ahead of us intellectually. So now we're the aliens, right? We're on Earth. We're going to a different planet.

And we see people on that planet or creatures on that planet that are versions of hominids 200,000 years ago. What would we do? I think we would also try to watch them from a distance, right? If we saw essentially, you know, Neanderthals or like, you know, early humans, we wouldn't, you know, to us, we would be so much more advanced than them. I think our fear would be if we interact with them in any way, they're not going to be able to handle it um they're going to freak out it could change the trajectory of their whole society so if aliens

are visiting our planet and they're anything like humans um then they might be looking down at us almost the way we would look at you know like a like a chimp or something and they're like well we don't want to you know we need to sort of keep our distance and just observe this. And maybe we can learn from watching them sort of advance. If these aliens are like humans, then that would completely validate lots of very classic ideas about Christianity. Like if the aliens are like us, like if they do seem similar to us that would seem to suggest that they were created in somehow the same way i mean that would be a that would be a real interesting argument uh like it if aliens show up and they have any human qualities would that also sort of i don't know prove that humans are the apex of evolution.

I mean, if they come off the ship and they're octopuses or whatever, that would be even more confusing. Well, do you believe in reincarnation? Do I believe in reincarnation? I'm open to lots of things. I suppose I've reached a kind of point in my life where almost anything that is offered to me, I'll be like, well, it could be. Maybe.

If it's metaphysical. I mean, the population of the world keeps increasing. So if it's people moving from, you know, person to person person that does mean a lot of new souls are also being created good point yes um but then that's a small conference point yeah if the numbers are increasing where do we get the souls but then but the thing is also we also have you know lots of cattle we have lots of dogs we have maybe if reincarnate you can't say once you say reincarnation is possible then like the idea of trees being sentient that's totally on the table then the idea of a rock having some sort of personality is possible i mean like this is

always the thing it's like you know uh i remember having an argument with my sister one time about ghosts and um and my sister was, well, okay, if you're going to believe in ghosts, you have to believe all of these things. They can't travel across water and all these things. And I'd be like, well, I don't know. Why is that? It's like, that's the human idea of a ghost. It's not like that if we believe one thing, you have to believe all the rules. Once something unbelievable happens, all the other rules kind of go poof. So, you know, I mean, the thing about the UFOs, I guess, is that you see the footage and the reaction of the pilots. That's what freaked me out. Yeah. Because like they don't know what it is. Um,

but is there footage of pilots freaking out over stuff that they don't know what it is? And then later they would say like, Oh, that was a weather balloon. Like, like, like we see the ones where they freak out and there is no answer. You know? Uh, like I said, did you watch the 60 minutes piece on it? Yeah. Yeah. I watched that too. It know? Yeah. Like I said, did you watch the 60 Minutes piece on it? Yeah. Yeah, I watched that too. It was deeply disturbing. Well, oh, this is a,

why is it disturbing? Just that 60 Minutes doing a piece on it made it seem way more real to me. Even though it already seemed real, there was news stories written about it. But when 60, I mean,

60 Minutes has been kind of the real paper record for a lot of different reasons since I've been alive. So when they were like, we're going to do a UFO thing, I'm like, holy shit, this is really happening. Okay. So you believe in ghosts. Do you want ghosts to be real? Or would you prefer to find out you were wrong?

That's a great question. I kind of like having, I like the idea of ghosts. I totally fucking want ghosts if they're there. I don't believe in ghosts, but like, but I would want there to be, but you seem to be saying you definitely don't want aliens. Well,

think about how we grew up. The UFO alien culture has existed way before either of us were alive, right? It goes back to the early 20th century. And then it kind of has this kind of boom in the 50s. People get excited about it. You see movies about it. And then as our entire life,

I remember going to see Close Encounters in the theater. What was that, like 1977? In the ship lands? And it's like, oh my God. oh my god and then et was another one and superman and and then it kind of goes through then it becomes blockbusters but all the examples you just gave the aliens are fucking great no i know man's great et was nice but then when we did the blockbusters in the 90s it was like what if the aliens weren't nice yeah and then it flipped and it's like all right now the aliens are declaring war on us.

And that became a cottage industry. But aliens have been in our life in this pop culture way that it just seemed like that's what they were going to be. Like this go-to for pop culture stuff that people love. I never thought we would actually have to deal with them. Well, I guess

I didn't. We have to come up with a plan for the weird aliens that are flying around though. But, but sure. But it seems as though, like, I mean,

I don't know, this might be like a, like I often say this, like, although my politics are all over the place, I feel like in some ways I'm kind of fundamentally a conservative person that I just kind of want things to stay as they are. I'm very hesitant about,

I, you know, I'm just, it... It seems like life is changing faster than I can accept it all the time. So, by that argument, I should not want aliens. Because if aliens suddenly enter into our world, it's going to be some significant

changes. We're going to have to... I have some weird conversations. However, I guess part of me does want to, like, if there are aliens, I want them to show up in my lifetime. You'd be disappointed if they came

100 years later. Well, yes. I would be, like, it would be, you know, I think about this a lot, like a guy who died the day before 9-11 or whatever. It's interesting. I guess this is sort of the larger question. Let's say the world is going to end, and it can end when you're 80 or five years after your death. What do you want?

And here's the one thing. It will not be a painful end. You won't be burned alive. It's not like the aliens are going to come and cover you in acid. You're not going to be eaten by zombies. The world will end suddenly and painlessly when you're 80 and you can see it or you can die. And five years later, it will happen and you'll never have to experience. I'd probably want to not experience it.

I'd want it. I'd want to see it. So you're like Dreyfuss in Close Encounters. Yeah. Well, I also love mashed potatoes. So, yeah. So I, yes, I guess in that Well, I also love mashed potatoes. So, um, yeah, so I, uh,

uh, yes, I guess in that way I am like, I mean, I wouldn't want the world to end today because I like my

life, but if it was going to the tail end at the tail end, or at least like I want my kids to grow up and I, you know,

I, I, I sort of, you know, I, I, I want my kids to grow up. And I, you know, I, I sort of, you know, I, I, I want to, to allow, I want them to have the experience of being an adult. Um, even if, you know, just even if it's truncated, I guess. Um, but, uh, I, I would be, it seems like two,

it would be the biggest event since the big bang, as far as any human is considered. I guess I would want to see what it's like. I would want to see how people react. You know, I would, I, I'd be,

I'd be curious what, what I would think about, you know, like what I'd be thinking about. We used to think about this during the eighties, right? When it seemed very possible that Russia and America might just blow each other up. Used to think a lot about,

wow, what would happen? How much notice would we have before we all blew up? This is an interesting thing. I'm 49 and you're 53. I'm 51. 51. Two years.

But even those two years make a big difference on this issue. Because by the time, say, post-war games, I was still in elementary school or whatever.

The day after. Yeah. Maybe I'm just speaking just from myself, but like, I was always like, it doesn't seem as though, uh, a country like the United States or a country like Russia would be willing to destroy itself. Like, like, like it seems like the stakes are obviously too high. In fact, I remember, I think I was in sixth grade

because my dad was very proud of this. I wrote something in sixth grade about how the only problem would be as if Syria got a nuclear weapon. I don't think I knew anything about Syria in sixth grade. I'm sure I couldn't have found it on the map. I have no idea what Newsweek article I saw or something that prompted me to do this. So I never worried about the end of the world like that. But I found that people just a few years older than me really did. I think that it was, you know, like the first couple of years of the Reagan administration, I think made people kind of like seem scary, but you had to be, you had to be aware of what was happening. We get to be aware.

Like when I, when, when they introduced the star Wars program, um, that seemed good to me. I was like, Oh great. Like lasers that can shoot missiles out of the sky.

This is even better. I felt the same. There was a real fear that Russia was going to try to blow us up, which is how we end up with movies like Red Dawn. Like that was a real movie that got made where it's like, Russia's going to invade us while being camps. But what is interesting though, is I'm surprised by the degree to which

pop culture really did sort of shape your real life beliefs on these things. Yeah. Especially in the 80s, where it we've talked about, where the underlying thing of that was, well, what happens if we find out the CIA murdered our president? Where do we go from there? And we still don't know. We're still not going to know. But if we found that out now, that's what happened.

Okay. Would that affect how you think about the world in any kind of different way? The CIA and the mafia murdered JFK. They killed him. Because I think that's probably what happened. We just don't know for sure. So if the CIA in orchestra with the mafia. It was a coup d'etat, basically.

They killed our president. That somebody from the CIA went to the Chicago mob and said, we want to do this. And we worked from the idea that Sinatra was the... Yeah, we want to do this. And we worked from the idea that Sinatra was the... We'll go get this Cuban guy and we'll just take him out. Well, I would be

very surprised. I couldn't be totally shocked because obviously we've been talking about this for decades. You know? It would... I mean, I guess I've now been socialized to believe that the CIA is not necessarily a positive organization. So I don't know if I, you know, and Kennedy did want to splinter the CIA.

It would be weird if their reaction to him would be should assassinate him. I guess maybe not so weird. But my point, though, is that I just like, when you're talking about Red Dawn and stuff like that, that just seemed like entertainment. Red Dawn's an absurd movie, yeah. But I'm just saying, they're making movies where

the Russians, where it's conceivable that all these weird scenarios, almost like with the aliens, right? There's this four or five year window where nuclear war became a pop culture scenario in movies and all these different things. Wait, we got to take a break and then quickly we got to do what you're watching. So you didn't watch the Mayor of Easttown? No, I only watched the first episode.

When we exchanged texts about this, it really hit me. Our television habits have become very different. I would have thought, I would have bet anything you watched that. My wife and I watched the first episode. You know, I like Kate Winslet. We both, I thought it was a little better than she did, but we both felt like, we just kind of felt like we've, we've seen this show before,

which means it can still be good, but it just, it seems like that now is a type of prestige television that, uh, that didn't, it wasn't so interesting that I, I was like, we got to keep going on this,

but maybe if I'd have kept going at it felt differently. I really want to watch the Bureau, but we haven't started that yet. I want to watch that too. I like Mary V's Town. I think you would like The Kings, the Showtime documentary about the Sugar Ray Leonard era. Yeah, I read that book.

It's kind of based on it. I think that they just bought the rights to it or whatever. But there's no book that could kind of own the IP from that era. It's about these four boxers, how they collide in different ways. It was cool. I thought it was well done.

I thought it missed a couple of things. It tried to push Ray almost as this creation of corporate America that I just disagreed with. I thought Ray was basically Tiger Woods. I like Hagler. I'm just saying when Ray was coming up in the late 70s, he was iconic because of the Montreal Olympics.

He was like the Ali replacement. I didn't feel like it got that part correctly, but I thought it was worth watching. You and I are both watching Pluto. Yes. You're watching old music videos on Pluto. I just go on there because they have movies that I can't believe. Like last night, Angel Heart was on.

I haven't seen Angel Heart or thought about it in a million years. I was watching it like going, how did this movie happen? How did the oldest daughter from the Cosby show end up as the head of a voodoo cult with Mickey Rourke and then Robert De Niro playing Louis Cipher. And it turns out he's the devil in the end. And I was just kind of like blown away, but Pluto always has these little hidden gems that I just left for dead in the recesses of my brain. And they return.

You couldn't have been too surprised that the character named Louis Cipher ends up being Bill. No, no, that was, yeah. Yeah. The fact that like, if I recall, every time he talks, the overhead fans start turning the opposite way.

And he looks like the devil. Obviously, satanic movies. But now, Pluto has like, it has a 70s and 80s and a 90s music channel where they just sort of show videos

with no VJs. So sometimes, I'll just kind of flip through those three back up and down. What's this weird documentary about the movie Flash Gordon? When did that come out?

It must have been in the last year or two. The movie came out in the early 80s. I never saw the movie. I only remember everyone saying it was terrible. But what is interesting is the way this documentary kind of presents Flash Gordon. It's like a classic.

Like, it's weird how, you know, maybe that was sort of a failure and say it's interesting somehow it makes it great like i feel like this is i see this in lots of different things and lots of lots of websites and lots of like this flash this flash gordon thing is presented um like like this is like this lost gem? Well, like this, yes, and misunderstood and like Brian May is in it and he's talking about Queen on the soundtrack

and you think that from the way he describes it, this was like a great moment in Queen's career and it's also kind of a vanity project for the guy who played Flash Gordon because he's one of the producers. And throughout the documentary, it suggests that... Sam Jones?

Yes. Yes. Him. And it consistently implies that he made some bad decisions in his life, but now he's bounced back. But they don't really say what the bad decisions are, so I'm not sure what he did. I watched a really weird thing on the NFL Network. Can I have a Flash Gordon point quick? Because I realized

we did Raiders of the Lost Ark for the rewatchables. And I didn't realize Lucas was trying to buy the rights to Flash Gordon before he came up with Star Wars. So that must have been in the doc. I had no idea. Initially, he wanted to do Flash Gordon. So Flash Gordon was this great IP that was sitting there for somebody.

My memory of it was the movie was really horrific and unwatchable and became immediately made fun of. That was my memory, too. I didn't think anyone thought it was good. All terrible

sci-fi, it does have its cult of people. Science fiction does have a tendency to do that, to sort of like attract a kind of... I guess I watched this documentary on the NFL Network on like the mathematical formula for putting together the schedule. Yeah. And it's a half-hour show. And the weirdest thing about it is there's like eight minutes

where they just really describe the software used to do it. Like it's all done on computers, but I don't know how I ended up watching that. Was it good? Or it was just you couldn't believe somebody made this? Well, I saw it was on, so I just started watching it. At first, I was sort of like, well, you know,

uh, I didn't realize that it would have, that it would have so much emphasis on the fact that like, they have to figure out like which games will be televised and like, what will be the national game. And that, that the NFL, like,

I kind of assumed the networks did that, but it's, it's really, um, and they have like, like all year to work on this, but the guys act like they're just like, the clock is ticking

and we must present Roger Goodell with the best possible schedule. And they get it in at the last minute, under the deadline, they try to add this drama to it. Oh, this sounds great. I would definitely watch this. And then you watched the 1971 music one.

That was the other one. I started 1970 the stuff with the music from 1971 i just started but i can tell they did a good job on it like this is this is you know i i think there was some feeling initially it's like well how thin are they going to slice these things now it's like a documentary series about the music of one specific year but the way that they're kind of unspooling it, it's like, this is going to be, it's going to be a lot of great footage that, I mean, there was, there was already like in the first half hour, there was footage of like John Lennon working up a demo for the song he uses to attack Paul McCartney,

but you can see him sort of joking around while he's doing it, which obviously makes the song seem much less mean. But I can tell I'm going to like it. What have you been watching besides The Mirror? You know what's a good thing to just monitor? I think you and I flip channels. I don't know if anyone under 30 even does, but Axis, that channel Axis. Yep, I watch that. I watch that know if anyone under 30 even does, but access that channel access.

Yep. I watched that. I watched that quite a bit. They have a lot of music documentaries and there's this sweet spot. I can't remember. We might've talked about this. If we talked about this, I just have podcast memory loss,

but, um, I like when bands produce documentaries about themselves. It's like a guilty pleasure when it, when it's like clearly tilted in ways to reflect positively on the band or twisting certain ways. And there's one on the Doobie Brothers that I watch every time it's on. I can't get enough of it because it's made by people who are convinced that the Tommy Johnston era was like the peak of the band. And they really resent that when Michael McDonald came on,

the band took off and became really successful. But to the diehard Doobies fan, this is actually a bad time. This fame, wealth, Grammys, fortune is actually like a dark time. And it just sucked that Tommy... And then Tommy Johnson comes back and it's like, that's when they did some of their best work.

There's this guy in the documentary who's like a doobies aficionado who's kind of the kind of like the Stephen A. Smith of it and he's just anti the McDonald era in a way that's hilarious but it's actually a decent doc but I like watching

when these conceits are so clearly they're trying to make some point that's just nonsensical or they're trying to ignore. I just like watching bands revise their own histories with documentaries. I think it's fascinating. I think you would. There's one on Chicago. Have you seen that one?

Of 100%. Yeah, that's a good example of what you're talking about. Oh, yeah. And then they run the critics and it's all produced. It's all the people who are in Chicago. I mean, I'll admit, I knew nothing about the history of Chicago. Like, almost everything I learned in that, I literally learned for the first time. When I was a kid, those were kind of like, those kind of documentaries were a big deal to me.

Because you'd buy them on, like, VHS. Yeah. Like, Motley Crue, Uncensored and Kiss Exposed. I mean, I would buy those things and watch them hundreds and hundreds of times. There are these stories that I still to this day, I can almost recite the things that he said. Like Nikki Sixx talks about getting his first guitar and he has no money. So he goes into a record store with an empty guitar case and he asked the guy for a job application. And when the guy goes back to get the application, he sticks the guitar in the case and walks out, then goes to the band.

He's joining whatever band that was and says, like, I'm here to play bass. And they're like, that's guitar. And it's like, but I'm here to play bass. But that's a guitar. Like, I remember the scene because i've seen it so many times that a lot of it's almost like my understanding talking about thinking you understand someone and it's like if you watch someone tell the same story 200 times you feel like you know what they're saying you know yeah well there's gonna probably be a lot more documentaries i'm guessing i wonder like you think they're shooting a brooklyn nets documentary right now about the uh the quest for the title there has to be right yeah there's a book about the nets uh about sort of like

that i can't remember who wrote it i think it's a guy for the washington post maybe or something but it's pretty interesting it There could be a documentary about, I mean, there could be a documentary about everything now because of the amount of footage that exists. Like, did you see the Blind Melon documentary? I knew they were making it, but I didn't ever end up seeing it.

Well, the dude from Blind Melon had a camcorder and just recorded everything that he did for his life. So it's not that you're learning anything just revelatory or anything, but it's like he has the camcorder on, I think like during the OJ Simpson car chase or whatever, like he's filming the TV.

It's just everything he did. So it is pretty intimate because it's like, just it's, it's everything in this guy's life. Like it's easy to make an interesting documentary. If you just felt, you know, well,

the Billie Eilish thing was like that, right. They just had all these whole movies of her for six years and carved it in. And, you know, it's definitely too long, but there's, I thought a pretty compelling piece about

just her relationship with her parents and her touring. And, you know, while also trying to be a teenage girl, there was some parent stuff that I became, I just thought was a missed opportunity. But at the same time, you can't really explore that stuff because you're doing it with the consent of the family. So how far can you go? But you know, like she's like,

her, her body's all fucked up and they're still throwing her out there on these tours. And you're like, this is your daughter, your daughter's in pain. What are you doing? Wait,

before we go, what, uh, what are you working on these days? Just out of curiosity, another book. You know, well,

here's the deal. I have a book coming out next year. Okay. Yeah. If it hadn't been for COVID, it probably would have come out this fall. But because of COVID, a lot of other book projects got pushed.

And I think some books got, they might be released a second time because they kind of got blown up when everything went down. Well, plus people couldn't do the book signing stuff and all the stuff you need to do to help push a book. So it will actually be coming out in the beginning of February. Do you have a title?

Do you have a cover? Yes. What is it? It's about the 90s. And it's called The 90s. Really? Did you tell me you were doing this? I told you and you were like,

oh, that sounds interesting. Yeah, I think I vaguely remember it. It's a great idea for a book. A lot of shit happened in the 90s. Well, it's just, it's a little different than my other books in the sense that, like, I feel like some of the other books I've done, for the most part, they're kind of like a very specific idea that i had and that maybe only i had or whatever but i mean this is a book that's just kind of a straight telling about the culture and the politics and the science and sort of the texture of the 90s i mean obviously

like helbert standard a book on the 50s yeah i mean there's a book on the 50s. Yeah. I mean, there's a book called The 60s by Terry Anderson. There's a book on the 70s by a guy named Shulman. So it's called The 90s. It's one of those books. And I pretty much wrote it during the pandemic. So we'll see what happens. It's long. I'm excited to read it.

All right, Chuck. Who do you want to win the NBA title? The Nuggets. Jokic. Yeah. I mean, I've always kind of liked the Nuggets a little bit. Like, even when I was a kid and I couldn't see them. Yeah.

I liked Alex English and I liked Fat Lever and I liked Kiki Vandeway and I liked Dan Issel. So I've always sort of followed. Like, I kind of like the Broncos too. I have no relationship to the city of Denver, but except that I've always kind of unconsciously rooted for the teams there. This is funny. This is how I feel about Seattle. You have these cities that there's no rational explanation why you kind of, I always just kind of like Seattle.

So I feel that way, except when they played the Pats in the Super Bowl that time. You know, I'm always surprised that for reasons I cannot explain, except maybe I kind of like their odd color scheme. I always find that I sort of root

for the Tennessee Titans. And I don't know why that would be. I really don't know. But I like the Oilers, but I did not make that mental relationship jump or whatever. But if I'm watching an NFL game where the Titans are playing and I don't have any feeling about the other team, I seem to naturally gravitate toward rooting for the Titans.

I don't know why. Unconscious rooting. Yeah, mine is for the city of Seattle. I can't explain it. Okay. It was great to see you. I'm sure I'll see you in LA at some point. Thanks for coming on, though.

Take care. Bye-bye. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Chuck. Don't forget about Book of Basketball 2.0 launching a new season around Len Bias. It's called What If the Len Bias Story. Seven episodes.

Really hope you enjoy those. And Raiders of the Lost Ark on the rewatchables, that's up this week as well. I will see you on Thursday. Feelings within On the wayside I'm a person never lost And I don't have to