The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 118: Olympics With Malcolm Gladwell

Episode Date: August 23, 2016

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell on ways to fix track and field (3:00), how sports doping has changed over the years (10:00), Michael Phelps’s status as one of the world’s biggest athletes (29:00), and what the NBA can learn from FIBA (41:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Yeah. Clear enough for you. All right. All right. It's my only friend who loves track and field. I have friends that like track and field, but I don't have friends that love track and field like Malcolm Gladwell does. We should also mention his smash hit podcast, Revisionist History, has finished all 10 episodes. They're all available on iTunes and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

You can read them at thenewYorker.com as well. And The New Yorker magazine. Michael Godwell, how are you? I'm delighted to be on your show again, Bill. It's been a while. You're also going to be on my HBO show in September, we should mention. So we're steering this toward topics that will be dead by the time my HBO show occurs. And I think the topic that will definitely be dead is the Olympics.

I feel like it's already dying. This might be the last day that anybody would even be interested in hearing an Olympics conversation. But a lot happened. The window is closing. Yes. So one thing that I was fascinated by this time around, I mean, there's a lot of different subplots, but it feels like swimming and gymnastics have surpassed track and field in America from a human interest slash bar conversation slash things I talk about with my family standpoint. That was the opposite of the way it was when I was growing up. I always felt like track and field was more important.

Other than Mark Spitz, I can't really remember a swimming moment from my childhood that, that stands out. I kind of remember Rowdy Gaines just cause his name was Rowdy. Uh, and with gymnastics, you know, obviously you had the Mary Lou Retton type moments and Nadia Comaneci, like gymnastics was always big, but I always felt like track and field mattered more. And especially, uh, as, as a kid in the the 80s i remember watching the world championships in 83 and i think i think it was even on the cover of si at that point carl lewis just all the characters we had in track and field what's changed do you feel like it's changed or am i crazy you're not crazy i mean i do anyone who cares about track and field worries that its fan support in the U.S. is dying.

Part of it is that the U.S. dominance, if you just look at the sprints, the U.S. used to be routine that American athletes would win the 100, the 200, and the 400. This year, on the men and women's side, you have Jamaicans winning, you've got a South African winning the 400. So you have a real dilution in American hegemony in the sport, and that might be part of it. But also, the sport does a terrible job of marketing itself. I mean, I did this back and forth with Nick Thompson at the New Yorker.

I would say I couldn't think of a sport that is worse run than track and field. And then, of course, I remember the NFL. And boxing. It's unbelievable how dumb the people running the sport are. They go out of their way to make it as boring as possible. You know, like in the Rio games, the track events, the stands were half full for most of the events, if that. And that's like, it's unbelievable that you would gather

the best athletes in the world together for this extraordinary track meet and no one shows up. I mean, that tells you there's something deeply wrong with the... Nick and I were talking about one of my ideas for fixing a real simple fix. This is something that's been done with this series of miles that have been conducted around the states this summer. That they let the people into the infield. So when you're running the race, you're running through a wall of spectators. So in the Olympics, they should, for the sprints, imagine if they put temporary stands, bleachers, on the infield facing the home stretch.

So when Bolt's running, you know, the 100-meter final, there are thousands of people right, like, right on the track, screaming and yelling. That's an experience that would make, you know, that anybody would show up for, right? It makes it smaller and more intimate. So you give up some total number of spectators. But all of a sudden, you can communicate the emotional power of the sport. It's an intimate sport. You've got to see runners up close to appreciate what they're doing. It's not like soccer or football where you want the big perspective.

It's like stuff like that, I don't understand why they're not trying to fix it. So you got, there's two separate conversations here. I like the in-stadium experience is a good one to have first. Because I went in 2012. I was so excited to be in London for the track and field.

I thought that it was going to, I'd been waiting my whole life to see track and field in person and see the high jump and the long jump and all these different things. And I never realized until I was there, it's a shit show. Like if you're in the wrong seats, you know, it's a giant football stadium. It's 80,000 seats. And I don't care how good your seats are. You might be on the opposite side of where the high jump is and you have no idea what's happening. You can't see it. Can't see the long jump.

You have no idea how far the guys go. And you know, as you were talking, I was thinking, couldn't, couldn't they just have like the high jump, the long jump and the pole vault in their own kind of contained mini little... In a tennis stadium. Yeah, almost like... Absolutely. Yeah, like a tennis stadium. That would be great.

Yeah. Long jump, high jump, pole vault, triple jump. Absolutely. They should... You have... You need a... Those events, the high jump is... If you're up close and watching it, it's unbelievably tense and exciting.

Yeah. It's meaningless if you're way up at the top of the stand. Meaningless. Absolutely. I had no idea it was happening. And you think something like beach volleyball, which I think has really increased in popularity, especially in the United States, and a not-so-small part of it has to do with the fact

that they're basically wearing band-aids for tops at this point their outfits are getting more and more uh Victoria Secret-esque each time um like designed by Maxim the poor the the one I think she was from Sweden she was pretty buxom and became like a whole internet thing that night and then the next time she had a match she had to wear the t-shirt underneath the thing because i think she knew it was like i don't know who those outfits are designed for but it's it's basically cinemax anyway if you had beach volleyball just in the middle of this giant 80 000 seat track and field stadium it was just going on as five other things were going on i'm pretty sure beach volleyball wouldn't be as important.

And nobody, nobody's going to watch it. Yeah. So you're right. So how big would that stadium be for, let's say high jump, long jump, pole vault, triple jump. That's it. Couldn't that be like a 2000 seat stadium? Yeah. thousand seat stadium? Yeah, you could. You could. I think I think you could stuff all of that into one of those midsize tennis stadiums. You just have to maybe rearrange some seats. But

that the scale works there, you know, and also I don't understand why you'd ever experiment. So think about the jumps. I don't understand why people, why two jumpers don't jump in the long jump simultaneously at the same time. Ooh, almost like bowling when people are in a bowling alley bowling simultaneously. No, but you could say you have two people left in a competition. Why, I mean, why not experiment and see what happens if you have them both? You have a gun that you go, ready, set, go. And so you could tell instantly who's jumped further. Right. I like that. Maybe that's a bad idea, but I don't understand why someone doesn't at least try it.

Maybe that makes the long jump way more compelling. I remember as a kid, and maybe these are just sports that are better as TV sports, but obviously something's wrong because nobody really cared about the high jump or the long jump this time around. The single biggest thing with track and field that's changed since I've been a kid is the long jump and how it used to be just one of the signature sporting events of my life. And now I don't even, I got to be honest, I don't even know who won this year. I missed it. I was in Vegas.

You know that the jumps, so there's a huge conspiracy theory about this. So in Carl Lewis's day, Lewis would routinely jump close to 29 feet. Yeah. High 28, you know, mid 28 feet. Now jumpers, if you look in the Olympic competition, they're jumping high 26, at best low 27. They've lost a foot. So what happened? Essentially, or a foot and a half.

Well, I don't know. Nobody knows. So one argument is that drugs really helped you in the long jump. And so you take away doping, and people can't do it anymore. That's the kind of cynical interpretation. The non-cynical interpretation is the best athletes just aren't going can't do it anymore. That's the kind of cynical interpretation. The non-cynical interpretation is the best athletes just aren't going into the long jump anymore. They're going into it.

You know, Bolt has made sprinting so much more glamorous that why would you wait? You know, could Usain Bolt, if he wanted to try long jumping, potentially be the world record holder in the long jump? I don't know. Maybe. But I can guarantee you he's never tried it. And that's maybe just a shift in the kind of popularity of the sport, but something between those two explanations. I love the fact that you don't think there's doping anymore this decade and that it was just the old days when people used to dope. I love it. It's great.

No, no, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I love it. It's great. No, no, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I love it. Doping patterns have shifted. Oh, okay. If you go back to the 70s, you know, huge numbers of people are doing it. Through the 80s, I think it's specific to countries. They don't have out-of-competition testing.

It's gotten a lot harder. If you're, people don't have out-of-competition testing. It's gotten a lot harder. If you're, people don't understand this, if you're an American or British or European distance runner, somebody shows up at your door dozens of times a year, unannounced, and has you pee in a cup, right? It's hard, and then they have a biological passport

where they have an entire blueprint of your physiology on file. It's kind of hard to dope. You have to be, if you're in a place where you can be found, it's, you know, you've got to be really, really good to get away with it. It's not like the 70s anymore. So, you know, sometimes there's some argument, well, people, the reason they all train at high altitude in the mountains of Kenya is it's really hard

for a drug tester to show up unannounced, particularly since we know the Kenyans will call you the night before and tell you they're coming

the next day. That came out this year. Oops. But, you know, I don't know. It's like, if you're Galen Rupp, the great American marathoner, there's no way he dopes.

It's just impossible. The guy got tested out of competition like 50 times last year. I'm going to flip your argument around. I would say it's easier to dope now because you can get to a testosterone threshold, right? They allow up to a certain amount. I forget what it is. I forget what it is for the Olympics, but you're allowed up to three or four times your natural testosterone because they have to factor in that some people just naturally produce more testosterone than other people.

Remember, they have a biological passport, so they have a picture of baseline, of what they assume is baseline. So we know if there's major deviations from baseline. So it used to be that we were in an era where we set these limits, but now we've moved into an era where we say you can't deviate from your baseline. We can tell if you do something shocking to change your... Are we sure we can tell, though? Because when they look back at all the samples from 2000 to 2012, when they had better technology, look back at it. And then it turned out a bunch of people had been cheating that they just

didn't catch. Yeah. So, um, I'm super, I think that there's more corruption at, uh, uh,

at, I think the corruption lies not with the sophistication of the doping itself. The corruption clearly lies in the administration of the doping. In other words, the people, the officials running these anti-doping campaigns, we know from Russia, they're like taking cash, they're swapping samples, they're warning athletes. So I think the issue is, can we get a – I don't think it's hard. If everything's working properly, I think you can police doping pretty effectively. Look at cycling.

So if you – the average times in the Tour de France have dropped dramatically since the 90s. And that's because they've controlled doping. Or at least they kept it within bounds. They cleaned up their act. Now it's time for other sports to do the same. So you think that times and stuff, because I haven't looked at this, you think that times there was a peak of like sprinter times, cycling times,

long jump, distance, all that stuff. For women. Oh. so this is the thing this is the crucial point which is at the core of all doping discussions and which people routinely miss which is

if you're a man and you dope you can improve your performance a significant amount but it's not large if you're a woman and you dope

you can improve your performance massively so there were male doping, you know, Ben Johnson was a doper, but clean runners are today running way faster than Ben Johnson did in 1988. But on the woman's side, you know, Flojo famously ran 10.49 in 100 meters in 1988. That record will never be beaten ever, unless someone else takes a massive amount of drugs. For women, doping is infinitely more significant. So, it's really hard to imagine that a lot of female athletic marks

are going to be eclipsed ever. So you think like Carl Lewis in the 80s, we did that documentary for 30 for 30 in the second series. I think it was called 979. Was that the name of it? Yeah. You love that one. I remember we did a podcast after that one. It basically kind of proved that Carl Lewis was up to stuff

I don't think there's any doubt that things happened and then you look at the times and the distances and the things that he did how many times did he have braces? twice? in his 20s? I love that braces is the one

I'm not sure that braces is the one. I'm not sure that braces is a definitive sign, but nonetheless, I concede it's not far-fetched. There was a lot of circumstantial, yeah, there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that they kind of put together in that. By the way, I'm a big believer in braces, and I always look at the guy's lower teeth. I think the lower teeth,

when the lower teeth start going crazy, that's a big HGH indicator for me. Because that's what happens. The HGH. Simmons rules of doping. Oh, yeah. I look at, there's indicators and they don't always mean there's HGH, but certain things.

Like you definitely get that little nub between your eyes. Definitely seems like it grows a tiny bit. The jawbone. Back knee is huge. Yeah, the back knee jawbone becomes more profound. I'm always suspicious. And, you know, this isn't, I'm not saying that everybody who does this is cheating. But the gross giant neck beard is always, I'm always suspicious why anyone would grow that because it's so ugly. You know, it's like, what's the motivation behind the neck beard?

I don't totally get it. But anyway, so you think, you don't think that people can doctor their testosterone to get close to whatever the limit is, to give a little boost, but without going over. I think the science is better for that, right? You can basically get right down to the number. So even if they're, so the kind of strategies, no, I should say before I go any further that I'm not an expert on this and I am not, I am by no means down with cutting edge doping strategies. But my sense is that in areas where the drug testing administration is efficient and honest, that the kind of stuff you can get away with is pretty small. It's on the mark. Now, do I think there's widespread doping in the NFL?

Yeah, because I don't think that they have a clean and efficient detection system. I mean, like, I think you can get away with it. And you've talked endlessly about how in the NBA, once you're tested once, you won't be tested again. Isn't that the rule? No, it's four times. I don't even think, I forget about what happens in the playoffs, but I think it's a free-for-all in the playoffs. Yeah, yeah.

Unlike the NFL, the NBA I think would rather avoid a situation where one of their signature stars is caught doing something that would be terrible for that person and also the league. So, you know, where the NFL is just, we'll go on a witch hunt with one of

the great quarterbacks of all time and a great human being, Mr. Tom Brady. The NBA, I just don't think they operate that way. They have, you know, they're a business and their business is not just in the 30 teams and the competition, but in these 15 to 20 ridiculously marketable athletes per year. And they're not going to fuck with that. They're just not. I don't think.

Yeah. Yeah. And they're not going to fuck with that. They're just not. I don't think. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's not also, you know, there's a thing. The thing about running and doping is that doping tends to be used by people who are at a stage in their career where their performance is falling, right? So you can typically tell just by looking at times who's up to something fishy. Yeah. who's up to something fishy? These kind of mid-career, they're 28 years old, and all of a sudden they're running 20 seconds faster. But in the NBA, it's really hard, or in football, it's really hard. I mean, it's not impossible.

You see these guys have these breakout seasons at 28, 29. You can raise an eyebrow, but it's just not as obvious. So I feel like there's an ability it's just not as obvious. Right. So I feel like there's a, there's a, there's an ability to get away with stuff in those sports. There's just not, um, but we haven't even talked about soccer. I mean, if there's ever a sport tailor made for doping, it's soccer. Yeah. I think that we always feel like as Americans, when we talk about this stuff, we are not

American, you're a canadian north americans when north americans talk about this stuff um we always gravitate towards steroids pd and like the baseball sammy sosa type of you know where you can see obvious effects and more power and things like that the oxygen doping is is the one that an epo and things like that are the ones that i i just don't feel like people know anything about and they don't understand what kind of benefits that would give a basketball player or a hockey player. I think it would. So if you think about, to my mind, the biggest issue for a basketball player is how worn down they get over the course of the season.

It's recovery. I would say recovery and endurance are the two things that basketball players have to worry about the most. And when we say endurance, what we mean is ability to play at the same level in May that you were playing at in November. Yeah, and also like the ability to, if you're in a playoff series to be able to play 43 minutes and then two days

later play 43 minutes again, and those are 43 hard minutes in the playoffs. And I think that's, that's where, that's where the endurance comes in because you don't want your performance. You don't want to just die in the fourth quarter. Like when I was growing up, basketball players got tired in the fourth quarter. Yeah. And I think that's.

So there's a whole series of strategies that intelligent players would use to combat those two problems. And I find it really, really hard to believe that drugs like EPO, which, you know, EPO is sort of a magic. It is a wonder drug. I actually think that large numbers of old people should be on EPO. Not massive doses, but it is a drug that simply replenishes your oxygen-carrying blood cells. I mean, it just makes you, it gives you, in a very tangible way, more endurance. If your elderly mother is tired walking up the stairs, I don't understand why people aren't saying there are some legitimate strategies to combat that.

So given this extraordinary drug's effects, if you were a soccer player, you know, at the end of the Premier League season, you're not on EPO. If you can get away with it, of course you are. Right. And we're not even positive it's that terrible for you unless you take too much of it. I think it definitely, don't they say it like thickens the blood and could lead to blood clotting? But I think that's if you're like totally overdoing it. Yeah.

No, there are, because the thing that, the crucial thing, and by the way, the great book, Tyler Hamilton, Lance Armstrong's colleague, wrote a book on, that is just a,

it is the most extraordinary book about doping, in which he claims he's apologizing for his doping. And in fact, he justified it so brilliantly. But the thing about that level of elite performance is, when you are training at the level these guys train, the effect of training is to diminish your red blood cell count. And so it's natural that you just replace what you've lost. With EPOS, what they're doing, they're replacing what they've lost and allowing themselves to work even harder. So it fits in seamlessly into the training schedule of an elite performer.

That's why the drug has become such an issue in so many different sports. Well, but we also have all these different things that are legal, like the hyperbaric chambers, the Germany surgery where they take the, what do they do? They take the blood out and then they clean the cells and they inject it back in your knee. I had the Germany procedure. Did I tell you this? No.

Oh, because you're a runner. I'm a runner. I had a version of it. They took stem cells out of my tibia and injected them in my femur. How did you feel after? Well, I was told not to run for a month. The month is almost up. And we'll find out whether it worked. The guy, the doctor, did it hilariously. I said, well, how many times have you done this? He goes, lots of times. I said, well, does it work on people like me? And he goes,

well, it works on 25-year-old NBA players. Of course, I'm 52. So it's like, I don't know, we'll find out how much like a 25-year-old NBA player I am. I do think that these days, I remember I've told this story before in the podcast, but I was talking to Maverick, who's LeBron's business partner,

and he was just talking about how much money LeBron spends on his body and how he replicated the gym that the Cavs have in his house. And, you know, he's got a full-time trainer and he's got chefs and he just treats his body like it's this $50 million mansion in the Hamptons that has a 15-person groundskeeper crew, you know? And that's just what it does. And I think like, think about the guys in the eighties, Bird and Magic and Barkley and Moses, all these people, you know, Bird,

Bird, I think a pretty good confirmation, like was just beer and cigs during the summer until like 1985. Like definitely would have some, some butts during the summer and some Miller. He has another four or five years on his, uh, career today. If he plays,

let's take a quick break to talk about our friends at sling TV. Uh, if you want a better and more affordable way to watch live TV, and if you're a cord cutter and cutter, and you're out there, there are cord cutters out there. Usually they're under 30 and they're smart and they realize that you don't have to pay money for channels that you don't watch,

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But now you're getting into the fall. You got to wear some pullovers, some khakis, some jeans, some light sweaters, long sleeve shirts. Well, trunkclub.com slash BS. You go there, you type in your measurements, share your likes and dislikes, get your own personal stylist. They'll pick your clothes from over 80 top brands. They'll ship them right to your door. Keep what you like. Send back what you don't like. It's not just another way to shop online. It's more than that. They even have stores in Dallas, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and DC. You can go there and you can find your stylist and they will help you for free. It's not a

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He belongs to one Olympics. Phelps belongs to three Olympics. That's like really interesting. Maybe that's why I feel like swimming. I think he belongs to four. He belongs to four Olympics. he belongs to well he's four he before olympics that's right he's four yeah i mean that is like a really interesting and maybe that's why it would allow swimming to rise in relative cultural importance because it's a lot easier to relate to a sport when someone familiar is coming back year after year it It's a great point. And I think the three biggest stars of this Olympics were Michael Phelps,

Usain Bolt, and Simone Biles. Simone Biles was a lock. Everyone knew going into the Olympics, she was just lovable. What are the odds she was going to resonate with America? A hundred percent. But Phelps and Bolt, the continuity of it was what made it special and it did feel a little bit like uh you know like the second three p for jordan or lebron coming back from three one where it's like when there's a familiarity with the person who's doing something great it pushes it

to another level phelps is somebody that for a decade even though he was killing everybody in swimming nobody could really he didn't really win anybody over as a personality you know he'd host SNL like oh my god this is awkward I don't he never really had what we would call a sophisticated interview moment

anything like that any moment that kind of resonated in a way that didn't have to do with the swimming pool. Then he had some personal issues. And I think something switched over these last four years with him and with fans and with Americans. And it had everything to do with just the continuity and the familiarity, you know?

And you get to know someone. And the thing that felt was really interesting. So one of the reasons he's so appealing to us is that he has that moment after 2012, where he has these series of crises. So we're with him long enough, not just to see this sustained pattern of excellence, but we've been long enough to see him go through these crises. He becomes this, you know,, gets a whole new dimension. He becomes a three-dimensional person. That is, you don't get, you know, Mark Spitz was never a three-dimensional person because

we met him, we literally met him on August 1st and we said goodbye to him on August 15th and that was it. Right. And you look at somebody like Ashton Eaton, who still doesn't matter to really anybody, even though he's probably the best decathlete ever, but I don't even think it's close. But if he came back and he won a third decathlon four years from now, now it's like, whoa, this guy's going to win three decathlons?

That's crazy. I think the casual Olympics fan might be interested in that. Phelps was great too because and i actually talked about this with chris ryan on a podcast last week but phelps reached that point that i think it's so rare to watch an athlete get to when we have a history with them we know they're great and then they have this challenger and you kind of want to see them vanquish that it's like how dare somebody challenge our great icon athlete oh he's got to swat this person down and then they do

and that's the final level that's like that jordan tiger ollie which i think this was the olympics where he kind of moved into that group for me as somebody that just wasn't just, you know, probably the greatest ever at his sport, but had a couple moments where it was like, oh, really? You're going to challenge me? I'm going to vanquish you right now. And then he did the vanquishing. And that's what was cool, I thought, this time around.

That's why he won the Olympics, I feel like, don't you? I would rank him first. I mean, I'm biased. I would rank Us first. You'd rank, oh, I mean, I'm biased. I would rank Usain Bolt first. You'd rank Bolt over Phelps? Phelps is like, he's like washed up by swimming standards. It should be over. Yeah, I have a track fan's suspicion of swimming, which is every time someone jumps in the water,

they break a world record. Like, what exactly is the relationship between the sport of world records and swimming? Such that, I mean, I bet you have never, there has never been an Olympic Games where at least half a dozen world records in swimming didn't fall. It's unbelievable. So you're suspicious from a cheating standpoint, or just it doesn't make sense to you?

I don't think it's cheating, necessarily. It could be. I have no idea. But it's something about the nature of the sport is such that superlative performances are almost routine. And to me, that ruins it. In track,

some of these records have been around for a long time. They're really hard. And when you watch that Wayne Van Der Erick, the South African who wins the 400 meters and breaks Michael Johnson's record from, that was what, 18 years old?

I mean, that mattered because that was an insane record. And no one was thinking it was going to get broken. It was, you know, Michael Johnson is such a kind of iconic figure in sprinting. And this guy in lane eight just comes and blows it away. It's like, wow. But in swimming, if Phelps doesn't break the world record, I would be disappointed. I mean, I just can't get excited about something where the superlative is still routine.

In person, the swimming wasn't that great. It was a slight disappointment for me because you can't tell who wins. I don't like any sport where I don't know who wins at the end of the sport. That's a problem. Whereas gymnastics was way better in person than I was prepared for.

I remember I wrote about this four years ago, but it's just so much more dramatic. And even when there's like five events going at the same time, when something bad happens, it's the worst sound you've ever heard at a sporting event. It's like, you would think Barbaro's leg just broken in nine places. If a gymnast falls off a balance beam, it is a horrifying collective moment. And by that same token, when somebody nails a routine, it's really a moment. You feel it in the stadium, and it's great. Yeah.

The parts that the Olympics has to figure out is when you have tennis and soccer and golf and these sports where the pros can just make so much more money and it's almost not worth it for them to go. And I think basketball is in that spot a little bit now. Yeah. What do you do? I think they have to drop those sports.

They should definitely drop golf. I don't understand how golf even became a sport. Tennis feels like they should drop, right? Tennis has four majors. What do we need the Olympics for? By the way, they're adding five more sports for 2020. The Olympics is

just run... It's insanely badly run. It's just a bunch of people trying to... greedy people trying to maximize their profit. They have to... I don't think tennis belongs. I don't think golf belongs, and I think basketball under certain circumstances belongs, but you, you know, you have to at some point sort of draw a line around what you think an Olympic sport is, and where you

think you have real traditions that you're enacting and say, we're done. Right? That's what we're, this is who we are. We're just like, tennis doesn't add another major every year. Yeah. Like, nor does golf. I mean, it's like, I don't know why the Olympics thinks that you can just infinitely expand this model to infinity. Well, how dare you say they should get rid of basketball, though?

You should take that back. That made me upset. I've never, last time I got excited about, you know, I can't get excited about a sport where there's a 95% probability the U.S. wins every year. And the only circumstance under which the U.S. wins is if they don't bring their best players. In other words, the whole conversation about Olympic basketball is

why didn't they bring so-and-so, which would have improved our chances of winning from 99% to 100%. Right. Like how, why is that exciting? Well, it was more fun when they put real thought into the team and had role players and 12th men. I just think they, I think they construct the team wrong. Why is role players and 12th man. I just think they, I think they construct the team wrong.

Why is Harrison Barnes the 12th man? I knew this was going to come up. Well, just why? Why not get like, I don't know, one of the Zeller brothers. Like,

why do you need a good player to be the 12th man? Why can't you have more shooters? What it's, it's like they, they, I think cause they panic because guys are dropping out, they basically just put together an all-star team. Why do you need more basketball?

Is it basketball? I mean, swimming, we don't pay attention to it, you know, except once every four years. The Olympics is this amazing showcase of what's going on in that sport. Basketball, we have so much basketball now. You could argue the NBA season never stops. People talk as much about the NBA in July and August as they do

in March. Isn't it piling on to have the Olympics as well? I'm ashamed to admit this, but I probably watch more basketball than any other Olympic event. I think the Olympics as well. I'm ashamed to admit this, but I probably watch more basketball than any other Olympic event. I think the women's are a problem. They have to figure out the women's because we probably could have gone four on five

for the first half of every game and still won the gold medal. It was actually the greatest women's basketball team that's ever been assembled. It was three generations of players and Taurasi's still in her prime and she's easily the best women's basketball team that's ever been assembled. It was three generations of players, and Taurasi's still in her prime, and she's easily the best women's player ever. I don't know. I don't even.

You could talk me into the women's basketball like the U.S. should not be allowed to send anyone who's over 22 years old, something like that. And I wouldn't mind if they did that. I did something on my HBO show about this a couple weeks ago. I really think we should make it a 25 and under team or a 23 and under team.

Whatever we have to do. It'd just be more fun to root for and I think it'd be a better experience for the guys. But why can't you say we have too much basketball? I'm going the other way. We have volleyball

and we have beach volleyball. So why couldn't we have, why couldn't the slam dunk contest be an Olympic sport? Come on. Why? What's the difference between that and beach volleyball? Why not? It's a spinoff of volleyball, is beach volleyball.

So why couldn't we spinoff basketball with two on two or three on three basketball? The problem with the Olympics is that they don't have enough events. Then, sure. But I don't think basketball? The problem with the Olympics is if they don't have enough events, then sure. But I don't think that's the problem with the Olympics. Explain beach volleyball to me and why if we have that, we can't have two on two hoops or three on three hoops. I have never understood beach volleyball, except, as you said earlier, as a kind of venue for ogling perfect bodies. But I don't know. I don't i don't i don't find it interesting i actually i find the the traditional volleyball way more

interesting that's thrilling and exciting beach doesn't do it for me i thought the volleyball was too long it just seemed like yeah you turn it on and be like oh it's the second set this is gone for like two more hours i don't know i got bored i remember in 84 there's a guy who watches nba games that takes 45 minutes to do the last five minutes of playing time well that's i'm glad you brought this rich i'm glad you brought that up i think there's so much to learn from the way FIBA, the flow of the game of these FIBA games versus what we have in the NBA. And I tweeted about this a couple of times. First of all, the players, it doesn't seem like the players are allowed to call timeouts. It has to be the coaches and it has to be during a stoppage and they get less timeouts so the game just goes the way the substitutions are different

um no 20 second timeouts you have if you get a technical foul it counts as a real foul which i think would be a great rule for the nba anytime you have these stupid double technicals i think guys would think twice if it also counted as a real foul but the flow of the game was so much better and especially you could feel it in the last three to four minutes of a game and it made me think like you know i've been obsessed with how the nba could just get faster and really it comes down to tv money but the league makes so much money that they could finagle it a little bit for the good of the game and this is something that I think Adam Silver, who's been the best commissioner the league's ever had

and one of the best sports commissioners ever already, hopefully it stays that way, this is something that I wish he cared more about because there's lots of easy ways to make the game move faster. Get rid of 20-second timeouts. If you've ever been to an NBA game, you know that a 20-second timeout is a minute and a half. It's not a 20-second timeout,

and there's no reason to have it. But they have set timeouts at the six-minute mark and the three-minute mark of every first and third quarter, and then the 10-minute mark, six-minute mark, and three-minute mark of the second and fourth quarters. Not to mention all the other timeouts the coaches are allowed, which I think it's like seven for each team, but sometimes some of the planned timeouts count towards the seven.

Also, the 20-second timeouts. It's so fixable. And one of the things I think they should experiment with is when people are shooting free throws. Because if you watch ESPN and ABC when they show games, sometimes people will be shooting free throws and they'll do the wide shot and they'll promote something. So it'll be like, oh, there's DeAndre Jordan. He's going to the line. Hey, coming up Tuesday, it's a new 30 for 30.

It's Doc and Daryl. And it'll be an ad as the guy's shooting free throws. And nobody cares and nobody notices that they're running an ad when the guy's shooting free throws because it's fucking boring to watch somebody shoot free throws. So if they pick their spots with that and they had in-game kind of native advertising during the free throws, you could get rid of those 10 minute timeouts in the second and fourth quarter.

That saves us six minutes and the flow of the game is better. I also think, I would think you could go further. I think the fouling, the second issue in the last five minutes, of course, is the fouling. I'd like to see a situation where with two minutes left, you revert to soccer rules. If somebody comes out, they can't go back in. Oh, I like it. I think it would be super interesting. Because I want to see people,

because I don't understand, I want to see players exhausted at the end of games. I think that's interesting. And so this constant subbing in, subbing out, foul the guy, sit him down, send him back in, to hell with it. If he comes out, he's gone in the last two to hell with it let's if you if if if he's if he comes out he's gone in the last two minutes and now let's play show me your and what if we what if we said what

would happen and i think i would do this as an experiment yeah but just to see what if we just said no timeout in the last two minutes well i mean at the very least you should not be able to call a timeout after a timeout I don't know why that's not a rule how am I calling a timeout when I'm already in a timeout so it's like a double timeout we just had a timeout

there's a great Hollywood phrase for that it's called a hat on a hat a hat on a hat is an idea that is made worse by the idea that comes after it right a timeout after a timeout is a hat on the hat. Here's the thing. If I call a timeout to design a play where I'm going to inbound the ball

and run an offensive play, we come out of the timeout, and the guy who's supposed to inbound the ball, my guys screw up and they can't find it. Oh, it's chaos. Don't reward them by giving them a bailout with a second timeout. That's it. We had a timeout for them a bailout with a second timeout. That's it. We had a timeout for them. Now they have to get the ball in.

If they don't get the ball in, the other team gets the ball. Let's go. Let's move. By the way, the chaos from a spectator standpoint is really interesting. Right? Right. I mean, watching players cope with incredibly high-pressure situations in the flow of the game is why you watch basketball.

So why do we devise something that takes away the pleasure of the spectator? Well, the other thing, there wasn't nearly as much instant replay with FIBA. And I just think instant replay has been a failure. I hate it. I think it ruins the flow of the game i think these games are way too long i my conspiracy theory and i hope i'm not right is that they've done studies and it's actually good for the games to be longer because it's more commercials the longer these games are more commercials more people going to buy food and drink stuff like that and i remember talking to adam about this to me i never feel like halftime's long enough halftime's like 15 minutes and if you have halftime you go you watch the first half you go up you go up maybe you get a drink you go to the bathroom you get food whatever

and then all of a sudden the game's starting again, and it's almost like, oh, man, I wish we had five more minutes. That should be your 10-minute timeout in the second and fourth quarters. But the answer is the halftime commercials aren't as valuable as the in-game commercials. Well, here's my question about commercials. And I don't know enough about the ad business to answer this correctly, but it's a question for someone who does. If I have, let's say for the sake of argument, I have in the course of a basketball game, a typical basketball game, 40 ads. Yeah.

And I sell them all for $1. So I get $40. If I shorten my basketball game and I make it way more exciting and now I have 20 ads, why can't I sell the 20 ads for $2? Don't ads become more valuable when they are more scarce? Particularly when you have a product like the NBA, which is so extraordinarily popular? Not to get too meta, but obviously we have you know, obviously we have sponsors during this podcast. We could have 10 sponsors.

You and I could talk for five minutes and every five minutes we'd have, you know, another one minute sponsor. You just described AM Sports Radio. Yeah, but would that be a better product or a worse product? It'd be by far a worse product or a worse product it'd be by far a worse product and i think the nba is in this middle ground right now where well first of all they're not getting the money from the ads so it's like let's say the celtics sell well the celtics are a bad example because they own part of their cable network so let's say like uh the nuggets uh they own their own cable network. So let's say like the Nuggets, they own their own cable network too. Who doesn't? The Milwaukee.

Milwaukee sells their rights to Fox Sportsnet. Who knows who has their thing? So Fox Sportsnet buys 20 years of Bucks games for a price. Now they can do whatever they want with the ads unless the NBA changes how you play the games. Now, could Fox Sportsnet say, well, wait a second, but we spent all this money on these games and now you're saying you're taking out two commercial breaks that we thought we were paying for?

They're not going to do that because anyone who's paid for basketball games got a great deal on them because the NBA is the hottest sport right now. Yeah, but except if Adam Silver were able to prove to them that by speeding up the game, you would raise ratings. So I think that is a very, very plausible outcome, that if you did what we're talking about, and if the last 10 minutes of every game was wildly exciting and actually took 10 minutes, I, for one, the number of basketball games I would watch if they fulfilled these conditions we're talking about would go way up.

So what if I can, what if Silvers says, I think I can deliver 20% higher ratings if I shorten the game and change these rules around timeouts? And then Fox, the advertisers have no beef. They love it. And then Fox, the advertisers have no beef. They love it. They would make more, like I say, it makes the individual, it makes a smaller number of commercials in a shorter game more valuable. And that offsets the lost revenue. Don't you think one of the reasons soccer has become more and more popular in the United States,

not just because of the wide TVs and the HD, but because it's a contained amount of time. It's like, oh, I'm watching Manchester United play Arsenal. The game's starting at 7.30. At 9.30, the game's going to be over. I know the game's going to be over. That's it. So at 9.30, I'm going to now do this. If I watch a basketball game, it's like Nick's Thunder.

It's starting at 7.30. I hope it's over by 10. Might end at like 10.20. Could go like two hours, 45 minutes. But it would seem like if I'm ESPN or TNT and I have a double header and my first game starts at eight and I know that second game, well, they would start the first game. Yes. First game starts at eight. And I know the second game was definitely starting at 1015 and ending at 1230.

And now my inside the NBA show is coming on at 1230. Like that's what I'd want. And I really do feel like they've looked at this, and it's better for them for the games to be longer because football is the ultimate model, right? Football, you have 60 minutes of action that takes three hours and 20 minutes to play. Yeah. And it makes no sense.

You're imputing a level of rationality to these guys that may not exist. I don't think they have properly, empirically answered the question of how much ratings would increase, audience size would increase if the game was structurally altered. I think that, I think it's a really strong case to be made that there's more money to be made in a faster, more appealing product. Because what happens is they just get lazy. They just, the easiest short-term way to make money is to add more commercials. Because what happens is they just get lazy. The easiest short-term way to make money is to add more commercials. But what you don't see, what you don't understand is how the quality

of the overall product is degrading over time. There's a great analogy to this. Somebody was talking to me about, some guy in the package good business was talking about i think it was folgers coffee which used to be incredibly high quality coffee believe it or not like way back in the 70s or whatever and every year they would they would they would say well do people notice the difference between you know 95 coffee and 93 coffee and the answer would be no so they would take it down to 93 and the next year they would say, do they know the difference between 91 and 93? And the answer is no. They take down 91.

And pretty soon they're at 60 and they're selling shitty coffee, right? Well, that's the situation we're in now. There's a kind of broader meta degradation that takes place over time that you don't see in these incremental moments. Well, it's almost like with gas, where they have the three different gases you can buy

when you buy gasoline. It's like 87, 89, or 91. It's like, could I use 87? Is that really going to hurt my car? Like, do I use 89? When you have a rental car, you always use the 87. Yeah, exactly. So I think hack-a-shack's another one where hack-a-shack's an easy fix, right? Yeah, exactly. normal foul, things like that. This is a judgment call. If somebody's intentionally fouling DeAndre Jordan away from the ball,

just give them the power to call that an illegal foul, and it's two free throws on the ball. Now that's not happening anymore. Yeah. And if you have to make it more of an art to intentionally foul DeAndre Jordan, and it's like, oh, it's a charred, you know, somebody's setting a pick, and I just foul him as he's setting a pick on me to get sent in the line. Great.

That's part of basketball. It shouldn't be part of basketball to just run up behind somebody and hug them. It's ridiculous. The other fix, of course, is that DeAndre Jordan could actually practice his free throws. Right. Is that so hard? I know, but that's the argument against allowing hack-a-shack is you can't create a rule that basically helps seven people.

Because really it's like seven people in the league just are terrible at shooting free throws. So you can't create a rule to fix that. But you should create a rule if you're going to have – what's that stupid foul they have when – oh, clear path. You have that foul. You have flag, clear path. You have that foul. You have flagrant fouls. You have all these different things. But you have no penalty foul for just grabbing somebody who has nothing to do with the play? Yeah.

I don't know. I honestly am starting to wonder if all of this is about extending the game and keeping people in the arena longer, keeping them watching the telecast longer. It just feels, it feels off to me because all this stuff's so fixable and they don't care. You know, you're making this, now you're making the case for the, you should be the next NBA commissioner. It's no longer about you being a GM. My dream is for Adam To take over the NFL And Barack Obama to be the new NBA commissioner

Would be my dream And I would like to be Barack Obama's assistant As he saves basketball Which is already saved because Adam did a great job But we really need Adam to run the NFL I think Adam would do a great job Quick break to talk about The people that have saved my face.

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for less. Harry's.com. Right now. Code BS. $5 off your first purchase. We forgot to talk about Ryan Lochte. Oh, my God. So, yeah.

So, Ryan, Lochte, this is, so I know you might disagree with me on this, but I think there are, to be an elite athlete, the striking things about elite athletes, particularly in these practice-intensive sports, is that they are rarely dumb. You can't be dumb and be that disciplined and that focused. And discipline and focus overlap so much with what it takes to be a thoughtful human being. But that's why when you meet all these athletes, they're not dumb. I mean, the thing about Lochte that's so strange is that somebody slipped through. In some bizarre way, we have an individual who is disciplined and focused enough to be, you know, a world-class swimmer. But in every other aspect of his life, a doofus. Right. But this is, he's kind of like this weird,

like laboratory specimen of somebody who broke the mold. He's, I mean, we knew he was dumb from four years ago when he did the reality show after the 2012 Olympics, which I'm still not totally sure what the point of that show was, but even for reality shows, it was dumb. Like, you know, when the reality show audience is was, but even for reality shows, it was dumb. Like, you know, in the reality show, it's like, wow, this is too stupid for me that you've really made history with a dumb athlete. I thought I guess I'm 46.

I shouldn't be surprised by this stuff anymore. I thought the amount of time, attention, publicity, everything that was devoted to that story was way out of whack. And I get it, but I thought it overshadowed the second week of the Olympics. Yeah. I mean, it was, it was, I mean, they had, I was watching those, the, the, that four hour NBC roundup every night and you know there was even with four hours there was a limited amount of time to show everything that mattered and they were devoting five ten you know a segment to Ryan Lochte at the expense of actually showing the Olympics that they

had exclusive rights to broadcast right it's like they why don't they just concede the Ryan Lofton story to everybody else and say our job here is to show you the athletes? It would have been crazy. Yeah, that would have been nice. There was one, I mean, as a track fan, they did a big Lofty story and as a result did not show one of the 1,500-meter semifinals, which is unreal. Yeah, that's outrageous. That's one of the marquee events of of the game that you're not going to show me the semis.

I mean, I realized I may be in a small minority on this one, but I was absolutely furious. So the 1500, the American won it. Yeah. Everyone acted like it was kind of an upset, a surprise. You didn't think it was a surprise. You said all the track nerds thought he had a real chance. Well, he had, so it's interesting. The 1,500 meters, the thing you have to understand is that

world-class milers never run, when they run the normal races on the European circuit every summer, every time they run a race, there's a rabbit. There is someone who has paid a pile of money to take them out in the first two or three laps at a predetermined pace. So they always run under ideal, predictable conditions that are dictated by them. So the best runner in the world, who's the guy named Ashbel Kiprod, the best miler, goes to the meet director and says, I want the rabbit to take me out, and he tells them what time, right? In the Olympics, there are no rabbits.

So all of a sudden, you have runners racing under conditions that are incredibly unusual. Ashbel Kiprot has, and there are many of all the guys in those races, you can count the number of unravitted races they run over the course of their career on one hand. It's basically just the national championships in the Olympics. So point number one is it's already weird. So they're in this situation.

They don't know what to do. So what do they do? They go out and they jog the first two laps. So they turn a mile into a half-mile race. They ran so slowly over the first two laps that So they turn a mile into a half-mile race. Yeah. They ran so slowly over the first two laps that I could have kept up. Especially after your surgery.

Yeah, no, your surgery, you can definitely keep up now. That's right. So right away, once that happens, all bets are off. It's a completely different race. And tactics start to matter hugely. The race went not to the fastest runner, but it went to the smartest runner. And we've known for four or five years now that one of the smartest milers of the past generation is this guy, Matthew Centrowitz. This American guy who is just time and time again is always in the right place at the right time.

And he clearly, as he realized the race was being run so slowly, put himself in the absolute most advantageous position and just ran, I mean, a textbook race. It was just like watching him. It was like unbelievable to see how he was just one step. He was like, he was a chess grandmaster who was one step ahead of his opponent. Yeah, he somehow got on the inside. He was a chess grandmaster who was one step ahead of his opponents. Yeah, he somehow got on the inside, and he knew he had to make the one move where he bumped the guy a little bit, but just enough that it was legal and snuck in,

and all of a sudden he's on the inside. In a normal race run at a normal pace, being on the inside with two laps to go, being in the front with two laps to go is not necessarily an advantage at all. Why? It's probably at all. Why? It's probably a disadvantage. Why? Because you're doing all the work. But he was like, wait, the rules have changed. And he also, I think, trained

I think, the other thing I think he did is he trained in such a way, he was anticipating a very, very, very slow race that was essentially run over the last 400 meters, and that changed the way he prepared. It was just a textbook example about how it is a, preparing for the Olympics takes a lot more than it appears.

I mean, there really is a huge amount of thought that goes into it. Doesn't it seem like he should have been a slightly bigger deal? Was disappointed. I thought that was awesome that we won the 1500. Yeah. Not we, you're Canadian. No, no. Well, yeah.

I'll take it, though. I mean, I'm a fan of his. Yeah. I met him years ago when I was doing a story on his coach. I was interviewing Alberto Salazar, his coach, while Centruitz was doing 200-meter repeats at blinding speed on the track behind him. And he runs so effortlessly. He's one of the most beautiful runners I've ever seen. It's just kind of, you can't believe he's going as fast as he is.

Even in the last lap of the Olympic final, if you looked at him in isolation, you would have said, oh, he's just kind of going out for a decent-paced run. And then you look at the time and you realize he ran 50 seconds for the last 100 meters. But yeah, he should have been a—that goes to the point about track just doesn't command our attention the way it used to. If this was 1972, he would be on the front page of Sports Illustrated he'd be on the cover of Sports Illustrated yeah I was gonna say Prefontaine is one of my weird deep dive

obsessions every once in a while I'll go back in I loved Without Limits it's one of my 10 favorite sports movies I really thought it was just so well done and great Donald Sutherland's awesome Crudup's awesome that race that you know basically tormented him for the next two years in the and great. Donald Sutherland's awesome. Crudup's awesome. That race that

basically tormented him for the next two years in the 72 Olympics is and you know way more about race than I do but it's a fascinating race and the movie does a great job of breaking down you know, he basically ran the last, I think the last lap

was as fast as he could go and it still wasn't enough just because of the way the race broke and he made his move and he got blocked at one point. And we think the winner was a doper. And the winner was probably a doper. 72, right? Yeah. That's, they had that stuff back then. What was your favorite race? Cause I know you watch all this stuff in this Olympics, just from a strategy, how it broke down kind of standpoint. Was it, was it the 1500? Uh, that I also, there's a,

the marathon was one run by one of the kind of biggest badasses in running this guy named Elihu Kipchoge, this Kenyan guy who is so good. And so he turns, so he's running, there's three people running that are together at sort of mile 22. Yeah. Four miles left, Galen Rupp and this Ethiopian named Lisa and Kipchoge. And they're all terrified of Kipchoge because he's so good. And he runs a little bit ahead of them at the water stand to get his water, and they think he's going to, you know, they get a little bit ahead of them at the water stand to get his water, and they think he's going to get a little concerned. And Kipchoge turns around and says, don't worry, guys, I'm not taking off yet.

Oh, wow. After the race, Galen Rupp recounted that story. Basically, we're at mile 22 of the marathon, and Kipchoge is trash-talking his competitors. I mean, it's just fantastic. Wow. That was, watching it, it was just kind of, and he just put the hammer down, and no one could stay with him. But that was an extraordinary performance. He runs, at no time during the entire marathon did he look like he was tired. He looked as fresh in mile 26 as he did in mile one. And he ran,

he threw down between miles of 21 and 25. He was basically running as fast as anyone has run that stretch of a marathon. What about our dude Mo Farah falling down and then getting up and still winning the race pretty easily? Wasn't that amazing? Yeah, that was, well, that's because they were, that was a tactical question. You know, you, they were running so slowly at that point that it was possible for him to catch up, which is why you would run at that such a pace when you're trying to beat Mo Farah is another, is a really good question. I mean, nobody else, nobody wanted to run a proper race. The only way to beat him is to run a proper race, and they wouldn't run a proper race. So, like, what happens? He falls down and he still beats them beats them i mean the collective stupidity of runners sometimes is hard to imagine

if we had pound for pound track and field uh runners like we had track and field runners if we had pound for pound runners slash splinters splash distance guys like we have boxing where they're like you know floyd mayweather is number one pound for pound boxer. Who is the number one pound for pound runner slash sprinter slash distance guy right now? If you had to do your rankings. You mean right now or in the last, if you were going to say the last. Coming out of the Olympics. Coming out of the Olympics. Who's pound for pound the best?

Such a good question. Yeah. I mean, in London, I would have said Alison Felix. Oh. This time around, I would say probably Mo Farah. Mo Farah is world class at every distance from the 1,500 meters to the marathon right now. 1,500 to the marathon? Any he could 1500 to the marathon really yeah ran a marathon i think last year and ran like a time faster than the winning time in the olympics this year

i mean admittedly it wasn't uh the olympics were up uh it was you know it was super muggy and stuff but uh no mo farah is is the first runner in a long time who, within the space of two years, can compete at the absolute highest levels in everything from one mile to the marathon. So pound for pound, I don't think anyone else is close to him. Wow.

I mean, he's a good enough credit. He is, you're witnessing, when you're watching Mo Farah, you're witnessing one of the most extraordinary distance running talents of all time. That was one of my 2012 revelations, was seeing him in person and seeing how excited the crowd was for him. I mean, he's so expressive and charismatic. Yeah, I wasn't prepared for the long-distance races to be as much fun.

They're actually better in person than long jump, high jump, and some of that stuff. I mean, 100-yard dash is still the pinnacle. That's one of the best spectator experiences I've ever had in my life. To even see Usain Bolt, you've seen him in person, right?

Haven't you? Never have. I've seen Mo Farah in person, but never Usain. I mean, even though Usain's from, he's one of my fellow Jamaicans. It's a tragedy. I mean, we've talked about the Jamaican team before, so I don't want to just rehash it, but it is incredible.

How big is Jamaica? 2.5 million people. So what's that? Like Connecticut? No. No, I think it's bigger. Maybe, no, maybe it's Connecticut. Rhode Island?

It's maybe Rhode Island. Yeah, it's in that territory. No, the place is tiny. And don't forget, like, tons of sprinters from other countries, like America, England, and Canada, are either born in Jamaica or their parents were born in Jamaica. So it's not just Jamaica, right? The greatest sprinters in Canadian history have all been Jamaicans. The guy who set the world record and won, well, Ben Johnson, but also the guy who, I forgot his name, who won in 1992, Jamaican. I mean, it's tons of Jamaicans.

It's really kind of strange, and it's hard to explain. Well, we did a back and forth, I think, like four or five years ago, and you were explaining how there was some term for it, some fancy term, some fancy Gladwell term about when maximizing. Yeah, capitalization rate, maximizing the talents of a specific area. They are finding 100% of their sprinting talent. Yeah. That's the only way.

Like Pennsylvania, for some reason, produces quarterbacks. Yes. There's something about if you have a region that there's evidence and there's history and there's role models and people look up to and there's some sort of something in place that tends to push more people into that place. My cousin who lives in Kingston, at his kids' either middle or elementary school, there is a sprint coach. Wow. So it's just like Texas in football. I mean, when you put that much attention on a very, very specific sport, you get results, right? There is, there is zero chance. If you're a, if you can run up a 10, five or faster, a hundred meter dash and you're Jamaican that they don't

find you zero chance they find you. I'm going to leave you with this and then we have to go like capitalization, right? This is why it is incredible to me that the U S soccer team didn't make the, even the final four for women for the Olympics. And just in general, you know how we always would talk about, oh, man, imagine if Russell Westbrook played soccer. Or imagine if LeBron played soccer. And we go through all that. Kyrie Irving, oh, my God, what a soccer player he would have been.

With women's soccer, we're getting the best athletes now for women's soccer. Just as many girls play soccer in America as boys from age six on. And the difference is with the men's sports, they're getting put, you know, you have football, you have baseball, you have basketball. There's team sports and there's different role models. I would say the best athletes are playing basketball right now for the most part, specific types of athletes are gravitating there in soccer. If you're a great athlete, I mean, I'm sorry with, with women, let's say you have a great 12 year old athlete. Well, what's she playing? Like my daughter's a good athlete. I don't think she's not like a phenomenon,

but she's a good athlete and she loves soccer and the two sports she's going to gravitate to are probably soccer and basketball. And then's going to gravitate to are probably soccer and basketball and then at basketball you hit a point where you need to have a certain height or certain body and there's the aau grind things like that soccer is is probably the most inviting of all the sports and then just talking about from a female standpoint it would just seem like that's where our best athletes are and now we have the infrastructure of 40 years. You have club soccer, you have all these different things.

It would just seem like we should be dominating in women's soccer. So to not even make the final four at this point in 2016 is just dumbfounding to me. And there's, there's a whole strategy conversation that is probably super nerdy for this, but the way that american teams play from the youth sports level on is they play to win they don't play possession like when you see like a team like barcelona where everybody it's possession possession passing quick passes give

and goes um triangles things like that a lot of the youth sports teams they just play to win so you just put your two fast kids at the top and you chip it up ahead they chase it and they try to score and you're just taking advantage of their speed and their athletic talent and at some point that catches up to you because everybody's fast and everybody's good and when you watch like our women's team play it's a lot of that stupid stuff that starts at age eight with kids just trying to win. It's like I look at what's happening to both sides of what we have, men's soccer and women's soccer. And it's an outcome of what I watch at my daughter's soccer games when these teams are just playing to win

and they play this dump and chase. And that's the way we play with our national teams. It's like we have no infrastructure. And it's the same thing with basketball with the aau culture and the fact that we we don't have like traditional point guards anymore and everybody's a shoot first whatever um i don't know i feel like it's infecting soccer and basketball specifically that's the end of my there's two separate things we're talking about here. There's one necessary revolution has to be in the numbers of people who are playing a sport, and the second necessary revolution

has to be in the sophistication of the coaching and preparation. And so you have, if you look at countries that have historically dominated soccer in soccer like the netherlands very very small country so the pool players is is tiny a fraction of the pool in the united states but the level of coaching i mean all the you know for a while all the great coaches were dutch the dutch reinvented modern soccer so So they maximized on the other end, on the sophistication of coaching and preparation. And I'm wondering whether we underestimate the coaching preparation contribution and overestimate the pool. Like, to my mind, Jamaica's the same way. That fact I told you about, they have a sprint coach in my cousin's elementary school,

that tells you more about Jamaica's sprinting prowess than the fact that Jamaica, the size of the country. Well, the way we do soccer in this country now, it's like if you're really good at soccer, you end up playing like what's called, you can do the ODP or you do an academy team or whatever. And it's the same commitment that like gymnasts make when they're trying to become Olympic gymnasts. You're talking like 20 hours of practice a week, tournaments every, just about every weekend during the soccer season, you're traveling. And it's like, there's so many soccer

players in this country. What's the outcome? Like, yeah, you have a chance to get a scholarship in college. But when you look at like the actual olympic team there's 22 spots there's turnover of maybe two people a year three people a year max you know versus like the the i think the odds are better that you'd get hit by lightning yeah you'd make the olympic team but uh but it's tell it to your daughter well but it's it's i think team sports are great. I'm so glad she's doing it. I think it's awesome. But at the same time, I just don't know what kind of habits we're learning with these kids from age 8 to age 14. They're playing a specific style of winning.

I don't care if it's basketball, soccer, or any of these other sports. You're just playing to win versus learning how to play. And I think it catches up to you. Anyway, that's the end of my rant. Malcolm Gladwell, the Revisionist History Podcast, what was your favorite one? Out of the 10 podcasts, if somebody was only going to listen to one,

which one would you recommend? It was the one called My Little Hundred Million, where I talk about the obscenity of Stanford University and how all the money in American education goes to such a small number of institutions. That was my favorite. Oh, that's one of your passions, too. Yeah, it might be the one that's the most popular

when I look at the numbers. Oh, good. Bill, it was a real pleasure. This was great. I'll see you next month on any given Wednesday. You're on the September 7th show. I won't spoil the topic, but it was a real pleasure. This was great. I'll see you next month on any given Wednesday. You're on the September 7th show. I won't spoil the topic, but it's a good one. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of August.

Anytime y'all want to see me again, rewind this track right here. Close your eyes. Pitching me rolling. Thanks to Sling TV for sponsoring today's BS podcast. Remember the best of live TV for just 20 bucks a month at Sling TV. Lose long-term contracts and hidden fees and extra equipment.

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