The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 177: Malcolm Gladwell

Episode Date: February 17, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Malcolm Gladwell to discuss Dwight Howard's and Carmelo Anthony's main problem (6:00), the 3-point evolution (13:00), Jim Dolan's rich-son complex (24:00), Seattle SuperSonics–expansion-team scenarios (34:00), basketball in the center of culture (42:00), 'Battle of the Network Stars' (54:00), the need for candid athletes (1:03:00), Magic Johnson's new job (1:07:00), and the staleness of tennis (1:14:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Protect your home. The smart way. Visit simplisafe.com slash ringer to get 10% off your system today. SimpliSafe with two I's. SimpliSafe.com slash ringer. Speaking of the ringer, we're brought to you by TheRinger.com and The Ringer Podcast. I have a Friday column up on The Ringer, an NBA trade deadline mailbag. Nice.

That includes, I tried to answer, somebody asked to come up with a trade for every team. I spent so much time on this. This was like from 6.30 in the morning to like 11.30. I spent five hours trying to come up with trades. I know I didn't do the best job. I probably went 20 for 27. What was your favorite of the list? I haven't read the column yet. My favorite was the most simple one.

It was Jimmy Butler for Damien Lillard. I like those just big-ass, one-for-one. Very old school. I feel you're famous for the five team the multi-team the multi-team i have one of those too we can talk about that but uh that's malcolm gladwell he's coming up right report slash bs podcast hall of famer it's been a while couldn't be happier so many things to talk about. Yeah, I was making up fake trades for this column. You know what's funny?

Because I do it with my players, too. Fans overrate their own players. And when you put them in trades, they lose their mind. It's like if somebody tried to put my kids in a trade. You were anticipating a lot of blowback from the column? Yeah, but it'll be fun. I love it. I had some good ones, had some decent ones, had some better ones.

Yeah, trade deadline is Thursday. The NBA is making more money than ever. Did you see the Forbes thing about how much money? I have a question about that. Yeah. You know, in Michael Lewis's book, The Undoing Project, his latest book, the whole preface- Your frenemy, Michael Lewis. He's my friend.

The whole preface is all about your boy at Houston. Daryl Morey, chapter one. And about all the steps that Daryl Morey makes to improve his judgment as a general manager. And it makes me think, when you were saying that we always overrate our own players, why wouldn't a team have a general manager at arm's length? In other words, imagine if you had a complete outsider

be your GM for that exact reason. So you don't want a GM who's falling in love with any of your players, who's completely... I mean, Belichick is someone who is... He's a very rare figure in that he seems to be able to have emotional distance from his players. Jamie Collins, one day he's the very rare figure in that he seems to be able to have emotional distance from his players. Jamie Collins, one day he's the most talented player on the team. The next day he's gone to the Browns, right? But I don't think most of us can do that. But I'm wondering, why wouldn't you

have a general manager on another coast who never sees the players, who has the ability to be completely objective about things like trades. I think the smarter NBA teams right now rely on a bunch of different people. And like the Warriors, for example, I think Jerry West is a version of that guy. He's detached. They just ask him advice and he just says stuff like,

you can't trade Klay Thompson, that guy's great. Or you should absolutely trade Klay Thompson, he's overrated, he's not in the mix. And that was what that chapter, I really liked that chapter. And one of the things that was in there was that concept of falling in love with your players. And when they were making a Kyle Lowry trade and somebody in the room had the suggestion, we'll flip it around. What if we weren't involved with that trade? we want to get that pick for and then it was kind of they all realized oh yeah we should do this but yeah i think you get attached to people like i wrote in the thing i did today about marcus smart i love marcus smart i know i'm irrational

about it there's no trade the value that the celtics fans and the organization has put on marcus smart can never be matched in a trade. Yeah. Because they have him as like an A plus and he's, you know, a B or a B plus, but it doesn't matter. And I think that happens a lot. I think that's why teams are so afraid to trade. Have you ever done a postmortem on your trade columns? So you have over the years have done how many trade columns? It's not just the trades. It's also like all the draft diaries. Draft diaries. But it'd be really fun to go back and just see.

I would love to know, for example, I would love to know whether in retrospect, the trades you propose for your teams, Boston teams, are better or worse. Yeah, I'm sure they're totally skewed. I've had wild swings with drafts. I've had some like great ones.. I've had some great ones. I was going crazy the year Curry kept falling.

Oh, that was... 2009 was probably my best one in terms of who I... From 2007, 2008, 2009, I had Duran over Oden. And then I had some terrible ones. What were some of your... I can't remember what your... I really thought Derek Williams should have gone ahead of Kyrie Irving.

Ooh. Yeah. I wasn't sold on Kyrie Irving. He only played 10 games in college. Yeah. The guys that always gave me the most trouble

were the guys with no sample size, like high school guys, Europeans, college guys who'd only played a few games. Those were the ones

that screwed me up. In fairness to yourself, those are the guys that give all of us trouble. I mean, those are high variance picks. Yeah. Dwight Howard. I remember Dwight Howard versus Emeka Okafor

was an argument because we'd watched Emeka Okafor for three years. Dwight Howard was some dude in high school. Well, I have strong feelings about Dwight Howard that aren't positive, but... That aren't positive? He's one of those guys... Well, actually, it's not really dwight howard

i when i read your analysis of basketball players from time to time i take issue with your and i feel like over the years you've been too positive about dwight howard because you not anymore not anymore but the other guy the other guy who and you're not alone, hardcore basketball people, the affection they have for Melo and have had historically for Melo. I'm turning on that too. In your basketball book, you had Melo so high. I remember reading that. I was like, am I right?

You had Melo in... No, I had Dwight. Iverson was the one I had too high. Melo, I've written since the basketball book glowing stuff about how he could be the best guy on a title team. I don't think that was wrong. Really? I just think he never found the right situation.

But he could have been the go-to guy on the best team in the league. But those two guys are similar in that you can say they never found the right situation, but you can also say that they're not people capable of creating the right situation either. They're not making people around them better. And they're not people uh capable of creating the right situation either they're not making people around their own and they're their own worst enemy like carmelis had multiple situations

where he could have actually had a great situation but he chose money each time and he chose guaranteed long-term dollars over being in the best situation and the thinking is well maybe i'll get the best situation anyway which isn't the way to go but what's happening with basketball in the last three years has basically blown up my book like if if i did the book again your publisher is your publisher is like screaming no no don't say that no it's like i don't even know how you could compare the basketball we're watching now to the basketball from 30 years ago. The fact that Russell Westbrook is averaging a triple-double, which seems amazing on paper, and parts of it are amazing

because of how hard he plays all the time and just the amount of energy he has to expend to do that. But it's also way easier for a guard to get 10 rebounds in 2017 than it was 20 years ago because there's less big guys out there. Everyone's shooting more threes. Threes tend to bounce longer. There's ways to bump it up. And I don't really know how to compare the eras anymore.

Larry Bird, in 86, he led the league with 82 three-pointers total yeah made 82 three-pointers it's like curry could do that potentially in a month yeah yeah you know yeah so i don't how do you compare it how do you compare when the styles are totally different when fast breaks the guys are going out to the three-point line instead of trying to get layups so it's almost like it's almost like what happened to baseball where baseball had these different eras and there were some where pitchers were great trying to get layups. So it's almost like what happened to baseball, where baseball had these different eras, and there were some where pitchers were great, there were some where there was more homers,

and I think that's going to have to be the way we start thinking about it. But isn't this, when I think, another way of looking at the contemporary basketball situation is, it reminds me of the 80s. It's very sharply different from the 90s and the early aughts. But remember those crazy high-scoring Denver teams of the late 80s?

That strikes me as a team that, if you took that Denver team and stuck them in 2017 and just had them move back three feet behind the three-point line on most of their shots, they work, right? So they'd have to relearn how to play though because the early 90s had some scoring bench stuff too the difference is like so i had this question in my mailbag that i'd have taken out for space but it was about antoine walker how antoine walker was the nash's sons always get

credited for being the team that brought back the three ball. But there was an Antoine Walker, Paul Pierce two-year run in the Celtics where basically all they did was shoot threes because that was the only way they had a chance to compete at a high level. So they shot. There's like three years in a row the Celtics led the league in three-pointers. But in the 0-3 season, they averaged over 26 a game, which is a ton. It was way more than anyone else. And Antoine shooting eight a game and Pierce was shooting seven a game,

but they weren't going in. Pierce was like a 30% three-point shooter. So people were thinking this way, but they weren't good enough yet. And I think they weren't good enough at shooting them yet. And I think the difference now is people are just better at shooting them. And I don't know. That's the story I haven't read yet. Why are people better at shooting threes now? Yeah. it is it spacing is it just practice is it they grew up

with during an era where they they were all taught to shoot the same way and release the same way and that's helped is it 20 years of just repetition that's the part i don't know it would be really i mean it would be really interesting to have to get a completely accurate practice diary of Steph Curry and compare it to what was 20 years ago and the equivalent score doing. And I'm sure maybe it's just that Steph Curry is taking 80% of his practice shots from outside the arc. Well, one of your obsessions was the underhand free throw. Yes. And I would say the three-pointer is a cousin of this, where all of a sudden there was a three-point line, right? The 79-80 season, it just comes in.

It's this long line. And I remember going to those games the first year, because I was living in Boston with my dad. It was Larry Bird's first season. We went to a ton of those games. And the three-point line was like an oddity. It would be the equivalent of if they had a four-point line now at midcourt you just stare at it when somebody shot it was like whoa he's shooting from there yeah and it just didn't seem

conceivable that this would be the thing that completely changed the league well this you know the three the history of the three-point line is completely consistent with the history of all major innovations. So there's a kind of, there's a literature on time lag and innovations. So you introduce an idea, and how long before it's a kind of clearly disruptive revolutionary idea, how long does it take to be adopted in a widespread way? So you can look at the ATM. The ATM, the first ATM, I might be getting this wrong, I feel like is in the early 80s, late 70s.

People don't start, the ATM doesn't kind of reach maturity until the, you know, 20 years later or so. Same thing with the telephone, same thing with the fax machine, same thing with the telephone same thing with the fax machine same thing with you same thing with the smartphone you're on the list it always takes essentially a generation do you think a generation yeah for people to adopt um i mean there's a like i said this is a massive um literature on this in in economics about about how it takes a generation for even the most sort of obviously good ideas to get widespread acceptance. And the three-point shot is a perfect example of that.

I mean, what seems like a no-brainer to us now, move back two feet and all of a sudden the... It's worth an extra point. Yeah, it's worth an extra point. That, you know, it's like, and same thing, no-brainer. Get your cash from a machine. Don't go to the bank during bank hours and line and line up in a long line and spend 20 minutes getting 40 your 40 for the weekend that seems

really obvious just now it was not obvious right in 1989 right it's like it was a weird idea do i trust the machine and the banks were like i don't know how many machines we should put out there like it's the same thing it's just weird the learning curve is always like i did something about this movie isaiah thomas led the league in three-point shooting with like 28 percent the second or third year literally 28 was he was the highest one i remember things started to shift first it was when you're down three with 10 seconds left oh we'll shoot a three we could tie it and everybody's just taking terrible threes. So that started it. But Bird was the first guy that I remember

who kind of understood what the psychological impact of it was. He would take them in big moments as kind of like the dagger. The first one, the biggest one he made his second season was the one that clinched the game six in Houston to win the NBA finals. They swung it around to him makes this three in the corner clinches the game runs down with his fist it was like oh the three it's kind of like it could be like a closer but it wasn't until the mid 80s when people started seeing it that way

and then all of a sudden in the late 80s that's when like the dale ellis type started coming in these guys that like they were spaying then reggie miller comes in how in retrospect how good of a three shooter was dale ellis i mean pretty good like you know in the in that like high 30s to low 40s percent del curry del curry was like yeah he was up there i think he's not he wasn't anywhere how close was he to his son if you compared him like against everybody else in his era versus steper it's probably similar they screwed things up though there was like a two-year stretch where they move it in the mid 90s they moved it in so everybody's numbers are way off yeah but then when they moved it back the numbers started coming around but i mean when the celtics were shooting all those threes like they

made the 2002 eastern finals and they're just gunning threes like i think antoine took eight a game in the playoffs by the way is, is that Patino era Celtics? It was right after. He got fired. The new guy came in. They just had two good players. He's just like, just fire threes. And he had actually, I guess, done the math.

And it's like, even if we make one out of every three, it's better than any other option we have. And they almost made it to the finals. Like, they really could have. And then it wasn't until about the mid-2000s, I think, that really the math and people like Daryl started coming in. The interesting sort of physics problem is if you add two or three feet to a mid-range jumper,

what is your, all things being equal, how much harder is the shot, right? So you're going to get an extra point, but you're also obviously attempting a more difficult shot. And what I would love to know is how much harder is the shot right so you're going to get an extra point but you're also obviously attempting a more difficult shot and what i would love to know is how much i mean someone surely has has has quantified exactly what is the cost of moving back a couple feet we know the benefit we don't know the cost but you know what i found just when i made my comeback when i was playing pickup poofs for a few years and I had a 20-foot shot, right, which is about three feet in from the three-point line. But most of the time when you play pickup, everything counts one point.

If you're doing it correctly, it's game to 11, everything's one point. What was interesting was people would shoot threes anyway. And Jacoby and I, the guy I always played with, we would always talk about it, like what would make these people shoot threes. And it was because they had practiced so many threes. And the line, it made them know where they were on the basketball court. So you can make a case. People are more comfortable shooting a three than one that's three, four feet in.

Because you don't have your bearings the same way. If you're behind the three-pointer, you're like, I know when I'm here, this is what I have to do. And I think that's one of the reasons the three-point shot has taken off like it has. It's like, you know, you get your four spots. I went to, when we went to do the Steve Kerr podcast last week, we went to the Warriors shoot-around. JaVale McGee was making threes.

The rebounding, Tate was there. The rebounding, throwing it back, three, three, three. This guy is like a dunker. Like, he's no idea he could shoot threes. And he's probably made eight out of ten. Yeah. You know? So I think, who knows?

Who knows where this is going? Well, this is the... Would you move it back or no? No, I mean, I don't think so. I mean, although what I'm interested in is there'll come a point where everyone plays Houston ball, just basically. By the way, did you see,

there was a clip online on YouTube of a high school team that really does just do layups and threes. There's no in-between game. Right. And there's like a five-minute video of them. And it is, it no longer resembles basketball. I mean, they's like a five-minute video of them. And it is, it no longer resembles basketball. I mean,

I'm not sure I love it. I'm not, I, yeah, I don't know. I hadn't mixed things. It was really kind of cool to see, the coach basically said, you cannot shoot anything that's not a three-year layup. Right.

And so you see the players, they sort of move into the paint and they kind of do u-turn they do these kind of u-turns once they see that there's nothing available like and does that it's like it's almost like there's a big kind of you know uh there's a huge gray zone yeah inside the three point line and they just don't go near it i mean it's just you've never like there's some it's some kind of hybrid basketball you've not seen before the most interesting idea i've heard for tempering this a little bit would be to change the arc so that it goes out before

the corner we basically eliminate the corner three oh okay because you could argue the corner three is where a lot of the damage is because you can put the guy in the corner he just stands there he doesn't do anything he spreads the floor for everybody else and it's worth three points every time the defense screws up and he's able to take a shot and if you're trying to establish a better inside out flow that's what you'd have to eliminate the counter would be everybody likes basketball watching it more now yeah i don't know why why are we defending the basketball of the 90s and that was really really difficult to watch basketball it was like that the rally era was pretty rough the pistons were like that's that's like god i want to don't want to go back to that it's a good segue to charles oakley oh oak yes yes this i i gotta say

i usually have a handle on sports stories and how they're going to mushroom. This one was like the biggest story of the season. I did not see this one coming. Well, it's New York. And two, it's the, we know there's, it's Dolan. Dolan. And anytime you can get some opportunity to gang up on Dolan in New York, there's like lots of, but like, it's sort of,

the thing that got me about this story is a bunch of things. One is, so you watch the tape. Dolan's getting, or Oakley's getting into it with what looks like one or more people. Just, but he's like, there's, you know. Which tape did you see? Because there was a second angle that started 20 seconds earlier than that tape. Oh, I didn't see the second angle.

Where he gets knocked down by one of those guys. And that's why he was so angry. Oakley gets knocked down? Where he gets knocked down by one of those guys. And that's why he was so angry. Oakley gets knocked down? Oakley gets knocked down. The guy, he's trying to reach his thing and somebody, and he ends up falling over. And he got up. And then the tape that everybody saw was like started 10 seconds after that. And that's why he was mad.

But here's my problem. So they drag him out, physically drag him out of the arena. And then they file charges against him. Now, to me, this is where the story becomes kind of preposterous and bigger than basketball. This, in a nutshell, is everything that's gone wrong with the criminal justice system in America. Give me a break. There's a shoving match at a basketball game. They drag the guy out, and then the cops file charges what is the conversation that takes place when they have oakley out outside it should just be go home or i'm sorry you know

yeah oak not today subway but instead they're bringing in the cops and cops with a straight face are are filing charges against a man because of a shoving match? Like, this is like, this is an absurd elevation of all physical contact into the criminal arena, right? It's just, but that's the whole, the point, the reason this story takes off is because at every level, it's about overreaction. Overreaction of the police, overreaction of Dolan, who then hangs Oakley out to dry with this statement

where he claims with no evidence that Oakley's got a drinking problem right or a drug problem like how does he get away how did how does he get away with that that seemed like that was uh he could have been sued for that if oakley wanted if he's basically he's basically saying he thought the guy might have a drinking problem but had no evidence whatsoever no evidence whatsoever i am quite certain that silver was on the phone to him 15 minutes after that statement came out. How he could issue that statement without running it. Are there no adults in the Knicks front office who would say to him, you can't say that about a Knicks legend.

By the way, you can't say that about a human being, right? What do you think Dolan has to gain at this point from owning the Knicks? I was really thinking about that the other day. I was going to write something in the mailbag about it, and I just couldn't come up with a good angle because my guess is he's just so stubborn. He just goes home at night and he's like, someday I'll show them.

They're going to see. They'll see someday. And I think he's like someday i'll show them yeah they're gonna see they'll see someday and and i think that's just i think he's just wired that way whereas most people would look at this and go wow everyone hates me yeah i i've owned this team for 17 years the fans hate me nobody thinks i'm good at this um every time i go to the arena i'm afraid somebody's gonna yell at me or make fun of me. And my team's worth probably $4 billion if I want to include all the assets and sell it. Maybe I should just get rid of this thing.

Just walk away. Just walk away. Maybe it's time. He reminds, I mean, not to inject politics into this, but you know who he reminds me of. I do. And why do I say he reminds me of this other unnamed person because they're

both examples of this kind of under theorized pathology which is they're the rich kid's son the rich kid's son has got a problem which is he spends his entire life trying to kind of outgrow his father's shadow and he knows he's insecure because he knows that everyone looks at him and said you didn't do it yourself you got daddy's cash right right so you have in both these cases one on fifth avenue and 52nd street one on seventh avenue and 34th street you have these these um these privileged spoiled kids trying to figure out what their adult role is, right, in their father's world. And none of them handle it well. This has been a subject I've been obsessed with as a sports fan over the years. The legacy kid owner.

Yeah. The kid who owns a team because his dad gave it to him. It's gone right in certain cases. When did it go right? I'm trying to think. Well, like for example, Wick Grossbeck, the Celtics owner, his dad is this legend and became very successful and Wick went to

all the right schools and followed him and has become a very good owner. I think that's a good example of a legacy kid type situation going right. Most of the time it goes terribly and most of the time you end up with jimmy buss and james dolan and all these people and you know it's almost like watching the uh the grammys montage the death montage and they show frank sinatra jr and you think like frank sinatra jr is on this montage because he

sang because he was later frank sancho jr it had no nothing to do with whether he had a good voice or not yeah and that's what basically what's happened with a lot of these owners you know it's funny i was once so obsessed with this rich rich people's children's thing i'm still obsessed Can we still be obsessed? Yes, we can still. Okay. I went and there's a family called the Gunns. Papa Gund made an extraordinary fortune in banking in the sort of 40s and 50s in Cleveland. Yeah. And he had four children. And one of his kids had owned the Cleveland Cavaliers at one point.

Do you remember? This is back in the 70s. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gordon Gund. Gordon Gund. Yeah. at one point do you remember this back in the 70s oh yeah yeah gordon gunn gordon gunn yeah so there's four guns and each one of the guns turned out amazing so there's a there's a daughter gunned who uh at one point i think was chairman of moma there was a son who is a uh history teacher

at a high school in private high school in uh new york and. And then Gordon is someone who has done really, really, really, I mean, there are good philanthropists and lousy ones. He's like an exceptional one. And he's done all kinds of interesting things in his life, including own the Cavaliers. So I was so fascinated by the fact that here's a family where their dad was like mega rich. I mean, not like serious, serious,

probably one of the top five richest Americans at one point in his life. So I went and I can't remember how many of the children I interviewed. But I was just curious, how did you guys turn out? How did you guys turn out okay when everyone else in your position has all of these perilous? And one of the things, it became clear when they talked about their father, how much effort their father put into making sure that his kids did not bear the ill effects of his wealth. Like, it was a serious, propaganda, I've forgotten his name, clearly took this really seriously. They lived in a normal house in a

Cleveland suburb. They didn't even know, one of the guns, I forgot which one, told me that he didn't even find out that his father was wealthy until he was in college and some guy in college said, well, blah, blah, blah, you know that because your dad's the third richest American. He was like, what? He didn't know. No, but like that's an extreme example, but it's hard work if you're going to be, if you want to raise normal kids and you're really rich. And, you know, sometimes there are examples.

We have two examples in public life right now of maybe someone where the mom didn't do the right job. It's more than two. We have more than two examples. We have more than two. Yes, we do. Well, think about it, though. So if somebody's super successful, that would assume they're working their ass off. They're not home a lot.

They're not really watching what's going on at home anyway. So that's bad. That's number one. Number two, if the family's super wealthy, the kids don't have to work, they're not thinking about, oh my God, they're not learning a work ethic at an early age. Their brain's not churning,

oh, I got to get out of here like a lot of the success stories of anyone who's who's just become super duper wealthy in america it's a lot of times it's people who came from nothing yeah you know they came from scratch they scrapped their way up yeah you know it's a lot of like the bob craft type thing it's the can't there's a there's a i've forgotten who came up with this but there's a great riff on this it's called the can't, there's a, I've forgotten who came up with this, but there's a great riff on this. It's called the can't won't problem, which is that when you're poor and you're raising children

and the kid says, I want a pony or whatever, I want this, this, this, you just say, we can't. And it's the end of the conversation. If you're rich and the kid says,

I want a pony, you have to say, we can give you a pony, but we won't. And being able, when you have to say, we won't, it's a lot harder. You have to say, we can give you a pony, but we won't. And being able, when you have to say, we won't, it's a lot harder. You have to be able to have a real conversation then, and give reasons, and have a philosophy of the family. And it's hard to say won't. It's super easy to say can't. And so these are families that have won't problems. I'm sure there was some won't problems um you know that i'm sure there was some won't problems in the dolan papa dolan

could have said i can give you the nicks but i won't well remember that the dolans had a whole thing where um the dad charles yeah who almost bought the browns at one point is that right yeah oh my god yeah in the late 90s i mean is there no indignity that the that the browns have not been well it was him and Bill Cosby were two of the people trying to buy it. So, however it turned out, it was probably better. But Dolan was trying...

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Was Dolan trying to buy it with Cosby or were they in competition? I think there were three different bidders. There was a Dolan group, there was a Cosby group. Because I was going to say, if it was a Dolan and Cosby group,

that's like... It's one for the ages. There was a Cosby group. Because I was going to say, if it was a Dolan and Cosby group, that's like the truck. It's one for the ages. That is one for the ages. So I'm going to say mid-2000s, Dolan was, the Cablevision company was sinking all this money into basically a digital competitor for DirecTV and all that stuff. I think it was called VOOM, something like that, VOOM or Zoom. And it was just a disaster. And they were pouring money into it,

and it wasn't working. And Dolan at that point, Charles Dolan was semi-retired, and James was running the whole thing. And James and the board members wanted to just get rid of it, write it off, whatever. And Charles wanted to keep it. And Charles and James went head-to-head. There's this huge article that when I was researching him last week

that I didn't even know about. I it was new york magazine about the dolan's like headed for this crash collision meanwhile charles dolan had given james like you know every single thing that he had so i did james have his father dragged out of the boardroom by two cops and then did he issue a statement saying he really thinks his father should get treatment for his issues? He's running a mega company. Yeah. That's the other thing. It's not like he's just the Knicks owner.

He owns the Rangers. He owns MSG. He runs Cablevision. And the reason, remember this, every time you take the train into New York City and you walk through the cesspool that is Penn Station, ask yourself the question why the richest city in the world has one of the worst train stations imaginable. It is because of the Dolans. Is that true? You can't fix Penn Station until they move from Madison Square Garden. And they won't move from Madison Square Garden.

It's on top. How do you fix it? You got this aging, ridiculous arena on top, and the Dolans are so off in their own little world that they think that basketball is more important than the commuting experience of millions of New Yorkers every day. Well, and he also squashed a football stadium that would have been Midtown, right? Because he said it was a competitive thing. That was a shame.

That would have been awesome. By the way, they have the money. If they want to build themselves, they could build themselves a gorgeous state-of-the-art arena, which would also make it easier to get free agents. I don't know if I'm a free agent, why on earth would I come to New York?

Because you're in New York City? No, but would you play for the Knicks? Who wants that? I think ultimately these guys talk themselves into anything. I don't know. When you think... I think they look at

variables that maybe we're not even you and i wouldn't look at bill if i was let's say i'm a i'm a top five free agent and i'm considering various places to go first of all there's all kinds of reasons not to want to remember new york has some strikes against it taxes all kinds of reasons but you look at a franchise that basically has sucked for how many years now? Since the Riley years. I think they have like two playoff series, three playoff series victories in 17 years. Deeply dysfunctional organization. Yeah.

A lunatic owner and high, both city and state tax. You're paying both city and state taxes. Well, if you live in the city. Definitely state. People don't understand. You're paying both city and state taxes. Well, if you live in a city. Definitely state. People don't understand. You're an accountant. If you're a free agent and you say you want to play for the Knicks,

the first call you get is from your accountant who says, no! So they're powerful. I mean, it's no accident that when those guys talk about, whenever those free agents go down the list of places they want to go to, there's always a Florida team

and there's always a Texas team, right? No accident. No state income tax. That's what that's about. And you know, if I was one of the other owners, I would be fighting for them to have less of a salary cap, Texas and Florida. Oh, because of that tax. I would say they should pay like 5% less than everyone else.

Yeah. I wrote in my mailbag today about that. I think the Seattle expansion team's coming in the next three to four years. Oh, that's interesting. For a couple reasons. One, because I think there's enough players now where they could get away with 32 teams. And 32 is a better number anyway.

It would allow them to do a couple different things. I don't know what the 32nd team would be. Seattle, 100%. But the 32nd team, it could be Vegas. It could be Mexico City. It could be it could be vegas it could be mexico city it could be louisville like who knows but so let's say seattle goes in i i've heard 2.1 would be the number so every owner would just get a a uh i think it's a 30 million now what's 30 into 2.1 million 70 million dollar check nice okay here's your check cash it 70 mil and then they probably What's 30 into 2.1 million? $70 million check. Nice.

Here's your check. Cash it. 70 mil. And then they probably have to sit out the meteorites thing for a couple years. But can you imagine all the variables coming from a Seattle expansion team? You get the Sonics back. You have this team that has an unlimited cap space that could just completely screw up the whole salary system for that league seattle would have a team again you'd have all the businesses in there and like when you look at what's happened with uh the warriors which we could see it was sitting there

for years and years and years and now it's like that's the wealthiest group of people that go to any sporting event game after game after game just loaded they're building this arena on the on basically on the ocean in san francisco not the ocean though the water china basin yeah yeah yeah and it's going to be this state-of-the-art complex that team has gone they bought it from 370 i would say it's worth 3 billion easy now yeah and uh i don't know where this is going because the media rights and china and the fact that anybody in the world will be able to have league pass in three to four years there's so much money coming in the league i don't know where it ends and the seattle thing

gets crazier by the day because seattle you know they do that you know how in real in real estate they do the crane count yeah the crane count this is the number of you you measure the construction activity in a city by the number of cranes in operation within like simple stats like this so you do the crane so for years they would do the crane count in china in the odds was like off that no one has seen a crown or in dubai in 2004 there was a i think there's they keep track of like what the record crane counts are. I think I'm right. I think that Seattle's got

the largest crane count in North America right now. Ooh. Seattle is booming. I love Seattle. So you've got, you've got Amazon, you've got Microsoft,

but now you've got a whole other, those are the kind of stalwarts of the tech scene. But now you've got a whole burgeoning tech scene. The downtown core is exploding. The crane counts through the roof. How is there not a team there?

How is there not a team there? How does New Orleans, God bless New Orleans, but how does New Orleans have a team over Seattle? It is kind of... It's like incredible. How does Memphis have it? All great cities, no offense, but Seattle is, I would say,

one of the top seven biggest cities we have. What is the economically weakest NBA franchise? New Orleans. It? New Orleans. It is New Orleans. Yeah. Yeah. New Orleans, and they're not even, I think they're getting like 13,000, 14,000 people a game,

but they have the worst TV contract, the whole thing. The league has been very loyal to New Orleans, which they get credit for. Are you saying that the Seattle franchise is, you're saying it's a new franchise, not a move? It'll be an expansion team, yeah. Oh, I see, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And what they would do with the other one, you know, we'll see how this Vegas thing goes. We'll see if there's ever a football team there. That was one of my favorite

secret stories. When rich guys go to war. The Sheldon Adelson, who's like basically the godfather of Vegas, and he's going to help the Raiders build this stadium. And somehow they had a falling out.

He's out. He's basically giving them $750 million or whatever to help them build it. He's out. Not only is he out, but then you can't cross him. So I don't think they can go to Vegas anymore. But they shouldn't because why not stay in Oakland, which is another one of the fastest growing cities? The Bay Area could support two teams.

It's always puzzled me why the Raiders have had this ambivalence towards Oakland, particularly now. I mean, it's like one of the great markets in the turning into one of the great markets. That's another legacy kid. Al Davis' son. Oh, right.

That's another one where it's just like, yeah, please help me, folks. Just sell the team. Just sell it. Sell the team. You're sitting on a giant asset. Yeah. I can't.

It's like Oklahoma City. That's another one. They buy the team from Seattle. They move it to Oklahoma City. They basically steal the team and move it. The stadium, the arena that they're playing in isn't any better or worse than the Seattle one was. It's a much worse market with a much lower tv revenue so they cut costs left and

right the only time they really spent a ton of money was last year because they're trying to keep the rant now now they've gone back the other way and they're going back into money saving mode a little bit but the team's like tripled in value yeah you. And yet you'd be like, oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you lost a tiny bit of money last year. The team that you bought for 300 million is worth like 1.5. I think you'll make it. Maybe take out a loan.

Bill, did you ever, I know you guys talked about a little bit of this when you had Durant on the show, but did the economics work for the thunder to keep the core of harden westbrook and duran together yeah 100 the thing when they traded harden they didn't have to trade him when they did because he he was making like i think four and a half or five million a year it was like what what was going to happen with his free agency they could assign him to an extension it wouldn't it would have kicked in the following year I think four and a half or five million a year was what was going to happen with his free agency.

They could have signed him to an extension. It would have kicked in the following year. They had all these outs that could have amnestied Kendrick Perkins and all that stuff. They could have taken a hit for a year and lost some money. I see. Just a question of how much luxury tax they were willing to pay. Yeah, maybe they lose a little bit of money, but they still would have three of the best young players in the league. My theory on that has always been that they really like the trade that they made they were getting they got they thought kevin martin could replace harden's offense they're getting this pick that they thought was gonna

be a high lottery pick and they really like jeremy lamb and they just like the trade they didn't know harden was gonna be as good as he was yeah now it's turning this revisionist history it came down to like you know four or five million bucks it was like he wanted 58 and they wanted to pay 53 whatever but i want to talk about that during anything but first quick break to talk about sofi if you've worked hard to get the career you want sofi's here to offer easy savings on the student loans that helped you get there you like these little breaks because you can go on your phone if you've taken out student loans to invest in yourself for your career sofi wants to help out.

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California Finance Lender Law. License number 605-4612. And MLS ID number 112-1636. Kevin Durant. KD. I asked you, I was fascinated by, and a lot of people were. People really love that podcast about how candid he was.

And he just went into it and he was like, I'm just going to be a real dude. This is who I am. Let's shoot the shit about stuff. Ask me anything you want. And we went and it was great. And it was really fun except for the fact that I was half asleep because it was like one in the morning. Are athletes hitting a place now where it's

either going one of two ways. They completely control the process and you're getting their little very carefully thought out presentation of whatever they want to pretend they are or they're going the other way and they're just completely candid and there's nothing in the middle anymore. Where do you see this going?

Well, I'd make a distinction between athletes and basketball players. Okay. Because I think, thinking about this, basketball players, what's interesting about basketball in the last 10 years

is that basketball has moved into the center of the culture. There's nothing else in the center of the culture. Everything else has been chopped up a million ways. I thought about this because I was interviewing, I read this book on Bob Hope.

Oh. It was really great. Bob Hope. And then I went and talked to the guy who wrote the book, Richard Zogelin. We had a great conversation. And he was talking about how this thing about hope, Bob Hope's specials, he used to do specials on TV,

they are to this day, if you look on the list of all-time most watched television programs, he's still in the top 10. This is like 40 years ago. Bob Hope was, for a period of about 20 years, squarely in the middle of American culture. He was on TV. He was on radio. He had his Bob Hope Desert Classics. He had a sports presence. He was in TV. He was on radio. He had his Bob Hope Desert Classics. He had a sports presence.

He was in the movies. He did Bing Crosby. I mean, he completely dominated media. And it's from the 50s through the end of the 60s, maybe into the 70s. Oh, I think it goes all the way through the 70s because I always felt like he was an uncle. He was an uncle. He was on TV all the time. I'd watch his shows. I always felt like he was part uncle. He was an uncle. He was on TV all the time. I'd watch his shows.

I always felt like he was part of the family. He's doing it. He really makes the Academy Awards, the Oscars, what the Oscars are, because he's the host for like 15 times. He's the first great host. Yeah. But that was, you know,

that kind of figure was possible in an age when there's three television networks and whatever. That, of course, in most cases is impossible now. You've got, everything's been chopped up a million ways. So the question is, what's left in the middle? And I think what's left in the middle is basketball. Basketball is the only, is music in the middle anymore? No. No. In the 70s and 60s, you're, I'm sitting in your office surrounded by all these musical posters, you know, Fleetwood Mac and the Doobie Brothers and all these people in their day were the Beatles, the Rolling Stones were absolutely essential.

You could not if you were in high school in 1972, you could not find a member of your graduating class who didn't either own a Rolling Stones album or listen to the Rolling Stones or could sing a Rolling Stones song. There is no band today about which that can be said, right? That's why they have so much trouble booking the Super Bowl halftime show. Yeah. It's like there's nobody in the middle. There's no one in the middle. So who's in the middle? I would argue that someone like Steph is in the middle.

KD is in the middle. Steph's the most middle of any middle. He's the most middle of. He's the middlest. He is the middlest of the, but basketball these guys have international followings they are personalities that we get to know they have careers that are long enough that we can that they become almost like friends to us we we actually see them as opposed to football where you don't because you don't see i don't think you never have a relationship with and there with so many on a team. And football is like such a kind of pre-digital age sport.

But basketball just seems like the last thing that can... Women watch basketball in a way they don't follow football. I don't know. I feel like... So basketball is special. And then within basketball, KD is special. And a lot of the personalities have become super distinct. Yeah.

Which is a really hard place to get to. But my point is, if you're in the middle, you can be yourself. Because what you're selling is, what KD represents is himself. He's selling authenticity, which you can do. But when you're on the fringes, you have to play some complicated game. He doesn't have to play any games, right? He can walk down any street in America and people know who he is and relate to him. And so I don't know.

I just felt the rules are different for a kind of a big time basketball player than for almost anyone else in the culture. How funny is that that this is the case now in 2017 where 40 years ago the league is starting to go down in the tubes because it's too black. And everybody's like, the league's too black. These guys are on drugs. Yeah. We can't even show playoff games during primetime. We've got to move them to 1130. It's the all-black league.

We've talked about this a million times but it's just so there's this really racist stretch of coverage of the league from 78 to 83 basically where they're all just dancing around with the problems are and the problems were it was a black league for a white audience well let's not remember you know now that's a good thing people think that so the supreme court passes brown versus Board of Education desegregating schools in 54. Nothing happens for 15 years. So we think of desegregation as something that happened in the 50s. No, no, no. It happened in a few symbolic places. The real desegregation, particularly in the South, does not happen until the end of the 60s and the early 70s.

So when you're talking about people complaining about the league being too black in the late 70s, early 80s, they're 10 years away from complaining about black people in their children. Just in general. So it's like, doesn't surprise me. By the way, it wasn't 10 years because when I was growing up in Boston, we had the whole busing thing.

And you had white people. And this is why when people say Boston's the greatest country and all that stuff, it really stems from what happened in the mid-70s and the residue of that and how horrible it was. You had white people standing outside buses and protesting that black kids were coming into their kids' school. And it was horrible. But this was like, I remember this. I was six.

This was happening. Really? And so that leads to the league and i i still think kareem the fact that he was the face of the league there for a few years and he was so inaccessible and just when you look at you compare him to the guys that we have now and kareem kareem now would fit in because he'd be kind of the intellectual oddball he would be amazing and if anything he does fit in now because he's a really i think his writing's really good i like his takes on stuff he's reinvented himself as his media personality successfully he's good at it it's almost like kareem kareem was 40 years early

they now you put kareem now and bill walton now into what the league is bill walton was like reviled in the in the 70s for a couple years like look at his hair he won't play for team usa he doesn't believe in this country go maybe you should leave you know a lot of that stuff if memory serves for being kind of seen as excessively healthy he ate well he rode a bike he rode a bike it's like you know he was politically active how dare you have opinions of politics wait this is really fun so there's a whole class of players who work way better. So Walton in... Well, Dr. J was as middle as it gets then.

Yeah. Right? He's like the Steph Curry of that era. It's like he's one of the few that it's like, oh, white people like Dr. J. So wait, but let's move players from the present. Who would work? Who's around now who would have worked really well in 75?

Kawhi Leonard. Oh, yeah, Kawhi. Kawhi Leonard. He would have been the John Havlicek of that era. See, I think the other way, like, Daryl Dawkins has a completely different career 40 years later. The Chocolate Thunder, the nicknames. If he broke a backboard during the game,

that would have been the biggest Twitter moment of the entire year. All that stuff. I think World B Free has a totally different career. Just the name alone. Yeah. Maybe the greatest basketball name ever. I think Rick Barry is even more despised. It's even worse for Rick Barry.

You love Rick Barry. I love Rick Barry. Yeah. I did too. I ranked him 24th. I don't know why he's mad at me. No, Rick Barry works way better in the present day than he does back then. Yeah.

Because what he is, is he's that kind of, who was Rick Barry? Rick Barry is essentially, memory is- A dick? No, no, no. No, sorry. No, he's not. He is Alan. What's his name ray allen real no he's super driven ocd just trying to repetition guy we're fine with railing now because we're really

comfortable with the idea of the perfectionist in sports because sports has gotten the the kind of the level of the play of play has been raised so much and the level of preparation and practice the perfectionists are now at home in the world. The problem with Rick Barry, he's a perfectionist in an era that is the, it is, which is the antithesis of perfectionism. Whether in a league where they're smoking cigarettes at halftime in the locker room, how can they deal with Rick Barry? Who's like, who wants to, you know, make, do everything exactly the right way. You're also talking about the heyday of when people were just completely unselfaware. So Rick Barry's doing all this stuff, but there's nobody calling him out on it.

And so when somebody writes a magazine piece, criticizing him, it comes out of nowhere. It's like hitting him with an anvil. But you think about the way pop culture was. And this is why some of that stuff's so funny from Mac. nowhere it's like hitting with an anvil but you think about like the way pop culture was and this is why some of that stuff's so funny from that but like the first battle of network stars which is 1976 which is right when rick barry was at his peak and you have this moment when robert conrad gets mad at gabe caplan he thinks gabe caplan's team and he challenges him to a hundred yard dash and this is on youtube telly savalas in, who was the biggest blowhard of that entire decade.

And he comes in, and he's just being Telly Savalas, and he's just a blowhard. But that's who he was. His whole shtick was like, I'm the bald Greek blowhard. I'm completely full of myself. That would never work now. Wait, Telly Savalas was participating

in athletic competition? Yeah, he's got like a little stogie, and he's just insulting everybody. And then Robert Conrad comes in. He makes this veiled German-Jewish Holocaust reference, which is like all of it's insane. It's bananas. And it's just nobody knew. Everybody was completely not aware. I'm stunned by the fact that totally out of shape stars.

I'm going to send you the link. I have to watch this. The first battle of the network stars is one of the greatest two hours. And it all culminates in Robert Conrad, who literally has a cigarette right before the race. He's having a cigarette as he's challenging Gabe Kaplan, thinking that he could just beat Gabe Kaplan in a race. Who wins? Who wins the race? Gabe Kaplan thinking that he could just beat Gabe Kaplan in a race. Who wins? Who wins the race? Gabe Kaplan wins the race. Gabe Kaplan with his little afro and his mustache takes on German Bob Conrad and dusts him.

And then Conrad comes over and he's like, that was a man-to-man situation. And nobody knew. So anyway, now it's the opposite. Everybody's completely self-aware and always thinking about how they're presenting themselves my friend uh david epstein who's like the best writer on sports gene sports gene he at one point went through all of those old battle of the network stars because it's the only chance you get to see about crossover potential so how fast to answer the question how fast can a football wide receiver run the half mile? He studied the battle in the Red Stars? Yes, he did.

Wow. He sent me the stats once because he was like, track athletes are constantly having this question of how fast can X run a race, right? Because no one runs, we're left sort of fantasizing. So his question was, you remember, remember there's a half mile once. I remember that James Lofton, for example, the great Green Bay wide receiver, he runs the half mile. Now, that's a really interesting question. Consider one of the fastest, you know, greatest wide receivers of his era steps on the track. How fast can he run at 800 meters? And the answer is slower than you'd think.

Surprisingly not good. But every now and again, there's this kind of, the guy who was, I know this separately, was an extraordinary runner, was, God, he played for Houston in the 70s, notoriously crazy, came out of Florida. What's his name? Not Earl Campbell.

No, no, no, I'm talking about a basketball player. Oh. Was his last name Maxwell? I don't know. Vernon Maxwell? Vernon Maxwell. Vernon Maxwell. Some guy who played basketball at Florida with Vernon Maxwell, said that their coach made them run half miles.

And Vernon Maxwell showed up hungover, if not high, like at last moment, got on the track, and ran under two minutes for a half mile. Now, just to put that in perspective, first of all, he's six foot. Basketball players are not natural distance runners. They're way too big big they're way too heavy so what's Maxwell he's probably 6'6

he was a skinny shooting guard I thought he was bigger there's a guy who he's not training for it we're fascinated with this so that was what's the perfect body type for every event

you know like you would have said you would have guessed it would have been somebody that looked like usain bolt and then usain bolt actually happened right but it would have to be somebody who's taller yeah who has long strides who gains steam as it goes along and can work the eventual miles an hour that he gets to is just, you can't compete with it. Yeah. Versus like that 5'10 quick Ben Johnson guy. He's not it. I would say Usain Bolt is always built to be better, but I'd love to know like,

what's the perfect decathlete body? What's the perfect long jump body? We know. I mean, we know by looking at- The Daley Thompson, Bruce Jenner type bodies. Bruce Jenner. They're always, Ashton Eaton, they're always a little smaller than you think they're gonna always, Ashton Eaton, they're always a little smaller

than you think they're going to be. When you, Ashton Eaton used to post his workouts online and he was, he wasn't, you realize how much

he was running away from anything that would bulk him up. They have to be. Right. Which, you know, this reminds me,

yesterday, on this track magazine, this guy Paul Snyder, who's this hilarious writer, ranked, imagine if all the US presidents in history ran Paul Snyder, who's this hilarious writer, ranked, imagine if all the U.S. presidents in history ran a 5K, who would win? And he ranks them all.

And it's this hilarious thing. Who has won? Well, W. FDR was last? George W. Bush is clearly the winner. George W. Bush? He's a good athlete. Yeah.

Oh, he's a really good athlete. But it's a strong case. So the question about Obama is, he never, he's a really good athlete. But it's a strong case. So the question about Obama is he never smokes. So if and the rule of the thing was you had to get them as they were. But if you change the rules and you say, I take them all at their athletic apex and I give them two months of training. Then I think Obama wins easily. Because he is half-Canyon. So he's 50% of the greatest distance running country in the history of distance running. The DNA helps him.

He's built like a runner. He's not a basketball build. He's a running build. He's like a lean, super lean, right? Those long, graceful strides. I mean, I think he's going to win ultimately. But W. and then third the feeling was that abe lincoln would be third because abe lincoln yeah he's like six five yeah but the thing about i don't see the abe lincoln thing at all no no it's super

gawky it's about it's about being lean i mean being a good distance runner it's all about how lean you are he was lean because nobody had grocery stores back then no he had marfan syndrome is why he's lean he has a physical condition he had Marfan syndrome is why he's lean. He has a physical condition. He had Marfan syndrome? Yes, he's got Marfan syndrome. I didn't know that. He blinking?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Was that why he died? Oh, no, he got shot in the leg. But when you look at the field, though, you realize how rare it is for us to have a lean president. They're not lean. We keep electing the same thing over and over again, which is the tall, heavy-set white guy.

We've had two deviations from that. Lincoln, the skinny white guy, and Obama, the skinny black guy. Everyone else is the heavy-set, tall white guy. I actually looked this up once. I think we've only had one president, and that's Jimmy Carter, in the modern era who's under 5'11". So Carolla, my friend Adam Carolla, always had a theory about this. He

always thought that our president, it didn't totally matter and that we should always just elect a six foot four guy who just had a really strong handshake and good facial hair and looked like a locksmith from the 1870s. And that should just be the guy we sent out. Speaking of handshakes, did you see this? Canadians are obsessed with when last week, Justin Trudeau, Canadian prime minister, comes to visit Trump.

And there's all this video footage of them shaking hands. And so Trump has a very distinctive handshake, which is he does the power grab. What he does is he extends his arm when you're still not, you're not, you're still, you're approaching, he's standing still, you're approaching him. And when you think you're still too far away

for the handshake, he extends his arm out, grabs your hand and pulls you in, right? So you're like off balance? Total power move. And then he does the big grip and you're just, yeah, you're totally off balance. He domin move. And then he does the big grip and you're just, yeah, you're totally off balance.

He dominates the situation. I think Roger Goodell does this too. Yeah, sure he does. He did that with Tom Brady. Sure he does. He reached out and pulled him toward him. But Justin Trudeau clearly studied the tape and gamed him.

So Trudeau jumps, Trudeau's like, you know, he's in his, I don't know, he's maybe 40. He's in massively good shape. Super handsome. Jumps out of the limo. He's coming, str don't know, he's maybe 40. He's in massively good shape. Super handsome. Jumps out of the limo. He's straddling into the door of the White House.

Trump is standing there, and Trump's going to do his move, right? He's going to extend the hand. And what Trudeau does is he closes on him. So he comes in really, really hard and fast. He closes like a cornerback. Totally does. Comes in high and tight. And he's the one who grabs Trump's arm.

He completely turns it upside down. And then they start pumping, and neither will give in. Yeah. It's just, it's seven seconds of pumping. Do you know how, that's a long time for a handshake pump. But the idea that Trump got owned at the White House by his Canadian counterpart, this was huge in Canada. Huge. It was like a thing on Twitter you couldn't believe. I didn't know about it until it was on the cover of Handshake Illustrated, which I get every week.

I think that accounted for why Trump was in such a grouchy mood all week. Because he lost a handshake to Trudeau? This is a guy who thinks he has thought a lot about dominating the handshake, right? If there's a handshake montage on uh on youtube could somebody send that to me quick break to talk about stamps.com avoid the post office during the holidays buy and print official u.s postage with your own computer and printer this is like almost what we were talking about earlier about evolution of things exactly it's so stupid we go to the post office why. We go to the post office. Why would you go to the post office? Why would you? You could do everything from home.

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Enter BS. Sign up today with stamps.com. You will never have to go to the post office again. Stamps.com. Enter BS. I had in my mailbag today Markel Fultz is going to be the number one pick. And his initials are MF. I'm really excited about it. That's huge.

MF is, we've been waiting. We've had KD. We've had all these boring ones. KD, KG, CP. Now we have an MF. This guy's a bad MF, Tate. Bad MF. MF.

MF and F. Wait, we didn't talk about... Tennis? No, we didn't talk about... Tennis? No, we didn't talk about... We didn't talk about... Have you ever talked about tennis on your podcast? I'm ready to talk about tennis, but we didn't talk about...

You never gave me your theory on whether you think athletes are... You talked about the middle, and you talked about the candid ones, and the road is paved for Durant to just be candid and do whatever he wants. No, you say he has the luxury of being in the middle. Why is somebody like LeBron so afraid to do that?

Why is LeBron so carefully calculated with every public decision he makes? I don't know. I mean, is it just their different personality? I mean, KD, the thing that came, I've never heard him at such length as I heard him on your podcast. And he sounds like he's an unusually charming

thoughtful perceptive perceptive perceptive kind of reflective guy I mean that kind of guy he can be himself because when he is himself he's so incredibly appealing right same thing with to heart I don't mean to hark back to Bob Hope, but the point about Bob Hope, back in those days, someone like Bob Hope, they referred to themselves as entertainers. Yeah. No one does anymore. And I was reading the... I should tell Kimmel to start doing that.

He should be. He's just an entertainer. And I was reading, don't ask me why, but I was reading the autobiography of Sammy Davis Jr., which is... So you're just cranking out 70s biographies. I am, I am, which is, by the way, bonkers.

But he had a lot of sex, Sammy Davis Jr. Yeah, he did. He had a lot of sex. He did. He really did. Yeah. But he also, he was obsessed with the notion that he was an entertainer, right?

Yeah. But that, you know, what they mean is that when you're in the center, those guys were in the center, when you're in the center, you're not a thing. You're not an actor or a singer or a comedian. You're yourself. The entertainer is someone who, by definition,

plays themselves in a variety of different contexts. So LeBron's an entertainer. But I wonder whether he has enough, as much kind of self-confidence in his self as KD does. KD knows he's charming, right? He didn't have any anxieties about that. But I wonder what is, is LeBron is sure of that fact? I mean, you know, Michael Jordan knows he's not charming, right?

He's not. He's not, right? He's not. Larry Bird's not charming. But these guys who truly will, you know, will occupy the center. Larry Bird's like, he's not charming, but these guys who truly will, you know, will occupy the center. Larry Bird's like, he's Indiana charming.

When we did the podcast with him in 2012, like he's like definitely a down-home dude. Did you hear, I was listening to Ezra Edelman talk about how when he did the Magic and the Bird documentary for 30 for 30, how he goes trying he goes

the whole thing hinges on him getting bird to talk about it yeah and he and you know bird doesn't want to do it and they sort of meet in the basement of conseco field house and like bird gives them i forgot what it is like an hour and then done right yeah and the whole time edelman sitting there and thinking if this doesn't go go well, my whole movie is out. It doesn't work. It's a really, really great riff he does. It's on the podcast Longform. I heard a phenomenal interview.

Magic was on Stephen A. Smith's show, his radio show. And it was really entertaining. But Magic's getting more involved with the Lakers. And Stephen A. Smith was asking him, you know, what are the kinds of stuff you're going to do? And magic,

he basically had the idea of, you know, a little bit of like what the words do, where they, they have a whole bunch of people in their inner circle. And he's like, you know, I got James Worthy.

He's doing TV. I'm going to ask him what he thinks. And Robert Horace got some rings. I'm going to ask him what he thinks. And Robert Horry's got some rings. I'm going to ask him what he thinks. And he just starts listing players he played with. And I'm thinking like, man, this is going to be great. Magic, magic, Mickey. And he's like, and what I've been doing the last couple weeks is reading up on the CBA

and trying to understand that, the salary caps. I was like, oh, man. It's just a gift that keeps on giving for me yeah there's always going to be bad people in charge of teams now magic might be good and he's you know one of the smartest guys i've ever met i don't think this is a job you could just jump into it's really complicated and there's a lot of time and effort and energy that goes into it this is why the phil jackson thing was so hilarious yeah it's like phil jackson in age 70 he's gonna start running a team he's gonna he's gonna be going to spain checking out prospects he's 70 magic's crowdsourcing he wants to crowdsource personnel decisions among nba veterans people that he played with it's not a bad idea i kind

of like that idea i don't know like i mean so you're you're pro you're pro jeez, you've been sitting in a studio for eight years. Any thoughts on Markel Fultz? Here's the thing. Here's the thing. I have yet to be convinced that there is any great predictability to player selection in any of the professional leagues. It is ultimately, particularly football, but it's ultimately a roll of the dice. And half the guys, not all of them, at least half of the people who are called wizards of talent evaluation are not wizards of talent evaluation. They got lucky. I think there's a couple of variables that, if they exist, are a better predictor.

How hard does a guy work? That was one of the reasons. I really like Jalen Brown in the Celtics. I don't think he's going to be like LeBron or anything, but one of the things they liked about him is he's one of those first guy at the gym, last guy to leave guys. That seems to be a trend, right?

Westbrook, anything you read about Westbrook is just this guy's been driven to just kind of shove it in everyone's face. That's another thing, the chip on the shoulder. The guys that have had it handed to them, that's one of the reasons I like Moneyball so much. Moneyball's about this guy, Billy Bean, who you know. But he had all the tools, but something was missing.

He didn't have the confidence. He just was missing that one little piece, and he became obsessed with, okay, how do I predict performance because I should have been somebody that made it and i didn't and i think i think when you look at work ethic sense of the moment you know lonzo ball who i loved anyway the way he sees the floor the way he uses his teammates i just think he's like once in a decade special just mentally as a basketball player they played arizona the other night they came back no it wasn't arizona it was oregon came back from 20 down he's he's basically distributing

the whole game he didn't even shoot that well 30 seconds left crowd's going crazy they have the ball and he takes this 30 foot three and makes it and but when he took it he's like i'm making this and i was like that's it that's all i need to see that guy's fucking great you know so i i think it's when you see that versus like the darko millis millichick oh this guy if if if and this if this those are the guys that usually end up getting people fired the the um people who look great on paper i i think there has to be some element of you're already doing it yeah and then if you can add the chip on your shoulder like there's this guy in kentucky

malik monk who you're gonna fall in love with uh during the tournament he just makes baskets he's good at it shoots threes does stuff like he's really good he's specifically uniquely talented and gets better when it matters but he's an inch too short so really he's too short can't guard anyone but is it i mean i can see a lot of those all those rules make sense but the difficulty is that um most of the players in the draft don't easily fit into those categories right so right we can identify the three players who we think are reasonably good can't miss prospects but you know you're at the bottom of the first round it's like at that point you just have to start looking at what's what's this guy's one elite

thing that he does is it good he's an energy rebounder great that makes sense i could put him here can he shoot that's good see see a point guard who can handle the ball and play good D? All right. So I think when you have the guys who are like, oh, that guy's a good athlete, that's when you get in trouble. But, you know, there's no real science to it. That's my point. You have to love playing basketball and have a real work ethic.

That was Odin's problem. You know? Odin had, obviously his body broke down, but some of these guys play because they're tall. That's also a problem. I don't know if Dwight Howard ever wanted to play basketball. I think he was just tall. Yeah.

Well, the other question is, who wants to play basketball with Dwight Howard? That's a bigger Dwight Howard problem. Sometimes circumstance really helps too right and this is durant and i talked about this like james is james harden james harden if he just stays in okc no he needed to be on his own team he needed to spread his wings a little and do his own thing i thought at that point in the podcast i wondered so clearly james harden if they keep the thunder core together harden's a different player because he's just not going to get the ball that much.

And Westbrook is a different player because he's not going to get the ball all the time. So they all evolve in very, very different directions. It actually would have been better for all of their games. I was going to say, that's what I was going to say. I think that surely that's the greatest team of the modern era if they keep it together. I mean, it's...

It would have been, yeah, definitely in the last 10 years, the highest upside. And perfectly positioned to dominate in the kind of basketball that's getting played right now. Yeah, exactly. You'd think about, you'd want perimeter guys.

Those are three of the best. But I mean, the irony of the fact that those are probably three of those could be three first team all nba guys and had them all on the same team it's a good what if but like you think about that was our last chance unless philly just keeps doing the process for another 10 years until they get three guys that might have been our last chance to have three great guys on the same team in the 80s that was something that just happened wait what about the warriors they have four they have two you only think two they curry and duran are great

you don't think clay thompson is i think he's excellent yeah i think draymond's excellent i don't think they're great yeah yeah i think that's the difference wait we let's talk about tennis well i watched i taped federer the australian open did you watch the australian i taped it Wait, let's talk about tennis. Well, I watched, I taped. Federer, the Australian Open. Did you watch the Australian Open? I taped it and watched it after the fact. It was very entertaining. It was more than very entertaining.

It was, I thought it was riveting. But it was riveting and it reminds me of why tennis is doomed. Why it's doomed, okay. It's doomed. You cannot, I was, has a little preparation for this i went down and looked at the top uh five the men's single same as true on the women's side by the way but men's singles top five rankings in every year of the last 10 years and you know you know exactly what you're going to find you're going to to find endless variations on Djokovic, Nadal, Federer, and then every now and again

you get Andy Murray, and then a little Stan Wawrinka, and then a little whatever. And like, you cannot, this game is aging in place. And you watch that thing, you watch Nadal and Federer, and you're like,

these guys are in their mid-30s or early and mid-30s. Is there any reason to believe Federer can't keep playing at that level for another two or three years? I mean, he's not as good as he once was, but there's no one who's under him who's threatening him. All the other guys fall away in the quarters, right?

And it happens every single, and they're playing fewer matches now. So now, you know, Serena plays, she plays the majors and she plays like you know two or three others same with federer they these guys could go forever can you can you better training better dieting better other things can you sell a sport yes sorry i just missed that one yes some other things other thrown into the mix yeah. By the way, I'm now going to completely go off on a tangent. Speaking of other things, well, no, I'll come back to that.

You can't keep selling a sport with the same people for 15 years. I mean, it doesn't... So what you just said about Federer was basically the same thing happened to Michael Jordan. When the next generation should have come up and passed him, it wasn't ready yet, and he was able to extend it with those last two Utah finals. Yeah.

It just, the next generation never arrived. And then it belatedly arrived. But I think with Federer, it's the same thing. There should be some 22-year-old Pete Sampras circa 1990 guy who should just be destroying everyone who is it but there's every year every year there's a new one every year there's a new one and I think it must be so demoralizing if I'm 16 year old tennis player and I look at what's happened in tennis over the last 15 years it's demoralizing it's like you think my theory what's your theory it sucks to play tennis to learn how

to play it does it sucks it's really we thought about it with my daughter she would be good at tennis and it's like all right so she gonna she can play six hours a day and just be by herself just hitting balls the only thing that's worth social interaction like the only thing that's worse is swimming swimming is worse swimming's bad and there's no money in it at least there's money in tennis but it's but the it's no it's dreadful there's a reason why so many of these tennis players hit 24 and they lose their minds yeah and they and all of a sudden they're out and they're doing stuff and you know i think capriati is a really good example of and just august remember. Did you read the Agassi? Agassi is another one.

Yeah. It's not a fun sport to learn how to play. And it's actually, it's probably a sport that's better for like an only child. I always really liked tennis. I liked hitting balls. I was an only child. Weirdly, all the tennis academies are in Florida.

So not only are you forced to play this incredibly mind-numbing game, you know, for six, seven hours a day, you have to do it in scorching, like, humidity, and you're stuck in Orlando. Like, nothing is going on. It's just like worst case scenario. Why wouldn't they at least put the tennis academy somewhere interesting, right? Put it in Buenos Aires. Put it in Venice. Put it in. That was when 10 years ago, my friend Connor, when this was like a year before we started coming up with 30 for 30, it was during the Laguna Beach Hills craze, whatever. Remember those shows?

The hills, all that stuff? Like the reality. And he became obsessed with this idea of doing Laguna Beach for the Voluntary Tennis Academy. And we talked about it all the time for like six months. And every time we would finish the conversation with, this would be the greatest idea ever. And ESPN just wasn't at a place to pull something like that off. But I know it would have worked.

I know I would have watched every episode. It would have been amazing. You know, it's crazy. It would have been the best. Those are co-ed, right? They're all adolescent. It would have been the best. Those are co-ed, right? They're all adolescent. It would have been great. The amount of hormones raging through the military.

I'm surprised there hasn't been scandals coming out of those. I've now moved on to my new favorite idea is Malibu Little League. Yes. The reality show about Little Leagues and their parents in Malibu. I'm playing on a cliff as just parents are hooking up with the coach. It'd be a great one. Did we hit everything?

What are we doing on time, Tate? We're at 1.18. Oh, it's time to wrap up. I think we gotta wrap up, Bill. Man, we never talked about stick to sports. Oh, that's another day. We'll save that for another day.

The stick to sports era has come to an end. But we ran out of time. We did, Bill. This is as fun as always. When is the second season of your podcast launching? June. I got seven shows written. Three more to go.

It's very exciting. One sports show this time. It is all about golf. And I'll only tease it by saying my highly controversial attack on golf is coming up. Highly controversial? It's going to be highly controversial. It's all about golf in LA. It's one of my favorite sports to attack. It's all about golf in LA.

I'm not telling you anymore, but all I can say, Bill, is that this one will deeply resonate with you as a angelina less angelina i'm i'm a new englander who just happens to live here it's right and anytime it rains like this and everybody freaks the f out but i was like this is this was like a two out of ten in boston i know. I may or may not be going after POTUS on this one because, after all, he's a man with deep financial and spiritual ties to the game of golf. Right? Yes. It's possible I'll go in that direction. Yes.

Malcolm Gladwell, as always, a pleasure. Thanks, Bill. Talk to you soon. Quickly, thanks to stamps.com stamps.com brings all the services of the US Postal Service right to your fingertips

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Thanks to the ringinger.com. Don't forget to check out my trade deadline mailbag. Don't forget to check out the last few podcasts we've done. We're on a really good podcast roll right now. We have some more good ones coming next week. And check out all the great content we're doing. The Oscars coming up in just about a week. NBA All-Star Weekend, we have a whole crew there.

We're going to have a whole bunch of videos coming up. We sent somebody down there you won't expect who's interviewing people and doing stuff with them. So yeah, check out The Ringer next week. Enjoy the weekend. Stay safe, LA. Back next week. Thanks, Marco. On the way so I never said I don't have feelings for him. On the way so I never said I don't have feelings for him.