The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 71: Sports Media Watch w/ Bryan Curtis

Episode Date: March 1, 2016

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons welcomes Ringer editor-at-large Bryan Curtis to discuss the future of studio shows, the biggest problem with the political media (10:00), the "insider" model (19:00), the importance of scoops (24:00), locker-room access (31:00), underproducing TV and radio (40:00), the return of Rick Reilly (43:00), OKC and the media (50:00), and Steph Curry's magnetic similarities with Magic (54:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I get emails all the time. Thanks for introducing me to SeatGeek customers. I get emails all the time. Thanks for introducing me to SeatGeek. They're awesome. Check it out. Today's episode is also brought to you by NatureBox, and not just because my wife has been a NatureBox customer since 2014. Brian Curtis. Yeah.

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my new website, The Ringer. Don't forget to subscribe to our upcoming newsletter, which we're aiming for the first Monday in March. Mid-March, sorry. TheRinger.com. Let's go. When I think mid-90s West Coast rap, I think Brian Curtis. I was a whole player in that, wasn't I? Kind of an underrated part of my resume, really.

It really was. Editor at large of The Ringer, formerly of Grantley, formerly of The Daily Beast, formerly of Slate, formerly of Play, which was a very, very, very underrated part of the New York Times magazine. Yeah, it was kind of a supplement. Yeah, a supplement thing. A couple of those publications are even still in business. Yeah.

It's kind of amazing, right? Play was a little bit of a prototype of what I was hoping to do with Grantland. I always thought it should have worked. They had good taste in writers. Yeah. Never really knew what it was or why it existed, but the writing was really good. Whole financial crisis. Yeah, that didn't help.

Kind of came right on top of our heads. Yeah, that was fun. So you know more about the ins and outs of the media than anyone I know. You enjoy the whole culture more than even I do. And I love it. And we always talk about in the office, you start, when did you start? Like four or five weeks ago? Yeah.

It's been great to have you. Thank you very much. I like having you in the meetings and stuff. We derail a meeting by a little sports journalism chatter, don't we? We totally do. Like every day. We've had a lot to talk about lately. We sure have. Woo. But we have, we're taping this on a Tuesday and a big Tuesday is tonight. And it's hard to watch these political shows without comparing them to sports media shows. Yeah. And especially like, you know,

CNN will have these shows. There'll be nine people at two separate tables with the host wandering between. It's almost like Hollywood Squares. Just put them all three faces on top of each other. When you watch this stuff, are they doing media better or worse than sports media? I think they're trying to solve the essential question of 2016, which is how do you do a studio show anymore?

Everybody already knows all the information. I have a lot of thoughts on this, by the way. Keep going. Okay. But like when all the better info and analysis is on Twitter instantly, when you can follow the returns on your laptop or on your device or whatever, and what are people going to say? What are they going to tell us that's new?

You know, and punditry, I think on both sports and politics, has kind of lost its thing, right? Like insta-punditry. You know, like, OK, Hillary's in the lead. 25% of the returns are in. There's just nothing to say that's interesting. Maybe there's a joke to crack on Twitter. But, you know, so-and-so, an advisor to the Rubio camp, what are they going to say on the CNN show? So you don't think with stuff like the Trump, like coming out of a debate, I feel like those shows are pretty valuable.

Because I want to know, like, I know what I thought when I watched the debate. Now we're following Twitter. We're getting other people's opinions. But I do like to hear from people. Yeah. Here's what I thought happened. Here was the most important part of that. And sometimes it'll be different than how I saw it. So I do like that part. Yeah. And the funny part is, though, I think they're wrong because I think it's really hard. Right. Like the other day, we thought Rubio and Cruz kind of crushed Trump at that debate or at least yeah changed the narrative right so so-called and then the polls came out and a lot of people thought that trump won the debate and trump's polls really didn't move you know so you know it is funny like i think there is a value i think it's better when you have a uh like a sports show

when you have a winner's losers clock on it right, right? You can tell me who won, who lost tonight. What's Rubio's path forward? What's Bernie Sanders' path forward? Does he have one? But they are really the same thing. Well, when I watch, so Barkley, I think, has the gravitas. Yeah. And Kenny to a lesser degree, but really Barkley.

And you're coming out of a big game, and there's been a lot of moments. I remember writing about this, I'm going to say in like 2010 or maybe 2010, LeBron's last game five against Boston, the last home game he played in Cleveland. Okay. Boston wins the series and LeBron is like curiously passive and just didn't seem like he had that urgency. And I watched that game and I was so upset as I watched it, just as a basketball fan, even though I love the Celtics.

I wrote a whole piece about it that week. It's like just being torn between I love basketball, but I also love the Celtics. This is great for the Celtics. This is bad for basketball that he's reacting this way. But I'm watching the end of that game and I'm thinking, I can't wait to hear what Barkley says about this. Yeah.

Like I want to know if Barkley, as a great player, he's in the great player club, which we've talked about before. Is he disappointed as a great player that LeBron reacted this way? Who is like that in politics? Is there that person who has that kind of gravitas? Who can emote for you? Yeah. Just that like, I know, maybe this on a Fox News or something, but somebody can't come on and just cream Hillary Clinton and go, I'm so disappointed in her. That was just rotten. Because you wouldn't trust that opinion. Yeah.

And the network, the producers in the air going, ooh, too far. Bring on the pro-Hillary person to balance this out. Right. Whereas Barkley, I think what we like about the Barkley thing on political TV is the loose cannon. Like when Chris Matthews comes on MSNBC, I kind of perk up a little bit because I'm kind of like, whoa, what's he going to say?

He could get fired today, right? He could say something so un-PC that totally gets him fired, you know? And I don't think he's like, you know, just like a generational talent, but I kind of perk up because I don't know what he's going to say. That was my attitude during the two drafts

that I did for ESPN. I just wanted people to be like, wow, he might get fired at any moment. It turns out I eventually, I didn't technically get fired, but I had to leave. But, you know, doing a studio show, I put so much thought into it. It was such a discouraging experience to do the ESPN show for those two years. And the biggest thing I learned is that if it's a pregame show that works for football, because in football, you're trying to get information. I'm trying to make picks. I want

to gamble. I got fantasy. I'm trying to learn things. There's nowhere to go in basketball. It's like, oh, the Warriors and OKC are playing tonight. So what do you think is going to happen? Well, I think they have to do this. And you're not saying anything. You don't have any weight. The weight comes after the game. Right. Right. That's when it matters. In our situation, when I did countdown for two years was we were basically a pregame show. And Barkley show is a postgame show. Right. And the postgame show is where you want to be. We would we would be on location for these playoff games and we'd have, you know, the game would end, they'd throw it right to SportsCenter,

they'd come back to us for three minutes. You'd have to race to make your 42nd point, but it wasn't, you weren't like digesting the game. Yeah. And I think that's the advantage that people don't realize that TNT has other than the fact that Barkley is the best studio guy of all time.

And that was a genius, right? It's just to never pull the plug on the show. Right. It's a post-game show that turns into a late-night show. Yeah. You just kind of roll with it. It's on in the background, even if you're not really paying attention. And they don't overproduce it.

Yeah. You know, and Barkley, we've talked about this privately, where Barkley just said the first time he did that show, it was very produced, very structured. And he was just like, can we get rid of all that? I don't want to know what the other guys say. And now they're very careful about, um, I don't want to know what you're saying. Don't tell me, don't tip me off. Ernie's the best at that. You need a host. That's just super comfortable with being able to add lib role, kind of knowing to move in and out, kind

of knowing to nudge people a certain way and that's why he's the best but it's not overly polished right like some of the pre-game hosts are we're in this segment we're out of the segment who can kind of let it breathe a little bit and that was you know that was my most discouraging thing about doing countdown for two years was how how overproduced it was and how just because that's the espn dna which is just like, everything's got to go from here to here to here and set this up. And we have this rolled package that we did and you got to do. So when you bring up that, you know, you're going to throw it to the greatest power of Fords of all time, because we spent two days working on this pre-produced package. Now we cut away and now

here's this graphic. And it was almost like doing a play and we would rehearse we'd basically rehearse the whole show before we went on tv i knew what everyone else was going to say the setups were made in a way that they knew what i was going to say and it wasn't it wasn't like free form that's why the draft was so much fun the draft is like i don't know what the fuck's going to happen right and this is how both kinds of tv have changed by the way we used to want slickness i think or that was what was rewarded by media critics in the in the newspapers right when we were youngins now i think it's we want people that know stuff you know they have opinions have like informed opinions or really know stuff like we want the kind of shaggy expert

in political terms this is why chuck todd replaces david gregory chuck todd doesn't look like a tv person but we think we twitter people and people who follow Paul just think Chuck Todd knows stuff. And he's a very good interviewer. Yeah, he is really good. I think his questions are excellent. I've been watching Meet the Press a lot these last few weeks. He's good questions. Yeah, which he's learned.

He used to be the kind of guy on TV in the morning when I think he was at Hotline on C-SPAN. You know, like, oh, that guy. You know, he had the goatee and, you know. Right. But he's kind of a new generation to me of that. Right. He's the kind of, you know, not quite as telegenic, but he knows stuff. Right.

And he's, you know, I was watching on Sunday and Cruz is doing the whole mafia ties thing with Trump and he throws that out. And then he, you know, he's just kind of throwing it out there, but not backing up. Yeah. And Todd interrupted him. He's like, wait a second. You can't throw that out. And then he moved. You know, he's just kind of throwing it out there, but not backing up. Yeah. And Todd interrupted him. He's like, wait a second. You can't throw that out. Like, what's your evidence?

And then Cruz had to answer. And he did answer. And he had answers. So that was good. It was good. But it was refreshing to see somebody be like, oh, wait, hold on a second. You just said you just kind of insinuated he had mafia ties. What does that mean?

Yeah, exactly. It's been an amazing week, right, with Rubio insinuating that Trump peed his pants at the debate. That was kind of a landmark moment in politics, right? I also thought of this another way it's kind of like sports is that we want politics to be a battle to the death, right? The fate of the country is at stake. We want you to compete, Rubio. Why are you letting Trump insult you? You go out there and show him.

And then when they do, when they get into berserker mode, it's kind of like Richard Sherman, Aaron Andrews. Whoa, this is what it's like. Oh, wait. And we as media, we recoil. Uh-oh. Oh, they mean it now. You know, and oh, but you're supposed to be polite.

We want you to really compete like your life's on the line. But we also want you to be really polite. You know, politeness is important to us, too. I thought that was kind of funny. Why do you think somebody would want to host a debate? I think that's one of the all-time no-win jobs. Mr. Trump, please. Mr. Trump, please, please.

Mr. Trump, please. Your time's up, please. It seems like totally dangling. You just, like everyone who does it comes off terribly. And John Dickerson of CBS, have you seen him? Yeah. Yeah, he's kind of the star of this cycle. Yeah.

He's gotten the laudatory profiles and he comes from print, which I think makes print seen him? Yeah. He's kind of the star of this cycle. He's gotten the laudatory profiles and he comes from print, which I think makes print people happy. He wrote for Time, he wrote for Slate. Oh, he's a smart guy. And I know John a little bit and he is a smart guy. Journalist DNA. I've never seen a debate where I thought the moderator did a very good job. I think it's a no-win

job. It's like doing the pregame studio shows. Especially with Trump. What do you do? How do you keep Donald Trump in Yeah. What do you do? Like, what's, how do you keep Donald Trump in line? How do you get Donald Trump to answer a question rather than kind of bullshitting you for,

you know, five minutes and then going on to the next thing? It is the biggest problem for me with political media and this is why I read, you almost have to read through a lens, right?

All right, what's your objective with this piece? It's a little like what sports media used to be like. Yeah. Kind of before the internet started compi i mean i have columns 2001-02-03 where you know part of writing a column was to go over the top with the angle you know it's like i remember writing columns about manning and the colts where it wasn't balanced it was just like this guy's a choke artist. And then eventually as the internet rolls along,

you'll be like, yeah, you've got to balance that a little bit better. I think the advanced metrics stuff kind of really helped. Sure. That's another way, by the way, the intrusion of advanced metrics into politics, right? Yeah. Made silver. Changed the whole game, right?

You know, storylines that were fake uh got blown up all of a sudden because they could be like actually the polls didn't change at all there was no rubio comeback right you know it's it's actually the polls between this week and this week didn't change at all i think it totally affected what a lot of old school writers were doing and kind of getting by with yeah nate had a huge 2012 victory lap what's interesting this time around is he was dead wrong about trump like he and i And I like Nate, and we've had a very good relationship over the years, but he just misread it completely. And most of his pieces were like, don't worry, Trump's going to fade once guys drop out of the race. And then it's like, no, actually, he's not fading.

And when he was challenged in 2012 by the conservatives saying, your polls are wrong. Romney's going to really win. All the lefties rushed to Nate's side. And now all the lefties are enjoying Nate take a bath on Trump by the way yeah that's kind of a funny funny byproduct this like I guess because he's now in his third cycle and it's okay to you know he's too popular right or we're gonna poke at him and he was wrong about Trump you know and but as our friend Charlie Pierce said he's like look this kind of election has not happened since 1896 and i can't even remember the guy brian uh william jennings brian yeah william jennings brian he's like not since williams

jennings brian has it has it been this chaotic and i was like okay i trust you charlie pierce uh and well i also think it's like there's no connection between knowing what's going to happen in the election and being a good reporter right no like did you know the warriors are going to win at the beginning of the season and win the title last year? If you didn't, does that make you a bad basketball writer? Well, last year I bet on the Warriors. But this year, no, no, no, hold on.

But you had good odds, right? Good odds, thought Steve Kerr. But this year, I thought the Rockets would win the most games in the NBA. Yeah. Yeah, you're going to be wrong a lot. Does that make you a bad basketball writer? Yeah, I think it does, actually. I know Tate looks down on me for it.

You're willing to endorse that? Yeah. I mean, seriously. He's smirking over there. I backed the worst chemistry team ever. Saying the Warriors are going to cruise to a second title isn't really very fun. It's not a very fun column to write. Saying so-and-so team's going to win the regular season and then lose to the Warriors.

That's kind of more fun. I think that's with politics, too. An angle saying this Trump thing is fake. Rubio is going to win. Don't ignore the noise. That's a much more fun column in a way to write. It makes you seem smarter. Well, and the cousin of that is you're better off doing something like that.

You're better off. The worst thing you can do is take the favorite, you know, like for instance, Sal and I really liked, uh, like the Broncos as the underdogs in the Superbowl. And I was like, I'm taking the points. But in the last second, I was like, I'm going to pick Cam to win in the last minute. What I should have done is said, the Broncos are going to destroy the Panthers. You just go out on a limb and it's like, what, a one in five, one in six chance. But if you're right, you look like a genius. Yeah. You know, and political writers like sports

writers only tell you about the only remind you of the predictions that came true. They forget about the, the nine out of 10 that they missed. Oh, totally. By the way, this is another thing. You mentioned Superbowl, the cam Jeb Bush, uh, political writers got really excited when Jeb Bush said after South Carolina, give his classy, uh, you know, speech to get out of the race. Or Marco Rubio after New Hampshire said, I ate it in that debate. It was my fault. It'll never happen again. And in a way, that's the concession speech they wanted Cam Newton to give after the Super Bowl.

Sports writers wanted Cam to give. Right. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Like we value, you know, when you're a loser coming out and being classy and really owning it. You know, if Marco had said, I didn't do anything wrong. I finished fifth in New Hampshire. But it's the media's fault. We value when you're a loser coming out and being classy and really owning it. If Marco had said, I didn't do anything wrong.

I finished fifth in New Hampshire, but it's the media's fault. We would have piled on him just like we piled on Cam. Well, in sports, you also have the people that butter up the media correctly are always treated more fairly. And this is something you and this is a little game that you and I love. Like who butters up the big the big ticket reporters and all that stuff and so like the peyton manning thing it's easy to see who his sources are right oh anytime something's happened to him he's schefter has information on something the next day schefter is the most wired in nfl reporter him and jim nance had the same agent um chris martinson who's now recovering from uh from cancer but back in the day, that was somebody

Peyton went to. And he just had all these different people. So when something bad happens to Peyton Manning, like this whole HGH thing, it's like a race to poo-poo it and throw it aside. Let's slow down here, right? Yeah. And I actually think Brady has made a mistake over the years, not kind of throwing little morsels to those guys.

Because when Deflategate happened, those people weren't covering up for him like that. Yeah, he doesn't have a guy in the same way, does he? He doesn't. He doesn't. He has a couple of local guys, but not national guys. I remember Peter King would get like the one annual interview with Brady, and he'd have to do it around the charity. And it would kind of be there would be a charity plug.

Right. Like Best Buddies. I can't remember what the name of his charity was. But that was the way Peter got Tom Brady. And that's how, you know, a guy's kind of cut off. There's not even a bat phone to Peter King. And Manning's the opposite. Manning works that really well.

I think Mickelson works stuff well. Like there's people out there that know how to play the game. Yeah. You know, and in basketball, LeBron has all his people yeah you know he's he's got i mean we know who they are uh but that's that's how he does it and like right now is a situation where somebody could write a really damaging piece about lebron just what what a huge mistake he's made and how he's screwed because the warriors somebody in the west is winning the title this year lebron's not winning about LeBron, just what a huge mistake he's made and how he's screwed. Because the Warriors, somebody in the West is winning the title this year.

LeBron's not winning with that team. Now that's a year later. It's like he might have really botched this whole thing, and he will never win a title again, potentially. Yeah, and it's only certain writers that would write it, you know, because then you're torching the bridge right behind you. Then LeBron's, you're cut off. It's kind of the weird thing when everybody becomes this insider, right?

Because the whole insider thing relies on access to some degree. Yeah. And if you don't know stuff, you're not an insider anymore. What's the point? You're not getting by on your literary chops, right? You're kind of getting by on tweets and information and knowing stuff. I noticed when I started doing Countdown that first year, the way the stars and the people around them

interacted with me was completely different. I had a lot more clout. You on TV. Yeah, just being on that show and being, you know, I was basically the white guy on that show. It was like, oh, the white guy from Countdown. Like, that's who I was. It was with Magic and Jalen and that show. It was like, oh, the white guy from Countdown. Like, that's who I was. It was with Magic and Jalen and Wilbon.

It's like, oh, the white guy. And with, you know, Name the Star, I had a little more sway. It was like I had a weird credibility. What was my credibility? It wasn't changed from the year before. Right. But I had a platform. And so they were like, oh, there's that guy.

We've got to manage him a little bit. and there are probably fewer people watching you on tv than reading your twitter feed right like you hit oh yeah but they don't they're still in this old media world by the way new power today on television is power in sports writing is the ability to read your blackberry on television if you're shown as an insider reading your blackberry on camera which is the worst tv of all time, that means you're truly powerful. Like only a few guys, Schefter, Woj, you know, there's a handful of people that can kind of do that on TV. When I see that, I go, oh, that guy, that guy's got some juice. He's so wired in.

He's on live TV. He can't be bothered. And this BlackBerry is more important. Stuff's happening. I was like, hey guys, sorry. He can't be bothered by the cameras, right? There might be news breaking, blowing up his BlackBerry at the same moment. That's a good move for young reporters.

Should be to, when they're like, oh, like Haverstrow. I love Haverstrow. Yeah. When he goes, I'm like, Mike, he's just like, hold on, guys. Or the Rachel Nichols show, right? Oh, yeah. Just kind of be looking down. You know, Rachel's asking quite kind of like, what?

Did you guys see something? Wait, what just happened? By the way, the lines about around these athletes are so defined now that when Woody Page breaks a Peyton Manning scoop or alleged scoop this week, you know, he said he was retiring. We all go, ah, never mind. Oh, Woody Page, oh, he's not one of the guys. He's in Denver, but eh, what does he know? That's the move, though, if you're basically betting that Manny's going to retire, right?

I think we all thought Manny was going to retire. Why not write the column and say two sources say, I'm not saying he didn't have the sources, but that's a great move for somebody. I found out Peyton Manning's retiring. And if he's wrong, all right, you look like a jackass. So what? Nobody will forget.

I thought Stephen A did that. And I made fun of him during the decision with LeBron. When he was, he threw out the Miami thing, like eight, nine days before. I think I wrote in a column, if this happens, I'll change my byline to William J. Simmons for the column after the Miami. And if you look in ESPN, the column I wrote after he said he was going to Miami,

my byline's William J. Simmons. That's funny, that's funny. But yeah, he's, I mean, he was right. I don't, did he, did he 100% know? Or did he have an inkling and throw it out so he'd look right? Chris Sheridan did it when LeBron went back to Cleveland. He was adamant he was going back. Yeah, and then when he got it, no one wanted to give him credit for the scoop. There was this fight over who really got the scoop.

It's also unfalsifiable, right? You were talking about the Woj thing about Durant to the Warriors, and the Warriors are looking at Durant. They signed Durant. Terrible. Wojalsifiable, right? You were talking about the Woj thing about Durant to the Warriors and the Warriors are looking at Durant. They signed Durant. Woj is right, right? Yeah. If they don't sign Durant, he can say, you know, and maybe truthfully, I mean, you know, oh, well, they looked at it and it didn't work or he was felt, you know, obliged to go back to Oklahoma City, whatever. How do we test that this is right? Like, and I'm not saying I even doubt it because I don't know.

I just have no information to test if that scoop is correct at all. We'll never know. You can always say, well, he was going to, you know, the Warriors really wanted him, but now they don't. Or the Warriors really wanted him, but he didn't want to go to the Warriors. I mean, I don't know. Let's hold this thought. We have to talk about HBO Now, which is the new way to stream all of hbo every episode of every season of hbo's current television shows plus the biggest and latest hit movies they're all on hbo now uh

it's the first time they have done this with a streaming service you can just get it you don't need cable you don't need satellite no tv packages required you know what else you get every episode of classic hbo shows like caribbean enthusiasmiasm, The Wire, Eastbound and Down. It's all on there. Showing on HBO Now this month, Fast 7 and San Andreas. You can get your rock daily double. I like both of those movies. Coming to HBO Now later in March, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Spy, and Pitch Perfect 2.

My daughter's movie du jour right now. She's been watching a lot of that. Coming to HBO Now at some point, maybe this podcast. Who knows? You never know with HBO Now. Download the HBO Now app on your favorite device and start your free 30-day trial instantly. What we're talking about with Woj and LeBron and just throwing out storylines that may or may not happen, which I think is a smart thing to do in this era of media.

I think this started during the decision. And this is, you know, the documentary of the decision will never happen because it's too embarrassing for ESPN and it's too embarrassing for LeBron. But I think the one thing that happened during that whole lead up to the decision, then the decision, was people throwing out stuff they heard.

And they would do it on Twitter. I've done it. I'm guilty. Hearing that so-and-so is thinking about so-and-so. And this has become a new form of sports reporting. And you saw it this week with Stephen A. Smith. I'm hearing Kyrie Irving is unhappy in Cleveland. Okay. I'm hearing he's been unhappy for months. All right. Are you reporting this? Yeah. So where are we with this? Yeah.

I mean, it was Stephen A versus Durant was a big moment. That was terrible. Durant fired back and then, you know, Stephen A threatened him. Yeah. But it was that was kind of the that was kind of the war of our times. Right. The end, the player denying the story. But the you know, it's like nobody I know talks to you.

This is fake. And the insider, in this case, Stephen A, saying, oh the, you know, it's like nobody I know talks to you. This is fake. And the insider, in this case, Stephen A, saying, oh, no, no, no. I know. Trust me. I know. And we'll come to blows about this. Yeah. I mean, it's an old.

It wasn't just that. It was basically like, I have information about you. I hope I don't have to use it. That was my insinuation. Yikes. It was like, you better settle down, my friend. Yeah. Because I know things aboutuation. It was like, you better settle down, my friend, because I know things about you. I was like, Jesus. The role is old, right? Will McDonough, you know, famously, Peter Vesey, you know, who is the model for Woj and the new guys,

I think in a way. Two of my heroes. Yeah, there you go, right? Will McDonough, especially near the end, got super crusty and it would just start going after people in a really, really harsh and borderline libelous way. Yeah. And it was, on the one hand, sad to watch, but on the other hand, as a professional wrestling fan, I loved it. Because he was the ultimate heel. Well, it was the Lisa Olsen thing, which was an absolutely terrible story. I was going to say. But it turned into the Boston Globe versus the Boston Herald.

And that's when Will McDonough kind of lost his mind right like just just throwing like grenades at the herald staff and and he had his guys in the league right he had his he had his agendas he had his guys but he was powerful and people were afraid and by the way both vesey and mcdonough you know people say oh the insider thing is new with all this power both vesey mcdonough were on tv which at the time was you know if you were a sports writer on network TV, that was big. And what McDonough did, this was one of the last great pre-internet journalism moments, was McDonough's role in the craft Parcells, Parcells leaving New England. Yes.

And the stories that he wrote that were totally swayed by Parcells and his side of things, and actually him being involved in the story. Like he genuinely was involved. Yeah. He had information that he withheld and wasn't sure whether he should say. But it was, I don't remember a reporter being that involved in the story of somebody who knew before the Super Bowl that he was leaving and basically told his team that. McDonough knew. I can't remember the whole chain of events,

but he had information that was salient that he did not pass along to his readers. Right, and he wrote a big story with that Saturday or Sunday morning of the Super Bowl. Which was terrible. To me, it's like I love Parcells for saving football in New England, and the team was about to leave.

It was going to go to St. Louis or wherever. He single-handedly created the entire generation that followed Belichick but he effed us with the Super Bowl right that story came out the day of that he was halfway out the door and how is that good for the Patriots we're trying to win the Super Bowl Woj had a little did a podcast the other day he had this comment where he was a columnist in New York in the late 90s, early aughts. Yeah, the Bergen County record, right? Right. And he's competing with – he wants to be Lupica and Harvey Ayrton and all those guys, right?

Because that's – the old power was the columnist, the local columnist, right? That's how you got famous. That's how you got on the sports reporters. That's how you got book deals. And he sees the world changing and says, oh, wait a second. In this new internet world, we live in the power is going to be in the insider. Yeah. I'm going to go that way. You know, like, and, and he didn't totally want to do that right away. Cause at ESPN.com, they were using him

as kind of a big picture MBA columnist. And he was really good for ESPN.com and they would always bury his stuff. And he took it personally and he went to Yahoo. Right. And it was a huge mistake by ESPN in the mid 2000s because Woj was clearly good. Like you go and read his pieces and he was unlike kind of anyone else they had. And he goes and now he's going the insider route. I've always wondered with him though. And I know Adrian a little bit. He's a good guy. I've always wondered how he has so much power over all these people who give him stuff. It's a really good question, right? He just gets all of them. I know.

Everybody. Everybody. They just give it to him. Yeah. Somebody who was an NBA writer the other day was saying, like, he'd noticed that Woj is the number of columns, you know, where he really goes in on somebody and just destroys them, which he's, you know, does. That's part of his quiver had sort of, had sort of gone down in the last couple of year months. And he's kind of like,

I took it as a sign that now he's connected to everybody that now it's complete. He's won before it was 60%. And then it was seven. Now it's like kind of 98%. And I thought that was really fascinating, right? Like, Oh, you know, he's plugged into anybody and to see, you know, what he does to really fascinating, right? Like, oh, oh, you know, he's plugged into anybody. And to see, you know, what he does to ESPN, right, who would dearly love all those scoops. And he would never work for them again. Yeah.

Yeah. But he's pulled power away from, you know, they own that in football. They basically own that in baseball, you know, with a couple of exceptions, right? But in basketball, no, it's Woj. Here's a very important question, though. Does anyone really care who gets the scoops do you care um i compared to to nikki fink uh in in hollywood yeah we don't know who those executives she is writing about we don't really even care about the scoops like we care about movies right but because she has cast she cast herself as this person who is against the big bad studio.

Yeah. Who is going in and getting that knowledge for you. And that's what the insider has done. Right. Like half of these deals. Remember the trade deadline? Was that last week? I'm losing track of time.

Yeah. Nothing happened. Right. Nothing happened at all. And we were just, you know, days and days and stuff and no moves that will probably affect anything in the playoffs happen. But this idea that we're behind the curtain and that there's this big, bad death star of the NBA and this one guy or woman is going in and getting it for us. I think it's almost a romantic figure now in sports writing. We look at that guy and say, that guy's working for us. He's not working for the man.

He's working for us. Yeah, Woj became a cult hero the last couple of years. I remember somebody wrote a piece about just watching him at the draft, just watching him on his BlackBerry for five hours. I was like, can you imagine somebody doing that about Dick Young? No, no. You sent me the NBA Finals last year before game one, and I was looking, and Zach Lowe was here.

Of course, Zach's talking to the assistants because he knows everybody. Zach knows everybody. Zach knows everybody. Mark Stein is standing on in front of a TV camera getting ready for a standup. That's Steining, right? Yeah. And then there's Woj kind of over on the side. And it was kind of like NBA power in one tab,

NBA journalistic power in one tableau. And I was kind of like, oh, wow. And of course I'm sitting there. Nobody's just walking by. Nobody knows who I am. But those three guys were kind of the, those are the three options, right? The smartest thing we ever told Zach when we hired him was we're just sending you to stuff and you don't have to write.

Just go for the networking. Go to Summer League for a week. You don't have to write one thing. Just go and talk to people, meet people, make connections, get people on your BlackBerry or your iPhone. And that's where you go, right? Not games. Games are losers, right right everybody's there but the work those people do is at summer league spring training if you're in baseball the last two rounds of the nba playoffs are good because uh people are on

the court like three four hours before and you can there are some people i used to get some good information when i was on countdown those two years just from kind of wandering around an hour before and it's a credential that you're there. That means you're powerful. Yeah, I'm on the court. You're on the court. Hey, what are you hearing? Don't you love now when we get the press, like the new credential is on Twitter.

You take a picture of the empty court or the empty field from the press box and go, my office tonight. Yeah. Oh, wow. You know, it's kind of the new dateline, right? You don't even need a dateline on your story. It's like my office tonight. There was this great moment during the college, one of the new dateline, right? You don't even need a dateline on your story. It's like my office tonight. There was this great moment during the college football playoff games where Chris Brown,

Greenlanders Chris Brown, was talking about a play and one of the guys in the press box goes, oh, no, no, that's not what happened. This is what happened. I had a great view from the press box. And Chris was watching all 22 film. Yeah. I was like, pretty sure Chris has a better view than you. I know you're there.

Well, now that they've changed the seats, it doesn't make a ton of sense to try to report from shitty auxiliary press seating. In the corner. Yeah. In the corner of the corner of the corner of the football stadium. I remember I was watching in San Antonio both years. Our set was kind of in the corner. We had a nice, like, big, tall view of the court. Yeah.

But underneath us were all the press people. They were all on TweetDeck the entire time. All of them. They're just watching TweetDeck and occasionally looking up at the game. And I'm like, there are real reasons to be at the game, but if I'm at a game,

I'm watching the game. I want to watch the timeouts and the huddles and people walking on the court when somebody's shooting free throws. How are people interacting? That's the stuff I watch when I'm at a basketball game. Yeah, and have you ever followed a play-by-play of a game on Twitter? I think TweetDeck's the worst. I can't handle it.

Have you ever looked at Twitter and go, I wonder, did Steph Curry just shoot the ball? Right. And it's always so weird. By the way, when I've a couple times, a handful of times last year, I've been in a press box, they'll make an announcement, like so-and-so has gone from the game of injury,

and then you look at Twitter, and everybody tweets it, and you're like, oh, they're working off the PA. They're not working off their eyes. They're working off the PA system. The stuff I like is if somebody's at a game, and they say, weird situation just now in the huddle. DeAndre Jordan and Blake Griffin had to be separated.

Yeah. That's the stuff I want to know if you're at the game. That's valuable. Or LeBron James is really frustrated with his team. He won't talk to anyone in the huddle or things like that. Or Draymond Green screaming in the locker room. Allegedly Draymond Green at halftime the other day, right? The Warriors was at the under game.

Hold on. We have to take care of business for one second, but hold that thought because I have a lot of thoughts on that. When you're making an investment, I'm invested in your thought that's about to happen, but when you're making an investment, you want to make sure one thing, that your investment is going to pay off, right? Well, investing in the safety of your home is no different. And you might buy a home at some point. Yeah. In LA. You live with the in-laws now. I am.

At some point you might be over here. That's right. Might have to invest in the safety of your home. So let's talk about home security. Researchers from leading universities like Rutgers and UNC Charlotte have proven security systems deter burglars. Talking about a deterrence rate of almost 90%. So if you're trying to find a system that's right for your home, I have a suggestion. SimpliSafe Home Security. They don't only protect your home. They save you hundreds of dollars, no hidden fees, no complicated installations.

You get 24-7 professional protection for just $14.99 a month. And you can start or cancel your service at any time. So go to Simplifebill.com. Save 10%. Once again, simplysafebill.com. You and I both hate the concept of sideline reporters. Yeah. In general.

For the most part, we could get rid of them. It's a broken job. Broken job. And yet Lisa Salters broke some news on Saturday night at that Golden State-Oklahoma City game. Yeah. And by the way, to be clear, I blame the producers, not the reporters themselves. I think it's a producer's problem. If you ever talk to producers, they'll say, the sideline reporter is an integral part of our broadcast.

Okay, we're going to give him or usually her two minutes in a three-hour game. Oh, how integral is that? But on the other hand, you have Tony Saragusa. Let's find a middle ground. Yeah, he gets 30 minutes of open mic time. Yeah, exactly. Tony Saragusa is the, I once compared him to the maitre d' who keeps coming over to your dinner and stands over the table

and interrupting your conversation. Like, all right, good, yeah, we ordered. Okay, all right, you can go now. You're cool. We're good. We're good, Tony. We're enjoying the dinner. Thanks very much. No, it's great. Everything's great. Yeah, my steak's Okay. All right. You can go now. You're cool. We're good. We're good, Tony. We're enjoying the dinner. Thanks very much.

No, it's great. Everything's great. Yeah, my steak's awesome. Please go away. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's a perfect metaphor. Okay, Tony. All right, cool.

Yeah, I want them. I think the thing is, to my point about being experts, them to be experts on something. Tell them, you find a person you like, doesn't matter who it is, and they don't have to have some background. Just study and be an expert. Like Todd McShay, I know you don't watch a ton of college football. He stands on the college football sidelines. Yeah.

And he's like, I'm just going to tell you about the draft prospects of all these guys. I'm going to do injuries and do all the other sideline stuff that you need to handle, which takes, like, what, a minute a game, two minutes a game? But I'm going to tell you about the draft stuff. And I've sat in a TV truck and listened to him. And just the stuff he says that doesn't get on the air it's fascinating and it makes the broadcast better because he's going i just looked at uh you know the usc linebacker and he did that he's doing this or he's walking really weird watch this or this next play this is going to happen and he's he was right a lot of the time and it's just it's just a guy who's like really into football who happens to be

standing on the sidelines right we've never seen that with basketball no but why not right it could be you could just put that guy put a guy or woman out there it's it's a little fast i guess it's fast um especially if you have a three-man booth there's just not enough time to talk i've done a couple three-man booth nba games it flies by you're like oh my god it's the third quarter i've i feel like i've said two things but it just it moves but what if we replace those stupid coach interviews that greg popovich has totally exploded for i hate the coach has been terrible little mini point about the spot on the floor where you know the spurs are just killing the other team right or the little the play they've run a hundred times where the guy can sit there and explain and say here's what i heard you know here's what i see when they're bringing the ball up the floor talking about this, or here's

what I hear them chatter. You know, it's like you need eyes and ears, right. And somebody who really knows the game. And I think that I'd be much more interested in that. My, uh, the thing I've learned about TV from my own experiences with it is most of it is about job preservation. You just want everything to look like everything else so nobody can. The more you try and the more chances you take, the bigger the chance somebody will go, why'd you do that? We should get somebody else. So you just want everything to look like what everything else looks like. The first year we did TV, it was me and Wilbonna Magic and Jalen.

And, you know, we just kind of figured out, let's start a, we're trying to do like almost a barbershop type thing. And there was a way for it to work, but it couldn't have worked with the way Eastman did the shows because we had to follow these cues instead of just kind of letting us loose. And the, one of the things that used to drive them crazy was if we somehow screwed up heading to a commercial, if it wasn't totally polished enough. And the reality is if you're watching at home, you don't notice, nobody cares. It was like, oh, I, I, a second paused after I finished my read for the way,

like nobody cares. People care if there's chemistry and if they're interested in the discussion, that's it. And that's why pti is so brilliant because they've created this structure of people aren't hosts but they're within a structure that they have to follow but not totally and the bell rings and you can go buy it for 30 seconds it's the only show like that yeah and they imported the chemistry from a newspaper yeah right yeah everybody who's worked at the post that was what they were doing in the paper. But it's funny that everybody who does that shows like, I love Pete Tavs, the most fun I've ever had doing TV. And yet we won't recreate that with really anything else with TV except for Charles Barkley's TNT show, which is basically the same format.

They throw them out, let them go. Right. Which is underproduced and just people actually having a human conversation. Yeah. Commercials are rough because as you know, that's what you care. Putting sports on TV is about selling beer. It's not about putting sports on TV. No one's doing it.

Well, we'd have a halftime show. We'd have four people and we'd have three minutes. So especially if you have a host, because any host that does a studio show is going to want to grab 35 seconds at the top to do a very long before they throw it. Sure. But in the first year, we didn't have a host. It's still three minutes. show is going to want to grab 35 seconds at the top to do like a very long before they throw it. Sure. So, but in the first year we didn't have a host, it's still three minutes. If you make a point, it's about 30 to 50 seconds. Right. So if, if magic goes for a minute, now there's two minutes left and you're listening to the guy, but you're also doing the math in your head. And you're thinking like, when the ball comes to me, I'm talking.

I'm just getting my point out. I got my Tim Duncan point. I'm plowing ahead with it. And what happens is it's just four people taking turns giving a 45-second speech and then you go to commercial. And that's not television. It's like three ball hogs. Yeah.

It's like, all right, you shoot this play. Next play I'm going to shoot. And there's no interaction and that's why the tnt i always marvel at it because they they have the long monologues but they also have the interplay yeah and that's so it's so hard to do it's so hard to get the hang of what you're talking about too is the exact thing the podcast is doing to sports radio yeah and it hasn't kicked in quite all the way yet because podcasting is still relatively new. But you listen to sports radio now and I grew up listening to it.

I know you listen to it. And it's too slick. It's too produced. There are no real interactions. You know, rarely there's not, you know. It's hollow. It feels like it is. And it feels like then you listen to a podcast,

you're like, oh, this is like human speech. Yeah, yeah. This is how people talk to each other. Yeah. Isn't that funny? It's tough to do. It's tough to have a good conversation in nine minutes about anything. Yeah.

And I think this is something that, you know, I've been thinking about this a lot with the TV show I'm about to do, but also like you watch Late Night and these guests come out and they, well, the audience applauds, guest walks out shakes hands sits down that's 40 seconds hey so so what are you doing up to

that's another 30 now we're going now you tell the rehearsed story about so I heard you're in the Bahamas because they everything's on the

pre-interview they tell the two three stories that are going to kill with the 200 people in the studio audience right

show the clip and they're out. It's not a conversation. The host fake laughs. Yeah. I've gotten really obsessed with Jimmy Fallon's fake laugh, by the way, when they're doing the karaoke things or the impressions. And he's going, you know, his mouth is open and his head is shaking.

Yeah. Which I know he's not real. Like, he can't find everything that funny. No. And I can't watch late night anymore because it's too packaged it's funny when i watch because i know jimmy so well at this point i've known him since 2002 and i always know when he's real laughing or fake laughing most of the time he's really laughing but there's a couple like oh that was a fake sometimes there's some

filler right you gotta you gotta laugh here right that's but he's got a great fake laugh that's one of the things i would buy on eBay is a fake laugh. I have no fake. I don't even try to fake laugh. Yeah. I just stare blankly. You're not really a fake laugh. I can.

I don't know how to fake laugh. I can feel, though. You know, if I need two seconds. You have a good courtesy laugh? You have a good fake laugh? Yeah, I've got a good one. I think so. Developed over the years.

Wait, we should talk about the dramatic return to Sports Illustrated by Rick Riley. Whoa. Yeah. The afterlife of Riley. The afterlife of Riley. That was your joke. I stole by Rick Riley. Whoa. Yeah. The afterlife of Riley. The afterlife of Riley. That was your joke. I stole it from you. There you go.

Rick's back. He was taking a break from sports writing and now he's writing the cover of Sports Illustrated. You know, I thought when he walked, I'd love to talk about this sometime,

but I thought when he walked, you know, there was this exhaustion with sports writing and he'd been doing it since he was basically literally in his teens, I think, you know, both at the college. He was quickly on the newspapers, LA Times, SI for 100 years. And I always got the sense with his ESPN run, he'd just written it. He felt he'd written everything, you know.

He didn't want to write anymore, and I think they just offered him a lot of money. Yeah. And he's like, oh. I would say yes if I felt tapped out and they offered me millions of dollars. write anymore and i think he they just offered him a lot of money yeah he's like oh i would i would say yes if they if i was if i felt tapped out and they offered me millions of dollars i think he just they just made it hard for him to say no i there's a lot of recency bias with rick and he didn't help himself in a lot of different ways but that guy was a great writer absolutely and uh and wrote especially in the late 80s, like the 87 to 96 range, wrote some unbelievable pieces.

His Greg Norman piece. Yeah. The run at SI was incredible. Yeah, he was awesome. And the way he did that back page column, too, when it was really going, that's a really hard trick to do. Write for a national audience. Do it weekly with a magazine lead deadline. And also, 800 words yeah

i had the 800 word comedy initially espn magazine it was they were like acting like it was a huge favor to give me this column it was like 680 words like i can't even fart in 680 words you know then i got them to go to 800 it still wasn't enough 12 12 50 was the right length for that call 800 800 you're basically you're doing a riley imitation yeah big you have some hard angle big intro um body and and it's just like a formula it's not it wasn't fun for me isn't it funny the titans of print who i'm just like i always just find this funny in this moment we're in right where there's still these guys around that were the biggest guys you know who are now finding their way in new media um when they're divorced

from their actual physical newspaper or magazine it feels weird like riley felt right when you opened the back page of sports illustrated then you put it on ESPN.com, and it was like, huh, something feels off about this. Like something just feels – and I suspect he felt it too. I mean, I remember talking to the people at SI.com. They said – one time they said his column on the internet wasn't as popular as it was in the magazine, weirdly, like to the extent they could measure it. It wasn't a huge hit on the internet because it was like – Because it was too short.

Yeah, and if you talk to those guys, they also say when they wrote for print, they knew who their audience was intimately. And then they go on the internet and they're like, it's like jumping into the Pacific ocean. Who am I writing for? You see this lupica, you know, just start doing a column for sports on earth. And I've, and I imagine it's going to, I'm really, I don't think I've read it yet, but it's, I imagine it's going to feel the same way. Like, oh, he felt totally natural in the daily news. That's where he belonged. Well, I think there's a certain art to writing a column that exists on one page of a newspaper. And you're trying to structure it so that it fits that exact length of the paper.

The great thing about the internet is there is no length. And when Riley got to ESPN.com, and he was a dick to me coming out of the gate like just point blank to me and the New York Times I asked him about you and he pretended like the phone hung up it was just a weird way to play it and he made it adversarial and then obviously I was like well I'm not going to help you in any way

didn't you guys have a podcast? didn't you eventually have a coming together? we did one podcast that I did as a favor to Skipper and Walsh that I um just for that that that was the reason i should have done it nice yeah it was like this was a big issue for them because people were making a big issue out of it and the reality was i didn't do anything like riley came out of that piece and he's basically like the people write too long on the internet and i'm gonna bring it back to where it should be and it's like fuck you dude like who are you you know the world's moving on there's lots of ways

to write about this but we talked about it since it's fine i don't have any hard feelings toward him but he was so condescending about it and i think that really played a huge part with how the internet reacted to him because he's basically telling all these people the way you're doing it is wrong. Now I'm the adult. I'll show you how it's done. It's like everyone's like, go to hell. Who are you? That's a weird way to start.

Really bad way. Telling everybody that their favorite writers suck. Yeah. And that bloggers have no credibility and you have to be... I mean, that whole generation really was adamant that you had to be in the locker room to have an opinion that mattered. Sure.

Sure. I'm not saying they're 100% wrong, but they devalued the opinion of just if you weren't in the locker room. It's like that opinion didn't matter, and that was the mistake. I compare them to what Oscar Robertson was saying the other day about Steph Curry. These are the metrics we were judged on. And now wait a second. You tell me that three pointers are more valuable. There is a three point line, right? You tell me that three pointers are more valuable and wait a second. I got paid the big bucks. I got judged by my peers. I got in the best sports stories of the year by doing the old metrics

the world told me those were the metrics go into the locker room write a negative column go in there face in the guy the next day ream the next day

by that guy you know almost coming to blows having to be separated and the world changed so I have a lot of sympathy for that you know

because I don't excuse the sneering attitude toward the web because it's just stupid but I also have a lot of sympathy because I feel like about Roberts and I feel like, you know, it was a different world. And of course, they're going to lash out, you know, against the new thing. Yeah. With Oscar, he just can't fundamentally understand how somebody could shoot like this. So he just blames the other players. Right. Right.

He it's not it's not in him to understand it. You know, if I watch somebody write, you know, 12 good sports columns a week with 12 different great angles, I'd be like, what's going on here? It's something you didn't look for a reason that it couldn't be true. Yeah. And I think that's what happened with him. It's like, this guy's, why is he making all these shots? It's everyone else, they should guard him harder. And it like no actually the game's evolved people are good at shooting threes but i think with uh with the internet um they're not wrong about it's good to be in the locker room and good to talk to people the the big difference though in the last 15 years is

what access am i actually getting from the locker room right basically and i'm not going to name the nba teams or the writers but you know who they are they're they're freaking extended pr firms for the teams now yeah and you're seeing you're seeing this over and over again now where they it's very very very skewed toward the player and the team that the guy is covering all the coverage you're. When's the last time you read a hard piece about anybody? Exactly. And it's like you read it as not journalists shirking their duty to go in the locker room, but as rebelling against the lack of access

that they would have gotten had they gone into the locker room, right? Well, you faced this with the OKC piece. Yeah. You wrote a whole piece about how OKC was handling the media. And that was probably... Handling is a good word. Handling is... Yeah, it's been generous.

Glad handling. Yeah. But it's, you know, it's like Durant and Westbrook were babies a lot of the times. Durant still is, by the way. And I think everyone enabled him. He's a huge baby. I mean, it's like finally people... I think the scales are dropping from people's eyes, right?

And I think... People got so upset about your piece, though. Oh, my gosh. The team was furious. It was like, how dare you lift the cape that we've carefully placed over this whole situation. The kimono that we've... Yeah, seriously. It was really funny, too, because all these NBA, national NBA typewriters were really cheering me on when I read it.

Oh, my God. Oklahoma City's terrible. This is a really bad place to do journalism. And as soon as the piece came out, they would go on national radio shows and they'd get asked about it. And they'd go, oh, well, you know, I agree with some of what Brian said, but some of it was overstated, too. And I was like, okay, cool.

Right. You got your access to worry about it, I understand. But it was pretty funny. They are notoriously the worst. Yeah. It is not even a competition. They're the worst. Everyone hates dealing with OKC.

The players are babied. It's just like you saw like not so coincidentally after you had that access. There was a piece about Russell Westbrook on SI with a lot of Russell Westbrook access. I don't think it was a coincidence. Yeah. Watched him do charity work and everything. Yeah. You know. Here's Russell Westbrook access. I don't think it was a coincidence. Yeah. Watched him do charity work and everything. Yeah. You know,

here's Russell doing some charity work. I'm sure the OKC reporters would have happily taken that. And they've been offered him funny how that works. I mean, let's say you're covering one of those teams. Are you going to write a piece about like really killing Draymond Green for being unprofessional on Saturday night and risk not being able to have any access to him for the rest of this season? No, you wait until he's traded or retires, and then you'll dump it.

This is my new favorite genre. The Reggie Jackson. Yeah, that's a good one. Or the Blatt got some of that the other day. Lamarcus Aldridge in Portland. And I call it the now they tell us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wouldn't this information have been happy to know when he was playing for the team?

Reggie Jackson was a great one. They trade him in like his body. I don't even think he was on the plane yet. And he just got crushed. Yeah. And as I think I wrote in that Oklahoma City thing, you know, it was like he was the one sticking up for the writers. When Westbrook would yell and yell at them, you know, he'd bring over the chair and say, here, use my chair. You know, that was telling, but he was the bad guy.

Okay, great. Gotcha. We, where can we go with Steph Curry is for media coverage at this point. He's weirdly accessible still. He is, you know, seems like everyone's waiting for the garage door to close um it probably will he's weirdly you know someone wrote a column this weekend saying it was my buddy josh and uh slate saying nobody hates steph curry well wait you know just wait you know and maybe maybe they'll hate him because he's just too good to be true right but eventually the media will find something

we'll find an angle on him nobody survives forever jordan didn't survive forever lebron survived five minutes you know the decision right and probably before that a little bit it could be for steph it could be what he's going to do with his contract he's a tate winsey free agent next after next season if the charlotte stuff starts oh yeah and somebody will start that early. It'll be the same thing like the Durant Warriors thing. You just, somebody throws it out there, ESPN takes it and runs with it for 48 hours. It's on every show and then it becomes a story.

And meanwhile, Steph Curry hasn't done anything. We're still talking about ballplayer loyalty. Yeah. 40 years after MLB free agency, you know, we're still mad. We still get mad, you know. I think it's in play that he could go to Charlotte. I don't think it's going to happen, but I think it's something that at some point he's going to be at dinner with his wife if they went back to back titles and be like, Hey, if we went three in a row, would it be weird if I went to Charlotte?

I mean, I personally think you don't leave a great team. I don't, there's nobody who's ever done that. Yeah. I don't, people leave bad has ever done that. Yeah. I don't, people leave bad situations or situations with dead ends. Like Kareem left Milwaukee cause Milwaukee was fading and it wasn't the place to be. Shaq left Orlando cause of Penny and LeBron left Cleveland because they had mismanaged the team and he saw the writing on the wall and wanted help. And he was right. And he was right. Nobody leaves a three-time champ. Now, if Durant gets knocked out in round two again.

You can say they've topped out, right? He might say. He did what he could. Been in this situation and this team doesn't spend money like the other teams and maybe I need to be in a bigger market. He could talk himself into that. I don't see Curry winning three straight titles and being like, okay, time to go home.

Right. But if they lost a share and they didn't win again next year, maybe who knows? Yeah. He's from there. His dad was a hero there. Like he's, he could be the biggest guy in the history of that state and probably is already. I was going to say he is playing a crowd 3000 miles away. Yeah. But this is all a conversation that starting in around August is going to become a conversation because that's how stuff works now. Yeah. Yeah. That could get him to turn on him. I didn't think about that, but that might be the move.

That might be the moment. All he has to do is say one thing wrong. Yeah. Be like, well, I mean, it's no secret. I love Charlotte. Boom. Yeah. There you go.

There's a seven day media arc. What's he trying to tell us? Yeah. Why do you throw that out? And then he starts to cut off access a little bit because he's scorned by his first negative wave of negative media right we could drop this we could drop this scenario i don't mean to sound like an old crotchety guy but we so he came into the podcast with david lee i think january 2013 he was such like a sweet kid he was so happy to be in the podcast he like he took a picture of me he was like can we get a

picture like he asked me and david lee if we could all take a picture together of us in front of the grantland sign he's a big fan of our site and now he's the biggest star in 20 years yeah it's it's incredible to me i feel like it was like a week ago when we did that podcast and now it's like i can never get him for a podcast no but i still think that smile is big, you know, with reporters, right? Yes. We like people who are having fun playing the game, right? Magic. Who don't frown when they see us come around the locker and do a press gaggle, right? Yeah.

You know, magic. Yeah, exactly. Magic was like that his whole career. And that's why he was able to translate that into his hugely successful post-playing career. Because he's genuinely like that. And Durant carried that off for a while and then he got a little sour

something happened you know people turned and he just it got weird I don't know what happened to him he was such a he was another one

I don't know where the wheels came off with him he became jaded somehow and I don't know why that happened I think it was just that run of bad luck

where he was hurt where they were losing where they had a lot of bad there was a lot of things that happened within like a year, two years' time that weren't his fault.

But he sort of got blamed or got caught up in it, and I think that's when he got defensive. You know, Magic, and then we have to go, but Magic was really like that. You know, we would go do a show and, you know, there would be some big game coming up, like, I don't know, game six of some series. And he would show up and he'd just have a glow to him. He'd be like, yeah, we're doing it tonight. Like, it was 100% genuine.

Like, he just loved basketball. Right. One of my favorite things about doing that show was being on that set with him for game six, seven of miami san antonio just like the joy he had watching that i think curry might be wired like that he might genuinely love basketball like that people who are old enough to remember the 80s nba who are old enough to have covered the 80s nba yeah they remember that era where you could go into a locker room and get magic or you could get larry a little tougher but you could get larry. McCallum's book was one of the last times where somebody had that kind of access. Yeah.

Unfinished business. Yeah, exactly. He was riding on the bus with them and stuff. And if you talk to him about stuff, they'll say that he is. And they say this like they're scared because they know it's going to end eventually. But it's not the Pistons. Right. It's not the Jordan Bulls.

It's a little bit of the link to that glorious past. Right. It makes you feel like you're covering, you know, I think all of us that cover sports now wish some level of our being that we covered sports when the athletes were like that. And of course there were all kinds of bad reasons. We would have to write newspapers and we couldn't write like we wanted and it was too short and all that stuff. But, you know, I think that's what Steph reminds him of. And I think that's why, you know, 10% of the sweetness of the coverage is due to that for sure. Dream organization too, because very new wave kind of thinking with the owners.

Also that, yes. Everyone, this is another great sports media Twitter thing when people start complimenting PR teams of teams. It's a combination like this is so inside baseball. I don't know who this is for, but also like stroking the PR team. It's so great. You should do that. You should start tweeting that out. I don't know who this is for, but also like stroking the PR team. It's so great. You should do that. You should start tweeting that out. I will.

A sports writer who shall not be named sends me them every time. It's usually college teams. It's like, oh, what a professional sports information director to work with. Great SID. Great guy. Great SID in Tennessee. Or when they leave their jobs or get fired, they start stumping for them to get a new job because they want access at the two conferences over.

Like, oh, he was great for me at Oklahoma. Maybe if he goes to Virginia, I can get some good stuff over there. That's one of my favorite sports media tricks when writers start stumping for the open GM job for some assistant on some other team. That is obviously one of their sources. It's the long con, right? Yeah, he's going to get me in there. You know who would be a great guy to run the Memphis Grizzlies?

Brian Curtis. He'd do a great job. I've heard his thoughts. And don't you think the owner goes, oh, if a famous writer likes him, that's good for us, right? Maybe the famous insider is so powerful and so smart like maybe he maybe he's right that's what happened with david griffin i'm convinced

okay there you go david griffin kind of lingering around people keep writing how great he'd be and then all of a sudden he gets hired it's like how do we know who's a good gm and who's not i figured that i figured that that seems like a very basketball thing i don't feel like i see that in the nfl football yeah not as much in football there yeah football in general is weird i think that's such a harder sport to do to run a team and just everything all right we gotta go uh thanks to hbo now you don't need cable or satellite to watch hbo anymore download the hbo now app start your free one month trial today san andreas fast seven pitch perfect two uh every episode of last week Tonight and Bauer's.

It's all on HBO Now. Download that app ASAP. Thanks to SimpliSafe. They'll give you 24-7 award-winning protection for just $14.99 a month. No contracts, no hidden fees. Start or cancel service when it works for you. For home security, you can trust. Go to simplisafebill.com and save 10%.

Remember, security systems deter burglars at a rate of 90%. Thanks to SeatGeek, the presenting sponsor of the Bill Simmons Podcast and Channel 33. Don't forget to follow The Ringer on Twitter, at Ringer. And don't forget to subscribe to our upcoming newsletter at theringer.com, where Brian Curtis will be writing. I'm excited. Boom. This is going to be great. I'm so excited.

We're so, we've had so much fun planning and talking and all kinds of stuff. All of us are just so jazzed. Oh, by the way, we should mention, you might have a media podcast

at some point. I might have a media podcast. Ooh, good tease. Yeah. You might do that. We're going to figure that out too. Interviews, all kinds of stuff. There we go.

All right. Talk to you soon. We about this bitch. Anytime y'all want to see me again, rewind this track right here. Close your eyes. And picture me rolling.