The Bill Simmons Podcast - Part 2: Barkley’s Future, TNT’s Possible Past, and 2024 NBA Media Trends With Ryen Russillo and Bryan Curtis

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

In Part 2 of a two-part podcast, The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo and Bryan Curtis to discuss NBA Finals narratives, the state of modern sports studio shows and broadcasts, the future of 'Inside the NBA,' NBA schedule debates, and more! Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Ryen Russillo and Bryan Curtis Producer: Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

coming up part two of the NBA Sunday pod with Rosilla and special guest Brian Curtis next this episode is brought to you by Prime Video you know me I can't go a day without sports I really can't and now Monday nights are all about hockey that's right there's a new exclusive home for streaming Monday night NHL hockey and it's on Prime all All season long, watch Prime Monday Night Hockey deliver unreal plays, the biggest goals, can't miss moments. Matthews, McDavid, Crosby, the NHL's best. They're all on Prime. Prime Monday Night Hockey.

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We did Slapshot, one of the best sports movies of all time. Eventually, you'll be able to watch that on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as well. Hey, FanDuel Sportsbook, I'm doing a boost because there is a big profit boost token on Wednesday. 30% if you hit your bet. I am going to, I think on Tuesday,

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Stay tuned for that on Tuesday. I'll tweet out whatever the boost is eventually. So there you go. Coming up on this podcast, Russel and I brought in special guest Brian Curtis, a sports media expert,

editor-at-large of The Ringer. We're going to talk all the media storylines kind of floating around the NBA Finals. Very peculiar year for media storylines in the Finals.

We're getting into it. First, our friends from ProJet. All right, for part two, joining us, bring our editor atge, Brian Curtis. He's three levels above being veteran journalist, Brian Curtis. When you're a veteran, it feels like vaguely insulting, right? Like veteran, play-by-play guy, so-and-so. It's like a mild insult, right?

It means something really bad's about to happen to you at work. That's what it is? Okay. And we're still a giant Brian Curtis fan. I know this is an exciting hour for you. Oh, my God. Look at all of those books. Oh, yeah. Brian Curtis has a lot of books behind him. He read all those books? Yeah, that's the first question.

Best moment ever, I had Joe Buck on the press box, and he's looking at him. He goes, oh yeah, where's my book? And I go, it's right there in alphabetical order next to your dad's. And there was this moment of, oh, okay. Yeah. You showed him. Yeah. That's the all-timer right there. Got both bucks. Hey, Curtis, we were talking in part one about media narratives and glass half full, glass half empty type of stuff that's going on so dallas is in the glass half full zone with media takes right because everybody's so excited for the luca piece of it and the kairi rehabilitation slash resurgence and the celtics are in the glass half empty zone of i know these guys records but and there's like a yeah but um

do you feel like this whole cycle happens faster than it used to happen is this like instantaneously in 12 hours all of a sudden the glass half full glass half empty happens it's probably generally true though i think the celtics part of it has lasted basically throughout the playoffs because there's just not that much to say yeah that's a good point i mean what what's your you know what was your storyline you know after they lost after the Pacers lost game one and the series looked like it was going to be really fun for about five minutes? What else was there to say?

And then Halliburton gets hurt. The only take right there is to start to just poke at the Celtics. Oh, these guys aren't that good. They haven't played anybody. Stars keep getting hurt. So I think it's almost out of boredom if anything else yeah rossillo chris ryan mentioned to me he was like it seems like you haven't had as much fun talking basketball during the playoffs as you did during the football season and i was like well i

was ready to have fun but i don't i mean the east was pretty awful right even like the knicks series which seemed like it was super fun. And then by the time we got to game seven, the Knicks are running on fumes and ESPN's doing that, the Stephen A show basically for the final game. And it was like, this isn't fun at all. West was a little more fun and then it kind of flamed out. But I would say if we're going to rank the playoffs, would you rank this on the lower end,assila since we started doing this oh yeah i mean no question my favorite series other than minnesota denver is new york philly i mean i love that round one loved it and okc dallas is there uh as far as entertainment we had close games with dallas and minnesota but it just i think was like oh minnesota's just not

ready for this the entire time. So yeah, but it also speaks to the Boston part of it. When the season started, hey, who has the most on the line now? And it's Boston. Which team, if they don't win a title, feels like it's a disappointing season? Now, I think there's an absurd version of that where, because I was back in Boston listening to a lot of the local coverage, it's like if they don't win, well, what if they lose game seven at home and Donchitz

finds a way to get six points in the last minute and a half? You start sitting there going, oh, this team is super disappointing again. Of course, there's a losing scenario where you'd feel like Boston doesn't have to start questioning itself, their identity as an organization, but there's so much at stake for them

because they've been lingering here now for such a long time that there was no way to enjoy it, especially once Butler, Mitchell, and Halliburton were gone. So I'm not surprised at all. And they've spent a crazy amount of money on it. And a lot of things have broken their way. Yeah. Like Curtis, we should mention you're from the great state of Texas. You followed this Mavs team.

I did. should mention you're from the great state of Texas. You followed this Mavs team. If Dallas doesn't win the finals, I don't feel like it, you know, I don't think the ramifications would be the same as the Celtics blowing this and Dallas becoming the third biggest underdog in since the merger in the NBA finals to win a title and to come down from having lost 30 games in the regular, all these beats, it would be a really bad loss for the Celtics. And for the Mavs, they'd be like, hey man, Luka, it's coming. It's going to happen. And I think you'd quickly move forward. Right. But how's the city of Dallas treating this team? It's been so funny because end of last year, and I still consider myself culturally a citizen of Dallas-Fort Worth and same way you guys do Boston. I listen to sports radio down there all the time. End of last year, everybody's pissed off about the tanking.

End of last season, everybody wants Jason Kidd fired. I was listening to the Dallas radio coverage of the draft this year. Everybody pissed off when they took Derek Lively. Five points a game at Duke, five rebounds. That's what we want. I mean, that was not a happy day of radio at all. So, you know, and even till March, right? When they put Lively on the bench,

put Gafford in the starting lineup, put Jones in the starting lineup, the Mavericks go 16-2. Everybody just really perked up. So it's not only a happy to be there finals. There was just, again, this does not stretch back at all. This is the opposite of what Ryan's talking about with Boston really just since March has it been like, Hmm, maybe there's something there in this team.

Yeah. It's like the happy surprise NBA finals team, which we don't get that often because all we do is talk basketball every day. I don't want to hear about anybody on coaches until they can once tell me they like this coach who they think is really good on the 30-win team. Like, this guy's a really good coach. They won 30 games. But now it's gone the other way where no one thought Kidd was any good

and it's strictly about the fact the story keeps being told over and over again on all the playoff games. He talks to the players not as a coach, but as a player. He tells them what he would do if he played not what they should do. And his timeouts before the timeout that you lose automatically,

people are acting like he's fucking sitting there saying, I think this world, there's more going on than just a flat line on the horizon. It may be spinning. We could be on something that's shaped different. I love, announcers love a couple things, and I'm well-versed in this. this well they love a good time out the most a good time out is just right but not losing the time out everybody knows you're going to lose if you call that before you lose it fucking brilliant yeah unbelievable and

then the other thing they love from players is when there's say 14 left in the shot clock is off and a guy got a really good look at the hoop and he goes now let me peel out here and waste time run the clock and get a way worse look announcers fucking love that they're like smart they were still didn't want to give the other team a possession and he took an awful shot as opposed to the wide open one. Brilliant. Well, the cousin of that is the two for one where somebody will jack up a 29 foot over the hand in his face with 29 seconds left on the clock.

Like two for one. It's fine. It's great. Yeah. It's like a court shot with 24 seconds from now. Do you took one of the worst shots of the game at 29 seconds? The reality is if they take a shot with three or four left in the shot clock, by the worst shots of the game at 29 seconds the reality is if they take a shot with three or four left in the shot clock by the time you corral the rebound

you have like four seconds yeah the two for one there needs to be now brian's like am i supposed to be on this podcast uh there needs to be an understanding that it has to be over a certain number left in the quarter. Guys are like two seconds north of the shot clock going up 2-1. There's 40 seconds left. It makes sense. 29 seconds left, maybe not as much sense. I think 35 is maybe the cutoff. 35 sounds great.

Curtis, we knew this would go in a bunch of different directions, but the announcing during the playoffs, the studio stuff in the playoffs, the studio stuff in the playoffs, the discourse we get on TV now versus the discourse we get on podcasts that are so much more hardcore and day-to-day can TV keep up anymore. And where, and where are we going with this going forward? I thought you were setting me up for JJ on Felger and Maz question. I didn't

hear that. I, so that got, that got, uh So that got gnarly, right? You traveled around a tad. But what you're talking about, these two different worlds colliding, which is a fascinating thing to me about where we are right now. The NFL, it's really pronounced because NFL studio shows still feel like the 1994 studio show that I flipped on at home and when I had to go turn on the TV, like, you know, Phil Sims, God bless Phil Sims, you know, sayonara. It's been a great run, but he was still doing Phil Sims on television. And, you know, the NBA shows, you could argue, maybe that's a little, there's a little more there and inside the NBA, which I'm sure we're going to talk about as its own weather system. But we're just in this funny moment where you just have a completely different conversation about basketball in one form versus the other.

Well, then the game telecasts feel different in some ways too, because it just feels like we're between these two worlds where you can hear it with the JJ Doris Breen telecasts where they're trying to be really sophisticated at certain times, right? And they're trying to throw numbers at us and strategy and stuff that's a little closer to the JJ side. But then there'll be somebody goes up by 20. And then it's like, you know what I kind of needed here was Dan Gundy just babbling about some story on the 99 Knicks and some guys having a good time and it feeling like they're hanging out and having a podcast. And it's that balance.

It feels like on TV, the balance, they're really having trouble trying to figure out what that balance is. Because on the one hand, what's your servant when you're doing these daily TV shows? It's like the video clip. Was there a good headline? Did you grab people with that two minutes, right?

It's Mike Greenberg showing the shot of Jason Tatum. Was he happy for Jalen Brown when he got the finals MVP? I don't know. What did you think? And now we start going around the circle. So they're doing that stuff, but then they're also trying to educate you about basketball. Are you happy with this stuff at this point? Where are you? I know it's not for me. And I've learned this lesson over the last few years that I think the drama, look, I'll actually defend first take here. The clip that made the rounds was during the playoffs and then everybody screen grabbed it. Could Stephen A score a point against LeBron James one-on-one? All right. How long is first take? Is it two hours?

They're having fun with that. Yeah. Okay. Right. So the point is, it's like a really easy target to go, Oh, look at these guys. And there's all these other amazing stories and it makes the rounds. There's also a lot of just, I know I used to have it too, where I'd watch certain shows and being like, it's amazing to think like, I'm not allowed to be on that show because I don't fit into a perfect like cookie cutter deal. And it was something I had an issue with for a long time, probably too long. I remember Dan Patrick saying to me, what's wrong with you? Why do you think you would be on that? If you don't angle to be an anchor and host these shows, you're never going to be on those shows. You're basically an idiot for thinking that you can be

on it. Even though I think the rules of that have been stretched quite a bit with people, non-traditional backgrounds being on opinion shows covering some of the major sports. They need more bodies. Right. I no longer care about it now. I've gotten over that part of it. But so when I watch those shows, I know that they're not necessarily for me, but I, I really think that we get the media coverage and we get the shows that we actually want. And no one wants to admit that we click on the dumb shit okay if i were being totally transparent of like i can't

believe i clicked on this story but it was a well-crafted headline it was a little vague i had to know the fucking answer i had to know if maury had the results and that guy was the dad. Inherently, I think we all, as educated as you may find yourself, as you age and try to angle your interest into more refined things, sometimes we still want to know if that guy's the fucking dad. And that's a lot of the sports coverage. And I think it's okay. And the reason this is programmed that way is because that's what we want.

Whether it's the broadcast teams, whether it's the big names of the guy that just retired, because if you don't know who that person is, you're like, who's that guy? And that's how they program these things. And it's also the way they still structure. We could go over all these different topics and questions and be like, that show's stupid

or this is a dumb question, whatever. I think the audience actually always wants this stuff. And I've come to that epiphany years ago, and I repeat it probably too often. To me, what's even more interesting is the way they've gone the opposite direction. So when you're watching ESPN's number one team, and J.J. Redick is really trying to get some X's and O's basketball into a telecast, which, by the way, is A, really hard in a basketball game because you don't have much time to talk. And really, really hard when you have a three person booth and there's not enough time really for either analyst to get their stuff in there. You know, he's like, that's a peel screen.

And I'm sitting there, somebody who loves basketball, but doesn't engage with like you guys do going. So peel screen. Whoop. Google, let me figure out what that is real quick. And, you know, again, that's about, and he's a newish announcer. So Greg Olson do a little bit of this when he first started and then he started being like, you know what, I'm going to give you the X's and O's, but I'm just actually going to throw away all the terminology and explain to you what happened on a play. Like we don't need that. We don't need terms that doesn't really help anybody here. People that know what a peel screen is is are going to recognize it anyway. Let's just do terminology here. But they've tried to go

the other way, it feels like, a little bit on that main ESPN telecast. Greg Olson thinks it's an interesting comparison because I remember that first year you wrote about it after the fact, you wrote a really good piece about Olson, how he figured out, he almost had too much information. Yes. And he had to figure out every play. I have five things to say. Let me just figure out, this is the whole conceder your piece. Let me just figure out the best of these five things.

And that's what I'll say. And I do feel a little about that with JJ, because obviously he's an incredibly smart basketball guy and you can hear in the pod, but when you're doing the TV and the games and you're trying to also appeal to people who are casual fans or kind of fair weather fans, and how do you shove the basketball down their throat without shoving it down their throat? You know, I guess my question with basketball is when it, when it's flying back and forth like that, how much, how much do we need? It's almost like the Summerall style.

Is it better to have a little less? I don't really know what I want. I know I haven't been completely happy with a broadcast in a while. And I don't really know what I want from it, Rosillo. I guess because I'm watching the game. They have all these altcasts. I can just tell you I've never watched an altcast for basketball ever because I'm watching the game. They have all these altcasts. I can just tell you I've never watched an altcast for basketball ever. I'm just not interested.

I want to hear the announcers and I want to hear the crowd. And I don't really want to be entertained by these people. I actually want to watch the game. But I'm sure there's an audience for that stuff too. What do you want from it? Man, that's a tough answer because like i think jj's at his best when he's pointing out what he feels like there are certain moments i'd say in some of the celtics games against the pacers he's like okay it is noticeable that the defensive energy is cranked up here and he's right there and he's watching it and it's such a simple thing but i don't know that that many color people are that good at at pointing that out immediately. They may see a block and play the results of, oh, the defensive intensity,

but it was just the activity, the movement, fighting over screens, contesting more. And he was a hundred percent right. It wasn't like he was seeing it and it wasn't happening. But then I think it's really tough because it's their first year together with this group. And whatever you thought of the previous regime with Van Gundy and Jackson and Breen, they've been around for so long that they knew each other's beats really well. And I actually liked it when it got a little topical. I like when there's a slow moment in a game where it can be... They start just talking about shit.

Yeah. Like, hey, what's going on? I actually, maybe it's because of the podcasting thing with me. I liked it. So when people say, oh, great, you know, Saturday night's game turns into a podcast again. Well, if the game sucks, great. I was into it. I was watching the UFC last night.

So Anik, Rogan, DC, they are so good but the sport allows you to have these moments where strickland is kind of feeling himself out feeling out the opponent so there's not constant action and yet they're talking about um costa and just kind of where he's at in his career and you're getting all this awesome backstory and then making that part of the observation and the actual call to fight and then these peak energy moments when the action is being matched by how the announcers and i was thinking to myself i'm like this is a brilliant broadcast of these fights and these three guys are so good but i also think the sport allows for a little bit more where brian's point on the basketball there's probably no perfect formula, but you can always tell,

Brian, when somebody shows up with way too much prep. And when that happens, it's usually newer people that want to prove their worth. And the most important thing you can ever learn in the broadcasting is somebody who had to do play-by-play 20-something years ago, way too much prep, talked way too much, wasn't secure, trying to prove myself. And even somebody who has a 10 year career in the NBA, the first time they get that position, you can tell when it's like, okay, it's just not comfortable. And they're trying to prove that they belong here. Or then you have the other side of the guy that's like, you want me to do prep? I just played, like, I don't need to.

What you said about the UFC thing I think that's such a good point I think those guys are great together and in the Strickland-Costa fight last night Rogan was on it early he was like I don't like this pace for him he's moving backwards

Strickland's just he's moving forward he's making him expend a lot of energy and I don't think Costa's ready for this. I think by, I think by the fourth, fifth rounds, then they start talking about, did he make a mistake making this fight five rounds instead of three? They were having all these conversations and Strickland hadn't even really taken hold of the fight yet.

And then when it started happening in the third and fourth round, because I was watching with my son and my son was like, this is the right conversation. Like, this is like, I don't think Costa, I don't know why he didn't do three rounds and they were just tapping into shit. I don't, the point is with basketball, Brian, I don't, it's, it's so back and forth and so fast. It'd be really hard to explore the studio space like that, you know? Yeah. It's, it's funny. And I know I'm preaching the choir here, Bill, Bill, but it's really weird that we've decided that every major basketball game in the United States needs three announcers. These are all good announcers, so I'm not killing anybody here, but Turner, three announcers for the conference finals. ESPN, three announcers for all the big games. The Final Four, three announcers. there's just not that much time. And it's, and again, it's not a, it's not a shot at anybody so much. It's just like you have this tiny window where you can talk about something.

It's a play by play announcer sport. So when you have two analysts and they're both trying to get their stuff in there and then inevitably they start talking to each other. One of them makes a point. The other person says, I agree. And I'm like, okay, thanks. You know, wanted to know what you, what the other person thought of that point as we, you know, swing down the court the other person says i agree and i'm like okay thanks you know wanted to know what you what the other person thought of that point as we you know swing down the court the other way it's

just it's too crowded to me it just is absolutely too crowded there's also something else i've noticed with doris is that she's so wants to be so respectful of jj because of his career and that he just finished up playing and he's still very connected to so many players that it's almost like she doesn't want JJ to feel that she's getting in her way. But then in a way it's almost fucking her up a little bit. And I don't know if it's not even about her ability because we know how great she can be, but I think it's tough to be like, hey, new group finals, figure it out. And she's doing something that's actually, yeah, it's commendable

because I think she's being incredibly gracious to JJ, but she's not getting to be the best version of herself because I think she wants him to flourish. And that's what I've noticed.

I want to do more three-man stuff because I think it's a good topic, but we're going to take a break. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer.

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Sunnybrook was the only hospital in Canada who could provide Andy with something special. Three neurosurgeons. Two scientists. One movement disorders coordinator. 58 answered questions. So I remember writing about this. From innovation to action, Sunnybrook is special. Learn more at sunnybrook.ca slash special. So I remember writing about this. With the first one, I had my Digital City Boston column. One of those finals, Doug Collins was doing the games. And then they added Isaiah.

I think it was Isaiah or Magic. It was one of them. It started with Isaiah. Then they hired Doug Collins, I think, because of it was just Isaiah. Yeah, that's right. It was the three of them. And one of the tips... I love that he knew that immediately. One of the tips you can look at when you know the threesome hasn't clicked

is they'll come out of timeouts or even when they're talking and they'll say each other's names to try to make it seem like they're balls moving around. And it'd be like, right? And Brian, that's what has to happen when you're protecting the rim. That's right, Bill. That is what has to happen. And then they go and it's just like, oh, this isn't working. And look, I thought Van Gundy and Jackson and Breen,

they kind of went sideways a little bit for me the last couple of years, but mainly because Jackson was out of the league too long. And I like hearing at least one person on the broadcast who's either coached or played against the guys that I'm watching within the last couple of years, because I think that's the biggest asset. But one of the things that was good about them was it really sounded like those guys went to dinner together, they hung out together, they might vacation together. And then when they're doing the game, you felt that camaraderie and that chemistry. And I do think that's important.

It's a really hard thing to build. And it's a really hard thing to build in four or five months, especially like I've announced a couple NBA games and it goes so much faster than you realize. It's like, oh my God, we're at the seven minute timeout. I've made two points. And so when you have a third person there, it's just flying by. And then they're talking in your ear and it's really choppy and weird. So you got to rely on that chemistry.

But Brian, your original point, I don't know why it's not just two people. I don't know how we got to three. I don't know who made the decision. I don't know when people looked at each other. Even TNT in the conference finals, they're like, Stan Van Gundy, Reggie Miller, they've never worked together all year. These are our guys.

And they're with Kevin Harlan. It's like, just pick one. Why not? They did it last year too. It was the same thing. And by the way, as people have looked at the new crews, I've seen some strange new respect for Mark Jackson coming up in a few places. Come back.

Hey, you know, Mark, we had some issues with Mark Jackson, but I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm out. Right.

I'm all good. Thank you very much for, for, for going to that one. We're, we're, we're fine. Yeah.

I don't know that we've ever had this depth of play by play guys. It's unbelievable. How many play by play guys across all sports and all networks where I go, this is a loaded era. Better than the 90s? No, it's a little like what happened with the NBA where the older guys are still really good, but then this new crop of dudes came in. They said, NBC for the Olympics is going to have Noah Eagle and Dwayne Wade, just the two of them. I'm like, that sounds great. Noah Eagle, Dwayne Wade, no third person that we're awkwardly pushing in in some way. They'll just call the game.

The games will have certain flows. But this goes back to a topic that we've talked about over and over again. It's like, I don't know why TV producers and the people who oversee this stuff can't stay out of their own way sometimes. And we saw this with Inside the NBA and Russell and I talked about it last week where it's just like, we just were doing this victory lap of what an awesome show this has been for us for 20 plus

years. And then over and over again, they have to put a fifth guy in when the stakes get bigger. This happened with the ESPN's women's basketball team during the college tournament. Everyone was like, this three-person team they have is great. It was really jumped out. It was like, this is awesome. Then when we got to the final four, what happens? All of a sudden, it's a five-person thing. It's like these guys, they can't help themselves, the people that oversee it.

It's like they almost want to feel like they did something. So their boss is like, what are we doing for the Final Four? We're going to add Don Staley. Great! That sounds good. It's like, you know what? You had a really good team already. Why did they do this, Curtis? It's really strange, and the thing I hate about it, I think I saw this. It definitely happened with Draymond. I heard you guys talking

about this, but also with CP3 on ESPN, which is everything then has to be about the new guy. Yeah. So they're going to like, Hey, Chris, when you were playing in the playoffs and you were in a high leverage situation, when you were feeling pressure, that was like, first of all, I was like, who wrote this question? Thank you very much. But everything is then about his playoff career. And I'm like, you're an interesting guy. I want to hear you talk. That's much. But everything is then about his playoff career. And I'm like, you're an interesting guy. I want to hear you talk.

That's cool. But this is not about you right now. We've actually got really, really big basketball in front of us. And the conversation should be about that. And I hate when that happens. In addition to, as you say, a producer getting in the way and just needing to add something for the most important basketball games of the year that we didn't need, then it always becomes about the new guy because they start asking him about his career. And I'm just like, I don't want this. The five-person studio show, we just have 50 plus years of

evidence that it fails. It fails for the same reason. I just did a podcast, I Don't Want to Step On for Rewatchables, where we talked about the power of foursomes and four and four people. When you go to dinner, four people is always the best number. Four people is always the best number for a studio show. There's just certain things where four golf foursome is much better than playing with three people. Then one person's by themselves in a cart. Um, the, the four just works. And I don't know why they would mess with that as the stakes get bigger and the audience gets bigger. That's when they add the fifth person.

I actually wanted to hear from Chris Paul. It's interesting. But at that point you just have to bump one of the people on the show. I just pick one. Somebody has got to go. What were you going to say, Priscilla? Well,

I, I have like specific Curtis questions on just understanding some of this stuff in that we keep seeing these old bits for inside the NBA, and it's coming back next year. It's true. We think. Why don't you two guys talk this out? Because I don't know. So we have another year left on the NBA rights deal. So inside the NBA.

Technically we do, yes. Yeah, so NBA will, the plan is that that will be on Turner next year. But. Okay. What was the time? What was it? College football? What was the one where they lost it?

And then the people just said with a year left to go fuck it just take it now thursday night football went from fox to amazon a year early that might be what you're talking about yes that's what it is i'm just i'm prepared for anything because it's to me so crazy that warner didn't keep the nba to begin with and watching them for the last month pretend that they're still in this and oh well oh, well, we have the right to match. It's like, this was done a month ago. This is where I went on the town and we did the whole thing.

This was done. They lost it. And now they're reporting that's come out since about, I think Lucas Shaw was the first one to report. The NBA was like, give us two, three, and you have it during the exclusive period. And Warner's like, nope, two, one.

You're taking games away from us. And they're like, okay, cool. And they left and immediately got 2-5 per year from NBC and that's it. And they're going to lose it. And so when I think how badly that was botched, I just like, would it surprise me if they're like, fuck it, take this off our hands a year early and we'll redistribute the money somewhere else and go after UFC or whatever. I'm prepared for anything. The lame duck season for coaching, for TV properties, it always gets a little weird. I'm not ruling it out is my point. I hear you. It is cheaper this year than the money we're talking about. I mean, it's significantly cheaper. So they have a cheap year, just like CBS just did with the SEC. Also, if your existential fear at Turner is that cable operators are going to be

like, hey, we don't need you anymore because there's nothing on your network. Why would you want to speed up that process? Surely you'd want to give yourself an extra year of cover while you figure out what are we going to put on TNT to make sure this is still a viable cable network, at least as any viable as any cable network. What if you could get twice as much money than what you're paying to get rid of it a year early? Maybe, and your company has a lot of debt like Warner Brothers does. Wait, is this media reporter Bill,

the one that broke the news about Turner being out? Because I want to know who I'm talking to here. No, it's not media reporter Bill. This is just, I'm prepared for anything Bill. Great question by a reporter though. Great job by Brian. No, this is I'm prepared for anything. Great question by a reporter though. Great job. Right. No, I, I, this is, I'm prepared for anything bill because when it came out that for two, three, they could have locked down the NBA and they just decided not to. That makes me think you are making decisions solely for money at this point. And if you're making decisions solely

for money, would you peddle off the last year of your deal for twice as much to NBC and just say, take this year early, give us money. Okay? It's not out of the realm for me. Okay. So when Skipper did the decade long deal for the rights in the mid-teens, it was immediately met with like, are you out of your mind? You tripled it. And it turned out that he was totally right. all the credit nailed it because he was i'll never forget my first meeting ever with him it was hey you've been on the air a bunch of years finally probably worth getting to know you for 60 minutes and he kind of like laid out his philosophy of live rights and all these things and i just remember going okay i'll

never look at this the same way because this guy spent this much time explaining this shit to me and now i get and you never knew with skipper it's like does he want me as as one of the people that's on the air at the time all like at espn does he want me hearing his side of it so that then i leave that meeting going you know who's a genius is this john skipper have you met him so really never knew sports rights yeah right so i always thought there was a little bit of that in there but clearly his call was the right call long term on the rights part of it. But there's also all of the ESPN programming that needs to be filled to be in the relationships with it. Then there's also like different weird stuff with SportsCenter that I never knew about that when you have the rights, then that means you can also show the replays in a way where the NFL had some real restrictions. It's like, if you don't, if you're not in business with them, then it limits all these other things you can do with repurposing any of the broadcast stuff.

So the reason I'm, I'm even setting this up and I'm going to need another second here. I remember the nets were being purchased. Bruce Ratner was doing the big real estate deal and it may even been a Grantland piece. Okay. It was one of those awesome long form pieces. I think that's where I remember those. Yeah, they were awesome. And it may even been a Grantland piece. Okay. It was one of those awesome long form pieces. I think that's where I read it.

Oh, remember those? Yeah. They were awesome. And Ratner said something I'm sure other owners hated because he was basically putting this undetermined number of value on what a franchise was. We can come up with what it's worth, money in, money out, but this is a painting. This is something I can say that I own. And I'm one of the few people in the world that has one of these things.

And it's like the worst argument ever for ownership when it comes to like CBA stuff with players. And the reason I try to set these two things up here, which I'm taking too long doing, is that I don't know where the numbers can keep going. But clearly there's something where it's worth beyond what it is for just the money in money out of what you're selling the commercials for on these broadcasts that if you're not in business with one of them then you're not really serious that you're not a real station that you don't have pat summerall giving you a promo a house of bugging as you're coming back from

commercial right before a kickoff after a touchdown that there have to be all these other baked in values that the tv people understand as the numbers continue to go up in a way that no one can ever shoot too high of a projection for you clearly agree thank you for the house of buggin all new fox and then 30 malcolm in the middle, but I think you're right. And look, David Zaslav, the guy running Warner Brothers discovery was sitting courtside with the Knicks, right? For all those games. So surely he of all people should realize that there is something about being in business with the NBA. I think the question that's interesting there is, and it goes back to that, what you said about Skipper, did we think the NBA was necessarily on this tier, right? Like that is

something I feel that's happened. You, all three of us probably heard rumors throughout this process with the NBA media rights that this number was going to come in much lower than it's actually going to come in at that maybe the bill, okay, bill was out out but maybe this number wouldn't be three times over seven billion a year it wouldn't quite get to that moment i don't know so there's look just to jump in though when guys started selling their teams i was like wait what's happening here the cuban that was the right so it just it was sort of odd that like the tv rumors that were coming out like and i don't know if it was a Boris thing where they throw out such an absurd number that when you pay a few billion, you feel like you're actually getting a deal based on the earliest projections local, like they're going to have to sell out, like the money's too much now. I was starting to believe that the number was going to come in at a number that was really disappointing and that obviously didn't happen. So keep going,

Brian. No, no. And I just, I just think the NFL was always in that. We want to be in, this is our painting. We want to be in business with these guys. It always has value. The NBA was another tier lower, right? But now you look at these numbers and it's, you know, Amazon wants to be in that business. So who doesn't want to be in that business? Yeah, the biggest thing, you brought up Skipper 10 years ago. There were less suitors 10 years ago, right?

Like it was always going to be ESPN and TNT. There was no like renegade third person that was going to come in over the top rope. So there were some thoughts, maybe FS1, maybe Fox. Yeah, Fox. NBC wasn't in there because they had just spent a shitload on football. And you kind of always knew where it was going with the two. This time around was different because you had way more suitors and Apple never even got involved, which I think was a surprise even to a lot of people that were at Apple. I think Apple thought the MLS and some of the other stuff they were on the sports side was a gateway to them getting

hard in the NBA. But I think the big thing that I think Warner missed on, because I'm not positive they wanted to lose the NBA. I think they're struggling for money big time. I don't think they saw the NBC thing coming. I think John Arand has a theory on this that I think they're struggling for money big time. I don't think they saw the NBC thing coming. I think John Arand has a theory in this that I think he's right. The Brian Roberts, the guy who runs Comcast, there was always a feeling with him that he's the guy in your fantasy draft. Matt Bell and I talked about this on his pod, but he's the guy in your fantasy draft who drives up the prices on the receivers. And he's like, 51 for Jamar Chase. They're like, fuck, 52. And then he backs out. And so all of a sudden you have Jamar Chase at 52. You're like, fuck,

he did it to me again. I should have known. And I think they felt like NBC wasn't a serious suitor for it. And it turns out they were, and they just missed it. And NBC was willing to go. Everyone knew Amazon was coming in. Everyone knew ESPN wanted to keep it. So you have three partners, not two. They were able to split the games and the packages and all this shit up so that they end up getting to that $7 billion figure. To me, this is why they waited on expansion. Because I think deep down they knew this was sitting there. And I think the owners were like, if we're going to expand, you got to wait till after the media deal because then we'll actually know what we're splitting up. But to me, it's just a miscalculation by Zaslav. I don't think he saw the NBC thing coming. I think he saw Amazon.

I don't think he saw NBC. There's a flip side though, Brian, where maybe he wanted to lose it all along. Maybe. I mean, it was a lot of money and what Rosilla is laying out about, it's a little bit of a vanity purchase like basically you're hoping to break even but it

lifts up all these other parts of what you're doing and if you're trying to cut costs left and right maybe you don't need a vanity purchase right by the way it's a ton of money and i don't pretend to be an expert you know in every part of corporate finance, but you're paying $2.5 billion or more for the old Turner package, which is not as good as Turner's old package. Yeah, it's a worse package. Plus, it's all that money, plus all the production stuff, plus the salaries, everybody that works for you. And the ratings.

It's more than money. Which is hilarious, because I've thought about this where okay ratings are down ratings continue like it's kind of hard to package the ratings in a way where you don't see some kind of decline it's just a matter of how extreme you want to believe the decline is there or how much you would say well with new technology and all this stuff that you can't look at these numbers anymore okay well it appears that the buyers weren't as concerned about those numbers or maybe it just gets back to the live audience argument where it's like the traditional number can be down, but if the percentage of live audience years ago? It's like, okay, but that's actually irrelevant because there isn't something else that provides this much inventory that still

is going to have these moments, which I also think was a big part of silver wanting to model some of the stuff for like more event moments. And that's why I think college basketball has just basically waved the flag and gone, we at least have our moment that matters for three weeks. Baseball postseason. Baseball postseason has been an incredible product now for a bunch of years, except for the one year where like half the teams get in.

But the baseball postseason is still one of my favorite things, but that might be their NCAA tournament through all the other inventory that you're sifting through going, this is just never, there's not going to be a world where it exists that this is as important as it used to be. Well, and that baseball package

is coming up down the road where it's the regular season versus the playoffs. At least with basketball, you can throw stars in the commercials and be like, tonight, Anthony Edwards against Luka Doncic Friday night here on Amazon or whatever. Baseball, you can't really do it. You just can't.

Okay. So I want to stay on the splitting this part up. Because once you get done going through the NFL part of it, I'm like, what? Where? How many of you have canceled your Peacock sub? So I'm sitting there going, they are chopping it up and taking it to the street. Now, does that mean that the product is weaker? Is this potentially a bad long-term plan to have everybody confused where the most valuable product in live television is?

Or is it just, well, we'll worry about that on the next one, because if this many different people want to pay us a combined total that outweighs just being partnered up with just two providers, like I think the NFL and clearly the NBA, that seems to be the league model right now. And I'm always wondering five years from now if some team or league goes more so the league than any specific team is like, that was stupid. Like the product was all over the place. Well, don't you think, Brian, don't you feel like a piece of this is going to be the two league cable channels, the NFL Network and NBA TV? Basically taking the games that were on those because they established those channels to try to get the rights fees.

But eventually those channels are going to become ghost ships. Like what happened to ESPN classic in the two thousands, you take the games that were on those channels and you start selling them off as one offs or five offs or whatever. And you just make way more money that way. I feel like that's what's going to happen. You disagree? No,

I think that's part of it. And to Ryan, the flip side of Ryan's point is if you chop it up more ways, you get more people promoting the NBA. So all of a sudden you have Amazon promoting the NBA. We know, we know you will take either Amazon or Netflix or hopefully both. The NFL has gotten both NBA is working on it,

right? They get their end with Amazon. You get NBC, which gets a bunch of your games off cable, which has been a big deal. You can go find the quotes from David Stern 20 years ago going, we need to put our games on cable because cable is the future. We need to get them off broadcast.

We've now come all the way back around. We're taking them off cable and putting them on broadcast. But I do think there is a little bit of an NFL issue here, right? I mean, the NFL carved it up as much as humanly possible. And then it's like, whoa, look at all these jet games. Look at all these Russell Wilson games. This sucks. These aren't great nights.

And there will be nights like that in the NBA for sure under the new agreement. Well, and there's a bigger piece, but we could talk about the schedule. But let's take one more break. Y'all afraid of ghosts? How about ghost peppers? It's the moment you've been waiting for. The ghost pepper sandwich is back at Popeyes. A buttermilk-battered chicken breast served on a brioche bun with barrel-cured pickles.

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because they're getting so much more money than I think all of us, to get to seven plus billion for these packages is pretty nuts. And I was thinking, this sounds like the perfect time to cut back now to 72 games or 76 games, something like that. And the NBA is like, nope, it's still going to be 82. NFL, same thing. Oh, you're making way more money on these one-off games. Sounds like the perfect time maybe to drop the 18 games thing, right? Because that'll be terrible. Player safety. Literally nobody wants it. All of us love football. Nobody wants an 18-game schedule. They're going to do it.

I don't know where any of this ends. Because you could tell me, is it more realistic for the NBA to add regular season games or lose them? And I got to say, I could see them going, when they have the two expansion teams going to like 86 games instead of 82 versus going backwards the other way these guys they're just addicted

to the cash and the money and how much they can make from it it's never about what's good for the league um Rosilla the 18 game NFL schedule is there a bigger money grab you've ever heard of well no i i don't i'm not surprised by any of this stuff like the baseball argument i always hear like okay so you don't watch baseball now because the season's too long so if they cut it to 140 or 132 you're going to start watching of course you're not you've already decided you're out of it so if i'm a baseball owner it'd be like stop bringing it up yeah like we're going to 200 games yeah we're selling hot dogs you know shirts are 60 bucks now in the stadium so guess what like and we're providing jobs so it's not happening stop asking i mean the basketball fascination with a

shorter season from all the basketball writers it's like find a new fucking topic and it's not happening myself it's not gonna happen it's never happening there's basketball people that i've talked to like i agree with your premise bill i i think the 72 game thing i've seen it all mapped out like hey great idea it's not happening this is not going in that direction every single decision and and i don't know i mean everybody works like the high level of corporate America. How would you do in a meeting? It's like, okay, what are we planning on doing? Let's lay out the game plan for this year. Hey, let's not make every dollar available to us. Let's cut back because of just vibes. Let's not try to make every last single dollar for shareholders and the people that have invested in this company. So the only difference is this all

plays out publicly. There's a different emotional attachment to it. But the NFL owners, with their track record of the last 10 years, I mean, they make the NBA owners seem like the Peace Corps. So there's nothing the NFL owners can do anymore that would ever surprise me about how much available cash they're going to go after. And the consumer, as we talked about with your decisions with what you do and what you click on and the different shows and segments that you guiltily watch, I think it's the

same thing with footballs. They're like, we'd rather go too far with this and realize when we've made the mistake than potentially leave anything on the table. And that's what I think the NFL does with the way they operate. What do you think, Brian? It's what everybody does. I mean, we decided in my lifetime

that 64 teams was not enough to crown a college basketball champion. Oh my God. 64 wasn't enough. We haven't even talked about college football. Like when you think about what college football has done to their sport in such a massive amount of times, it looks like the NFL stuck in the 50s.

Yeah. Oh, I know. College football playoff is going to be a month long this year. I talked to a guy last night. He's like, I played at Cal. He's like, we're in the ACC. He's like, I forgot again. I forgot twice that we're in the ACC.

Everything grows. I mean, we created the- Wait a second. Cal's in the ACC? Yeah. Breaking news for bill. Jesus. This is why I feel great about not following college sports.

Yeah. I guess if you're comparing anything, if you're comparing a beer and a photo college sports, you're feeling great. It's doing a hundred times better. What happens to college sports? Do we just end up with like 32 major programs and that's it? Well, I think we're going to have it.

Everybody else is div three. Right. It'll go to some extreme where, I mean, you think the NFL owners, I mean, you have school presidents with no governing body just deciding to do whatever they want to do and they get on the phone and then all of a sudden you have Cal and the ACC because of all these other dominoes that have fallen. But I don't care how outdated I sound. I don't care how old I sound. I think there is a line which you could pass in the structure of some of these decisions that are made where you're like, hey, we went too far. It's like the Tebow coverage at ESPN. They were like, we can't get enough of

it. It does numbers. The data backs it up. Tebow, Tebow, Tebow. And I was like, you know, I think everybody's fucking sick of this Tebow topic. I think people are pretty sick of it. And like, nope, keep doing it. And the play there was, we will do it until we've made a mistake doing it too much instead of not doing it enough, which is basically what I just said about the money part of it. So when I look at college football, I don't think they give a shit about any of it anymore. And there may be this super league. And then I'd like to think there'll be some correction 10 years after that happens. It was like, you know, it was kind of fun where geographically and culturally, it felt like there

was 10 to 12 schools that all kind of matched what it was like to be from that part of the country. I missed that. And that's what I loved about college football. And that's what I hate about what's happening. Curtis is sad. Curtis loves college football. What conference is Texas saying? Are you in like the Patriot league now? I will say I'm sad, but on the other hand, I looked at Texas and schedule the other day. It's like, wow, we're playing Georgia this year, playing Florida. We've got two of our old rivals back Arkansas and A&M we're playing at Michigan at the beginning of the season I'm like that sounds like the Super League is here and you know I totally co-sign everything Ryan just said but also I'm looking forward to all those games it's going to be awesome can we talk about inside the NBA yes I really want to talk you just wrote about this you wrote about Barkley and the theory

of people who publicly negotiate their contracts which is is a new trend that we're seeing, which I'm surprised people are interested in. Barkley seems pissed off more than anything. I think he was led to believe that they were keeping it. And now he's looking at all these people and he's talked about it. He's looking at all these people he's worked with for the last two decades. And I just think he felt like this was going to be a situation. I'm just going to keep going, going, going. And now all of a sudden this person he barely knows is taking basketball away. What happens to the show going forward? What happens to Barkley?

Does it stay together? What are your instincts? So he was going to keep going, going, going, except every three or four years he would say, yeah, I'm going to retire. And then Turner would come by and be like, here is a huge new contract not to retire. So please, please don't retire. So he's going to do that. But you know, it's funny to me because I think we all love inside so much. And I'm, and I'm one of, one of these people that we think the only way these TV friends would ever break up is if some asshole executive breaks them up. That's the only way. If you actually listen to what Charles Barkley says and has done going back to two years ago when he shopped himself to live golf and to possibly leave Turner, we all kind of memory hold that one, right? It's like, yeah, if live golf gets me a huge payday, I'm just going to have to go. And that's, that's just

the way it is. If you listen to what he says, his whole thing has been like, I want to make a great deal for myself. And I don't, by the way, I don't begrudge him that at all. He is a, he is great at what he does. He is the biggest star on that program. He has more worth and more leverage than everybody on that program combined, right? So he can go make the big deal he wants. So to me, the question about inside going forward is what is Charles Barkley's interest in keeping the band together? He's the guy that's going to, it's not going to be Amazon saying, Hey, we want everybody. It's going to be Amazon or somebody going to Charles Barkley and say, what's important to you? Is it what's important to you that you get the absolute best deal?

Or is it important to you that we bring everybody with you? That that's what you want. And to me, he holds this whole thing in his hands because he's that big of a star. Well, the one thing that seems pretty certain is that Ernie's going to retire with Turner. Because he's been there forever. And he's at a later stage of his career and he's under contract with them. He's doing other stuff with them. And it seems like it's a super important thing for him. But I also wouldn't be surprised by anything. It also might be a good career move for Barkley to branch out and be with

a different group of people. What's the difference between 23 years, 17 years, 12? Once you get past 10, 12 years of everybody together, maybe it is an interesting career thing for him. On the other hand, he just tried a career move with that Gayle King show and that thing lasted 10 weeks. So sometimes when you're a part of something special, maybe you try to keep that. How do you see it playing out, Rossello? Well, everybody knows he's my favorite athlete of all time. And probably, you know, one of the coolest things is getting to know him over the years and having him on. But when I had him on, I think it was just a year ago when I was in Chicago for the Combine. I think it was a year

ago. It could have been two years ago. He was basically telling me he wasn't going to do this much longer. And Curtis lays it out perfectly, the timeline in this piece that's up on the ringer now. And I would say the lesson that I think is the most correct lesson I've ever learned in this business is if you're younger and there's an older guy that's on the air and a manager says, hey, that guy's probably not going to resign after this year. He's going to call it quits. It's the most untrue thing in any profession. That guy never goes anywhere. He just keeps resigning because think about his life. Like, hey, do you want to make another $20 million next year working? Granted, he works more than one day a week when you factor in all the NCAA tournament stuff that they do.

But I'm always fascinated by Barkley. Like, I have a Barkley theory that if you're just yourself long enough, once you't lost your job on the air you can then just survive forever and everybody's Howard Stern theory yeah Howard Stern really you pass a point where you just you just get to say whatever you want it's okay like him saying before the Western Conference finals like I haven't been in Minneapolis in 20 years they're like dude you're here Curtis puts it in Curtis speak for your column because I don't want to quote it but he was there five years ago and his alma mater Aub, Auburn, was playing in the Final Four. So it seems sort of not like a thing you would forget. He must not have had a great weekend.

People love Barclay. Nobody's going to call him out. No, and it doesn't matter, right? That's the whole thing. All right, but here's I think this is a good connection to what we've been talking about with every last dollar and where do the TV rights keep going and all this stuff. We've seen massive single contracts for people, whether it's the Aikman Buck deal, the Brady deal, like new levels where when you thought you were making like a couple million bucks for one of these jobs, you're like, I'm killing it and I'm having a great life. I think the peak content people have completely reset the market at the higher ends. Like, where does this keep going? Where, like, do you ever hear, like, do you ever have anybody in

your world that talks to you kind of off the record? I don't even know if you can share this with us where it's the person's becoming the vanity hire, where you may not even be able to figure out how to recoup all of that money. Like, is there a number where Barclay isn't actually worth it? Yeah. I mean, I think I hear that from people in the business all the time, especially from a kind of person that's the executive, but not the executive running the place. Right. And clearly at ESPN, like Jimmy Pataro has decided, this is the strategy. There were clearly people, let us say, at the executive level at ESPN,

and we're like, oh, is that the strategy? Is this where we're really going in on one, two, three, four here? Is that it? So yeah, all the time. And look, if ESPN were to hire Barkley and put him on the pregame show, you're really going to have $40 million a year in salaries on the NBA pregame show? Because Stephen A's not going anywhere.

Especially a show that they've proven they don't really care about because they have two-minute segments at halftime. Here's what I would say to Pitaro. Let him be on the air for a little while. You're going to hire him. Have him. The greatness of the TNT studio show, and by the way, I don't even know what the ratings are. Everybody raves about it. What are the actual ratings? But they come back and they give them the greatness of the tnt studio show and by the way i don't even know what the ratings are everybody raves about it what are the actual ratings but they they come back and they give

them the freedom to actually have real fucking conversations there's a there's a looseness to that a lack of structure because you can't have structure with those guys those guys would revolt against structure and then i see these other these shows try to do it it's like what are you doing you don't even have this you're not allowing your on-air people to even have the same taste of real estate as these guys. That's what I was, when I was doing the studio show, that was always what I was talking to Curtis about. I was like, this finally makes sense to me.

We're coming out of halftime and like a game seven of, you know, some series final and you have two and a half minutes to talk. Like you were, you were saying this on ESPN, they had Chris Paul there. They had five people at a halftime show and it was like two minutes and 10 seconds. And Stephen A was one of the people. So you know he's going to go for at least a minute and then they got to wear Chris Paul. And so you might as well take the other two. Poor Bob Myers. I don't know if his usage rate was too high. You know, I went, I look back, I wrote about Inside the NBA in spring of 2002 for Page Two.

It was the first year I was at Page Two and I went down to Atlanta and I did a two-part piece about it, talking about how it was the greatest studio, greatest sports studio show of all time. That was the premise of the piece because it was like, finally, finally there's a show that's like for us to finally, there's an unpredictable show that gets the conversation piece. But I think when, when people talk about what's going to

happen in this show, you don't really hear a lot of dialogue about the history of how bad these shows were and what like we grew up with in the seventies and the eighties. And even like the most famous show is Brett Musburger and Phyllis George and Jimmy the 70s and the 80s. And even the most famous show is Brent Musburger and Phyllis George and Jimmy the Greek. Go back and watch that show on YouTube. It is absolutely brutal television. It's brutal, but it was great. We loved it. But you go through and how many ESPN studio shows have there been? How many countdowns has there been? There's been like 20. How many different football shows have we had year after year? And even the Fox show with all those guys, that's kind of like a karaoke show of the show that was pretty good 15 years ago.

And Inside the NBA has been able to just levitate above it. And we've always been able to point to it and say, oh, this is the one. Thank God for this show. At least we have this show. This is the show that's figured it out. And I think Barkley's what, 85% of it? Because he's the best TV talent we've ever had in sports. So wherever he goes, when you talk, Russell, about the shiny new toy thing and is that worth it? What's the price? It is worth it if you're NBC. It is worth it if you're Amazon because you have Barkley. You have this face you can put everywhere. You can trot out. It is like buying the biggest, shiniest yacht in St. Barts. I don't even know what he's going to get, but it's going to be some nuts number, I think. Because you get the legacy of

you're still basically getting the inside the NBA because of him, right? Anyway. Bracillo're still anymore on this? No, I was kind of trying to find inside the NBA ratings and they're all over the place because it's that the number right after the game is done. Right, right. Curtis, you have something

on that? Well, I was just going to say to Ryan's point earlier about the looseness. To me, the biggest thing if it moves somewhere else, is it's got to go into the night. That's a huge part of inside the NBA. Is that going to work on ESPN when they have to get to something else after a game? It's not going to work on NBC if they have to go to like- Jimmy Fallon, we got to go.

Local news. So really, to me- Yeah, they're tossing a charm. Yeah. They would have to do it on Peacock, right? It would be like coming up next on Peacock. It's just different. Once you're making viewers work for any piece of what they're watching.

I don't like that. I don't want to flip. That's why Amazon probably makes the most sense. This is where the Barkme number, you can't put a cap on it. Because if there's one thing we've learned about content the last, I don't even think it's five years long. I think it's like a three to four year thing where the decision makers are like,

all right, this person guarantees me an audience done. Like, I don't, whatever, whatever. And I, I think that clearly Barkley is on that short list and it's not the play by

play. Cause the play by play color numbers, very clear that ESPN was sick of not being able toby-play because the play-by-play color numbers very clear that espn was sick of not being able to figure it out and then finally they're like we'll just fix it with money and grab arguably the best team and then fox finds a way to i mean you want to talk about like salvaging things for a team that we're losing all of its free agents it's like actually you just drafted two future hall of famers and olsen and burkhart and then the olsen part of it that's really weird.

But Fox came out about as well as you could ever imagine post-losing Buck and Aikman. Yeah. But I'm talking like non, because I've never really quite understood. People bitch about the wrong play-by-play and color people, but I don't know that the ratings go up because you have the right broadcast team. I don't know that I would ever believe that. No, the ratings are the same no matter who's announcing the fucking game. So we've been saying that forever. It's just a fact.

Barkley is on a really, really short list of people that I think would get people to go, well, what are they doing? And if it's something new, that number's astronomical. It's massive. Can I make the case for Kenny Smith quickly? No. I actually think he's become underrated. I like him and Barkley together.

If it was just Barkley moving on his own and saying goodbye to everybody else, and it's like, Barkley's going to be a new team, I would really miss what he had with Kenny because I thought they really complimented each other. I thought they were getting real arguments on the air that were good natured and always respectful. I thought he brought a different level of thinking to it. That would make me the saddest. Shaq, I like

Shaq personally. I think the show would be fine with or without Shaq. He'd probably miss some of the comedy, but the Barkley-Kenny piece. I don't know. Maybe what would be weird is if barkley went to one channel and kenny went to another one and kenny and shack or it got split up i think that would be strange too but it's you're right about you're right about the kenny part like being the foil to barkley i think shack from the beginning to where he's at now is a

massive improvement it's like a borderline miracle. Right. He was so bad that first year. I was like, why are you guys doing this? You already have what everybody considers the best show. Why would you do this? I think it's worked. Because he and Chuck have a different dynamic that's totally different than the Kenny and Chuck dynamic.

So that's one of those rare cases where it worked out. And my issue with Draymond on it, what we talked about last week, and then kind of got picked up everywhere. It's like you can't trust me as a young guy that was insecure about being on the air and I'm surrounded by all these other stars and all these other big names and all the stuff that I was going through at the beginning of my career. I didn't want to be made fun of. I always wanted to be the cool guy. And what you learn is you can't be the fucking cool guy every single segment. You can't. You have to be a little vulnerable. You have to make fun of yourself. You have to be self-deprecating. And Draymond doesn't have any of those beats yet. He doesn't understand any of it.

He's also, I would argue, one of the more delusional people that we have commenting on himself in sports today. So it wasn't even fair. He wasn't ready to even sit there. But then he had to learn how to like hey man you have to you have to do like chuck makes fun of himself all the time shack learned hey i'm gonna make fun of himself kenny's gonna be made fun of because he's kenny smith sitting next to shack and charles barkley and then ernie has to be the rare anchor like if you ever replaced ernie can you imagine how mad the new anchor would be and be like, wait, you're just going to talk over me the whole time, blow up my clock. Never. I've got somebody in my ear and I've got a toss. And now you're talking over me. You have no respect for me. Like

professionally, that's part of the joke is they never have any respect for Ernie doing all the mechanics of driving a show. So to learn to do that on the fly immediately for a younger person in that role, that person would lose their mind. You're like, wait, this is what I have to do the whole time. So I'd hate to see it broken up. I just think the Barkley, hey, we've got Barkley. You roll them out to the up fronts. You're playing at Augusta with them with a couple of vice presidents and programming that there's this other baked in vanity value, the word you used earlier that happens with him that doesn't happen with many other people in the business. No, it's like a Letterman's going to CBS type of situation

where you're getting the show, but you're also getting this personality that now you get to put at the forefront of all these different things you're doing. You could argue that maybe TNT slash HBO slash Warner didn't leverage that quite enough. The Draymond thing's interesting though, Curtis, because on the one hand, I didn't think he was good on the show.

I thought he was just too mean-spirited and I just thought his usage rate was higher than it needed to be considering he's walking on the show

that's the best sports studio show of all time. But he's a young announcer. I'm sure he'd be better five years ago. The bigger issue to me is they just didn't need a fifth person. There was no reason to do it. And that was the part, you know, when we talked, when anyone who was critical of it, it more stemmed from

why, which goes back to our initial conversation. Why, why do you have to tinker with this? So when I look at Amazon and NBC, as they put together their shows, I guess their thoughts are going to be more is more, you know, Amazon did an NFL show. They had five people on it. Why do you have five people on it? Why don't you have four and then rotate in a fifth person, depending on what your specialty is, you know, but I just know how this works. This is, we're just in the more and more, how many people are on the NBC Sunday night show? What was that? Nine? Let's go in the field to Jack Collinsworth and Rodney Harrison. Wait, what? I don't know what the peak number.

That was like a cap violation. There was a time where I think Dan and Olbermann were on it. Yeah, they had two studio hosts. And Costas. They were all three on, I'm pretty sure, at the same time. That would be an awesome piece is to go back and just try to figure out how they actually split up the minutes with that. I mean, maybe it's a terrible piece, so I'm not trying to give you an awful assignment. But I remember at one point, because Bill's always really good in this, when it was the women's final four, it's like, oh, we got a six-man desk or six-woman desk, actually, is what I should say. So look out, hide the kids. NBC Sunday Night Football at its peak

pushed the limits that man has never attempted to push since because it was just, what the fuck are we doing? Yeah, we're going to different sets. We're going on the field. We're back over here. CBS, when they were trying to work J.J. Watt in there, but they didn't want to get rid of Phil Simms, they were doing six at halftimes for the early game.

Six is just incredible to me because there's always five people who just are never talking. I don't know if we're ever going to figure this out ever, Curtis. You've been writing about this ever since I've known you. And it feels like everyone's getting worse at it. I had somebody from a network tell me one times we produce TV for ourselves rather than producing TV for people at home. And that that's like, that note has always stuck with me, you know, as a producer, that sounds like a cool idea. I remember the last, as long as we're doing random nineties references here, I think it was the last year CBS at the NFL before they lost it. It was just Greg Gumbel and Terry Bradshaw in the studio. Maybe Pat O'Brien and Leslie Visser were somewhere around,

but it was kind of a two-man show. It was good. It was fine. You know, NBC did this with, NBC, it was Costas and Pat Riley was the years between the coach. Before he coached the Knicks. It was one year. And you can go back and watch some of those on YouTube.

And they're like, it's like legit good it's like whoa almost like uh a podcast i do okay but wait stay stay on this because i now i'm thinking in my head the rolodex of things that i love like baseball tonight peak baseball tonight in the 90s i'm like that's the studio show that's the thing and it's like your college girlfriend is over she's like do you want to have sex you're like no gammon's diamond notes are coming up next like i i can't do this but then i also think about the nbc weekend nba package and it's like oh wait we're gonna have peter vesey come out the side door and just blow torch somebody right now like this is awesome like wait i can't go anywhere peter vesey's coming up and it's kind kind of like the old Vegas line where when my friends complain about Vegas saying that place sucks now, it's like, no,

you're 30 years older than the first time that you went there. So you're different. It's not that Vegas, Vegas has some changes and surely it evolves, but you're a lot different now than Vegas is. So are we sitting here complaining about these shows that it's really about us being a lot different where we were so easily appeased with this stuff i'm like wait ravage ravage has got the 10 inning game against the blue jays like i can't i already watched the game i want to see the highlights again i want to see rob nen strike out the side like maybe we just all change and studios keep trying to fix these shows in a way that we don't care about anymore um i'm still laughing at the gammon's uh diamond notes thing that's really

really i absolutely love diamond um no because you know i know it's to to i loved it i don't i don't know i'd be like gammon's makeup shit i don't even care yeah but here's here's the big point of all this and it goes it gets derek barton what it connects inside the mba everything if you have four five six people on the studio show you have to script things you can't have a real conversation anymore everything becomes 12 years ago yeah by the way the more people on it the more you script and then all of a sudden it dies it's's not real conversation and it sucks. That is the point. Can I respond to the Priscilla point? Sure. Technically, sometimes I think you're right where we value this stuff because

when we cared the most, it was the way they did it. So I'm always going to defend it. I just think the studio shows were way more important than the nineties because we had less sports, right? We, we like some cities didn't even have 24 seven sports radio stations at that point. We didn't have the internet yet. We didn't have podcasts to listen to. We, I just remember the eighties were even worse, but I remember just being so starved for any sort of info or conversation about things I cared about in sports that I would listen, drive around in the nineties, listen to EI. And I fucking hated EI. I didn't like, I literally didn't like one of the shows and one of the hosts. And that's what I would listen to driving around. Cause it was like, oh, at least they're talking

about sports. I have other people in my life. So when I would watch like baseball tonight or like Riley with Costas, it was really meaningful. It was like, this is a half hour of sports that I'm just not getting enough of. It goes back to like when we did the national is the first piece we did for Grantland about the national trying to be this all sports newspaper. Like how meaningful that was to all of us. Cause it was like, holy shit. Somebody is going to write about sports for 40 pages every day. This is amazing. Now it's like, you can get anything you want. And I don't know where sports studio shows fit in there in the same way, which is what was so special about the Barkley thing. Cause you still like the game would end and you, I always wanted to hear what he thought afterwards. And that's a really rare, that's the rarest thing you have. First take has some of that. Now it's Stephen A, oh, I can't wait to watch Stephen A the next morning. It's 7 a.m. PT. Hear what he said about the Cowboys. Like the shows that have succeeded and thrived, I think have hit that the best. It's like this happened. What do you think? Which we've

tried to replicate with our pods too, I think. We've already talked about though, the ESPN, like the ESPN show should be better. It just should be better but steven a is going to do the steven a role malika's a star but she's the anchor so she's still gonna figure out a way to defer because the job when you host is to defer and perk is feeling himself but you never quite know like if he were tweeting during the revolutionary war it would depend on the battle be like hey this is a home game those boys got pride and then you know you'd have the deal going on in long island and it'd just be like the hestians are in the mix there ain't no way george got to step up george george was a stat he's a a compiler. No real battles. No rings.

Can this be a segment? Perk? Right. Perk, close down, random revolutionary wars? Right. And then the French would get involved and be like, George and the Americans want the trade deadline. Like they added the French Navy.

So ain't no way. So it just, there's that show just, I know it it's not for me and we've said this numerous times so i'm arguing my own point of our standards in the 90s versus our standards today and i agree with you bill we just cared about it then because we didn't have that much content to get through i never know what that show is every year but they're also not allowed to have even close to the amount of real estate that TNT has. So it's not even, sometimes I don't even feel it's fair to be critical when they come back from

halftime, you can get mad about what it is at halftime, but you just go, what's the, you can't get mad about this. The best way I would describe it is the way that how short the segments are would be like, if they were being asked to play basketball without a three point line line and TNT got a three-point line. And shoes.

That's the difference. I want to say one thing about Malika because I've noticed this and I don't know if you haven't done TV, it's really hard to explain how hard this is. They do this thing where she sits with Woj and then she gets up and they keep the camera rolling and she leads into the next segment walking from the woosh set to where the other guys are and keeps going keeps going sits down and then they kickstart another segment it's just really impressive it's like it's like the good fellas long shot you guys all right you know what i'm talking about no i know exactly but you can't just use the gym on the open to do that yeah what fucking hard to do that. Yeah. What? I'm with you.

Look, Curtis knows this. You know what people love more than a set? A side set. Look at Get Up. Get Up has nooks and crannies all over the place. Nooks and crannies are big. Curtis loves nooks and crannies. A little couch where your knees are almost touching the guest. Do you have nooks and crannies in your pod setup, Curtis?

Oh, yeah. Do you just move over to where Jack Collinsworth and Rodney Harrison are? I should do that. We should have done the last 30 minutes in the little kitchenette over there. That would have been cool. Mike and Mike had experimented with a side little deal where it was a couple chairs for, like, a longer form interview. That was weird, but the chair angle was brutal Cause it just led to an absolute dick bulge in Chino's that was just right, right in your face. There's nothing, it was like performance enhancing

camera shot. And I remember the first time I filled in and the side set and I like sat into, I was like, what are, Whoa, dude, like, what do we need to put up a parent for like parental warning on this? And some guys like, you know, he's got his headset on. He's like, we got bad chairs, man. We got bad chairs. We're trying to work through it. Chairs are really important. The dick bulge set. Did they get rid of the dick bulge set? Yeah, because there was no desk.

You were just out there in the open and the angle and the cinching of the pants and the entire thing. But, you know, sex sells. Curtis, anything else? I always get unnerved when I see a sportscaster without a desk. I really do.

I don't like that. Sportscasting is a, yeah. I don't like it for talk shows or anything. Anytime it's just like the legs, it just feels, I don't know, I feel uneasy. It just feels like a producer said, now let's stand up. Okay. Thanks. That's so helpful.

Do we wrap it up? I think we got it. Yeah. Curtis, what do you got to plug? Press Box Monday, David Shoemaker, and then I don't want to go all Pat Bev on you guys, but please subscribe to my podcast because Wednesday, if we pull it off, we're going to have a really cool NBA-related podcast. It's going to be really, really fun.

I just want to make sure it gets recorded and done and everything. There you go. What's your finals prediction? Mavs in four. Okay. I love it. So you do your finals prediction on your Tuesday pod? Yeah, or Celts in seven. Oh, you already did it. So you do your finals prediction on your Tuesday pod? Yeah, or Celts in seven.

Oh, you already did it. I'm still sorting mine out. I want to know more KP info. Oh, really? Yeah. Does FanDuel have any sort of line on what I think you're going to pick? I'd probably pick Celts in six right now, but can I see footage of Porzickus practicing?

It would be great. A couple threes, maybe him running up and down the court. Would be nice. Curtis, thanks for coming on. Thanks for joining us. Russillo, great to see you as always. I'll see you in Boston.

Thanks to Steve Cerruti and Kyle Creighton as well. And I will see you in this podcast on Tuesday. I don't have to. D.C., Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and Vermont. Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 in Arizona, 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut, 809 with it in Indiana, 800-522-4700, or visit ksgamblinghelp.com in Kansas, 877-770-STOP in Louisiana, mdgamblinghelp.org

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