The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Sports Repodders on James Dolan, Dan Jenkins, Best Sports Books, and a Friendlier Media | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: March 15, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Bryan Curtis and The Wall Street Journal's Jason Gay to discuss sportswriters of old, Twitter's role in changing the media landscape, unhappy players, James Dolan and other curious team owners, the college admissions scandal, the greatest sports books, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's very special episode of the Sports Reporters on the Ringer Podcast Network is brought to you as always by ZipRecruiter. The best teams start with great talent. I think the Sports Reporters qualifies. Brian Curtis, myself, Jason Gay. That's a great team. A lot of talent. No one knows the importance of talent more than ZipRecruiter.

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or you can download that app. Check out TheRinger.com, the world's greatest website where right now we ran today our first Game of Thrones explainer from Mally Rubin and Jason Concepcion

aka the Binge Mode crew. And speaking of Jason Concepcion, we the Binge Mode crew. And speaking of Jason Concepcion, we have a very special episode of NBA Desktop tomorrow. A very, very special episode. An extremely special episode. I'm actually appearing on it, but briefly, but that's not why it's extremely special. I urge you to go to our Twitter feed

and watch NBA Desktop tomorrow. That's all I'm going to say. Ringer Podcast Network as well, where you can find the Press Box on Channel 33, hosted by Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker. They're all special episodes. Every episode is special. Fresh Prince in the 90s special episodes.

Yeah, each one. Each one, you learn a lesson about life and things to do and not do. Shoemaker, people were worried about him in 2019, new dad. People were worried his PR was going to go down, but his PR has been solid. He is surprisingly coherent.

Yeah. Seems like it. I say that as kind of an old dad. He is surprisingly with it. So featuring Brian Curtis in a surprisingly coherent David Shoemaker, the press box on channel 33,

where we also have Tea Time Now on Fridays, which is a relatively new podcast. And also the Sports Rewatchables. We did that on my podcast earlier this week. The Ringer MLB show, it's up today. Shoemakers, Masked Man Feed is due in WrestleMania 30, I think Friday. And then Ringer NFL next week.

Niner Seahawks from 2013. So there you go. Coming up, the Sports Reporters. Me, Brian Curtis, Jason Gay.ahawks from 2013. So there you go. Coming up, the sports reporters, me, Brian Curtis, Jason Gay. But first, Pearl Jam. All right, we're all here. It's the Sports Reporters. We haven't done this, I want to say it's been longer than I thought. Maybe like mid-December, late December, somewhere in there.

We're overdue. Last year, yeah. Yeah. It's been a while. Biggest thing that's happened, Dan Jenkins died, which Curtis wrote about and talked about in the press box, so I don't want to go into it in too much detail. The one thing I will say, it is that the last of those old school sports writers that we all kind of grew up reading about that, you know, someday when I get to be an adult sports writer, I'll be at the Masters and I'll have a scotch and Dan Jenkins will be there and I'll smoke and we'll blow cigarette smoke on each other

and then write a story on deadline. It just feels like it's a million years ago now. And reading those stories, that was my reaction. What was your reaction, Jason? I mean, absolutely. The era already fell over, but his passing definitely closes it. And I agree.

I mean, the lives that these guys led don't exist for anybody anymore. There is no next generation of Dan Jenkins. That door has closed. Yeah. And I guess I got in this conversation with somebody where I was like, I think we all love to imagine that the old guys naturally were that cool. That just being a sports writer in the 60s, you wore a certain kind of suit, right? You drank a certain kind of way. And I think that's all true. But I think the secret is I think Dan learned that all stuff from the movies. I think he was watching 40s movies and he always just struck me as a guy who was like a movie star pretending to be a sports writer. Oh, interesting.

And he was that idea. If you cast a sports writer just right, the guy always had the last line, always had the last word, knew how to handle a discussion, knew how to talk to a bartender in just the right way. That was Dan to me. The other sort of dynamic is the idea of the writer just writing the piece and then putting the, you know, the magazine comes out and that's it. That's that. And we all know that nowadays just publication is kind of phase one of what it is to be a sports writer in 2019, that that just sort of, you know, fires up the engine and fires up the conversation and you're responding to people immediately. And then there's this whole other secondary life a story takes on as people, you know, go at it and you go back at them and so on. And just the kind

of having a separation from all that just feels so unusual. I also think, you know, anybody who became famous at Sports Illustrated, it was basically like 10 famous sports writers now all kind of grouped together because there were no national sports writers back then. And that was really the only place you read Sports Illustrated, you read Sporting News and Sport Magazine. And for a few years, they're inside sports. But other than that, your local newspaper was only the people that lived in that city in the extended city that read it.

So I thought all these Boston Globe guys were amazing. And Bob Ryan and Lee Monfield and Ray Fitzgerald. But Curtis never read one of those dudes. There's just no way. A columnist in Mississippi made this point. He's like, if you grew up in that certain era, and it's kind of our era too, by the way. It was my generation.

Then I think, how old are you, Jason? I'm 79. No, but I'm in my mid forties. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So somewhere between Curtis and me and you are in the middle. But yeah, that was our extended generation. And if you heard like the best sports columnists in the world are Red Smith, Jim Murray, and then you could update it for us, Lupica, you know, whoever the hot guys were in the 70s, 80s, Mitch Albom, whatever.

You couldn't read those guys. No. But Dan Jenkins and SI came to your mailbox is what this guy in Mississippi was writing. So they had this huge advantage. You had to go to the library and hope those guys wrote a collection or something like that. Oh, yeah. I remember being at some bookstore in Massachusetts when I was in college. And Mitch Albom, he used to do these greatest hits books called Live Album.

The Live Album. It wasn't even the first one. It was Live Album 2 or 3. And I'm like, oh, this is Mitch's album. I've heard it. And I bought this book and read all the columns. And I was like, this is really cool. You get to read Mitch's album.

And now we have internet archives. People always ask me, why haven't you done a collection of your things? And I was like, I guess I could. But why would people could just find them online? Like, why would they have to read them in a book form? What did Kornheiser call his book? I'm getting paid in cash or I'm back for more cash. Yeah.

There was bald as I want to be, I believe. Right, right, right. So back to Jenkins just for a second. Like, I think if you made that Sports Illustrated roster and you were being pushed, especially in the seventies and the early mid-80s, you just had a much bigger impact than you would have had anywhere else.

If you're in Boston, even if you're in the New York Times, I just don't think it's the same audience. Absolutely. So that era feels like, it feels like with him, he was the last of that group. And now I don't know who's who's the who's

the dean now curtis who's the old guy uh nope nope not the guy i'm sitting across from right here are you the dean kevin clark who's the guy who's the link to the 70s and 80s the guy who was right there on deadline with a typewriter and cigarettes well now we now we're in the 70s, 80s generation. So who is it? But most of those guys, like, you know, Mike Lupica is like, you know, the Daily News kind of doesn't exist as a thing anymore. Yeah. I mean, the difference, right, is that those guys don't have their publications anymore.

I mean, so now we're kind of on the 90s generation of guys who are still around. You know, it's Shaughnessy, right? I mean, he starts late 70s. Come on. You're asking me who was in the press room, Bob Ryan, but he's not even writing that much anymore. You know, it's funny. I have a hot take on this. TV has killed the Dan Jenkins successor generation. I was just about to say, cause it should be like Kornheiser and Wilbon, but those guys don't write anymore. That was that that's exactly right. That's the portal, right? That's the move. You were to acquire a degree of fame, and then you are going to move into television and get your

big payday and get your house on Nantucket. And that was that. Listen, guys, I tried. It did not work. I'm back in the newspaper business. I want to update, let me update Dan Jenkins just to end this conversation, but this will, this pulls him into the present. Yeah. Here's the secret of him. He was a huge sports nerd. He was a giant nerd. He was not one of the, he was not like Jim Murray where it's like, this is good comedy material for me, but I could also be doing showbiz or I could be doing the business page or whatever. Dan was a huge sports nerd and he dragged people to college football and golf because he was so excited about it. He was a great writer, but he was also like, I am so fucking excited to write about this and to be at this major and to

be at Texas OU that you person who's not really interested in that would be excited too. And that's people all the way through. That's you. That's Zach Lowe. That's other people who have Brian Phillips on tennis who goes, this is so incredibly cool, you have to read this. Yeah, yeah. And that to me is like the thing that you can bridge him way, way back to the 50s and 60s and get all the way to today. Yeah. Brian, you're just repurposing material from the press box. I am.

I have like nine thoughts. The thing though is, I think he's probably the last guy that was never interested in being a multimedia. Wait. Because you think like. Wait, what about the novels? Well, but that's the thing. He was the old school version of that. His version of branching out to sports writing was like, I'm going to write novels and I'm going to try to write screenplays.

But that version of that now is I'm going to get a podcast. I'm going to try to go on TV. I'm going to try to be on Pardon the Interruption or whatever. But people aren't really thinking. Maybe Lupka's, I guess, doing that too. He's writing those young adult books. But Jenkins,

how many books did he write? Maybe double digits. But he also wrote a whole bunch of screenplays that we probably never saw. He wrote Beverly Hills Cop 2, the first draft. You know this? Is that true? In London.

You didn't know this? I somehow didn't know that. He wrote the unproduced screenplay of Beverly Hills Cop 2. Wow. You need to have a live reading of that. That was Axel Foley's caddying. He's undercover. Yeah, he was at the Royal Turnberry.

One other thing, and then we'll let Jenkins go, is just one of my favorite things that you brought up in one of the pieces you wrote. I can't remember if it was the Grantland feature or the recent one. He just decided he didn't like Tiger Woods. He just didn't like the way Tiger Woods had handled some things and basically feuded with him, but it wasn't even a feud. It was like, you haven't kissed my ring,

so I'm not going to acknowledge you either. And they had this kind of icy distance between them. And it's hard to imagine. I think he's the last writer who could have done that without everybody going, wow, you're a huge douche. Why are you handling this this way? Everybody sided with Dan. Yeah. They're like, how dare Tiger Woods not kiss Dan Jenkins' ring? And the way Dan told it to me was he went to Tiger when he was first blowing up and he said, I want to talk to Tiger and ask him some things. And I think he'd like to ask me some things, meaning like, what was Ben Hogan like? What was it like to be on the course of every major with

Arnie? He'd like to ask me that. And the word came back from Tiger's camp, like, no, he wouldn't. And he was not happy about that. And yeah, Tiger was on the shit list forever after that. Yeah. I think golf and boxing were the two most sports writery sports, right? In the seventies, eighties, even the nins. And golf now, we watch golf and people enjoy it in the moment. They tweet. They put little GIFs. And you're never thinking like, I can't wait to read the big think piece about this in SI three days from now. But the tournament's over and six hours later, I'm done.

I might hear the House Golf Podcast on it. But same thing with boxing. Used to be the fight. Then the second part of the whole spectacle was four or five days later, the big, awesome, giant essay about it. And that's gone too. Now we just have Jason Gay writing a quickie 1,200-worder for the Wall Street Journal.

And then I don't think about it anymore. Yeah, that's it, man. Did Jenkins ever do the sports reporters, by the way? I don't know. Hard to believe he didn't get asked. He wouldn't stoop down because all his acolytes were on there. Lupica Kornheiser. Those were his guys. He probably was like, I'm not

flying to New York for that nonsense. Curtis and I were texting. There's this great sports book about the history of Sports Illustrated. And there's this part about Rick Riley where it's, and it's small. It's like a paragraph, but it's about how

as he was really starting to hit it big at SI, he was basically doing this bad Jenkins impersonation of kind of drinking a lot in the golf club house this one night. Not on the page, but off the page. Off the page. And somebody was like, it was like watching an exaggerated bad Dan Jenkins impersonation. But people were offended that he was trying to be Dan Jenkins off the page, which I think is good for the legacy of Dan Jenkins. And Dan was not cuddly. So Dan made sure everybody knew what was going on.

Yeah. And Dan was not put his arm around him. Oh, he's all right. Yeah. He, you know, he was the kind of guy who wouldn't let you forget. He wouldn't let people forget something like that. So all the guys from that era of SI, DeFord, he's not alive anymore, right? Frank died.

DeFord died. Jenkins died. Yep. Mark Cram died. Yep. Andre LeGarriere is long gone. Long, long gone. Is there anybody left from that?

William Knack died. That's right. That's another recent one. It's been a lot in the last year. So that whole crew is gone. Knack, DeFord, and Jenkins all recently. Jesus. I want to come back to this because I want to do this thing that I didn't tell you guys about sportsbooks at the end.

I'm ready. Let's hit some topical stuff first. Jason, you wanted to start with this Antonio Brown. He's going to Buffalo. People are starting to write pieces about it just because it started on Twitter. And then 24 hours later, it turned out he wasn't going to Buffalo. What did, what did you, what did this mean in the big picture of how we cover sports to you? Well, it's even better than that. I think a lot of people went to bed thinking

Antonio Brown was on the bills and then woke up and he wasn't on the bills. Uh, so like a nightmare, you know, you wake up and it's a totally different thing the next day. But I mean, it's funny to segue to this from Jenkins, because I feel where celebrity is now in media is in these folks who are kind of the high frequency day traders of sports media, the people who can give you the scoop on who's going where and when, who's breaking their contract, who's getting traded, who's signing with whom, who's getting drafted. Obviously Wojnowski is the biggest of them all, but I think there are a lot of people. Schefter's probably right there alongside him. That's how you get the big bucks, and that's how you get real value at especially a big sports media company like ESPN. And I believe it was Rappaport for NFL Network who's very good

and had bad information or late information or someone was giving him, you know, just, you know, just bad stuff. And he went with Bryant to the Bills. And it was a story. And I believe, Bryant, correct me if I'm wrong, that the Schefter corrected somewhat quickly or say that it was not happening. And so there was some sort of intrigue almost immediately as to whether or not this was going to be a real thing. There was insider on insider action, which is always the highlight of these things. That's one of Curtis's favorites. That's when we get the Godzilla versus Mothra kind of matchup. Well, it should almost have a name because there's a certain ploy where people completely undermine the other tweet while not acknowledging it.

So it'll be like Brian just said it was raining outside. And then I come in and I go, such a sunny day here in LA today. There's no sign of rain at all. So it's close to the process reports. I'm clearly talking about your tweet but not acknowledging it. Yeah, they rarely acknowledge each other, do they? They credit each other sometimes. I guess Chris Haynes doing the Hulk Hogan thing

about Hayward signing with the Celtics to Woj, right? That was pretty much the... They don't normally get that direct. No, they don't. I would say it's raining first reported by Brian Curtis of The Ringer. I would say we're in this weird era where you trust one max two guys in every sport. And everybody else feels like they're batting 200.

Like everybody else feels like they're okay. But especially on the big ones like the antonio brown they're probably not going to get that so it's like you know schaefter and glazer and then it's kind of woge and you know haynes will get a couple but it just it feels like there's now that it's all agents it feels like there's two or three guys have everything locked down sometimes one and everybody else is just kind of guessing and they're wrong a lot. Or running with one source.

Fundamentally, all these guys started as very good reporters and getting information that people didn't want out there. But as you get more popular, people start to give you information. Then you start to be in the information exchange business. And then you really achieve some sort of strange singularity where you yourself are a story by virtue of the

fact that you're just paying attention to it. The fact that you have turned your eyes and your media gaze upon, you know, someone's destination, it makes it significant, makes it real, makes it in play. The biggest example of that, of course, is, you know, the way that, you know, the Anthony Davis stuff went down with Wojnarowski, where he was, you know, not just revealing this information, but this was obviously sort of the beginning of the process. This was, you know, something that had been, I don't know, embargoed is the right word, but just however it worked, they went to him to obviously get that information out there and it kicked off the whole of the craziness. And he kicked it off on a Monday morning. That starts the news cycle. It's like, can you get this out an hour before first take? But by the way, that's no different than what happens in any other sort of media business. We see it, you know, I work at the Wall Street Journal, you know, corporations are like this. They go to favored reporters to, you know, break

corporate news often. Politics, Vanity Fair yesterday, you know, announcing Beto O'Rourke for president. I was going to say. This stuff happens in virtually every format. And it's usually, you know, a status thing of the reporter. You know, the higher you are up on the food chain, the more likely they're going to come to you with the good stuff. I guess my fear with it is that if people are relying on information for their success and how high their salary can go and stuff like that, it reduces the chance that they're going to be super critical of anybody who might give them that information. And that enters a weird place that I think has started to infect sports a little bit and is one of the reasons why the media coverage has been so player-friendly, especially in basketball,

where the basketball coverage now is so apologetic for the athletes. We've talked about this on the pod before. This is not a new topic, but I'm amazed over and over again how people who cover sports are siding with the players over and over again versus some sort of balance or questioning it or even this whole LeBron thing. I feel like I'm a dick because I'm like, this is bad what they're doing, what LeBron and Rich did to the team, to the young guys. This is just bad behavior. But I felt like I was kind of on an island a little bit. Like Curtis, there was a couple other people who were. But for the most part, I don't understand why everybody can't agree that this is a bad way to be the best player in a basketball team.

Same thing with Kyrie Irving. If you're being a dick, it's OK to say, hey, that guy's being a dick. I think it's shut it down chic. The idea that you have to just immediately make some sort of radical step to preserve your value. And what I despise about it is that it's just so binary.

The idea that like, oh, of course, Zion Williamson should never play a second of college basketball again. He's a fool not to. Well, absolutely, Zion Williamson should look after himself, and he should put his financial interests and his future ahead of anything else. Certainly not Duke University, anybody else in the student population. But I'd really like to see him play in the tournament.

Is that wrong? Can I want both of those things? Can I want Anthony Davis to be happy and play in a basketball community that he wants to play in but also want to see him finish out the season for the Pelicans? I mean, it makes a lot of sense to shut LeBron down for the rest of the year. But what about the people who have tickets, who have purchased tickets months in advance to go see a Laker game?

You know, we have to think of those interests. Is it wrong to think of those? Yeah, and sometimes there's no 100% right answer. I think there's nuance to stuff. And it's okay to admit that there's nuance to stuff. It's okay to admit that there's nuance to stuff. It's okay to admit two things are right too. I just think that. Or that two things are wrong.

Like the jazz fan who, who said whatever he said to Westbrook and got Westbrook all upset, whatever the exact wording was, was obviously completely out of line. And Westbrook was out of line too with, with what he said back. And I'm, he can say that I would handle it exactly the same way.

I think that's crazy to say I would have handled it exactly the same way to say that you're going to fuck up you and your wife too. Like you shouldn't say that. Sorry. We don't have to apologize for that. Like Westbrook should not say that, period.

I happened to watch First Take that morning after that happened, which was a lively edition of First Take. But I think they actually got to that point. They got to both are wrong here. Good. They were mainly focused on the fan, but they also said

you can't threaten somebody and you can't threaten his wife. The fan video was kind of amazing because the more that guy talked, he sounded like someone describing like a UFO encounter. It just got less and less believable with every sentence. It was amazing.

Well, then his tweets started disappearing and then his account got deleted. And part of the reaction when you see a story like that is you just immediately transfer it to the larger picture of, oh God, I hope Trump doesn't tweet about this tomorrow at seven in the morning. For sure. And it really did seem like that was in play for a little while. But yeah, I think this is a really weird time specifically for basketball coverage. I think football seems to be where it was

for the most part. We still have our information guys and people breaking down stories and writing about teams. But in the basketball, the way these athletes now, Jason, a few months ago on this said, was talking about the parallels of celebrity journalism and Vanity Fair and Vogue magazine compared to how these basketball guys are doing it. And, you know, you can kind of tell when they want to get the right narrative out. They all run the same playbook, right? They'll go to a certain person that they

know will give them the kind of interview they want. They might go on a podcast. They might come on a podcast like this. If they feel like, hey, I want to show somebody I'm a thoughtful guy. I want to shoot the shit for an hour and prove that I have a sense that there's more to me than just basketball. But what's interesting, maybe I'm just older and I think about this stuff more, but it is funny to, I'm always looking at what are the motivations? Why is this person doing this? And I feel like it's more transparent than ever what some of these motivations are. What do you see, Brian?

Can I ask a related question? Yeah. Do we really believe NBA players are less happy now than they were 10, 20 years ago? This is a theme you've been hitting with Priscilla. You talked about it with Adam Silver. It was Adam was the first one that talked about it. I felt like Adam started it. Because when I was listening to that interview,

he goes, he was talking about this Jordan documentary that's coming out on ESPN. He goes, you know, boy, those teams, you could just tell there was a certain camaraderie there. I'm like, wait a second. Are we talking about Michael Jordan? Who was the biggest asshole to his teammates? I love Michael Jordan. My God the biggest asshole to his teammates.

Sam Smith got two books out of him. I love Michael Jordan. My God, that guy was an asshole. And if you read the Jordan rules, every single bull basically wanted off the team during the 91 season. They all wanted off. And I'm just like, if they had Twitter accounts and if they had the power that NBA players had now, wouldn't they have just done the same thing in 91? Are we really less happy? Look, I'm not of that born on Twitter generation. So I do understand there's a difference. The younger people interact with the world and they

certainly interact with the online world differently than I did growing up. But do we really believe they're less happy now or do we just believe they have more power now that they can say, screw this. I don't want to be dealt. I don't want to be part of some giant trade. So I'm going to speak up and I'm going to control the exchange as much as I can. They also have too much time on their hands. The season is too long.

You know, there's more days in between. And I feel like there's so much dead air now in the NBA season that a lot of these stories take on life because of that. I have a follow-up to what you just said, but we're going to take a quick break. Hey, it might be the best time of year to be a sports fan. Spring training wrapping up. Basketball season heating up. College basketball, it is time for the madness.

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There's no wrong way to fill one out except for not filling one out at all. Best Bracket Millionaire. Go to Yahoo Sports, sign up, enter to win. All you have to do is get ready for brackets coming out on Sunday. It's free. You don't have to do it anyway. You don't have anything to lose. You just have a million dollars to possibly win. All right. Off of what you just said,

the answer is basketball players have always been unhappy. Yes. Everybody's unhappy. There's been books written. Journalists are unhappy. Yeah, yeah. There's been books written every single decade about unhappy basketball teams with copious amounts of evidence

that there's been no nirvana in the past where it was like, man, if it was only like 93, we're all so happy that year. If you read Breaks, I just reread Breaks of the Game. And that entire book is about an unhappy basketball team in a league that isn't doing that well. But then there's a whole section about how the Seattle Sonics are really unhappy. They just won the title, and now Dennis Johnson's making everyone miserable. And there's anecdotes about

that. And then there's an anecdote about how unhappy everybody was to play with Kareem for years. And it's just, this is what the league is. You put 12 dudes together, only five of them can play. They're all making varying amounts of money. And it's going to be really tough to catch everybody, you know, on the right level of happiness. And when you see it, when you see the team that is happy, it's usually a team like Sacramento or Brooklyn that's younger.

The money hasn't really come in yet, but yeah. I bring this up because I think it comes around to what we're talking about with transactions. When we went into transactions world as a sports writing society, we started talking about these guys differently. We started talking about them as salary dumps and throw-ins and-

Expiring contracts. Expiring and amnesties. And they stopped becoming basketball players to a certain extent. And they've just, a lot of them became like monopoly chips you push around the board. Pieces. People literally say pieces. And when I do see these guys speaking up, I do wonder, it's like, would I want to be talked about that way by everybody?

Like that everybody's a GM and the way they think of me is this thing that's going to fit in or not and if as soon as you don't like it you just dump it and I'm like if I'm going to be dumped in 10 seconds because there's some deal that's better if camaraderie and teammateship why wouldn't I why wouldn't I react to that and be like if Bill's like you know with Curtis we love Curtis great guy you know great good writer writer. But we have this trade with Yahoo where he's a great throw-in and he makes the salaries match. I'd be like, fuck you. I don't want to go.

I don't want to go there. No, my answer would be we're not discussing Curtis. If Ward-Jarowski called me, it's not true. Curtis is untouchable. You know what I mean? I just don't think I would want to be talked about like that. Well, and that's how everybody, especially like you look at the young guys in the Lakers, and we have now, I've heard this, other people have heard

this, people have reported it, like that profoundly affected those guys when the Davis thing happened because it was Rich Paul telling Wojnarowski and Rich Paul was one of LeBron's best friends. And it wasn't hard to connect the dots. So I think this has been, you know, I think it's affected the Celtics. Tatum has been thrown into every Anthony Davis deal, even though they're not even allowed to trade for Anthony Davis. It's definitely affected, you know, the Golden State,

like the future of that team. But there's a good example of, I forgot about this, but when we did the sports rewatchables, when Harrison Barnes was on that 2016 team and the Durant stuff had started. And in the OKC game that we did, he played OK, but in the finals, he really fell apart. And I have to think part of that had to do with the fact that he knew if he didn't play well, they might not want to keep him.

It's just an interesting dynamic that I don't feel like is that old. Well, we're also talking about, to bring it back to the beginning, that this is metabolic rate, right? The sports media metabolic rate is faster than ever. You said something at the top about how something would happen and you would wait a couple days because you can't wait to hear what Dan Jenkins or read what Dan Jenkins said about the Masters or said about Michigan, Ohio State. And that's gone, that whole notion, because everything has to be instantly processed,

not just in terms of the person sitting at home watching the game immediately commenting it, but the athlete themselves going into the locker room at halftime sometimes and seeing their performance evaluated or their job status evaluated on a day-to-day basis, not just by professionals, but everybody. Everybody has a voice now. And there's really not, in the digital world, there's not a great deal of differentiation between sources. And I think it just makes people crazy. I mean, this is being studied now. What Adam Silver is talking to you about at Sloan is a condition that is not specific to NBA superstars. It is far and wide,

and it has a lot to do with the idea of just people being a isolated, but also just, you know, feeling overwhelmed and feeling that they just do not have a life apart from that digital existence. I do agree with what Bill said earlier, about we've now overcorrected a lot in sports writing. 70s, 80s, 90s, there was a lot of finger wagging old man sports writing going on about players. Athletes are ruining this for us. And they're all, and you're selfish. If it wasn't for the athletes, sports would be so much more fun. You're selfish to want a lot of money because you're one of the most famous people in the world. How dare you? How dare you brag about your last contract? And I think it's almost totally to the good that we corrected a lot of that because it was bad. You look up a lot of columns.

They don't play well today from that. Just a lot of those are just insane. The late 90s are the last. So that was 20 years ago. If you go back and read a lot of the basketball stuff back then it's borderline racist it's like look at what are these black guys doing is the underlying theme of a lot

of the pieces why can't these guys be grateful for the money they've had it's really unseemly but I do think you can be so sympathetic to one understand the player that you do get to a point where you're like well what if that guy's just the problem what if he's a dick that's okay to say i saw andy mccullough

clubs baseball at the la times say this he's like when did we get to the point where we just can't call a player out anymore and to your lebron point it's really funny because the one of the few people i saw just dig it in on that was bill plaschke at the LA Times. He's just being a columnist like a columnist has been for 100-ish years. Yeah. And he's like, wait, I'm not feeling any sympathy to LeBron. I'm not feeling sympathy to the Rich Paul LeBron entertainment experience. He's screwing up the Lakers. And so I'm going to write repeatedly that he's screwed up the Lakers.

And this is a big disappointment. Yeah. It'll be interesting as this goes with the Kobe fans too because there's that whole Kobe fan faction that really resents this LeBron thing. I can't take credit for this. I heard it somewhere else, but when LeBron passes Kobe for points, I can't remember who said this.

Somebody was like, he's going to have to make sure he does it on the road. I was thinking that's absurd absurd and then i'm thinking like he probably will make sure he does it on the road i don't know if you want to do that uh that in la but it's you know the buddy buddy aspect of this stuff and look i had duran on six podcasts you know it's it's not like i'm the ringer has been guilty of some of this stuff too but i one of the reasons i had him on because i was so interested by how candid he was being about everything it was like just this resource it was like i don't know when this is gonna end i want and by that last one i felt like he had started to kind of close the fountain you know

he was much more if you go back and listen to like the mailbag podcast we did, he's just letting it fly. It doesn't give a shit. And by the sixth one now with this next thing looming and all this stuff, I think he has to be a lot more careful. But in general, I wonder like what, if the Artest melee happened right now, how would it be covered compared to how it was covered in 2004? Because think about the Artest family, right? Fight, settles down, guy throws a beer at Artest, hits Artest with the beer, and Artest goes in the stands. And our reaction was, I can't believe he did that. Why did he go in the stands?

Now I feel like people would be madder that the guy threw the beer at him. Right? Am I crazy? Absolutely. What do you think, Jason? Well, first of all, just think of the way it's processed because it would be processed in real time. The idea that you had to wait for SportsCenter

or the next morning to see a clip of it on television. I mean, you just get it immediately. I mean, the Westbrook thing was fascinating just as sort of a similar I mean that was not a similar situation at all but that clip of Westbrook was released before we knew anything about the fan and what the fan said

you know that sort of thing went around what the heck is Westbrook doing and then later we find out that the fan was acting contemptibly too and I just think that everything will just happen so much more instantaneously and it'll be as toxic as you can imagine. I don't think it's going to be some sort of like,

it would be some sort of like more progressive reaction to it. I think that you would just be as ugly as ever and you'd be watching it all just unfurl immediately. I, I, I sort of disagree. I think we would, I think what you're saying is right.

We would immediately, I think the reflect, the reflex for a lot of sports media now would be what made the player do that? What did the person say? Let's at least put the ourselves in the player's shoes. Yeah. Um, if you, did you watch shut up and dribble documentary? I did. So remember that little part of that where Bob Costas is confronted because he used the word thugs around that incident. I mean, imagine the first sports writer, sports media person who used the word thug in 2019 to describe a player doing that. The person would be dead.

Toast. Well, I remember the studio that night criticized the fans. Remember right after the Artest Melee happened, the guys who were in the Bristol studio were like, I can't believe the fans did that. And those guys took heat the next day. Like, why are you blaming the fans? But now I think the guys would say that in the studio. But also like, you know, just to go back to a basic element of this, I just feel like what we describe as the media now, it's not like people sit around and wait for like the five pashas of like mainstream sports journalism to weigh in on something. I feel like what the players think of as the media

is everybody with Twitter accounts, everybody on Instagram. It's everybody. Everybody has a say in all this. And the sort of instant stream of invective, and that is as ugly and toxic and racist and brutal as anything you can imagine from any generation now, today in 2019,

I don't think that players look at it like nowadays, saying, well, I saw the Rotten Tomatoes ratings of sports writers, and this is what they thought about what happened in the Malice of the Palace. I think the reaction would be really, really ugly. Well, we should mention that they don't have to read this stuff. I think there's a difference between the guys in the 70s, if you're playing basketball and somebody's sitting behind the bench yelling epithets at you for the entire game,

you have no choice. You have to hear it. Nowadays, that guy is kicked out in five seconds. And what people, when they talk about... This is such a great segue, Bill. I can't believe you're just setting it up like this thank you the social media vitriol

is ultimately you can avoid it if you want to there is some voluntary Kevin Durant doesn't have to go in his replies and read 2000 people saying shitty things about him if he doesn't want to. So I don't know.

Or if James Dolan does not want to hear someone saying, sell the basketball club, he can have him permanently barred from the premises of Madison Square Garden. This is a good segue. Let's take a quick break. This seems like the perfect time to talk about the hit Showtime series, Billions, starring Emmy Award winners Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis. Guess what?

Everything changes this season. Enemies become allies. Longtime rivals Chuck Rhodes and Bobby Axelrod are forced to work together to claw their way back on top. The scheming and sabotage will leave you guessing as they seek revenge on anyone and everyone who stands in their way. Maybe there's hope for me and Jim Dolan. Don't miss the new season of Billions starting Sunday, March 17th at 9 p.m. To get a free month of Showtime, go to Showtime.com. Enter code BS. This offer is for first-time subscribers only. It expires March 31st. And check out the Recapables,

our podcast where we recap TV shows sometimes. We will have a recap podcast of that first episode of Billions on Showtime March 17th, Sunday night. Yeah, so James Dolan. I've been waiting for this.

Yeah, me too. It's great. Let's do it. Folks, if you want to fast forward yeah it's right here so what so Michael K let's start there he gets 45 minutes with James Dolan

and a binder and James Dolan says a bunch of crazy things Michael K could have definitely nudged on some stuff and

I thought Kid Gloved did a little bit but did a good job of nudging him in the right direction there were some nudges. There were good nudges. That's a really hard interview to do because you have a crazy person.

You want the crazy person to come back another time on the show. You're getting good sound. You're winning with the thing. But on the other hand, you could really nudge. And if he had really nudged back, I feel like Dolan would have gone off the rails because he's obviously very close. Did you like how we interviewed him, Bri? I did. I also liked the way that the words are just spilling out of James Dolan's mouth. Whenever I hear an owner interviewed, you realize we don't hear these guys talk that often. For a reason. They're in our minds and in our stories all the time. But then you hear him talk and you're like, oh, wow, these people are bonkers. Yeah, really crazy.

And just the way he was, how fast he was talking and just, you know, he would kind of like, okay, we get a question out like half second later, just the words are falling out of it. It was wild. He made up a word. What word did he make up? I think Jason Concepcion was telling me about it.

It was like, it was a cross between stupendous and tremendous, but he used it as a noun so it was like stumination. It was unclear. It was barely audible. What were you going to say, Jason? Yeah, let's not wimp out here, Bill. Let's go right to it. Are you in a conspiracy with Daryl Morey to

break apart the New York Times? Well, we think that was the GM, right? I assume he was implying either Ainge or Morey. Ainge who I've met like three times for a total of eight minutes. I went to Ainge just because that's what I thought Dolan would be thinking. So if Morey, I'm legitimately friends with. And I've admitted it. I've talked about it.

And it's been a recurring theme for the last 12 years. He's been on this podcast a bunch of times. The funniest thing about what... Two really really super funny things one was that that daryl morey would be threatened by free agents meaning durant i would say over anybody else going to the next daryl morey would drive durant to the airport if he left the warriors to go to the next everything they literally the greatest thing that could everant to the airport if he left the Warriors to go to the Knicks. I mean, literally the greatest thing that could ever happen to the Rockets is Durant leaving the Warriors. So that was funny. And then the part about, you know,

like there's this conspiracy to stabilize the Knicks. All of these people are coming together and trying to make it seem like they're not stable. It's like, dude, you've already done that. You've done that for 20 years. You were the model for answer as of dysfunction and destabilization. I don't have to do anything. So that's the second. And then the third part is just like, as a Celtic fan, I hope he owns the team until 2080. I don't want him to sell the team. I want him to keep it. Please, you're terrible at this. Just to clarify, you're saying no,

you're not in a conspiracy with Danny Ainsley and Daryl Morey. It was a non-denial denial. What is it like to be the recipient of a major fourth wall break like that? When you heard that Dolan was calling you out, what did you think? Well, this was especially funny because I played nine holes of golf that day.

And I just did, I turned my phone off because if I get the phone, I get distracted. And I got off the course and you turn your phone back on. And especially when you, we have 92 people that work for us.

So anytime I turn the phone off after two hours, there's that split second where you're just like, man, I hope nothing happened. And whether nothing happened could be something that was somebody that works with us or some sports story or just something awful. And this was the combo of the Odell trade and Dolan.

And it was just like, I just had all these texts and I'm like, what has happened? Then Dolan and people are just texting me, Dolan, exclamation point. I'm like, what has happened? Then Dolan and people are just texting me Dolan exclamation point. I'm like, what did he kill somebody? What happened? And then I realized what it was. And then it was just so funny. Like I was just immediately amused and so happy.

It's like, really? Plus like to deny that he was courting offers is insane. Cause so many people have the same story about this, like in the rich guy circles, because they were all mobile as in to try to put a bid for it. Well, if you look at the interview, you know, he does these very choreographed interviews and he did one with ESPN a couple of months ago where he talked at length about, you know, the team and his ambitions and plans for the team and why the Knicks are different than the Rangers. And he said a couple of things that seemed to me to be very, very much flagging, you know, make me an offer, folks. One was the fact that... He named a price? He named a price.

But secondly, he talked about, you know, how, you know, and we all agree that sort of the business of the NBA is franchise valuation, right? Well, the Knicks are the most valuable franchise in the NBA, shockingly, but they are because of where they are and so on. And he's saying, like, look, they have single-digit increases now. This is not a business where I'm going to somehow, my team is going to be 10 years from now, it's going to be worth twice as much as it is now.

I don't see it having that kind of thing. So that says, if you're talking about anything, that that becomes an opportunity for a seller to sell. Those seem to be real indicators that, you know, if he was not explicitly, you know, putting the team on the market, that he would at least listen to a very substantial offer. But I think the big thing with the Knicks as an offer is that it's just a big price.

That's a very big price. It's not Steve Ballmer $2 billion for the Cl price. That's a very big price. It's not Steve Ballmer, $2 billion for the Clippers. It's a much more expensive endeavor. And there aren't that many people who can pony up for that. I've talked to a few people about this. And what's changed about how these franchise prices have just gone through the roof. When you think about what the Philadelphia 76ers were for sale, and this was this decade. And I think they went for like 260 and some of it was debt assumption. And at that point, it's pretty easy to put together a group of rich guys. You borrow some money. This guy puts in 30. This guy puts in 100. This guy puts in 15. You're good to

go. And in this case, I think a realistic price for this Knicks team is like, let's say 3.7 billion, right? They're probably worth two and a half. And then there's the rich guy tax of if I own the Knicks, I become the hot shit in New York. That's worth like another billion point two. The problem is it's really hard to cut a check for $3.7 billion. Like there's's only two dozen Americans who could do that who probably care about sports. So if you're saying, I don't know, $1.5 billion or something like that, that would be the majority interest.

You would still have to find all this other money, and the word is out in the street now, minority owners. It sucks. You're putting all this money in, and you're basically just getting courtside tickets and that's it. You have no say in anything. It blows. Right. Yeah.

How would you like to put in $1.2 billion and get parking slot number two? You know, like that just is a, it's a big ask. I had somebody tell me, and I don't think I can credit them, but it was a great idea. I'll credit them in the next pot if they say it's okay. That the way to do this to buy an expensive team would be like, let's say the Knicks are three and a half billion. You put in 1.5 billion near the controlling owner. Take the other 2 billion and you make it public.

You go Green Bay Packers basically, and you just sell the interest. And now everybody owns that other part. And now you're still the majority. I don't totally understand the economics of that, but I thought that was a really interesting idea. So somebody buys it and they say that other two billion, I want the Knicks fans to own it with me.

Half the Knicks is like a public company. Yeah. Or like the Lakers or whoever it is, or like the Pittsburgh Steelers, whoever it is. It's like, come on in with me. We'll own this together. Let's save the Knicks together. And they do it that way. I thought that was kind of interesting.

I was going through the list of billionaires who could cut this check. So Bezos is one of them. They would have to like sports is the thing. Stan Kroenke has a basketball team, so he's not him. He's got three teams. Are there other Walton errors that could, Sam Walton errors that could step up to the plate?

Like Michael Jordan got the Bobcats. Like Bob Johnson sold them. He might be the only person who's lost money on an NBA team in the last 30 years. Incredible. And Jordan probably put in 100 million of his own money and that's it. When these guys like LeBron talk about, I'm going to own an NBA team someday.

It's like, you might be part of an ownership group. Like you're not going to, the amount of money it's going to take to own an NBA team. I don't see it. Bill, do you worry at all that, you know, James Dolan has kind of doubled down here and is going to be so agitated at you that were someone to come to him with a check for 3.7 or 5 billion dollars that he would stare at and say like if i take this i have to say that bill simmons was right i don't think he cares about me as much mad at bill simmons that i'm just going to tear this check up i don't think i have anything to do with it but i will say this you might have given knicks fans another 20 years of James Dolan.

Believe me, I'm as unhappy as Knicks fans would be about that scenario. I do think there's a stubbornness with him that is completely irrational that we saw with the Isaiah Thomas thing. And this is something that is a recurring theme in Dolan's life of like, you're not going to bully me into doing blank. And with the Isaiah thing, it was like clear. The move was like, you got to get rid of this guy. What are you doing? And at some point he dug his heels in. He was like, you're not going to tell me to get rid of this guy. I'll do whatever I want. I'm James Dolan. Don't tell me what to do.

And that's feels like that's now happening with, you're not going to bully me into selling. You can bring your signs to, I'll kick you out. This is my place. Is there another owner in the NBA or sports in general who would have done the same thing? Can you think of anybody who would have like had someone call, Hey, sell the team. And they would have had their, you know, goons remove them from the arena. I think Robert Sarver would do that, the Suns owner. He's basically James Dolan with worse PR. He doesn't have the profile that James Dolan does, but he's just as bad.

That seems like a mess. Jimmy Haslam, are we totally convinced he wouldn't do it? He wouldn't actually do it, yeah. What's weird is every time Dolan gives one of these interviews, it's clear that it really annoys him that the fans have so much say and sway with all this and it's really like a how dare you how dare you people this is my team this isn't your team it's my team how dare you well what makes me weird and what makes me crazy about it is it's so not New York. I mean, thin skin, man.

That's supposed to be something you shed the minute you walk into the city. You're not supposed to be the kind of person who has rabbit ears for criticism. I mean, it's a fundamental right of living in this town that you can say what you think and we're good tomorrow. And the idea that someone is banning people permanently for petty commentary is crazy. I don't know. Trump's from New York, right? There's a model for thin-skinned

and ban the media. Who is this guy? This did feel very Trump-ish, this whole thing. But yeah, it is. Well, first of all, start here. He inherited the team. I think we forget this over and over again

with sports owners is you have the owners that are usually the best owners and there are a couple of exceptions, but for the most part, they're usually self-made people that are just incredible businessmen and are billionaires for a reason. And then they eventually turn their attention to this sports thing. And they're like, now I'm going to do this.

Now I'm going to make this successful. When somebody has been handed a team, it's either because their husband died, like the New Orleans Pelicans lady, Gail Benson, or their dad died, or their dad got super old and gave them the team. This doesn't mean that you have credentials to run the team. Jeannie Buss, who has been in the business world for a while, I'm not sure that means she should own the Lakers.

Her dad did, her dad did a great job. She probably learned some stuff. We have no evidence she should be a successful owner. We have evidence james dolan should be an owner she's kind of funny there's no other world like when my son turns 25 he's not going to take over the ringer like okay guys wow is that a new break wow okay here's ben simmons he has some ideas about how to incorporate fortnite into our uh into our coverage Fantasy is going to go out and buy a car. All right. Way to go.

Well, we do have the root for the second generation scenario, which is you're kind of in that zone with Jonathan Kraft right now, if I'm not wrong. I found myself in the Stephen Jones. There's the Stephen Jones faction with the Cowboys. There's a right way to- What if the self-made guy, isn't it time for the self-made guy too? You might be onto something, Curtis. Simmons

versus Dolan might just be a ruse to take attention away from the whole Kraft thing. Come on. He's an old, old widow. Come on. I will say the one way to do it and this has had mixed success, but I do

respect when people at least do it, is Jonathan Kraft really did try to go up the ladder as a real business person and have different experiences. I think Genie did to some degree. Kirk Lakob on the Warriors, who really since he got out of college and his dad took the team, has tried to work his way up the front office as a real basketball guy and really put the time in. I don't know. I like when people do that. I can't imagine James Dolan kind of put the time in as a potential owner. This is like Don Graham at the Washington Post. I'm going to be a reporter and I'm going to be a sub-editor and I'm going to learn the business thing and then all the way up. Yeah.

That's the respectful air. The New York Times publisher. I met that guy recently. AG. Sulzberger's they you know they operate almost like a monarchy but they try to keep the times of the family but whoever is the next person up they have to start

at the bottom and work their way up and experience all these different parts of the newspaper before they're ready to do it it It's smart. James Dolan, that has not happened. But the funniest thing with all of this is that he seems to think he's a good owner. And it's like, I don't interfere with my guys. I've given you everything you've wanted. Yeah. I've spent money, but he doesn't realize that hiring people is part of this. And if you're absolutely a 1 out of 10 F- at hiring people, that means you're a bad owner.

Does anybody think they're a bad owner? Ever? Did Marge Schott think she was a bad owner? I think older owners think they were bad owners. I think they acknowledge it as they get deeper into the thing. I think they understand that they were rash and made bad owners. I think they acknowledge it as they get deeper into the thing. I think they understand that they, you know,

were rash and made bad call. I think that any sort of wise owner would be, you know, alert to that. You think?

Yeah. I think they may not say it though. I think you're in such denial at some point. You're just trying to convince yourself whatever your reality is.

I gave you Phil Jackson. You asked for Phil Jackson. I gave you $60 million worth of that guy. You've always been a success in business, and it's hard for you to admit. And you're probably making money off your terrible basketball team. Right. Dolan certainly is. So you convince yourself, of course I'm a good owner.

He hasn't been a bad Rangers owner, apparently, because he's hired a little better on that side. Yeah. Another incredibly overrated franchise. The other move, of course, is for everybody, everybody in the sort of greater New York area to become massive fans of the J.D. Straight Shot band and just to buy so many records

and to stream so many songs that they become such a global phenomenon that they are on world tour constantly, like the dead or something. And, you know, he's not able to attend to the team because it maybe just falls out of interest with it because he is a full, full on rock star. I mean, that's the Irving Azoff connection. Is it right? Yeah. And, and by the way, those guys are incredibly successful in the music side.

So it's not like he is a, he's not a bozo as a businessman. He just doesn't seem to understand that owning a sports team is different than owning the MSG music side of things or whatever else they have. It's easy to be not a bozo when you inherit a lot of stuff. True. He could fix the subway. You don't do anything. You're not a bozo. James Dillon could literally fix the New York City subway and people would be like, sell the dicks! It just

overwhelms everything. And I agree. Yeah, there are business enterprises that he's involved in that are wildly successful. The next thing just outweighs everything. This thing now, this showdown with this lawsuit with Steve Ballmer, it's basically Dolan and Azoff against Steve Ballmer who

wants to build a basketball arena right next to the new Rams arena that's coming out. And they're trying to block it. And they're either trying to block it because they really don't want it to happen because they want the forum to be the exclusive place that anyone would hear music there, or they want to get cut into it.

Now they're messing with somebody who has made a ton of money in his own time, who is just as stubborn as those guys are. And it really has the chance to be one of the, it's like a Billions season. It's not a Billions episode. This is like season five of Billions, this conflict with Jeannie Buss getting brought in. Like Axe is the only person missing. That was the incredible part of the story.

They wanted the Lakers to move back to the forum, back to Inglewood, essentially, to preempt the Clippers. And she's calling Ballmer balls in the emails, B-L-L-Z, like derisively. And I'm like, how are you putting this stuff in email? You're the owner of the Lakers. You're putting like a huge plan in there.

But yeah, this whole thing this week, because I've been thinking a lot about owners and just what we want from owners. And I actually think the worst kind of owner is what the Celtics had before this latest ownership group where they had the Gastons and they had Paul Gaston's son, who's a legacy kid, who didn't want to spend money,

didn't want to be accountable for anything. Wasn't it Paul Dawn's son? Was it what? Wasn't it Paul was Dawn's son? It was Paul Gaston. Yeah, it was Don Gaston's son. Didn't want to spend money, didn't want to be accountable for anything.

They made decisions that made the team worse to save like a million bucks. And it was just like the worst case scenario. I guess if you're going to do silver linings with Dolan, like at least he spends money, I guess. Like at least Phil Jackson, like that came from a decent place. Like this guy's a legend. We'll bring him back to New York.

People were excited about that at the time. But I look at somebody like Sarver and I'm like, wow, everything you've done has been. Everything's terrible. Yeah. You've actually, you're hurting. That's a great basketball city. And those fans now actually are starting to not like basketball because of him.

That's probably the worst case. And as a Cowboys fan, I'm in the, we haven't won anything in 20 years, but Jerry Jones is wildly accountable. He's the most available person in the NFL. He's the most accountable person we have. He's more available than offensive linemen. He's just like, here we go. Got an hour? Let's do it.

Brian, let me ask you a question about Dolan, which is that if you were his media strategist, a position we don't know whether or not that exists. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think he's answering the phone i think that person just keeps resigning a day into the job right it's like yeah uh what is the move i mean i think the move is you know total isolation and never do an interview ever again but

uh if in lieu of that what would be the strategy for polishing up his image? I don't actually know if the interviews hurt him. Do we think they actually hurt him at this point? I think he's such a toxic asset. I think there's no downside. It's like Trump. At this point, he can say anything. It's not going to change anything.

I mean, you're in the city with back pages that just want to tear you apart every single day. I do feel like the sell the team thing is going to get momentum in a way that it's been. And Jason probably has the best feel for this out of anyone because he's in New York. But it's been percolating for a few years now. And it feels like it's going to hit some sort of tipping point if they don't get these guys this summer. That's what the problem is. If Katie doesn't come and Kyrie doesn't come and now it's like, hey, we got Jimmy Butler. That, that, and hey, we spent six years tanking for Jimmy Butler and the fourth pick in the draft. Here's Cam Reddish and Jimmy Butler, everybody.

We did it. It's not going to go well. So. And the Mavericks win the championship. That'd be bad. Now, conspiracy theory, you could argue he's definitely

got a little swagger these days, old Jimmy D. He's like, I'm the owner of the Knicks. This is great. Maybe he knows he's getting KD, and that's why he's feeling himself a little bit. That thought occurs. That thought has definitely occurred. He's acting a little irrational confidence, Deanne Waderzy,

with some of the proclamations, which makes me wonder. I mean, this is a team that the best free agent they've signed in the last 15 years was Omar Stoudemire, who had no knee cartilage left, and they paid $100 million to him. So it's not like free agents have been

batting the Knicks away. It's tampering irrational confidence. Yeah. That's exactly what it is. Who is your favorite crazy owner of all time, just out of curiosity? From our era? It could be anybody. Anybody since you've been alive.

God. My favorite crazy owner. Pretty hard to top Bob Irsay. Oh, wow. Because he was on Twitter. No, that top Bob Irsay. Oh, wow. Because he's on Twitter. No, that's Jim Irsay. That's Jim. Oh, Jim. Bob is the moving trucks. I thought we were talking about Jim. Jim was sadder, though.

Bob Irsay was pretty good. Jim's got some major issues. Yeah, Don Carter of the Mavericks when I was growing up. Speaking of the Jordan rules rules there's this great scene where he's I can't remember who he's trying to sign

off the bulls but he has this whole speech about do you believe in God and all this stuff when he's trying to sign him to a free agent contract it's like it's like your interview

with the televangelist before you get the big free agent deal yeah and he wore a cowboy hat at courtside he was that's a good one

yeah he was he was a good one that's kind of old school NBA. Marge? Well, Marge, it was such a tough ending. It's a long couple of years. I mean, think about it.

30 years ago, people being horrified by something somebody said. Can you imagine Marge in 2019? I feel like the whole country would shut down for a week as we regrouped. Steinbrenner, I actually think has become underrated.

Yeah, we forgot. For the amount of media that he generated just day after day after day. But I think the lost guy for this is Charlie O'Finley. The A's guy from the 70s. And I think there's one good book about them. But the amount of crazy shit that guy did and just how off his rocker he was culminating in. And they won.

And they won. They won all these World Series. But then he guts the team in this just batshit way. He just basically sells all his players in 1976. It'd be like if Dolan just sold Porzingis for $50 million, but then also sold Kevin Knox and sold their lottery pick and got $100 million and was just like, fuck you! That's basically Charlie

O'Fiddley. So I love it. I think he's my sleeper. I agree with you about Steinbrenner. People have forgotten the Dave Winfield stuff. I mean, it's just... Imagine if that happened today. Bill, where would you put Victor Kayyem? Oh, that was brief.

That was brief, but bad. Yeah, if we did like a bad behavior by owners podcast, the Victor Kayyem episode would be strong. If you were played by Phil Hartman on an episode of Saturday Night Live. That's true. That's a bad sign. You're in the Notorious Owners Club.

So how many owners have been played by an owner, by an SNL character? Only a couple. Has Jerry Jones been an SNL character? I don't think so. He should be. He should have been. Hey, SNL character. Only a couple. Has Jerry Jones been an SNL character? I don't think so. He should be. He should have been. Hey, SNL, make Jerry Jones a character.

Steinbrenner, definitely. Victor Kaye, I am. Steinbrenner hosts SNL? Mark Cuban, I feel like, has been made fun of. Is Steinbrenner on SNL? Steinbrenner hosted. Hosted. Yeah.

Incredible. That is amazing. Steinbrenner hosted. I feel Steinbrenner is kind of a missing link in terms of when people talk about the president, they talk about his style and his sort of like, you know, just the way he works. I feel like Trump was very much inspired and awestruck by George Steinbrenner. No question. And think of like Trump coming of age in the sort of peak Yankee era of George being maximum George, then being exiled from the sport and then triumphantly returning.

I see all these kinds of parallels there. Very blustery. Do you think Trump would have paid somebody off for bad information about one of his best assets and gotten suspended for a year? Because that actually happened. Check out the Dave Winfield story. Yeah. It feels in play. All right the Dave Winfield story. Yeah. Nuts.

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Use the offer code BS to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com slash BS. Offer code BS. Okay, so we're going to move to another great story. The college cheating scandal that included Lori Loughlin, a.k.a., and Felicity Huffman. And seems like it has the potential to be a domino that bleeds in the college sports for like the next 10 years. I read the Pat Forty, Dan Wetzel piece yesterday about there's two names in that story that are like two famous

behind the scenes college basketball people. And I just wonder if this is the start of seven years of stories. We took care of the PressBox overworked Twitter joke of the week in like five seconds with the Aunt Becky and wake up San Francisco jokes from Full House, which were really epic. You're in big trouble, mister, with Mary-Kate and Ashley Ellison wagging their finger. I had two absolutely favorite details from the USC part of this. Number one was one of the fake women's basketball players that was signed. She, of course, was not playing basketball for USC. And somebody came up and said, what's wrong?

Why isn't she on the team? Thinking there's a real legit basketball player. And the excuse the AD came up with was, oh, she has plantar fasciitis. So as a society, we've been, oh, that's that thing Tim Duncan had. No question. I got no more questions. Can't fuck with that. Plantar fasciitis, we just assume like that's it.

That personal partner. Could be three years. That was amazing. And the second one is they actually got a fake football recruit was involved. And I was thinking like, this is amazing because college football fans know who all these guys are. They don't, there are no like mystery football recruits. They have video, they just everything. And then I found out, oh, it was a kicker. And that's like the one black hole of college football recruiting media, because you get these guys and it's like,

oh, he was nine of 15 in his high school career, but he hit a 50 yard and he was great at a camp. And so you're like, yeah, sounds great. It's going to be the next, next great kicker at my school, but that's how they snuck it in. Those are my two. Those are my two. It's one of the last positions where you have these kind of like natural, like, you know,

fines like, Oh, you know, he played Aussie rules football and we found him at a circus and like all this kind of stuff. And like, yeah, he's not a known quantity in the same way that a quarterback was.

Wasn't the kid also from a school that didn't have a high school football team? There was that. And somebody tried to get into a quarterback was. Wasn't the kid also from a school that didn't have a high school football team? There was that. And somebody tried to get into a sport that USC didn't have, it was lacrosse. Yeah. And they're like,

well, they don't actually have lacrosse. We're gonna have to pick another fake sport for you. USC lacrosse. So, you know, my question here is like, you know, we have some children among us. Bill has the ones that are closest to college, but still a ways away. This feels like a story that

has all kinds of elements of wealth and privilege, but also just super 2019 crazy parenting. And do you see parallels here between the lengths to which parents will go to get a kid into school and the kinds of stuff you observe in, you know, youth sports and just parents and travel teams and all the nuttiness there. Yes. Okay. Next segment. I just dealt with it. My daughter was applying to schools here for ninth grade and, and, you know, there's only so many spots and so many schools. And as the story, this happened after we found out where everybody was going. And I was thinking this story, I'm sure this must have happened with at least one of the schools, right? As a parent promising, well, if you let her in, I'll do this. Got me thinking though, I should start doing this with ringer internships, right?

Oh. You know, a lot of people want to work here now. We're the greatest website in the world. Not a lot of spots. We don't have a lot of internships. They want a side door to the ringer. Just random parents coming in. We're willing to be bribed here at the ringer.

We get so many internships. Poor Kyle. Hey, Kyle, you have an intern now. His name is Jack. He's got ADD, and he doesn't know anything about sports, but he's going to be your new intern. Never produced a podcast. His high school didn't have a podcasting.

Breaking microphones as he's setting them up. He's like, no, no, no, we can't touch Jack. He's here. But no, this is all part of the same beast, is parents becoming competitive with other parents and wanting the best for their kids to a point that, This is all part of the same beast is parents becoming competitive with other parents and wanting the best for their kids to a point that, and also wanting to impress people in their lives, right?

Yeah. The stuff about like trying to get your kid in a pen because it's an Ivy League school and now you're paying off people at pen because you want to tell your kid, your friends that your kid got an Ivy League school. I feel the NCAA part of this is just a complete stalemate. The whole NCAA thing. And this goes to Zion and this goes to everything else. We've basically, the media has decided that amateurism is fraud and a con and wrong and et cetera, et cetera, but nothing is happening.

So it's kind of like every time- Nothing ever will happen. And so there's sometimes, every time a case comes up, everybody gets really mad. And like you were saying, pointing at the Zion thing, like, finally, we've hit it. This is the moment the dam breaks, but the dam doesn't break. It will never break. And so we're all just kind of, there's just nothing to do at this point. Just from a how do I write a column perspective, just nothing's going to happen. We all want to be there at the moment the dam breaks.

That's as a journalist, any dam breaks. Celtics win a title, the amateurism dies, baseball goes out of business, whatever it is, but it doesn't happen. And so we just kind of gin up all this energy and then you kind of go, okay, well, nevermind. And people seem to be underrating that it's actually really fun to play college basketball. Titus and I talked about this last week on the pod. It's just like, Zion's having a great time. He's at Duke. He's with all these dudes. He's playing in front of a packed house.

He's being idolized. He's never had any of these experiences before. This isn't a bad thing. And he's going to make a lot of money. Yeah, I mean, I think,

not to sound like a Wall Street Journal columnist, but I think the market will solve this before the NCAA ever does. I think that what you're going to have happen here is leagues,

whether it's G or somebody else steps in in another sport. These leagues are created in their content, and people will watch them, not in the numbers that they would watch high-level professional sports, but they'll watch low-level professional sports

because it's young and interesting, and these are people you can follow. And then college sports can go off and be college sports, and you have the regionalism and the excitement and the sort of fan stuff. And I don't think it's essential to college sports. And you have the regionalism and the excitement and the sort of fan stuff. And I don't think it's essential to college sports to have the best of the best of the best. I truly don't.

I don't think you're like sitting at a national championship and saying, I have to see one of the greatest running backs in the country right now. Well, we're not getting the best of the best now. We're getting people that are unfinished products for a year in basketball. Especially in basketball. In football, it's a little more finished.

Because you get three years and junior, you're pretty much there. I think what Jason said is the key point. I brought this up to Adam. He didn't take it and run with it, which made me feel like that was the one time he got, I don't want to say dodgy but um I think the G League is what solves all this at least for basketball there's no answer for football but I think if they pour real money into the G League

and have a 30 team league that has like a 25 million salary cap and play they stagger it so that maybe it starts in like July and goes all the way through to January, and then those people, it's this 50-game season, and then they can join the big team at the end. There's a way to do this where they can just make money from it. And once that happens, college is done. I mean, done as a place to see Zion Williamson. And candidly, it's better for college to be that.

It's better because you don't have the headaches. You don't have the problem of having to police your top tier talent from getting income. And it's just ridiculous. But I think that what they're frightened of is like, what does that do to the television product of it? If it at all arose the audience, is the gravy train slowing?

And that's the issue for them. Well, think about this. So I was reading in Breaks of the Game, which is set in 7980, and I'd forgotten this. The CBS has the NBA contract. But then the year before that 7980 season, they go all in on college basketball for the first time. And there's this real fear that they talk about in the book with the NBA people that college basketball is going to surpass us.

Wow. And what are we going to do? And they're showing all these college basketball games, they're tape delaying the NBA games. And this is less than 40 years ago. And now we're looking at college basketball going, wow, this could really just be the MLS basically compared to the Premier League of the G League in 10 years. I really think that's conceivable. And I also think you're going to see, and there's no reason legally this could not happen, that if you're going to create the G League and you're going to create an avenue for young people

to not go to college and professionalize, well, you could also do that for people who are in high school. There's no problem. I mean, we have it in soccer. It exists. We have IMG Academy, right? Exactly. And I don't think that there's anything preventing teams. You will see players enter the

Houston Rockets system. Players enter the Sacramento Kings system. There's nothing standing in the way of that legally. Well, Doncic's rise I think is a fun example of how this might work someday. Because he was a pro when he was like 16. As an 18-year-old when he would have been in college

playing a 30-game season, he played an 85-game season or something for Real Madrid and was playing against the best pros overseas and he turned out fine. So he was making money from age 16 on versus somebody like Zion who's only making under the table money this year, and then will make real money next year.

But maybe that's a solution. I sort of think that I agree with Jason in the sense that if something's called the University of Texas, Longhorns, football, basketball, I will watch them. If some of these people peel off and go to a pro league, I'll still be interested. And by pro league, it's still the uniforms. And by the way, as,

as NBA tapped the brakes guy officially here at the ringer, um, NCAA tournament and the NCAA is going to be the biggest thing in the world versus the G league. I just, just a mild correction for the, for the foreseeable future. Right.

I agree. I get carried away with the G league. Like who, like I'm talking about literally nobody is watching the G league, right? The NCAA term is a billion, billion dollar, away with the G League. I'm more talking about... Literally nobody is watching the G League. The NCAA tournament is a billion dollar, bazillion dollar business. If the G League had your top 10 prospects every year, basically if they had the top 30 players who were freshmen...

Is there going to be a crazy 64-team tournament starting in March with everybody's alma maters across the league? I don't think they can replicate that. I think it would be bigger. I'm just saying, like, college basketball is gigantic right now. Even though we're peeling off players and they're staying one year, that's still a huge business. Even if you remove the top 30 players,

I still feel like college basketball, March Madness, that would even be more fun. Maybe it's Holy Cross's chance to win it. There you go. Right. No, and players would stay longer, and you develop relationships with them that are, you know,

more long-lasting. But, you know, I'm tapping the brakes right there with you, Brian. But the other thing that's happened is, you know, part of the reason

Zion is Zion is that there was this whole sort of backlog of, you know, fan excitement about him going back four or five years is his school kid career. There were videos.

Yeah. You know, certainly all that stuff. And that's really new. And I think that that those players getting funneled into some sort of semi professionalized system, or low level professionalized system, I think, you know, will have more life because of that, because people are more alert than ever of all that stuff. And that, that's a whole other media conversation to show the Wild West of like, high school highlights and all these people commodifying another set of young people who aren't getting any kind of compensation.

Yeah, and that's only going to get worse and worse, too. I'm fascinated by the MOS, and I think that's a good parallel to what we're talking about here. I went to an MOS game. I have LFCC tickets. We went on Sunday, and it was really fun. I had an awesome time. There were a couple good guys on each team that were like world-class guys. And then some other guys who, you know,

it would be the equivalent of, I guess the G league in the, in the NBA. But the point is the experience was still an A-list experience. It's a great stadium. They've created these traditions and fans all stuff we've talked about on this pod before and i think i think college hoops if you just remove the best 20 players i still think you still have all that yeah multiplied by a hundred because of the college the loyalty the coaches who are really the stars um the tournament, the regional stuff, the conferences, all that stuff. Like I really, I don't think it would affect it other than you'd be,

you'd be removing the one thing that people like me really watch college basketball for who don't have a team is who are the best guys to share. And knowing you, you'd still get interested in the second tier prospects. I probably would. I'd be like, oh, you guys good,

good second round pick for somebody. He looks like a young Kevin Herter. He could be a ninth guy on a real out of playoff team. Let's take one more break. Hey, Allbirds is dedicated to making stylish, comfortable footwear using premium natural materials designed for life's everyday adventures. What are life's everyday adventures, Kyle? Taking the bus.

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the sheep well. Allbirds believes that comfort, style, and sustainability don't have to be mutually exclusive. Head to allbirds.com to get your own very special, soft, and cozy pair of wool runners. I did this Skype thing with Jay Adande's Northwestern class today and got one question that I thought would be fun to talk about for 10 minutes. Because I get this question, obviously this is the question I get the most. I'm sure it's the question you guys get the most too. How do I do what you do? Give me some advice.

How do I get into this? And one of the things I always say is if you want to be a writer and you want to write about sports, read, which sounds really stupid and cliched, but it's not because over and over again, I'm shocked by, you know, there's this whole, we have 60, 70 years of great sports books at this point, right? Including some of the all time classics that have been written in the last 40 plus years. And the three of us have read all of these, sometimes many, many times. And I think when you tell somebody under 25, give me some advice. And you tell them, have you read all the books? And they'll kind of look at you sometimes like, oh, really?

I should do that? I should read the books. Which got me thinking, what do you think are the best books to recommend for people? Let's say there's a 17-year-old listening to this right now or a 20-year-old or a 22-year-old, and you had to tell them five books to go read right now that will help them understand writing better, journalism better, why we do this for a living, why we love writing, why we care about this shit. What five books would you pick? What jump off your head? And I did not prep you guys for this because I thought it would be better

if it was like an authentic off the top of my head. Yeah. Big subject. Yeah, I know. I know. I, as a kid on that shelf and reading it about that age was, was Friday Night Lights for me. Yeah. And I think it's a great book, but it also shows you how you can take something. It's almost like what I was saying about Jenkins earlier and just make people think it's the coolest thing in the world. Yeah. Because you just invest so much energy and you write so well about it. To me, the whole myth of Texas high school football,

now extended with Operation Varsity Blues, is created there. It's just football. I grew up going to those games it's just high school high school football is good in california too but that mythic quality that there's somehow it's it's more matters but it's like bigger here the sun sets differently in texas so that's my number one pick what's yours jason oh man i mean i'll just go from, you know, autobiographical experience. At some point, my father, who was not a big sports guy, and actually forbade me from reading the sports section, so in the great tradition of kids who turn into things

that their parents don't want them to be. But he gave me Roger Angels the summer game and five seasons which is really a funny book especially five seasons when you think about it because it's just like essays about like

baseball games that at the time that I was reading this were already ten years old and it was just you know it was obviously

super literate and it was a way of looking at the game that I had never sort of seen in a sports page but also just felt you know

what a great life I feel feel like, you know, and not to bring it back again to Jenkins, but like the great writers kind of also just took you there and made you feel you were part of it and made you feel you were in on this amazing sort of world and secret. And they weren't just like kind of like conveying facts and information. They were developing a whole world, like in a way that great novelist would. And Angel is as good as it gets, obviously. And I think that was his real secret was he created worlds for you. I mean, he was representing worlds.

He wasn't creating anything. Still alive, by the way. And still alive at 90. Maybe the last one of those, that generation. Yeah. Unbelievable. And the other one that I would say is Bill Russell's autobiography, which is as great an athlete autobiography as there is.

It was written in his career. With Taylor Branch. Taylor Branch. And it's just, for a million different reasons, incredibly impactful. I think you need one truth-telling player bio in there. Maybe a Jim Bowden, you take Russell. I think you need one big muckraking, ugly piece of investigation. Like we talked about the Jordan rules as a good, the nineties had a bunch of them. Remember the book about Notre Dame called Under the Tarnished Dome? Remember going to the bookstore to grab

that one? Season on the Brink that one. Season on the Brink. Yeah, Season on the Brink. I mean, even that's a little more high tone, but there were just a lot of good muckraking ones. That's a good one, I think. I made a little starter list for you guys

to bounce off you guys that maybe people could listen to. I feel like these are essential sports books, but also books that each one brought something a little different to the table. So Breaks of the Game, which I still think is the best one, just because of the league that

it captures compared to what the league is like now. But also he is like 12, 14 page, just deep dives on like Billy Ray Bates and Maurice Lucas. And the access that he gets with those guys just could never happen anymore. So for a bunch of different reasons, I would go with that. Wait till next year's, I think is fun. We've talked about that in the pod before. William Goldman and Mike Lupka exchanging essays about this year in New York sports at Friday Night Lights.

Bring in the Heat by Mark Bowden. There's a good one. Where he spent the year at the Eagles and that was like the early 90s were really the last time you could spend the year

with a team and actually get real access. And it's the fish out of water where the journalist isn't on that beat. Right. And he's like, whoa, how does this work?

And obviously he went on to do a whole bunch of great things. Bringing the Heat. I'm sorry. Playing for Keeps was the sequel to Breaks of the Game.

That was Halberstam with Jordan's last Bulls team. And that's a really good book. And he didn't have the access. And actually, that's a better book than I think people remember. Moneyball, Michael Lewis. For sure. I would say is the most influential sports book of this century. 21st.

Had to become incredibly rich and famous by writing a sports book. Unbelievable. And think of all the stuff that it led to i mean it's clearly the most influential how to get business people to read your sports book exactly well right yeah yeah it's it's the uh what do they call that in like you know filmmaking the x of the x like it's the money ball of the x like that's now a substantial pitch for any book. By the way, I've listed now six books and all of them are must-reads. If you're like, I want to write about sports someday, it's like, you have to read those six books.

The City Game by Pete Axton. Pretty good. It's 50 years old at this point. It's about that first Knicks title, but I think it's more apropos now because of what happened to the Knicks. I like that book.

New York basketball, but also like the Knicks are finally going to win the title. And now it's like, wow, that was 7 million years ago. The Last Shot by Darcy Fry. Beautiful book. Oh, great book.

You could do a whole New York basketball trip. All-timer. Do Heaven is a Playground and have a trilogy of New York basketball. Last Shot's my favorite of all of those. I think so. And I think the Last Shot came out like,

Marbury had just gotten to Georgia Tech. Yeah, he's like a ninth grader. But he's a ninth grader in the book, yeah. And Darcy is driving him around. Yeah. Right?

And taking him home. I remember buying that when it came out and being so excited. But I think, believe it, did it come out as a New York Times piece,

I think, originally. Maybe. Or, believe it, did it come out as a New York Times piece, I think, originally. Maybe. Or a Harper's, maybe? Magazine piece. And then, yeah, it became the book. But that was just complete investment. And that's not a long book either. That's just like,

you plow through that in two days. Loose Balls, I think, is my favorite oral history book. It's about the ABA and the stories are great. And we've all heard these stories now, but if you're 25, you might not have. That league was insane. That's the kind of forgotten place book. It's about the ABA and the stories are great. And we've all heard these stories now, but if you're 25, you might not have. That league was insane. That's the kind of forgotten place book. You go back to this place that was awesome and is now

forgotten. Well, now it's a documentary. I think people are more prone to just make a documentary than do normal history. Ghosts of Manila by Mark Cram. Interesting choice. About Frasier. And it was the first time I remember somebody challenging the myth of Ali. And like, actually, he wasn't that great of a guy because he basically tried to destroy Joe Frazier's life and turn him into an Uncle Tom and called him an Uncle Tom. And Joe Frazier still is bitter about it all these years later. It's really an interesting reread.

Life on the Run, Bill Bradley. Good choice. An athlete writing really thoughtfully about basketball, who's also playing basketball, does not happen very often. Phil Jackson did a Maverick, but I think this book's better. Season on the Brink, Bobby Knight. For sure. John Feinstein.

Unfortunately, John's behavior the last 30 years has made people less prone to like this book. He's just crossed paths in an unflattering way with a lot of people. This book's awesome. Untouchable book. And just Knight is so raw and crazy and profane and a maniac in this. You reread it, you're like, oh my God. He got everything. This guy was a college coach and he just had everything.

Right. He did six things a week that would force a resignation in 2019. Yeah. Agassi's book, Open, I think is probably the most influential book of this decade. And then I really like Pride Still Mattered, the Vince Lombardi book. Oh, yeah. The autobiography of that. I thought that one and the Richard Ben Kramer one about Joe DiMaggio, I thought were my

two favorite kind of- Pride Still Matters is Marinus? Yeah. Yeah. Anything, any sports book he wrote, that's another. And then Kofax, the Jane Levy book Kofax did. Those three, if you're just looking for like diving into an autobiography of a sports figure, I think those are probably my three faves.

And then after that, there's a whole bunch of random ones. One that I have to mention, though, do you ever read Thin Ice by Larry Sloman about a year with the New York Rangers? No. The hockey team, New York Rangers. Yeah. Pretty good.

It's like Studio 54, cocaine era, a year. It's kind of crazy. I think it's out of print, maybe for a reason. It's the perfect title for that. If you're a hockey fan. Did I mention the Ken Dryden book? No. What was that one called?

I wrote that down. There's a famous one I've never read, though. The Game. Yeah, that was the one I forgot. Ken Dryden, that's the best hockey book ever. And he was the goalie for the Canadians during their big long run. And just is also like a great writer who's writing about Guy Lafleur, what makes Guy Lafleur tick. I can't even imagine.

It would be like if, I don't know, Andre Iguodala just wrote a book about the Warriors. And it was this incredibly well-written book about all this. So anyway, those are 15 that I would start with. You don't have to read all 15. But the point is there's a lot of great books out there. There's tons. Tons. And every time I think I've read all of them, then I find like 10 more that I haven't read.

I was like, oh shit, that's been on my shelf forever. And I've never read that. And you know, it's funny to reread a book that you love, like Friday Night Lights. And it's like getting together with your old friends. It's like, oh, Boobie Miles. I missed him. Boobie, we're back. Let's spend some pages together. That's amazing. Jason, what's the best cycling book ever? Well, I think most cycling fans would agree that it's The Rider by a guy named Tim Crabbe. Crabbe?

Crabbe. But I have a secret favorite, which is a book called Dog in a Hat by a guy named Joe Parkin. And it's like all great sports books are written by the people who are low level, right? The people who weren't the superstars, the people that were in the trenches. And this is a book about just, you know, the dark days of Belgian muddy Kermess racing.

And it's just, you know, as you guys know. As opposed to the golden age of that type of racing. It's just great. And it's just, there's so much skullduggery and he's a really good writer and really funny. So I recommend Dog in a Hat by Joe Parkin. But I had a question for Curtis, which is that what's the best Cowboys book?

Oh, I really liked the Jeff Perlman book. Oh, I love that one. That was a good one. So I'm in the Bayless trilogy, probably. Yeah, that's a good one. I mean, speaking of the muckraking 90s, he wrote a book about Tom Landry, God's Coach, that was a muckraking book about Landry.

Yeah. When that landed in Dallas. So that was a story. That was a big deal. Yeah, he was basically saying he was out to lunch like the last five years. Oh, and he got all the players to tell it. I mean, it's excruciating.

That's a great book. I'd also just want to add like the player who dropped out book, who just felt like this sports isn't for me. I'm out of here. And he's a little bitter about it. Yeah. And he's smoking dope or whatever. Like Dave Megiesi out of the league is a great one.

There's a great one about UT called meat on the hoof by a guy who went to the Darryl Royal UT football factory and was like, I hate this. This is, these coaches are tyrants. And we wrote that. That's a great one about UT called Meat on the Hoof by a guy who went to the Daryl Royal UT football factory and was like, I hate this. These coaches are tyrants. And Wilt wrote that. That's a great book. Those books where you realize that sports has this side of just people that are like, I want out. I don't like this. Yeah, fuck this.

Wilt Chamberlain's autobiography, which I wrote about in my book. It has this cover of just this close-up of Wilt. You're talking about the first one? Yeah. It close up of Wilt you're talking about the first one yeah it's like Wilt not just your average because the 10,000 women

one is the one that has all the attention now which is an inferior book this was 1973 and I think he was still in the Lakers yeah and

it's if you're interested in Wilt at all that's a good one that's another good one it's a must read it's really good I also

I enjoyed Spike Lee's basketball book that is best thing in the house yeah that's a fun one I's another good one it's a must read it's really good I also I enjoyed Spike Lee's basketball book that is best thing in the house yeah that's a fun one I think I've read every basketball book that's ever come out

and what's weird is they're not coming out anymore I think the internet has just kind of swallowed up basketball books and I'm not really sure why that happened I don't even know

Brian Windhorst has a big LeBron book coming out like sort of like a is that true? LeBron's second chapter yeah yeah he does a copy yeah there are books about katie steph curry books lebron books kind of come out but if they're like the big kind of like unexpected work of reportage of what a lot of these are you know if zach low decided to go

write that or something right that book has not come out in a while well be interesting like what if somebody wrote a book or wanted to write a book about LeBron and his buddies and this whole empire they built, but it was going to be like, I'm not, this isn't going to be a kiss-ass book. I'm writing everything. I think it would be really hard to write a book like that

because I think they'd have so much influence that they would just shut out who that person could talk to. Because we saw this happen with the Michael Leahy book about Michael Jordan, where Jordan decided, I don't like the idea of this book. And that dude got frozen out for a year

and the resulting book was not that good because he was so bitter about the lack of access he had. But also like books are just reverse engineered now. It's partly a function of the business now. Like they start with the idea of who can get on television, who can get out there and promote, and people are going to care about. And so if you have access to an athlete,

having LeBron and Maverick Carter run around and talk about the book on national television, which obviously they would do. If it's flattering. Yeah, right. So their involvement is central to it, is the most important thing. And who writes it and how good it is

is secondary to that. You forgot the live album three. Live album four. I wonder if these infomercial documentaries that everybody's making have replaced the book. Everybody's got a crew following them, filming them for some documentary about, here's what it was like when I came back from knee surgery.

I feel that's happened. I feel like the reality show replaced the magazine piece, like Ice Truckers. That's a great magazine piece that turned into like multiple seasons of a reality show. Right.

And then you're right, then the sports doc kind of just, you might've murdered the sports book. I mean, it's like once, because once it's a 30 for 30, it's my fault. It's fault. But like, once like you do the 30 for 30 SMU scandal, like that'd be about five years ago, that would have been in the zone of somebody can go write that book and remember somebody who was there and can go talk to everybody and get Eric Dickerson and all that stuff. But I do feel like once you see the 30 for 30, you're kind of like, I'm

satisfied. I forgot to mention the fab Five book that Mitch Albom did, which I have complicated feelings on because I know Jalen's side of the story with it and everything. I was going to say it was also pre, we found out a lot. Yeah, we found out a lot after. But in the moment, that was a pretty meaningful book because I hadn't really read somebody who spent time with college athletes who were having their jerseys sold for a hundred bucks

while they barely had enough money to buy two big Macs, you know? And it was such a moment that somebody captured that. It was such a moment. And I'm glad that book exists. I, I, there are still a ton of sports books being written because they get mailed to my house all the time. And then in the baseball industry, there's baseball books coming out left and right. And I think, I think there is an audience for them because they wouldn't keep making them if,

you know, I, what, what book is out there? What book do you wish you could read Brian? Right now? That's not written. Yeah.

Which book do you wish somebody was working on? It gets back to where we were with the NBA player thing. But if, but if Kevin Durant decided to write the real book, sure, I'd read that. With a ghostwriter? Don't you think? Yeah. Yeah.

Don't you think if he wrote the Wilt book now and just laid it out, wouldn't you read that? Wouldn't you be excited about that? Who's our best person to write the Wilt book? Is it KD? He has the kind of... Is it Kyrie? No. It's got to be bigger than Kyrie

I think it's gotta be KD okay here's I just don't think he would be as candid as Wilt was in that book because there were less repercussions back then but you said Wilt has a whole story about how he was in first class

and got blown by the lady next to him and they had a blanket over her and like he's just he just gave hard to believe KD going there he gave no fucks and I think I think KD would have to

you know Kyle's like what's the name of this book sounds like he gave all the fucks can we put the Jose Canseco book as kind of an honorable mention on this list what was that one called the book Jose wrote it was one of those things

I remember when it came out and everybody was like you big liar and then it was basically all true. And it is kind of a wildly entertaining book because he does go into the lives of athletes. Yeah, it's amazing. And he gets sued. Well, if you're a publisher. It was right.

He gets sued by Rafael Palmeiro. It's true. If you're a publisher and your boss gave you 10 million bucks and said you can have any contemporary athlete, they still have to be active, you can have that autobiography, who would you want? The honest, the Wilt autobiography version of them? Like they give no fucks? No, you have to consider their personality and whether or not they will give you that kind of thing. I think you have to consider that.

Because Tiger would be a dud, right? We'd love the real Tiger book. Exactly. We just got it in fact we didn't need Tiger for it I think it's Serena Williams I think that like she has you know a remarkable life

I think she has an incredible story to tell and I think she has a wildly huge audience and I think they would I guess my issue with that is I feel like she kind of did that with the docuseries little bit I feel like I already went behind the curtain with her.

A little bit. It would probably, for me, there's no basketball player. Is there a football player? You're saying there's no basketball player? I just feel like I know. One basketball player who has a good book in them. I just feel like I know everything about all the basketball players. Richard Sherman could write a great book.

Richard Sherman's book would be good. I mean, it's not on the Ser basketball players. Richard Sherman could write a great book. Richard Sherman's book would be good. I mean, it's not on the Serena level, but he could write a great book. There's no quarterback or no... No. No... Oh, I got it. I have the answer. I'm Coming Clean by Phil Mickelson.

The Phil Mickelson Zero Fucks book would be incredible. The Phil Mickelson I Don't Care, Hear All my stories about all the people I've gamed with. All right, we have our answer. But this is the way to think about the basketball book, though. Like, think of a guy who has been on a whole bunch of teams who wasn't a star, who was just kind of a great person. And like, you know, I don't know. Is it like Andre Iguodala?

Channing Frye. Like, is there somebody who has like a great book? Richard Jefferson? Richard Jefferson. Too nice. He's too nice. I mean, now these guys would do a podcast.

Vince Carter. Vince Carter tells all these stories on his podcast. I think the NBA players are so successful. He would have been good. Yeah. No one, no one mentioned Sacred Hoops. Sacred,

which one was Sacred Hoops? Phil Jackson. I'm good. Did you read that, Bill? You read all basketball books? Did you read Sacred Hoops? I read every Phil Jackson book. The most interesting one is the one he wrote

after he left the Lakers in the mid-2000s when he just assassinates Kobe over and over again. What was his old co-writer's name? Charlie Rosen. Charlie Rosen. My former Page Two colleague. Forgot about Charlie Rose. All right, we are now

at the point of the sports reporters coming to a close where Jason is going to do a parting shot. Take the stage, Jason. All right. Well, gentlemen, in the endlessly stimulating world

of professional sports media, there is a secret, mysterious force out there that holds more power and more influence than any other entity. No, I'm not talking about Bill Simmons and Danny Ainge and Daryl Morey, who everyone knows are co-conspiring to drag down the sport of basketball in the great city of New York. I'm talking about the critics and what the critics are saying. Not a day goes by in the world of sports where a reporter doesn't lean into some hockey player or basketball player or football

star and tell them what the critics say. Critics say you don't want to be here. Critics say you're a disruptive force. And best of all, what do you say to your critics? These critics have a lot to say, and yet somehow they remain nameless. We never get a precise ID on who they are. It's possible they're very real people. It's also possible that critics are a convenient straw man, a somewhat sheepish journalistic device to insulate the questioner from the criticism. By the way, this device is abundant in all forms of journalism, from business to politics to semi-listenable media podcasts featuring a homogenous panel of similarly-minded middle-aged white men. Brian, what do you say to critics who say you're too fixated on print journalism,

a profession that hasn't been relevant since the late 1920s? Guilty. And Bill, what do you say to critics who claim you don't talk enough about the Boston Celtics? When the critics finally realize that reporters are stealing their questions, they're going to be angry. They might even get really mad. But to these critics, I have only one question. What do you have to say to the critics?

Wow. Wow. That was almost too good. Yeah, that was too good. You should have taped that a little more. That's going to appear in the Wall Street Journal magazine in two weeks. I just pressed send. You really had an active train ride writing that on the iPhone.

I may have had too much coffee at 3 o'clock. That was a good one. Made me think. What a way to end. Made me think. Really makes you think. Really made me think. Really makes you think.

Talk about that. What a productive episode of the Sports Reporters. This was great. We had a great parting shot. We solved basketball. We recommended 25 sports books. What are the headlines that are going to be pulled from this about the

Knicks and Bill Simmons? Don't bring us down. We were so happy. My Knicks fans in my life are really mad at me. They're like, you don't realize what you did. Who did this? I'm like, I didn't do anything. What did I do? He's a crazy person. I think they're onto something.

I think you have sentenced the next 25 years. I apologize. I like the Knicks fans. Jason Gay, what can we read from you next at the Wall Street Journal? I'm going on vacation.

You can read nothing. Actually, read my colleagues. They're a lot smarter and better than I am. Okay. Brian Curtis, Press Box, and a couple of surprises that I'm going to tell you about

when the mics go off here. Oh, I can't wait. Here we go. Awesome. Thanks, guys, and enjoy the weekend. Everybody will be back on Monday post-March Madness with I'm not going to have a podcast Sunday night, but listen to One Shining Podcast because we'll be breaking down the March Madness bracket.

So see you on Monday. All right. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to go to ZipRecruiter.com slash BS to go to ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. Thanks to Allbirds. They make stylish, comfortable footwear designed for life's everyday adventures like the Allbirds Wool Runners, which are made from wool. They look great. Designed super simple.

Perfect for in and out on the town, in the office, or in my case at my daughter's soccer game when it's muddy and cold and I need nice warm wool runners. Oh yeah. Head to allbirds.com to get your own very pair, your very own pair of soft and cozy wool runners. Oh yeah.

Oh, and Billions. Thanks to them. It's launching again on Showtime, March 17th, nine o'clock. The season where everything changes. Enemies become allies, allies become enemies. Emmy Award winners Paul Giamatti and Damien Lewis are on hand as Chuck and Axe.

Don't miss the new season of Billions, Sunday, March 17th at 9 p.m. only on Showtime. Listen to our Recapables podcast where we'll recap that episode after. Don't forget about One Shining Podcast this weekend. If you're ready for the madness, they will be going tonight, actually, after some really good college hoop games

tonight, and then they're doing the bracket episode Sunday. They have you covered. They have Kyle covered. St. Patrick's Day. Do you believe that? It's Sunday night, St. Patrick's Day bracket show? Do you believe that? Does that mean you can't drink on St. Patrick's Day? It'll be a good one. It's about finding balance. Finding balance. I'm not a wool runner. that does that mean you can't drink on st. Patrick's it'll be a good one I get it's about finding balance finding my wool runners

uh-huh enjoy the weekend and we'll be back on Monday I don't have a few years left in me On the wayside on the front side of the road I don't have a few years left in me