The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Meadowlarkers 88: The Business of Caring

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

Howard and Amin are joined by Ray Ratto as they dive into one of our favorite Le Batard Show topics: Lists! Howard has a gripe with the way sports media has fallen into using lists and the analysis of them to pass as journalism, so he, Ray, and Amin have an in-depth conversation on how nuance has changed in sports analysis and why we're covering these games and athletes to begin with. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. This is the Don Levertar Show with the Stugat's Podcast. Welcome to Metal Lockers 88. And as we begin the countdown, I mean, El Hassan is here. We haven't seen you in a bit. You were over on your new show. Congratulations, Oddball with Charlotte Wilder as well.

We haven't been teeing that up as much as we should have, but that's where we've been able to see you. We have Ray Raddle with us as well. Ray, this is your third shot with us, right? I think this is number three. Yeah, we're going to try to get this right at some point. I'm going to try. I'm going to try.

Kate Fagan is out. We will see her next week. And first, Ores of Business, let's see. We're going to go 88. We're counting down. I think we've only got three shows left, but as we are counting down, 80 is a very easy number for our honorary captain. It's the wide receiver's number really. Too many to count, but obviously it used to be the premiere wide receiver number Lin Suan 88,

Drew Pearson 88. All of that being said, Michael Irvin 88, the playmaker, but of course, because Ray Rato is here and he's wearing an Atlanta flames NHL T-shirt from back in the day, we got to go with the ultimate 88, and that is Eric Lindras on the skates, right? The man who invented concussions. Made them important. Welcome boys. You know, I got some problems as always.

And I hate to perl it as we know that. I hate the use of the term legacy when we're not really talking about legacy, you know, some Joker scores, 35 points and says you're just trying to add to his legacy. When you're actually just adding to your point total, one of the things that has gotten to me lately, and we just see it all the time, is the list, if Kate were here, she would say, list be get lists. And it seems to be engaged in Kate's point, it's that once you get on one of these lists, you have to be on one of the lists. Now you appear on future lists in an ads to your cash. This is a little bit different. This is the list to replace essentially journalism.

It's how we frame virtually everything. The top 25 is out. We were talking about talking about that. There's this story going on now about Steph Curry saying he's the greatest point, got him all the time. So now there's the Steph versus Magic Johnson. And now who are the top point cards of all time? There's the ongoing list versus spy versus spy of LeBron and Michael Jordan. And on it goes. And so I'm sort of wondering what the implications of all this are. I mean, it just feels to me, Ray and I were talking off line

on here before we get on about how it really is the journalism equivalent of sitting on the couch and eating a party-sized bag of Doritos from the lazy factor. But, you know, Ray, why don't you say, let me just start us off, you tell us about this list, the list phenomenon in itself. Top five, everything, top 10, this, it is driving me insane. Well, you being driven insane is rather a short trip. It's a good thing. Yeah.

That said, it is the substitution of argument for journalism, because you can argue about a list forever, because the list is entirely subjective. Including the number of things you're trying to list. Like if you're trying to find, okay, who are the five best players in NBA history? You find out that it's really about 22. There's not a best five because nobody can agree on what the parameters are. You know, my favorite thing about that is Ray is I interrupt you very quickly. My favorite thing about the NBA list is when somebody says, give me your NBA Mount Rushmore

when it's got five guys at McCourt. There's only four guys on Mount Rushmore. It's like, we can't even get that list right. Yeah. No, it's a bunch of artificial constructs that are designed to allow people who don't feel like they want to do any research. They have arguments and have opinions that are supposed to be taken as seriously. When in fact, no, you're just another gas bag in the bar.

And frankly, most people go into a bar just want to drink. They don't want to exchange viewpoints on the five best Cincinnati royals of all time. Yeah, no, it's hysterical in the sense that there's never an answer. You can't win this argument. It exists because it cannot be solved and it cannot have a resolution.

And as such, that's why it's such a great go-to for publications, for media heads, whatever, because it creates a never-ending loop of argument conversation, people watching it, want to chime in, because everyone has their own top five list. That's the other part of it. It's like, whatever lists you, the three of us can come up with top five. It could be three completely totally different top fives. We post it. There's going to be an endless supply of people underneath in the comments who say all three of us got it wrong. It's actually these five guys are in this order. And so that's why it exists. It exists because there's no resolution and because it's easily engageable content.

It's also incredibly lazy, but that's why you see most of these top whatever lists formulate and get prominent in the off season of these sports. That's why we need something to talk about. Look man, baseball ain't what it was, right? It's not captivating minds. Aren't the minds the way it used to be. August preseason games for NFL or just getting the Sartre underway, but that's not

that those don't account. It's August. What are we going to talk about? Talk about top five this top seven that top 10 this top 25 that. Well, and what's crazy about it too, is that it does fit where we are as a culture, right? Where you're on little small devices on your phone, screens not very big, perfect for a top three list. We're on little snippets of information, whether it's Twitter or TikTok or Instagram or whatever. And so, you can post that list and then you see people talking in their small clips like we are right now.

You'll see, you know, and this passes as information. It's, and I understand it. There is, however, I think the issue to me isn't that it exists because people talk about whatever they want to talk about, so that's a big deal. But it's place in our information. We're still journalists in a lot of way and we're still, a lot of us are still trying to create

actual, we're covering news. And so this is replacing that. And when that happens, you run into a bit of a, you know, it actually becomes an issue. My favorite thing about the list, though, I will say, Ray, is whenever you contribute it to the list, when I was on Twitter, invariably it was always, always someone to step in and say,

you forgot this guy. What about Kareem? Okay, Jesus Christ, right? So to me, I guess the issue is that isn't it one of the things where you're looking at the list and the bar room argument, that's supposed to be the fan side of the conversation, that's their realm, but it's now become our realm. Well, but that's sort of the idea. The idea of getting excited about what used to be Twitter was that it would democratize content that everybody would have a say. And most people who want to have a say are people that shouldn't be heard? I mean, and all the lists are based on a simple theory that first you have to argue about what the list is trying to measure. You know, is it the best player of all time? Is this the best player you've ever seen? Like that's

a measurable thing. Is it the best players of the last eight months? I mean, first of all, you have to argue about methodology. Then you have to argue about the definition of best and what that's supposed to mean. How many skills do you have to have in this particular pursuit to be considered one of the best? So it is an argument about an argument, about an argument, and it becomes a tail chase that is easy to moderate because you don't have to have an independent thought in your

head. As long as you can yell loud and pay them and buy the next round of drinks, you're home free. You can do this for days on end. It's the beast that feeds itself. It's an arborist. Yeah, one of the things I mean that hit me, I don't know if anyone will take a detour on the list because this is list based. This is list. This is listed Jason has if anyone has seen the Showtime slash Apple dot Goliath the Wilk Schaimbelen doc. Yes, yes, I did. And this to me is where this conversation really came from that when people do talk about the greatest players of all time, he's not in the top 10 or he's often not in the top five anymore.

And I didn't really care about where he ranked except for the fact that it hit me generationally. Now, Ray, you've got me by a few years. I mean, I've got you by a few years. You saw Chamberlain play, didn't you, Ray? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I never saw Chamberlain play. But the thing that I really liked about this documentary, the one thing that hit me about the documentary was when I started caring about basketball, it's probably eight or nine years old, so we're looking at 77, 78. Chamberlain had just retired. So he was still the guy, you know what I mean? He was still in the, you know, he was still in the public memory as the most dominant big man of all time. He's that dude, right? And so I just found it interesting as we create lists upon lists upon lists,

what it actually does to the historical record because now you can look at somebody like Chamberlain and have no concept of whether he was any good. And that to me is sort of, that was the danger piece of it. And also when you see this conversation going on about magic and Steph Curry, how are you, you know, we're assessing players and talking about players if you're of a certain generation, you saw both of them.

If you're of another generation, you've only seen Steph. And if you're of another generation, maybe you've checked out and you've only seen Magic. You didn't really watch basketball that much anymore. Yeah, and I think Chamberlain is the best example because his name is the first one that created arguments because if you look at his raw numbers, they're not going to be repeated.

Never. Anybody's lifetimes. And yet, there was always a handy argument. Yeah, but he couldn't beat Russell. So immediately, now you're arguing about two different definitions of what the best is. He's the immediate bar stool argument. Yeah, and he was the first one, and he may still be the most enduring one. What about William's Demagio, too, though? That same thing, right? One guy put up the big numbers, the other guy won. What about William's Demagio too, though, that same thing, right?

One guy put up the big numbers, the other guy won the World Series, although Demagio put up huge numbers too. Yeah, I mean, that was a different thing, but Chamberlain is the most latent example of this. And I mention this because I did see him up close, and I saw Russell up close. And they were two radically different kinds of players. And Chamberlain wasn't just brute force.

He had nuance to his game and Russell was not just nuance. He was an incredibly skilled physical force in his own way. But to know that you had to bother to watch either of them, or even if it was just on film. And nobody wants to do that anymore because it means you have to actually spend five minutes looking on the internet for it. When it's much easier to just go to basketball reference and argue about raw numbers for guys you never saw.

And it's just part of the inherent laziness of it all that makes all this list making, you know, it's great junk food, but that's all it is. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that I talked about this with Rob Port and Chris Dillon, the directors of Goliath. And first of all, that argument of Russell versus Will, that much of it was mythology that was built by the NBA to fuel this argument, fuel interest. And mythology that was, in fact, myth, it wasn't real, right? Like you think about, oh, he kept losing a Russell.

Will you think about the Habitat Check Steels of Ballgame Well, you think about the halved chick steals the ball game, and they have the full film of Russell turning it over. Chamberlain making the clutch play to put them up, or put the game in the one point. Yeah. Russell having the incredibly bone-headed, unclutch turnover of throwing it into the stanchion. And then a play that Chamberlain has nothing to do with, turns into a turnover,

how it deals with all, Celtics win. The record, the paper, the basketball reference to use Ray's term says, Celtics beat the sixers. Again, Chamberlain lost again, Russell won again, but that doesn't do any kind of justice to what actually happened, where one was much more clutch than the other,

but the one who won was the one who was the least clutch. There's one problem, the other problem is, and it also ties into this. This is why whenever I do these lists now, I always preface it with that I've watched play. And I don't mean watch plays in watch film because I've watched film on Russell, on Robertson, on Elgin Baylor, on Jerry West,

on all these guys. But the reality is I recognize this in myself. Every stitch of film I've watching of these gentlemen is their greatest basketball achievement. Game seven of the 69 finals. Game four of the this playoff game. The game where he scored 80 that is always these superlatives. Or it's their worst, but I never get to the other side. Sure. Sure. But I never got to see Bill Russell on a Tuesday night in February against, you know, against, you know, the Hawks. I never got to see that.

I get to see Bill Russell against the Lakers and the... I got to see that. I never get to see those games. And so even the film that is consumable is blurred and is kind of... What's distorted? It's distorted in the same way like imagine if my entire existence of knowing about Steph Curry Was basically just watching the game he scored 50 against the King's Lashon and then also that game against the Celtics and the finals a couple years ago And also the game seven against the calves where he couldn't get shaked heaven love. If my entire perception where the

Steph Curry was greater or not just came from those cherry-picked memorable games I would be robbed of the full experience of no no no you don't understand it on a nightly basis people were like how are we gonna guard this guy and so on and so forth. So for me I've found a little bit of solace when having him ask to make comparisons and all that stuff, whether it's a list or not, to say, look, I can only talk about the guys that I watch play regular season games,

Magic, Bird, Jordan, Barkley, Ewing, so on and so forth, on. And even then, I handicap the games that I watched as a child, as a young adult, as someone who wanted to be in the industry, as someone who was in the industry, as someone in the media. Like, there's different levels to even the basketball

I was watching, even if I watched it. My understanding of what Jordan and those guys were doing in the 90s, pales and comparisons to my understanding of what Tracy McGregor and Kobe Bryant were doing in the 21s, pales and comparisons to my understanding of what Tracy McGregor and Kobe Bryant were doing in the 21st century simply because I wasn't watching them as a guy with popcorn and a beer. I was watching them as someone who's evaluating the talent. But you're being intellectually honest,

which most people can't be, one, because they can't have your sort of depth of experiences. And two, they're not looking for what you're looking for, even when you've got a bearing a popcorn. You know, that's why for most people, the best player I ever saw, well, I don't know who you saw. What does that mean? Now, it's just, it's, and that's why, you know, the list as, as, the democratic as it might be is largely useless, but because you can count clicks now and people like to have their opinions registered, lists become more popular because of that.

Whereas if you did like a detailed breakdown of just to use the example Chamberlain V. Russell and you got tapes of that Tuesday night in Cincinnati or the night when he got held at 7 for 25 against Zalmo, Bady and St. Louis. kind of work because it's work. They'd rather just gasp back their way through the next beer and then call their local radio station and do the same thing only with half a heat on. And that's why lists are as corrosive as they are. Yeah, and that is the thing about why this is an issue, is that I think if you had the balance issue is that I think if you had the balance that where you had a really strong sense of the journalism, a sense of the history, a sense of these things, and then you had the fun list as well, you could balance them out, but we're so completely out of balance now. And the reason why I bring this up about being out of balance is because I'm getting old, right?

I mean, I was thinking about the first generation, and I don't know who it was for you or who it was for you, I mean, but I think for me it was Patrick Ewing, where it was like, I think Ewing was the first player that I remember from high school to college to pro to retirement. I saw the whole thing, you know, and I was like, holy shit, right? Because that's not the case with Kareem. I don't remember Kareem at power, I don't, you know, it wasn't the case with Larry Bird. It wasn't the case with any of the, but you and was the guy that you remember the whole route. And the reason why I'm bringing this up now

is because if you don't have that level of context, and if those contexts aren't being brought to you, then as an industry, what we are constructing for people who are not in the industry is something as an industry, what we are constructing for people who are not in the industry is something that is so superficial, that you're not gonna learn. If you really do wanna know, okay, well, I never saw him at your Johnson player. I never saw Steph Curry play, tell me about him.

Like, if that piece is missing, then we're left with nothing. Right. And honestly, that's the part where, he also, the concept of who presents as an expert, who knows, right? Because when you talk to players, there's a grain of salt that goes along with that conversation as well.

I'll give you a great example. Dr. J came out a month ago or so with his top 10 players of all time. And not a single player on that list was an active player, and more importantly, not a single player on that list was a player that came after him. We protect our own time. Right. Like so the youngest player on that list was Michael Jordan, and Michael Jordan played own time. Right. Right. Like so the youngest player on that list,

that was Michael Jordan and Michael Jordan played against Dr. J. Right. So it's like the idea is like, hey, I'll name a guy who's younger than me, but he had to literally be on the same floor as me. And once we get past that, my time, then it ends. There's no way in. Or it could be before my time, but not after my time. Sure. So it's like, you know, he's telling you, these are my favorite players going up.

These are the guys that were toughest against people on our playing against. And that's it. The best only happens here. And it's funny to me. And both of you guys, maybe you can correct me, but I feel like this feels like a uniquely basketball problem. I don't know that this conversation that the weight was 30, 40 years ago was the best it'll ever be. And it'll never be this good. Existing any other sport the way it does in basketball. Now baseball, baseball, baseball, it might even be worse. If there's one thing out, basketball, I think what it comes down to and I, and I will exclude football from this for one reason, possibly two, but definitely one reason.

They changed the goddamn rules and football all the time. You can't, the players know this that you cannot compare Kenny Stabler to Tom Brady. They just change the game itself is so completely different. But in baseball, absolutely, there's a whole bunch of get off my lawn and baseball because the entire game is rooted in the past. It's not rooted in the future. It's not even and baseball because the entire game is rooted in the past. It's not rooted in the future. It's not even rooted in the present.

It's rooted in the past. And so in baseball, when you're watching, you know, when you talk to guys about how the game was played back then, there are so many places where baseball just gets dismissed, you know, the present game gets dismissed because of the benchmarks, you know, no complete games, pitch counts and all that other stuff and no stolen all the other things that we've heard about, even though today nobody in baseball history dealt with the volume and variety of velocity that these guys are facing right now. Go ahead, Ray. I know you want to say something.

Go ahead. But here's where I get off the track about baseball because one, it's changed its rules plenty. Yes. Including what the ball is like, which is the most fundamental. That's not a rule change. It's not a rule change, but it's a condition change. The basis for a different stuff. That's different though. But it's literally changes the rules every 18 months in terms of what you can do in terms

of pass interference and this and that and all that should be changed. No, I'm not arguing that football isn't bizarre that way, but baseball, for being as rooted in the past as it allegedly is, has changed its rules and the way it plays and the way it is governed more than any other sport. In fact, I would suggest that basketball is sort of the least volatile of those, because what are the big rule changes in the history of the sport? They widen the lane twice so the Chamberlain couldn't have 100 points of game.

They changed goal tending and they put in the three point line. And the shine of the game. Nobody has adapted to those same essentially those same rules. The hand check sure, but largely the game is played under the same general rules that it's always been. The difference is in the players and what they do within those rules. I would say that the illegal defense rules. I don't think people really appreciate how different. Well, the fact that you can play a zone. Yeah, but it's, it's, it's great. So I give one small example. If Howard were posting up,

Ray, right? Like I do that. Oh, I'd foul his ass. The old rules said, first of all, I could not help until Howard has the ball. Yeah. So the idea that like, I'm guarding the ball, the entry pass guy that I can sag back and

almost sit in Howard's lap and raise on the other side, I couldn't do that. I had to be on ball. When the ball got to Howard, that was the only time I could go help. And if I did, I had to commit 100%. I couldn't stun. I couldn't hedge all the way. And so in essence, if I were a big man, or if I were a star player, and I got the ball,

and I saw a double coming, I knew unequivocally, I had an exit pass right there. There were no mind games there. And so now, obviously, there's all these things where guys are sagging and they're coming in and they're going out, you don't know where, it's kind of an amorphous amoeba of a defense, and it makes it such more, much more of an intellectual pursuit really a

figuring out where the defense is coming where the help is coming and where my avenues are I think that even more than maybe hand-checking is the most devastating rule change in basketball in the last since the introduction of three-point lines so in the last but 45 years introduction to three-point line, so in the last, but 45 years or so. Yeah, and there's one other, and I'm not trying to top your story, because you know, way more about this than I do, but and Gary Viti, the old trainer of the Lakers, made a point of this, that defensive players now simply, no matter what the rules are, have to cover much more ground than they ever did before.

And part of the response to that is that they get injured more often because they are asking more of their bodies night and night out, which is why you get load management. So there are a lot of subtle things about basketball that are very much true, but in bringing this back to list making, it's why comparing Stefan Curry to Magic Johnson makes no sense because they are radically different kinds of players in radically different eras. No, that's right. And the idea that we need to conflate them based solely on the fact that we remember seeing both of them on television.

Was that somebody said something? Yeah, it's just mind-bogglingly stupid. But we don't mind mind-bogglingly stupid because it eats time and that's what we're trying to do. Exactly. We're eating it just so you know everybody, we're just eating innings right now. That's all we're doing. We're just eating innings.

Where that really does come to play is when you're talking about Chamberlain and Russell. For example, I think because look at the rebounds statistics back then. I mean, the number that these guys are just devouring rebounds, two things. One, they were so much, you know, they were bigger than most of the other players, especially Will, but also shooting percentages were so low back then. They were a lot of, you know, that's why I have no interest in using the triple double as some measure of greatness for today's players, because when you're shooting from 35 feet out, of course, the guards are going to get more rebounds.

The opportunities for triple doubles are higher than ever because you're not taking the same shots that you were taking when magic Johnson was getting triple doubles. Right. And the inverse of that is correct where it's like Oscar, average, a triple double and then over the span of like three years, you know, average triple double. But as you pointed out, field goal percentages were terrible, but also pace of play. There were like 130 possessions a game versus

102 103 in the modern game now. So that's way more shots that are going up, way more misses, way more opportunities to load up on counting stats. And again, not to say that one is better than the other or whatever, but it's just like, if you're not factoring those things into your analysis, then you're presenting a rather unsophisticated analysis of the comparison.

Well, I actually like what you were saying earlier about the Dr. J line because that's really good because it always reminded me of the veterans committee and baseball. And whenever the media, you know, not the media, the baseball rise, whenever we get criticized about our Hall of Fame votes, they would say, oh, you gotta let the experts do it. You know, and I said, obviously, you know nothing about the Veterans Committee because those sons of bitches settle more scores

than we do. Those guys are settling scores in that room. They're not doing what we're doing. They're like, I hated that motherfucker. We're playing. I hated him. We're not going to vote for him. Yeah. I mean, the Hall of Fame, which is ultimately the biggest list there is, no matter what the sport is, the baseball Hall of Fame is in that way the most honest because there are the most number of people voting and none of them are in the same room. So you can't really create your own grudge and then call 450 other voters and say, hey, help me out with this grudge I have against.

No caucuses in the baseball voting. I mean, and it's far from perfect, but I remember the story about one Roger Wurley got into the pro football Hall of Fame. Nobody thought of him as a potential Hall of Famer until the guy in the room from St. Louis made a tremendous sort of argument for him. And I wasn't in the room at the time, but people told me about it. And he basically swayed an entire room of people with the quality of his argument. Now is he a Hall of Famer? Well, he's in there, he's got a plaque. But would you think of him as a Hall of Famer?

My guess is you barely remember his name. I was going to say it means thinking, who's Roger Wurley? Yeah. I mean, but that's the point. It's just, it's, we all love lists because we are all addicted to arguments. And the idea that the scoreboard tells you who won and who lost is rapidly becoming less important because that settles arguments and people don't want their argument settled. Yeah. They want them. They want them the last forever. It's like Serbian Croatia in anything.

The argument is more important than the issue. It cannot be solved. And we don't want it solved. Well, we want Serbian Croatia for sure, but... Yes, all the other stuff. For sure. Another version of this, by the way, lower level than Hall of Fame is all star voting right all stars or all MBA or all pro or

Pro Bowl or whatever you want to call these these lists that come out either midseason or at the end of season And I'm always tickled by it because Inevitably there's always someone who says oh, I can't believe such and such was snubbed But they never tell you Who's on who should get off for them? I remember this happened most famously in the NBA. This was maybe like 45 years ago Michelle Roberts who was then the executive director of the NBA players Association All-Star reserves get named they have to two All-star teams and she says,

it's criminal that player XYZ wasn't an all named in All-Star. And I said, but you're the executive director of the personal association. So in essence, as you're sticking up for player XYZ, for not being on All-Star team, while knowing, hey, there's a limited number spot, so and one in means one out. That means you are going against player ABC, whoever he is, who's on the All Star team. And this goes back to this concept of lists and lists being finite, that the idea that someone being snubbed or someone should have been there,

unlike the Hall of Fame, where it just continues to grow in numbers. When you're talking about about these all whatever lists There's someone that you're campaigning to get kicked off, but no one I think that's the way we should frame the list from now on Is like we should just start the who needs to go list, right? And and to get them off like for example the you know the NBA That the the all-time you know the 50, now the all-time 75. These things actually have value in a lot of ways. I understand it for the player.

If you're a baseball Hall of Fame, your bank account just got much, much bigger, as opposed to not being in the Hall of Fame. Your profile gets bigger. I get all of those things. Ray and I were talking offline about this as well, about the need for the public to have experts to guide them. So your kids, your kids at college senior, and they want to go to college. So what do you do?

You get the US News and World Report. Top 50 colleges in the country, not knowing that that whole thing is button. It's one of the great scams that, you know, evil genius shout out to the evil genius, right? That, hey, circulation is flagging. We need to do something. Hey, here's a spot, you know, where, and now that is the measure.

You would not believe how much, how much space that, that list gets. People rely on that for trying to decide, well, UMass is only the 57th best school in the country. What? It's only your kid. Why would you do research? Why not just buy US News and World Report? It costs $495. You can get it at the Super boy. I paid that forty six ninety five for that list. And how well did that work for you? Not well. How much tuition did you play out based on that nonsense? Well, what's that? We want somebody to tell us what's what's real and what isn't because we can't figure out what it is except in sports where we all think we know what real is, and none of us have a clue. I mean, I've said this maybe a million times. The athletes know way

more about what we do than we do about what they do. And yet we're the ones acting intellectually superior by making lists and voting on these all- star teams and putting people in the hall of fame. And it really is only about arguing. I mean, the entire, the entire framework of it is who got voted in. Okay. Now we have to talk about the snug. And now we're going to talk about next year's MVP based on the first three games of the incoming state. Well, wait, the only reason I'm laughing right now is when you're talking about it, it reminds me of one of my favorite days covering baseball, which was walking in to Fedway Park, walking to the Red Sox Clubhouse. Now, you know, as well as anybody, that when you walk

into a clubhouse on an average day, right when the clubhouse opens, there's nothing happening. It's like a graveyard in there. There's nothing happening. So I walk in and there's no more. I walk over and I see no more, and he's salty as hell. And I'm like, dude, it's 3.32. There's nothing.

What could you possibly be mad about right now? I'm like, what's happening to me? He's like, I'm sorry, it's all right. And he says, you know, just because I've been to a restaurant doesn't make me a chef. I'm like, I have no idea what that means, but okay, just because I've been to the hospital doesn't make me a surgeon. Now, like, where are you going with this man? And then he finally said it, who the fuck are you guys to judge what we do? 330 in May after the random game. That's clear.

I was like, I don't know what you read. I don't know what column you had for, you know, we were reading over your breakfast, but he was on fire on this very point. Who are you to judge what I do? You have no idea what I do. You can't do what we do. And why do we defer into you? You come in here every and he was just, it was, it

was a classic rant. It was, it was, I love it. It was 20 years ago. And I remember it like it was yesterday, you know, who do you guys think you are? Telling everybody about what we do. I'll do the back end of that story because this happened to me my first year covering baseball. I'm in spring training. It's like day six. And, you know, I'm just in a clubhouse talking to this guy and that guy, Mike Cruko grabs me by the

arm and says, Hey, come here. And I said, what? Just come walk with me. Okay. So he takes me down to the batting cages down the left field line at Scottsdale stadium He puts a helmet on my head puts a bat in my hand and he's And there What are we trying to do here? Just just stand there He takes three baseballs. He puts them all in a pitching machine One is the fastball one is a curve one is a slider. I Can't see any of them. He walks over to me,

takes the helmet off, he says, when you ever say in the paper that someone so can't play, remember what just happened. And I went to school on that because what we can do is say, someone so had a bad game, someone so so shot poorly, so and show so and show struck out three times and ground into two double plays. But as long as we don't say this guy is unqualified to be where he is, we're on solid ground. But that too is something that we don't want to talk about anymore. We wanted to clear that somebody's a terrible player or someone is the greatest player of all time based on the first six games of a season. We wanted to jump into conclusions because every day like you said is legacy building. Yeah, where my favorite

I mean is I could have made that play. No, you know, that's that's that's that's offensive. That's offensive. That one is offensive. I could. I push. I push back on the saying so and so is a bad player And they'll be he's there. You couldn't do it. I'm like I'm not if you're comparing yourself to me We're already in trouble. I am not the comp the comp is the in the NBA the other 449 guys out there and Inevitably maybe this is a bit of list making, but you do not rank towards the portion of this where employment is guaranteed. You're probably somewhere in the churn where there's about 50 slow guys who are not in the league, who could be in the league right now, but for whatever reasons of availability, opportunity, et cetera, right? So that's

the thing. I do get irritated when players do that. And I'm like, whoa, you can't do it. And you're not supposed to be comparing yourself to me. You're supposed to be compared to your peers. And compared to your peers, you rank wherever, or you rate, wherever you rate. The other part of that is, the idea, just because I went to a restaurant, doesn't make me a chef. No

But if I go to a lot of restaurants and I eat a lot of steaks from different restaurants At some point I begin to have develop a palette that while I cannot prepare this meal I feel like I'm adequately Equipped to say the steak here is prepared better than the stake there. Yeah. And what I said to No more in that day, I used, I used a line from the great, the late great Roger Angel, where I said to him, the reason why we're here, No more, is the business of caring. Those people out there want to hear everything about you. I don't really give a shit to be honest. And I said to him, I was like, people out there want to hear everything about you.

I don't really give a shit to the artist. And I said to him, I was like, I'm trying to convey what they want to know about you. They are willing to pay $15 for watery beer and 40 bucks for pocket and all of that because they care about you, right? This is why we're here. Do you think I want to be here, stay in here talking to you while you're in your underwear

about this, they are interested. This is, and also, you're making 11.5 million a year, not because you can hit a ball with a stick, because everybody cares about the fact that you can do that. And the, the, the, the, the response was that's all bullshit. That's what I was going to ask. That's what I was going to ask.

It's because it was important to him that in his list, he was better than a 42 year old sports writer. Yeah. You know, as if being better at baseball than you will get him $11 million a year. Right. I'm going to get you $11. It's another one of those false constructs based on the simple theory that where I'm coming when I introduce this subject is my parameters. I don't care what your parameters are.

Yeah. So you can argue something completely different. We'll be talking past each other. And in the end, either we buy ourselves a beer and calm down or we punch each other out in the end. Well, I think what's really important about all of this too. And then this is the reason why that we're talking about this as a concept is what is our responsibility as the people who have the microphones and the people who have the pens and the laptops and are doing the documentaries in shaping this because if we're going to play the whole list game, then we better bring, we better bring it at a, at a higher level or the

credibility disappears here too, like for example, right? Okay, you are going to compare everything. At some point, we are going to talk about the greatest players of all time. That's what we do. But it can't be reflective of what we're seeing out here right now. It can't, what we do cannot simply be, you know, an Instagram clip because it's, it's no good. That's the point. That's a problem. Right. The problem is if you want a list well done with nuance and all that stuff, it doesn't compress neatly. But is it any less entertaining to do that? I mean, it's actually, I think this entire conversation has actually been pretty interesting.

I'll give you a great example, right? The the magic and and carry thing. I talked about it great length like all of the it doesn't it's it's a will to ask qualities of magic Johnson about you know nine final strips in 12 years yes but two of those years one was he was hurting his second year in only played 30-some odd games and the. And the other one was in the Aribal series. Yep. And then the other one was his last year where he came back out of retirement due to HIV and pushed this Laker team to a playoff run and then they bowed out.

So now I really talk about years where he was legitimately healthy. He went to the finals nine out of 10 years. And then that 10th year, he went to the conference finals. So you start to formulate all these things, it's like, oh my God, man, and it's like, oh, well, meaning is clearly trumpeting how superior magic is to Steph Curry has enough.

The flip side of that, Steph Curry, led the league and scoring one year, his unanimous MVP season, he led the league and scoring and shot 50, 40 40 90 from the field 50% from the field 40% of 3 90% for the pre-the-line While leading the league and scoring that's that level volume score Yeah, like that that doesn't happen by the way paying 32 minutes a night He led the league and scoring shooting 50 40 90 in 32 33 minutes a night

So not a lot of time, not a lot of shots, led the league in scoring. You know what the most amazing stat of that season is? It's not any of those things. He led the league in steals. Yeah. No one ever talks about that. He led the league in steals that year.

So like I said this and someone said to me, so what are you saying? And I'm saying, they're pretty good, both of them That's the point and and that conclusion Howard leaves people feeling empty They want after the exposition for there to be a declarative statement that that guy is the best player or the best point guard Or the best this or the best that and these are the guys and that's the order he goes first and then he comes after him You know why because he's better because of all the exposition I delivered if I sit here

Then I can wax poetic though numbers throw accolades. I just basketball wise sit down and watch hours and hours of magic film Then hours hours of curry film and point out all the nuances and all the great things that they do at a level that is supernatural that's just not seen anywhere else That doesn't leave anybody with a sense of... And then conclude, they're both pretty good. Yeah, you know. But my favorite, I'll tell you what my favorite magic Johnson like argument is, this is what I drop on people.

If I am with popcorn and beer and we're just doing the argument thing, I say magic's so good. You guys remember Walt Williams? Of course. Yeah. popcorn and beer and we're just doing the argument thing. I say magic so good. You guys remember Walt Williams? Of course. What was his nickname? I don't remember his nickname. Walt the Wizard. Walt Williams' nickname was the Wizard.

The reason why they called him the Wizard was because when Walt was coming out of Maryland, I believe, six, eight, ball handling, could shoot up. He's gonna be the next magic. I said magic so good. They had Nicknames off of just residue This guy got a nickname literally because hey, you kind of remind me of this other guy who's got a This got a pretty famous nickname. That's incredible

No, and you can just like biosmosis by just you being around me can get some of my shine. That's greatness Like if you're, if you're, um, Oh, what was it get? What was, what was his nickname? Which player? No, I'm thinking tennis now. Oh, yeah, I'm thinking Gregor Dmitrov, baby fed. Baby fed.

Baby fed, yeah. Just, he was not Roger Federer. They never are. They never are. And it's the worst thing in the world. They never are. They never are. And it's the worst thing in the world you can do to somebody. Don't put that on me, baby Shack. And what must be, baby Jordan, Harold Meiner.

Don't put that on me. You ruined my life. Oh, but that's the great thing about all of these is that in 20 years, you're not going to hear arguments about Jordan and LeBron anymore because half the people having them will never have seen Jordan because they're not going to go on. I have a little not seen either one of them. Isn't that the interesting thing is that the speed of which of all of this is that there

was a time when Bob Kuzi was the greatest player of all time, right? There was a time when Oscar was the greatest player of all time. There was a time when Bird was the greatest player. There was a time when Magic was the greatest player. I mean, and so it's like, it just, the river just keeps rolling. And so we're surprised every time. And it's like, clearly, Jordan, that's it. It's going to end here, right?

And then it just ends right there. And it's like, but it's not because people now make an argument that LeBron James is the greatest basketball player to ever play the game. And in three years, there's a nine year old tumour who's going to swear on his parents heads that Victor Wombon-Yam is the best player of all. Hey, man, we already had the kid in the draft draft who said Paul George was the goat. And a Miller. So it's already starting like this level of kind of, but that's what makes it such an interesting conversation

to me intellectually because you think about like track. I don't think anyone sitting there like Carlos is still better than you, St. Bolt. But it's just not something It's not what people. But you have an objective standard, which is this race is the same length that it then. And this guy's run it eight tenths of a second faster than the other guy. Hmm.

You don't, I don't hear a lot of, you know, boy, Roger Bannister is still the greatest mile or ever. Because one, nobody saw him. And two, the only thing you can't really say is he was the first guy to break four minutes. Now, you're doing it routinely. You know, I mean, that's all you can really do is maybe construct a timeline, sort of like the, you know, the evolution of man, where you know, from, you know, George Mike and to Wilk Chamberlain to, you know, on and on and on. That's the line where there was one guy who was the best player of his era. And then he was followed by a guy

who was the best player in that era. And that's the only real valid comparison you can genuinely make because ultimately we're comparing every one of these guys, whether we know it or not, not to somebody 30 years later or 30 years before, but to their peers at the time. Yeah, that's right. And so we end up being the buzz kills. And to try to create some level of sanity in these conversations, because, and I think the bottom line isn't, you know, to be the buzzkill on the list, it's that it's the way that the information

is being disseminated today, that's all we're getting. And I think it's sort of important to sort of create a little bit more or a lot more context. And that does it for us. Let's go. Final thoughts, Ray Rattles. We've got, we've got three shows left. What else should we be talking about? What do we, we got three more? I don't know. I think we got to throw one more documentary in there. When Kate comes back, we'll have a big party to finish off. I mean, final thoughts. Well, let's look

at, right. You have any final thoughts, sir? Um, my final thoughts is my next list is going to be who was the greatest NFL player to ever be suspended for betting on his own team? No, that's a growing industry. It really is. You know, who's the Roger banister of that? Who's the Roger banister of betting on his own team? Alvin Ridley. Well, actually, that's not true. That was not the first. Yeah. Oh, warning. No, I just love the guy, the kid from Iowa is my Hall of Famer, the kicker, who was

betting the under. But he was like to do, and he was like the, he was like Johnny Rosebeef and Goodfellas. That's in my mother's name, in my mother's name. But I see, I give him credit because he was also an incredibly wise better because he watched Iowa every week and he never score. At the end, he is the kicker. Yeah, just, you know, and it never came down to him kicking. He just knew. He's gonna average nine points a game with his offense, no matter who's playing. That's a genius. He could have transferred to you on LV while he had the chance.

That is awesome. We are wrapping it up right now for Metal Lockers 88 for Ray Rato, Amino Hassan. I'm Howard Bryant. We'll have Kate Fagan here next week. I think the documentary Angel City is what Kate wants to talk about. Maybe we'll do that. But we'll give you something. We'll see you next week. To find something. To find something, right?