The Josh Innes Show - Black v. White ASG Part 1

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

First off, I do thing there is a lack of competitiveness among people of the current generation. I think it spans all fields, not just sports. I hate that. I love to compete. Also, let's get into Nick Wright's comments about the ASG being more competitive if if was black v. white. Is he wrong? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Dude, I work on the radio, right? And whether you believe it or not, I do put a lot of pride in what it is that I'm doing. Because I, and there are days that are worse than others. And there are some days that I'm not doing 100% on the air and I should. I'm not telling you that every day I'm some sort of infallible guy. But I'll give you an example. So I voice track on some of these stations and other markets, right? And by voice tracking, I mean I can sit in my house in Detroit and I can do a full four-hour radio air shift in Salt Lake City in 10 minutes.

And I can do one in Seattle in 10 minutes. I can do one in Boston in 10 minutes, right? So, like, that's kind of how this works. You can, like, it's a pretty magical and it goes in an instant. So, like, if something happened, like, I voice track in Utah. If something happened in Utah and somebody died or something, like let's say breaking news happens, Mick Jack. Dagger dies. And they're like, we need to get somebody on the air right now. And even though you recorded this four hours ago, I could run into a studio right now, and I can hit record,

and I can get a voice track is what it would be called, a voice track about Mick Jagger that would be in in a nanosecond. I would go in, I'd go, all right, Rock 106, 7, this is sad news. Mick Jagger, the legendary voice of the Rolling Stones, one of the all-time grades died today, at whatever age you died today. And it would go right out. out, like not in real time, although it would be possible that does exist, that technology does exist, if they wanted me to do it. But it would go and within 10 seconds would be available to be on the air and it would run. And it's amazing, right? And that's what I do.

And I take a lot of pride in that because there are people that have decided to put me on these radio stations. And while it's not my love, my passion is not to go on the radio and talk up records. My passion is to talk on the radio, and these are not situations where they're expecting me to talk a ton. I do take pride in it sounding good and putting forth effort into it and making it sound as unique to that city as I can and make it sound like I'm in that city. You know, like I'm trying. Like if I'm going to be on in Salt Lake, I'm going to read up and do everything I can about Salt Lake to make it sound like I'm in Salt Lake or as close to Salt Lake as I can be in Salt Lake. Right? I don't want people to listen to that and have people listen to me in these other cities or program directors in these other cities or anybody else listen to me and go, well, this guy didn't try it all or this sounds like shit.

I'll go and listen to some of these people that do this. Like I only do a couple of stations. There are people that do tons of radio stations in this. Like I'm talking like people that are on hundreds of radio stations doing this or, you know, not hundreds. That might be an exaggeration. But they could be on 10, 15, 20, 25 different radio stations, right? And I'll listen to these people and I'll listen to what I perceive to be a lack of effort on their part. And I'll be appalled by it.

And I don't want people to hear me in these cities, whether it be listeners, whether it be program directors, bosses, whatever, that listen to me and go, this guy's not even fucking trying. And that's the last thing I want. The last thing I want is for someone to hear that and go, why the fuck what I put this on? So I do put, I actually put forth more effort into those than I do into the show in Detroit because it's such a little amount of time that I'm actually talking. talking on these things. Like I have a boss in Salt Lake, which is on a station called Rock 106-7. And I'll talk with the boss. And he called me the other day. And he's like, well, you know, we're kind of going in a different direction with some of our clocks on the station. So we're doing a commercial free hour here. We're doing like 90 straight minutes of rock or 106 minutes of rock or

whatever the hell it is. And we're doing that now. And we want you to talk as little as possible. and I know that nobody wants to be told not to talk. I'm like, dude, I don't give a shit. I'm here to do whatever you need me to do. This is a thing I make a couple extra bucks to do. My main job is to be basically a talk show host in Detroit. So, like, my heart is not hurt and my heart is not broken over the fact that you want me to talk a little bit less on here. So I'm cool with it.

Rock on. If that's what you need for me, I'm here to do what you need to do. But I want to make sure it sounds as good as it possibly can for your city and unique to your city. sound good in your city because I don't want you to sit back and ever hear this and go, this guy sounds like shit, why do I have him on here? I was on in Tampa over the weekend. It's the first time I've done this station in Tampa. And I'm listening to some of the other people that do these that are not in Tampa,

that are doing the same thing I'm doing but from other cities. And I'm like, these guys fucking suck. They're not trying. It's lazy. It's that was, this is shit. And I'm competitive in that way that I don't want people to hear me on the radio in any of these other cities and go, this guy's not trying. He sounds like shit. He's not trying to localize this shit. And this may mean very little to you when you listen to

this. You might go, what the fuck do I care? What does any of this mean? It sounds like you're speaking, you know, Yiddish. And I'm like, I get that. Or you're speaking gibberish or you're speaking French. But it matters to me because there's a competition that goes along with that. because I don't want people, I don't want to go out there and embarrass myself or sound like shit. I don't want people to do the kind of shit that I do, which is listen and judge other people. And I don't want people to be able to listen to me and then judge me and go, yeah, that sounds like shit. That's the last thing I want. I want nothing to do with that.

I don't want people to be able to sit back and go, because that's what Jillie and I do, because we're judgmental bastards. Like I'll go in and I'll listen to something that somebody else is doing. And when I listen to it, I'll go, like, what is this? Like, this person's not even trying. This is lazy. What are we doing? And, you know, I don't want people to be able to do that to me to sit around and say, this guy sucks. And not just because they think that I'm not good at it, but because they listen to it and they hear me half-ass it or they hear me just mail it in, which a lot of these people do.

And I don't want people to have that opportunity. And I certainly don't want program directors if they listen to the radio. station to be able to do that. I don't want them to say, Jesus, dude, what the fuck? Like, I don't want to embarrass myself, nor do I want to disappoint these people. What does this matter? I think to some extent, that level of pride doesn't apply to people in certain sports worlds. And that's why I think you don't get, especially like in the dunk contest. Like, if someone was like, do you want to be known as the best fucking radio guy. Do you want to compete against the best radio people? I'd say yes. Of course I want to compete against the best radio people because I take pride in being a competitor and I want

I want to go out and be able to tell people to fuck off and I want to be able to go out there and say, I'm the fucking best at this shit and I want to compete. I think what you end up with, especially in like the dunk contest, is these people don't care enough about that. And in the All-Star game in general, people don't care enough about that anymore. There's no passion for it. There's no pride for it. And I think that's what's been kind of a deterrent for a lot of people in the, especially the dunk contest. In the All-Star game, it's been a mail-it-in, whatever. But what's happened now in the dunk contest or out of the dunk contest and into the game, by adding this element of the U.S. versus the world, I think that elevated the competition a little bit,

whether you want to acknowledge it or not, part of what makes the world team, a team that other guys want to beat is, like, there were no white dudes. There was like one white dude on the two USA teams and they're like three or four white dudes on the world team. There is a battle that these people want to have. These people want to go at it. There is something about black versus white. There's something, I don't even think it's U.S. versus everybody else. I don't know that Kevin Durant or LeBron really gives a shit that they play for the United States of America. They just don't want to lose to a bunch of white dudes from Europe. So like there's an element of pride, I think, that went into that that didn't exist when it was just, hey, here's the east, here's the west, and

let's roll the ball out and score 180 points apiece and go home. There is a different element to it. I heard Nick Wright caught some shit the other day. Like he went viral because he said that if you really want to get guys to compete in the All-Star game and you really want to get them to play hard, play black versus white. And of course, the story became like, oh, Nick Wright, what a dummy. Or, oh, Nick Wright, of course he's taken at this angle. Leave it up to Nick Wright to come up with the worst angle ever for this.

dude he ain't wrong you can sit there and tell me that it's a ridiculous take well we talked about that a couple weeks ago when I was telling you about about a guy by the name of dino costa so dino costa was a was a host on serious xm and it's a guy that me and melzer used to listen to i told you about him told you about his documentary and all that shit there's a guy named dino costa and dino's whole schick was he was just fucking wild like this dude would say whatever fucking wild shit was out there And he was controversial and he got fired from XM and he got fired in Portland. And why did he get fired in Portland? He got fired in Portland because he told people to go run over Black Lives Matter protesters.

Like this guy just said some shit. Like this guy said whatever the fuck was on his mind. And a lot of it was bat shit crazy. But I told you one night I was listening and he was talking about All-Star Games. And I think it was an All-Star game related discussion. And he said, all right, All-Star game, Black versus White. You want to get guys to compete? You want to get people interested.

You want to get people engaged in it. Make it black versus white. And when like white, right wingish sounding guy says it, it sounds like, you know, the Third Reich and shit. But when white guy that's super liberal, like Nick Wright says it, it becomes like, oh, it's kind of palatable and acceptable. Nick is not wrong. If you want to get those dues to go out and ball, you want to get them to go out and hoop, you want to get these guys to go out and really be passionate about it. And I think you even saw it to a degree in this one because they're going to get them. There was a little bit of that us versus them.

And you got like the jokers and guys like that. And Luca didn't really play a ton on the All-Star game. But like, Nick was not wrong. If you want these dudes to truly go out and compete. And if you want these dudes to truly go out and truly give a shit about winning and not mail it in, there's one pride that these dudes will not let die. And that is pride of race. I mean, real talk, that's who.

That is America in 2026. Like there is pride in being black. I'm black and I'm proud. So if you lined up a bunch of white dudes against a bunch of black dudes, there would be no greater shame to those black dudes than losing to a team of white guys. Nick was not wrong. Look, you can say a lot of shit about the guy and you can say that he's a fucking wacko and you can say that he's a racist and a race baiter and whatever you want to say about Nick. He is not wrong.

Like those dudes would go out and they would bleed. They would not accept losing that game.