The Josh Innes Show - Luka Conspiracy Theories

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

I've seen many theories surrounding the Luka trade. It seems many people believe this was orchestrated by the league in an attempt to revitalize the league. Is it possible that there isn't a real fix for the leagues problems? Is it possible that maybe people aren't as interested in basketball as they are football? Luka is a big star, but he's not saving the NBA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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we are your local dignity memorial provider find us at dignity memorial.ca the dignity memorial brand name is used to identify a network of licensed funeral cremation and cemetery providers owned and operated by affiliates of service corporation international well here we are a couple days now removed from the luca trade that uh brought basketball to relevance if uh if only for a moment um it's it's funny i've been seeing people comment on this about how this clearly has to be orchestrated by the league because Adam Silver knows that the league is tanking and he needs to bring attention back to it. And what better way to do that than make a big trade that brings a big megastar to Los Angeles because they need a big star in Los Angeles and that will save the league.

Let us not forget that the biggest star of the last 20 years is currently in Los Angeles, but whatever. People operate in this real world where they think everything is rigged. And I don't think that's going to get any better with social media and everything else and people having access to, you know, like look at the Bills stuff, right? Like fans have access to the All 24 video now. You pay for it and you can rewatch games and you can see not the all 24, the all 22, you can see the all 22 videos. Um, and you can like watch every single play from 10 different angles and back into the left it, and you can convince all your people that your team got screwed or that your team is part of a conspiracy or that the league is rigged. Now, as you know, I do believe the Chiefs get the benefit of a lot of calls.

I do not believe the NFL is rigged. It would be difficult to rig an entire league, but I do think that they wanted the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. That's why I bet against Buffalo in that game. Like, the Chiefs winning that game was a lock. And, you know, that was the big conspiracy theory last week. Now the big conspiracy is that Adam Silver and the NBA know the league is in trouble and what better way to make the league more relevant than to have a superstar player in

Los Angeles for the next decade and that can change the game. Okay, operate in that world if you want. I do not buy that because I don't buy that one player going to Los Angeles or New York or any other city is going to save basketball because I don't think basketball can be saved. What do I mean by that? What do I mean when I say basketball can't be saved? Basketball will exist. The NBA will exist. The G League will exist. It's all going to exist. But if we're operating in a world where we want to know how basketball and baseball can get to a point where they can compete with football, they can't. It is impossible. There is no dethroning football. So take football out of it and say football is its own world and everything else is competing for the eyeballs of the rest of America when it's

happening. So baseball, NBA, WNBA, hockey, soccer, whatever it may be, they're all competing for eyeballs and they're in their own little universe that will never be on the level of the NFL. If you want to believe that the NBA can somehow get to the level of the NFL, then fine, but it can't. So when I say that basketball cannot be saved, basketball is never going to be what basketball was from about 1981 to about 1998. It will never be that. That will never happen again. That was a wild time. It was a perfect storm. How it worked out, who knows? It was divine intervention. It's Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, then Michael, and it just worked. And people can say, well, the basketball was better back then. Was it?

Who knows, right? People like to wax poetic about how great things were in this era. Was the basketball really that great? Maybe, maybe not. But you had Michael Jordan, who was the perfect star. There was no greater star than Michael Jordan. And it just, that's how it happened. That's how basketball had its moment. I think where basketball is struggling

is people compare ratings from 30 years ago and say, why aren't we doing this anymore? Well, there's a plethora of reasons why you don't have the same reaction you're getting. One, Michael Jordan's not there anymore. Two, the world is different. People consume sports different. People care about sports differently than they used to. 35 years ago, you still basically had basic cable and that was it. You didn't have a cell phone. You didn't have the internet. Nobody had other ways to entertain themselves. So you flip on a game and you watch basketball on a given night. It is not fair to compare ratings on television in 2024'd be lucky to get anything close to that now. It's a different world. But people are trying to figure out how can they save basketball and did they force this Luka trade to try to save basketball? Here's the other thing, right? Luka, who is a big name in basketball and sports circles, if you are a sports person,

you know who Luka is. If you're a basketball person, you certainly know who Luka is. If you are an average Joe that doesn't know who Luka is. If you are an average Joe that doesn't consume a lot of basketball, do you know or care about who Luka is? And the answer is no. Michael Jordan transcended sport. Michael Jordan was a crossover appeal. Certain dudes that have crossover appeal can help broaden your sport. Shaq had crossover appeal. Shaq was a larger than life figure who then started rapping, who then started making movies and was everywhere and was in every commercial. Shaq had crossover appeal. Michael Jordan had crossover appeal. Penny Hardaway even had crossover appeal. And these are American born basketball stars that appeal to a certain group of people.

Now look at Luka. Again, the only reason I'm discussing this is I've seen this conspiracy theory that, well, they wanted to make this happen because they're trying to save the NBA, and Luka and LA would do that. I just don't believe it would. First of all, the city you're in does not matter for saving the NBA. Dallas is a major American city. New York's a major American city. LA, Chicago, they're all major American cities. Doesn't matter what city Luka plays in. First of all, Luka's not the best player in the NBA.

That's number one. So it's not like he's a Michael Jordan who's the clear-cut star of the NBA. He's not. That's not who Luka is. So in this world where we're talking conspiracy theories and does the league try to rig it where Luka goes here and it fixes the league, Luka is not a big enough star with crossover appeal to save the league. You know who Luka is? He's a guy who's criticized for being out of shape and lazy and can drop 50 on a given night. Luka is not a crossover generational star. He's a generational talent, no doubt, but he is not a crossover star with

enough appeal to save the fucking league. There is nobody currently in the league that has crossover appeal to save the league and no one has been able to do it since Michael left. It's just the way this league operates. I know it's hard for people to accept this. And hold on, let me play a couple of commercials here and then I'll continue. All right, if you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs, you got to check out Pick 6 from DraftKings. When it comes to basketball payouts, DraftKings Pick 6 posterizes the competition, including picks it's a very simple concept hit all your picks and score higher minimum payouts on pick six plus even more cash if you outscore the competition pick six is available in most states including Missouri California Texas Georgia and more and

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Ontario. Voidware prohibited. One per new customer. Bonus award. It is non-withdrawable pick six credits that expire in 14 days. Limited time offer. See terms at pick6.draftkings.com slash promos. It's hard for people to accept this, but maybe people just don't give a shit about basketball as much as they do football. Maybe they don't care about baseball as much as they care about football. So we're in this world where we're trying to figure out how we save these sports, how we resurrect these sports. You're never going to have basketball what it was 30 years ago, and you're never going to have baseball what it was 40 years ago. It's impossible. It is not fixable. It is broken. Why is it broken? It is broken because one, you play long, lengthy, regular seasons that people do not give a shit about.

There is no urgency. People do not care. There is no need to sit down on a given night and flip on the TV and must watch a basketball game. Why? Because if your team loses, there's 81 more of these motherfuckers and who cares? Baseball. Well, boy, big game tonight. Let me flip it on. We lost. Well, big fucking deal. There's 161 more of these games. You cannot create the urgency. You cannot make the urgency. It does not exist. That's the biggest reason. And we're in 2025. And in 2025, this is a world now where people have a thousand other things to do. I think people judged things based on television ratings back in an era where there was nothing else to do and you were almost held captive by sports. On a given night, now you can go to your phone and go to

YouTube and get lost in fucking cooking videos and do-it-yourself videos. And here's Dave Portnoy eating fucking pizza in Massachusetts and over here is a guy who made a self-produced documentary about a dead mall in Des Moines and like you could I watch dumb shit on YouTube and you can just watch a bunch of shit and you don't have to be consumed by the basketball game when I was a kid that's the only thing I would put on TV but my options were the games that were on TV, my Sega, or videos. Those were my options. So when I lived in Montana as a kid, we got Utah jazz games. So I'd hear Hot Rod Hundley doing a jazz game. And I would flip on the jazz because I liked sports and that's the sport

that was on, so I watched it. But my other options, again, were playing Mad 94 on Sega or putting in my copy of Angels in the Outfield. Those were my options for eight or nine year old Josh. Now an eight or nine year old's on their fucking iPad watching fucking Bluey or probably fucking porn for all I know. That's what they're into. They like just like I know it's hard for people to grasp this. And I know that Adam Silver can't do that. And I know that Rob Manfred, the commissioner of baseball, cannot just accept that this

is who we are. Like, you have to find a way to evolve and get better. I understand that. But there is an element of this is what it is. There is no remedy. Basketball is what it is. The sport is not going to be bastardized to the point that people are now going to flip in because it's a fucking circus.

So you can go in and add a four-point shot. I think that'd be kind of neat. But people aren't going to stick around because of that. Like basketball is what it is at the core of it. If they're not interested in basketball, they're not going to be interested. And there's nothing you can do about basketball to make people interested in it. People, as we've discussed, they are more interested in the drama of the sport than the game itself. This fucking Luka trades the biggest story in the universe today and will be for the next couple of days, right? Then they start playing basketball again. Like tonight there's like 10 basketball games. You know, who's going to like really be interested and invested in those 10 basketball games? No one.

There's some diehards. Sure. But big picture, the world does not care about a February basketball game in the NBA. And there's no way to remedy that. You cannot fix that. The closest thing, and I talk about it all the time, and you're probably like, Josh, shut the fuck up about relegation. The only thing that can make regular season basketball and hockey and baseball interesting is if there's a chance that if you lose, you're going down to a secondary league and can't compete for the Larry O'Brien or the World Series trophy anymore or the Stanley Cup. That's the only thing. And I don't even know that that would be a guaranteed fix.

But that would be my first recommendation. Because there is nothing you can do to the game, to the actual on-court product, that will make the game more interesting that you will pull people who aren't already interested in. The people who are interested are interested. You're trying to find new people who are trying to come back to the game. And I hear what people say about it. Like, oh my God, they shoot too many threes. That's not why people aren't watching. They don't give a fuck.

I mean, you're going to shoot threes. That's what's going to happen. And people say, I want tighter defense. I want like Gary Payton defense. And if the game were 90 to 89, you wouldn't like that either. It's okay to say that this country is just not overly interested

in regular season NBA basketball. And it's not overly interested in regular season baseball. And to me, the fix, again, Meltzer and I were talking about this, texting back and forth. He goes, explain to me how relegation would work. I'm like, I don't know.

All I know, and it may not work, but to me, that is the only solution. You can't just continue to bastardize your game and make it unrecognizable and hope that you bring in new people, right? Like, hey, we got dwarfs on trampolines. Like, cool. But what are you going to do? What are you going to do after that? Like, the game is the game. Basketball is basketball. There is nothing spectacular that can change about basketball. The players playing basketball are playing basketball. I do not believe that Luka, who is one of the top five players in the world, is going to change the fates of the league because he's in LA now. 100% do not buy that. And I don't believe there's anything you can put on the court that will fix it. So you got to find something behind. Like,

look at baseball. Baseball thought, hey, let's fix baseball by adding a pitch clock. Cool. It's sped up the game, but the game is still the game. Baseball is still a slow prodding game and there's way too many games. And in the middle of May and June, who gives a fuck? That's what you're battling. How do you fix that? Well, you fix that by saying, hey, the Pittsburgh Pirates are a hundred games out of first place and they're about to get relegated, so they need to win a couple of fucking games or they're out. I saw something that I thought was interesting. It was on a reel. I was watching, I just scroll through reels on Instagram all the time. And there was a reel that was Kevin Garnett on his podcast. And Kevin Garnett was bitching about Jimmy Butler, saying that Jimmy Butler is undoing or helping undo

a lot of what guys of Kevin Garnett's era went through many lockouts for, which was fighting for the right for guaranteed money and player protection and all that shit, right? And he was bitching about this, whatever. But he said something that was interesting. He said with that kind of shit that Jimmy Butler's pulling, at some point they're going to end up

going to like non-guaranteed contracts or like NFL type deals where there's a certain amount that's guaranteed but you sign a 200 million dollar deal and 80 of it's guaranteed or whatever like currently NBA players sign a deal and they get every fucking dime of it Kevin Garnett is saying that at some point these owners are going to see this type of shit and they're going to the players are going to lose leverage when guys like Jimmy Butler are pulling the kind of shit that Jimmy Butler is pulling. You're going to lose leverage. And he was bitching about this and I'm thinking, you know, Kevin, that might actually be the way you save your league and make your league more interesting. Your league may become more interesting if guys who are signing $300 million deals are only guaranteed 180 of that. Look at what the NFL does. The NFL, unlike any other league, baseball or basketball,

where it is clear that if you are in a smaller market, you are at a true disadvantage. Whichever disadvantage you want to call it, whether it's financial or whatever, you are at a disadvantage. If you are a basketball team in Memphis, you do not have the same advantages as a basketball team in Chicago or Dallas or LA. You do not. It is a fact. But in the NFL, if you're a football team that plays in Green Bay, Wisconsin, or Kansas City, Missouri, or New Orleans, Louisiana, in theory, you're on level with these guys. Anybody can compete. Jacksonville can compete. The New Orleans Pelicans cannot compete. They're fine. But the second they start competing, other people will

poach their players and they're dead. The Memphis Grizzlies can have cute moments. Like I love the Grizzlies. The grit and grind era was great. Not one of those dudes that played on that team was a superstar. They just built a great team around a bunch of grinders and they were fun for a while, kind of like Detroit was for a while. But in the NBA, the Pelicans have no chance. The Charlotte Hornets have no chance. You want to know why I know they have no chance? Because when they were the Charlotte Bobcats, they didn't have a chance. When they were the Hornets before that, they didn't have a chance. The New Orleans Hornets didn't have a chance. That's the problem you run into in baseball and basketball is a handful of cities have a legit chance and the smaller cities can have a moment. When I was a kid, the New

Orleans Hornets had a really cool team in like 2008 that had Peja Stojakovic and Chris Paul and David West and they were fun and they made it to the second round of the playoffs and lost to Denver. And that was a fun team. I enjoyed watching them as a kid. But then a couple years later, you know what happens? Chris Paul is off in LA and David West is over here and this guy is over here. And then you suck. You have moments. There is no sustained success that you're going to have. I mean, there are exceptions. Like I guess San Antonio is an exception, but San Antonio is also a relatively large city. It's not Memphis. Memphis, you know, in television market world is a very small place. You know, even places like Indiana are tough places to sustain. In baseball, you know, St. Louis is about to deal with it because

ain't no one going to the games anymore and St. Louis don't have the money anymore. Like, that's the problem with these sports. So back to the point that KG made. KG says, well, we're about to get to a point where all this work we put in is going to hurt and we're not going to get these guaranteed deals anymore. Maybe that would make the game better and make dudes not sit out half the fucking games if they were playing for their food every night. Now, again, not like they're going to get paid. But, you know, I mean, look at the NFL. Every time you see a major contract signed, you go, holy shit, that's huge. But then you look at the guaranteed money and you're like, oh, yeah, the guaranteed money is not as impressive.

Now, maybe he will make that whole contract, but maybe he won't. But that's part of the problem is there's like to the NBA players tell you that the regular season doesn't matter. So if that's happening, then why the fuck would you tune in and watch? You know, baseball regular season doesn't matter. All the teams get in the playoffs now anyway. Regular season sucks. And I know that the commissioners of these leagues can't just sit back and say this. They have to try to figure something out or they're going to lose their job.

But what's the solution? What's the fix? People aren't addicted to your sport like they're addicted to football. The NFL is about to add, I guess in a couple of years, going to put two more games in. And before you know it, they're going to have teams in fucking Mexico and Germany. But people are addicted to it. There's been no sign that people have lost interest in the NFL. There are signs that, hey, too much college, people weren't interested. Look at the ratings that went down for the college football playoff. Ratings ain't going down for the NFL. People are still locked into it.

So the NFL's got the advantage of people are addicted to it. People aren't addicted to regular season basketball. The NFL is, like right now, the NFL has too many games. 16 was fine. Now they have 17, they're about to have 18. But people are addicted to it. They gotta have it. People don't have to have basketball.

It's an afterthought. Like I think the people in these leagues operate in this world where they think it's ordained by God that they're going to exist forever. Like MLB will be around forever and the NBA will, and it probably will. But the more people lose interest in it, how often can you continue to get big media rights deals from ESPN? How long can you continue to keep signing dudes for $300 million in a league that big picture people don't really give a shit about? There's so many big time, great NBA players that no one gives a shit about. They don't know they exist.

So they're just not big stars. So what do you do? That's where they fall in this. And then back to the Luka thing, which was, oh God, they're trying to rig this for Luka. If they bring Luka to LA, there are not enough non-basketball slash non-sports people to give a shit about Luka. Luka's not the Caitlin Clark of the NBA, which by the way, I don't think people give a shit about her anymore either. That was out of sight, out of mind. It's kind of come and gone. No one gives a shit. But there's nobody doing that. There's no rivalry that people are appealing. You want to know why the WNBA had a moment real talk. It wasn't because one girl was really good. It was because one black girl and one white girl, what black girl made a face at her. And then the world was upset for 20 minutes. And then it was over. I keep seeing people tell me,

Oh my God, watch out. The WNBA is about to take over. It's not, no one gives a shit. So what's going to happen is you're going to have this boom in the WNBA right now, like Nashville's getting a team and all these teams, and in a couple years no one's going to give a shit about this anymore. Hell, they already don't give a shit about it. It's just there. But you had one brief moment where in this world, this is what people care about, drama.

It goes back to the on-court doesn't matter. The drama matters. The trades matter. The free agency matters. Then what happens is you go to the court and people are like, all right, who we trade next? That's the issue the NBA has. This Luka trade is the most talked about thing that's playing in la whatever the fuck they call that arena now cryptocurrency.com arena and then that'll happen and then it's on to the next one and people aren't going to give a shit anymore because last time i checked luca was playing in a pretty big fucking city the fifth largest city fourth largest city in the country for a handful of years now and people didn't give

a shit why are they going to care now that it's in fucking la they don't i don't think it's a fixable thing and my only solution or my only thought for a fix is relegation. And whether that'll work or not, I truly don't know. But that's to me, that's something you got to try. Anyway, we shall continue.