The Josh Innes Show - OKC/Pistons Rest Fest

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

The OKC Thunder were in Detroit last night and had 80 PPG on the bench. This is why the NBA is being ridiculed. Tanking isn't the issue. Fan experience isn't the issue. Price isn't the issue. Winning and losing + Load Management = The Issue Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, everybody. Welcome in, all up in this podcast. It's Josh, as you know, because who the fuck else would it be? Who else is it going to be? It's my podcast. It's not like we have any guests or anything. So it's me, whether you like it or not, here we are. But I'm glad you guys listen to the podcast. I'm glad you guys enjoy the podcast because I enjoy that you enjoy it. I know it's been kind of off and on here the last couple of weeks or so, but trying to get back into doing it more consistently. There's been a lot of shit going on. So what do you want for? from me. What do you want from me? But anyway, what's going on in the world today? It's like you look for sports shit to talk about, you know, and you want to talk about sports shit. But I also like to talk about other shit is, you know, that's the beauty of the podcast. You know, it's sports and other shit. That's what the name of the podcast should have been. Sports and other shit with Josh Ennis. And sometimes there's a lot more other shit than sports because right now, like you watch sports. There's no football going on right now. They're at the fucking combine. Who cares. So, like, you watch sports and it's like, oh, you want me to, like, I'm in Detroit right now, right? Actually, first of all, let me play a couple commercials so we can just get right into stuff here. We're back after this. So I'm in Detroit right now. And last night was supposed to be this amazing matchup between two teams who might be in the NBA finals. An NBA finals matchup in Detroit with the best team record wise in the east and the best team record wise in the West, right? And this is fresh off Detroit playing San Antonio,

couple nights ago. So the second best team in the West, which came in here and beat Detroit. And then last night, it was going to be a big time matchup with the Oklahoma City Thunder, the number one team in basketball, defending champs, MVP, Shade, Gilgis Alexander, all that, taking on Detroit, like kind of a test of your medal. See where you are type of game, right? See where you stack up against these guys, right? You know what you got last night instead? the Detroit Pistons versus a Thunder team with no SGA who's allegedly hurt, Jalen Williams who's allegedly hurt, Chad Holmgren who's allegedly hurt, Isaiah Hartinstein who's allegedly hurt or dealing with something, and Alex Caruso.

And the fact that I have to say allegedly hurt, with all the amount of load management we get from dudes in the NBA, you don't know if somebody's actually hurt or if they're full of shit. So it's ridiculous. So we all have to sit there and say this, like, is this guy really hurt? But you mean to tell me all these guys played two nights ago outside of Shay, outside of him, everybody else played in that game. Maybe not Caruso. Let me make sure on that.

But like if you look at the team and you look at the guys who played and didn't play, well, first of all, let's do this. Let's go and let's look at their game on, I guess they would have played, I think, either Monday or Tuesday, because that game would have been Wednesday night, right? So let's take a look at the number one team in basketball. The Oklahoma City Thunder, who, by the way, lost this game yesterday because this game was pointless because they didn't even try. So a couple nights ago, guys who did play for the Thunder in this game, which was, let's see, the date on that game would have been, let's see, I can't find the date. It's either Monday or Tuesday.

There were two options. Hartnstein, Chet Holmgren, and let's see, Alex Caruso. Those three guys did in fact play in the game the previous day. You want to tell me they're all hurt? Cool. Now, Shea's been out, whatever. And then Jalen Williams. So what you saw in that game on Wednesday,

the game between the Pistons and the Thunder, 78 points didn't play. 78 points for Oklahoma City did not play. Their leading score, their second leading score, their third leading score, their six leading score, and 1A, 1B, one of their top bench guys. And Caruso did not play. And it's one thing to not play against the Raptors, who by the way are decent. They played against the Raptors in Toronto, fine.

But then you come to Detroit and you're facing the best team in the east and none of these guys are playing. And that's the problem that the NBA has. And that's why the NBA is difficult to watch. And that's why, look, I'm not turned off as much by the NBA as a lot of leagues or a lot of people are. I get that there are a lot of people, and some of it's political, some of it's not, but people love to use the NBA as like a kind of a whipping boy, if you will, among media people, particularly right-wing media-type people who like to shit on the NBA, and there's too many threes, and there's too much flopping, and there's too much tanking,

there's too much load management. There's a lot of reasons to shit on the league. But big picture, I don't mind watching basketball. Like, I'd rather watch that than college. Jesus Christ, college basketball blows. But, like, if I have the option to watch an NBA game or a hockey, A hockey game? Real talk, I'm probably going to watch an NBA game. Because I try to convince myself that I enjoy watching hockey on TV.

I don't. I like, I like hockey. I'd go see it today. Like, if there's a game in Detroit and I had tickets, I'd go. I like to attend hockey games. I like playoff hockey. I'm not going to dedicate two and a half hours to watch a hockey game. And I respect the shit out of hockey guys. I respect their personalities. I respect that they seem like the nicest guys on the planet. I respect the fact that, like, they're dealing with a lot of bullshit right now because

the world's nuts. But like I like hockey. But if the option was, hey, the Pistons are playing Oklahoma City or the Red Wings are playing the Capitals, I'd probably watch the basketball game. I'd say probably. I definitely would. I don't hate the NBA as much as a lot of people do or at least claim to for clout on social media. That said, if you're trying to sell the people that the WNBA is a fun thing to watch and you should get invested in it, and you've got 1A versus 1B. you've got the best team in the east versus the best team in the West.

And 80% of the points scored by one of those teams isn't playing in a game. And a bulk of that is coming from a load management position. How do you convince people to invest in your product? How do you convince people to put their hard-earned dollars into your product? And it kind of goes to that conversation from a couple weeks ago with Mark Cuban. So Mark Cuban's thought was, you know, tanking isn't really a huge issue. What we need to do is focus on affordability for basketball. We have an affordability issue and we have an entertainment issue.

I don't buy that. Because, yeah, it's expensive to go to a basketball game. And yes, there are a lot of basketball games. So, look, you might have a hard time and there are some people who cannot afford to go to a basketball game. There is not a price that you're going to put on good seats in an NBA game that's going to make it affordable for every person, every mom, every dad, every guy on a date. But Cuban's point was tanking is fine. People can accept tanking, especially if you tell them they're tanking, which I agree with for the most part. Like when we were in Philadelphia, there were a lot of people who hated the idea of tanking.

For everybody who hated tanking, there's a large number of people who say, hey, if this is the plan to get us to a position where we are a better team and we have a chance to win, I can accept it for the time being. I mean, look in Houston. Houston tanked for baseball. tanked and then got all these great players. So tanking, in a lot of cases, is the route to getting better. So I'm not against tanking. Now, if you're doing it six, seven, eight years, you're not tanking at that point. You're just a shitty organization. But if you're like, hey, this is going to take a couple years, we're going to suck for a little bit,

but we're going to ride this thing out together and that's going to make us better. Fine. I mean, Oklahoma City. I mean, a lot of these teams have had to go through high draft picks to become good, right? So that's nothing shocking that that happens, right? But his point being that people just don't care about tanking, they do. It is a factor. Is it the biggest factor?

No. Is it a sexy talking point for people on the internet? Yes. But it's not the biggest issue they deal with. The biggest issue they deal with is also not that it's not fun to go to the games. Every stadium, we talked about this. Every stadium has the same shit. Every stadium has a mascot that comes down from the ceiling.

Everybody's got dudes shooting hot dogs out of a fucking cannon. Everybody's got all that. Like, whether it's in New Orleans or Oklahoma City, best team in the league versus one of the worst teams in the league. They have the same shit. Same music plays. Here's monie, mooney. Here's some hot chicks shaking their asses.

Here's some guys shooting some hot dogs out of a cannon. Here's some free t-shirts. Oh, wow, look, the wacky mascot just hit a random dude in the face with a cake. That happens everywhere. And there's nothing you can do to the in-game experience. It's going to make it any better or change it enough to make it that significant to anybody. outside of drawing a name out of a hat and that person gets to coach the team like they're Eddie.

Outside of that, nothing's going to change. So, again, we talked about the Mark Cuban thing last week, but outside of that, like, I think there are factors that can be accurate in a lot of that shit. Like, you can say little pieces are true and true and true. But when he basically said that winning isn't interesting to people or winning isn't the most important thing, that's bullshit. And I know I've used the lions an example in this,

but it's true. And I know that the NFL isn't actually. apples to apples because the NFL is the most popular league in the country. And I know that it's not fair maybe to go with this comparison because there's only eight or in some cases nine home football games in the NFL. So again, it's not apples to apples. And I respect that it's not apples to apples. But back when the lions were going 0 and 16 and back when the lions were terrible, you could go see the lions for $5. Nobody gave a shit. They could not give away tickets to see the lions. Now the Lions are good, and it costs 500 bucks a ticket to get into the game on the secondary market.

So what changed? Mark Cuban, what changed? What changed about the NFL product so much? Did you guys shoot more T-shirts out of a cannon? Did the Lions go out and hit more people in the face with pies? Did they make the date experience better? Or did the team get better? Thus, people had more interesting going.

Well, Josh, go apples to apples. All right, baseball and basketball are closer to apples to apples. Let's use the Astros from when the Astros were tanking. When I lived in Houston the first time, end of 2009 to the end of 2013. The Astros were at the tail end of what was a good run. They went to the World Series. This is so 9, so they're a couple of years removed from the World Series. Still had Berkman.

Still had like Carlos Lee on a bloated contract and an bloated body. They had Hunter Pence, they had Michael Bourne, I think, at the time. Like, they had some guys, and they were fine. And they were guys, a bunch of guys that ended up going to other teams and were huge contributors for other teams. But as a collective for the Astros, they just sucked. They just were middling, right? They weren't tanking yet, but they were middling. So, you know, not Carlos Lee.

He sucked anyway, but he was just done. But, you know, Lance ended up going to the Cardinals and won a World Series with the Cardinals. And Michael Bourne, I think, went to the Indians, and he was fine. and Hunter Pence went to the Phillies and San Francisco. These were good players that went to places and were contributors and were good players. As a collective, they weren't that good for the Astros in 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, whatever. So they hired Jeff Luno, and that was in, I guess they would have hired Luno. Was it 13?

Did they hire? Or did Luno leave St. Louis right after the World Series in 11? It may have been that. They may have hired Luno like an 11 or 12. Either way. So they hire Luno, and they basically tell you they're going to, tank without telling you they're going to tank because they can't tell you you're going to tank, but they were tanking.

And you could go to games in Houston in 2011, 12, and 13. You could probably get in for a dollar. If you want to look at the Rockets, when I was on the air in Houston, we did a bit and this got me in trouble with the Rockets, because they were on the station at the time when we were at 610. But we bought a bunch of tickets because they were four or five bucks a piece. You can get into the Rockets game on StubHub for four or five bucks a piece. and we bought a bunch of them

and tried to give them out to homeless people so they can go to the basketball game. Like that's how cheap the tickets were, right? Do you think it's that cheap to go to a Rockets game now? Do you think, like, how much do you think it costs to go to an Astros game now? Anyone? Anyone? Like when I was in Houston, you could just walk up, you know,

or wherever, buy a couple tickets. Hell, you could do that when they were good. Towards, you know, the beginning part of when they were good, you could still get in for relatively cheap. My season tickets were relatively cheap. How much it cost to go to an Astros game now? It's fucking stupid. How much cost to buy beer and everything in an Astros game now?

Fucking dumb. Do you think they made the in-game experience better? Do you think they're all going to the game because orbits the mascot and not Junction Jack? No. Do you think they threw a cake in somebody else's face one more time a game and that made it better? Do you think the T-shirts they shoot out of the can and are slightly better? Do the hot dogs taste better? No.

You know what they're doing? Winning. And going to three World Series. how many World Series they've been to winning a couple World Series, right? Like, that's it.