The Josh Innes Show - OKC/Pistons Rest Fest Pt. 2

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

Let's continue dissecting the issues with the NBA compared to other sports. I continue to believe Mark Cuban is off base. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So the idea that winning isn't the most important thing. Like, yes, if you want to tell me that an eight-year-old kid who's excited to go to his first ever basketball game or just any basketball game, if you want to tell me that that kid, at the end of the day, it's not about winning and losing? 100%, man. I told you guys this. When I was a kid and I got to go to a major league baseball game, it was the biggest fucking thing ever because I very rarely got to do it. So when I was, you know, 12, 13, 14, and I'd get to go to one or two Cardinals games a year with my grandpa, I couldn't tell you the scores of those. games and I didn't care because I'm walking around the stadium. I'm seeing the grass. I'm hearing

the pop of the mitt, crack of the bat, and it's amazing. That is accurate. But the more games you get to go to, the more you actually give a shit if they win or lose. Example, when I was in Baton Rouge as a kid, the kingfish were the hockey team. Baton Rouge Kingfish played at the Riverside Centroplex, and I loved going to watch them play. I was obsessed. I didn't care that they were just an ECHL team. I was 12, 13, 14, 15 years old, and I went to as many games as I could. I had a media pass that my dad was able to get me, so I would go

to the games for free. I'd catch a ride with one of our neighbors. He'd go to all the games because they had season tickets. We loved going. But once you go to something every day and you're used to the experience and you're used to the dance for your dinner and the chuck a puck and everything else you do,

you do want to see your team win because that makes it fun. So I love the Cardinals. The one or two times a year I'd get to go see the Cardinals. I didn't care if they won or lost. There was a game I went to when I was a kid in St. Louis. This might have been in 2000. And I think they were playing the Arizona Diamondbacks.

And I want to say the starting pitcher that day was Rick Ankeel. I know it was Rick Ankeel. I don't know who started for Arizona. I'd like to think it was Randy Johnson, but I'm not sure. But this was, I think, in 2000 or 2001. And the Cardinals played the Diamondbacks in St. Louis. And I was in St. Louis. I got to go to two games, I think, that year, right?

99 I went, and I got to see McGuire hit his 499th career home run. And I saw Tony Gwyn get like his 3,000 or 2,990 second hit or some shit. And I think the Cardinals ended up losing that game because Tony Gwyn actually hit a grand slam. That one sticks with me. Tony Gwyn, who never hit home runs, hit a grand slam. But I think this would have been the next year then. So I think 2000, and Rick Ankeel was the starting pitcher. And I want to say Rick Ankeel went like four innings and it struck out like 10 dudes or something through four innings.

Like he was dealing. And then I want to say the final score was like 17 to 3 or something. Like the Cardinals got walloped in that game. I remember nothing other than that. Let me actually look at the schedule from that year and see if it lines up. Now I'm genuinely curious. So at home versus the Arizona Diamondbacks, it would have been, I would guess, August. Let's see, versus the Diamondbacks, July 25th, 26th, and 27th.

They lost a game at home 17 to 5 to the Diamondbacks. Let's see what the box score was of that game. And let's see if Rick and Keel started. Let's see. Who was the starting pitcher on that day, if it'll show me? 727. Starting pitcher for the Cardinals was Rick and Keel. Rick and Keel went four in two-thirds innings and struck out 10 dudes.

And I want to say that he started out through three innings striking out like eight dudes through three innings. It was something stupid. And then they lit his ass up for six runs. And I want to say, and this one might be wrong, but I want to say Jim Edmonds hit a home run that day too, like in mop up late in the game. But that might be false. Did Edmonds hit a homer? He had two hits in an RBI. Did he hit a home run?

Home run, anybody? Jimmy? Ray Langford. And so did Jim Edmonds in the seventh inning. So that game, it sticks with me. I didn't care that the Cardinals won or lost. I remember I snuck right behind home plate to watch because at the time they were down like 17 to 2 or something when Edmonds hit the home run. All that said, as a kid, I agree.

As a young kid who never gets to experience something, the winner. and the losing does not matter. And that is accurate. And I'm not going to argue with you on that. But at the end of the day, it's not kids that are buying all of the shit. The kids are not buying the tickets. The kids are not buying the merch. It's the parents.

And it's the people who, yeah, once or twice a year, they want to bring their kids to a game and they don't care if the team wins. Rock on. But how do you keep people in the stadium? You make it an event. How do you make it an event? You make the team good. So the idea that it's just as simple as make it more affordable.

and make it more of a fun atmosphere at the game and give away more shit and shoot more hot dogs out of a can and people are going to remember their first date. There's truth to that. I'm not going to argue with you that there is validity to that. But there's data. There's reality that will back up that more people go to the games when the team is better. The tickets are worth more when the team is better. The atmosphere is more fun when the team is. team is better. Look at Philadelphia. When I was in Philadelphia, all the teams stunk for the most

part. Now, there were always people at the Flyers games because that's how hockey works. There's 20,000 fans. They all go to the games. They have season tickets, whatever. But look at the Phillies. So when I got there, it was the end of 2013, started the 2014 baseball season. And that team, I want to say lost like 90 something games. They stunk. Still had some old has-beens on the team. Chase Sutley, Ryan Howard, Chooch, Jimmy Rollins. And they had some guys that they thought maybe be good like Dom Brown, you know, dudes like that. Cole Hamels, all that. You could walk into the game.

You could shoot a cannon through the place and probably not hit anybody. Like, I will say this. Philly never got as bad as, like, say, Houston did when people weren't interested or how, like, St. Louis is right now where no one's fucking interested. Like, you could go to a game and, hey, it's baseball and it's summertime and it's a nice park. and you can get in for relatively cheap. But now try going to a Phillies game, a couple years ago when they were real hot when people were like, holy shit,

could they win the whole thing? Now I think people are kind of getting a little stale, and the team's gotten stale, and the reaction's gotten stale. But you could have gone to Philadelphia back in 2014, 15, and 16 when I live there. And look, there'd be people at the game, but the ticket prices were cheap. Now imagine going there.

Or do it in reverse. When the team went through that whole stretch where they sold out like hundreds of games in a row, I forgot the exact number. But when they sold out hundreds of games in a row, I bet you couldn't buy tickets for cheap to get into those games. And that's baseball. That's 81 home games. So if you really want to look at one that's a better example, you know, NFL, I get that you can say it's not apples to apples.

NFL doesn't count. Okay, cool. NFL doesn't count. It's a different animal. Baseball and basketball are somewhat comparable. And baseball is even tougher because there's double the home games that you get for basketball. So you would think it'd be tougher to keep fan interest up for something that's not that big. go look at places where the team is good

and where they were bad before or vice versa and tell me what the difference is because I guarantee you when you go to a Phillies game in Philadelphia right now you know what you get PA announcer it's see here the Philadelphia Phillies and oh look there's the Philly fanatic

doing his little wacky fingers trying to jinx the batter from the other team and he's shooting lasers out of his hands and all this shit same shit same sandwiches at the concession stand same i'm going to go take a picture with the harry of the k statue same kiss cam same shit the difference is the team is good that's all it is so you can give me all that shit and you can feed it to me however you want to mark cuban and this goes back

to basketball which is where this whole thing started you know you the biggest detriment to the teams may not be that they're tanking, but it is that they're not winning. And you can survive for a while. Like Oklahoma City is a great fan base in Oklahoma City. They tried to take the Pelicans, or at the time, the Hornets. They tried to take the Hornets from New Orleans after Katrina. Like it was a coup. Like they were trying like hell.

They wanted an expansion team. So when they got the opportunity to get the Hornets and they became the New Orleans, Oklahoma City Hornets, mind you, they made it a point that part of why they, when they got the team, part of the deal was they need to be called the New Orleans Oklahoma City Hornets. If you remember those jerseys, it was Nola and Oklahoma City on the jersey. And they didn't give a shit. The people that were trying to get a team to Oklahoma City, they did not give a shit that they were going to try to take a basketball team away from a city that was ravaged by a hurricane. Did not give a fuck. They wanted a team and they were savages about it.

and everybody showed up at the games and it was a sellout. And that's kind of the hard part when you look at the reaction of something that's short term. It's kind of like when you look at these crowds you get for football games when you play in Munich, Germany or something. Like, of course, there's going to be a billion people at a game if it's a one-off. What happens if you have to watch not just an NFL team, but let's say a bad NFL team in Munich, Germany week in week out? Do you think people are really going to give a shit? Like, that's the true test of these things. But in Oklahoma City, everybody went to the games and everybody was hyped.

and holy shit, we got basketball. Look, we could sustain having a team here because we love basketball. But what also worked out for Oklahoma City, and this is why Oklahoma City has been able to continue being successful and why we've never had to really see what it's like for them to have the other half of it, Oklahoma City gets James Harden and gets, Kevin Durant was drafted by Seattle technically, but they end up getting James Hardin and they've got Kevin Durant and they've got Russell Westbrook and they've got Serge Ibaka.

And they're in the NBA finals like a couple of years. after they permanently relocate Seattle, which they stole from Seattle back there. Sonics, which they sold from Seattle. What would have happened in Oklahoma City if that team wasn't good? Oh, I know. People would have stopped going. Now, it's different. Look at Memphis.

Like, you can get into a game. How much do you think it costs to get into a Memphis Grizzlies game right now? Let's look up Memphis Grizzlies Stub Hub. Let's just take a look. Memphis Grizzly's single game tickets on StubHub. Okay. Let's see here. They take on the Trailblazers at home on March 4th.

Would you like to know how much you can pay to get into a game? Not court side. Those seats are still expensive. You can sit in the upper deck to see the no-name Memphis Grizzlies versus the no-name Portland Trailblazers for $4, including fees. You can sit in the club level for $20. You can sit in the lower bowl seats for as low as $19. on Stubhubbub, all-end, fees included.

Do you think that was the case in Memphis when it was grit and grind and they went to the Western Conference finals against San Antonio? No. So again, and I know I keep repeating this, but the idea that sports fans are more concerned about how much of a fun party it is versus their team winning, there's a partial truth to that. But at some point, you have to win.

And if you look at the NBA right now, let's say you're a fan of the Pistons and you're like, holy shit, I get a chance to go see Shea Gilges Alexander, MVP, number one team in basketball. And you buy tickets to this game thinking you're going to see this and what you end up with is the leading score, the second leading score, the third leading score, the sixth leading score and the top bench player all not playing. At some point, you're going to tell people to fuck off. At some point, you're going to tell the league this is bullshit. At some point, and you're going to do that with your dollars. And that's the issue they deal with. Like, I don't think baseball deals with that issue because no one, you know, there's no load management for the most part in baseball. Dude might take a day off.

There's 162 games. You know when you go to a game, like say on a Sunday, if you buy tickets for a game on Sunday, there's a chance that the star player's only going to be a pinch hitter that day. You know that only, you know, once every five days, you're going to see a starting pitcher. You know, so you get that, you know that, you appreciate that. They're understood things. Basketball dudes might play twice a week, maybe three times a week. And you want to tell me that, like, you buy that ticket.

It costs more to go to an NBA game than it does to a baseball game, generally speaking. That's kind of part of the supply and demand and the more games and more opportunities. Cool. But that's what it's, do you think whenever you go see a hockey game? You want to, like, people love to make a hockey thing, a racial or political thing, right? people love to make hockey versus NBA a racial thing because, oh, a bunch of guys like a bunch of white guys in hockey, huh? People like to make that argument and people bitch about that kind of stuff. Fine.

That's not the issue. I'm sure for some people, race is an issue and everything. But I think the difference you get from hockey versus the NBA, and I think this comes from kind of being not a second class league, but if you look at the leagues across major professional sports. in America, you've got, you know, top of the line is NFL, obviously, and really college football is the next. And then you can coin flip baseball and basketball and then hockey's down there. And you can keep feed me all the WNBA shit you want. And I see data that's like, look at the social media followers that Angel Reese has. Cool.

How many of those are just dudes that want to look at her showing her ass? Like, who gives a shit on my social media followers Angel Reese has? But like you can just go down the list of all these leagues. The NHL, the one thing you can't question about the NHL, and you can question it about the NBA because it's proven that there's load management and that dudes take nights off and all that shit. The one thing you can't argue is that dudes that play hockey, if you're going to buy a ticket to a hockey game,

unless a dude's arm is falling off, more than likely that dude's going to play. And you can't guarantee that in the NBA. So I agree, again, that tanking isn't the number one thing. Like, people can accept tanking. Mark Cuban's not wrong. People can accept tanking, like, if you know that there's an end game and there's a plan, I think people can accept that.

They won't accept it for very long, but they'll accept it because they get that there's a plan and it's in place and we're going to figure this shit out. But what they can handle is the risk of buying a ticket to a game. Like, can you imagine you buy a ticket to like a movie, right? I still love going to the movies. I go usually every weekend. I fucking love the movies. And it'll be sad.

It'll be a sad day when the movie theaters disappear, just like the shopping malls and everything else. The things I fucking love could all end up gone. But maybe I need to move on. But I love that shit. But you go to the movie and you're like, hey, guys, guess what's coming out? Mission Impossible. I'm going to spend $20 to I'm going to spend $15 to $20 for the IMAX tickets for it.

And then I'm going to spend $20 on popcorns and sody pops. I'm going to do all this shit. But there's also a chance that when I show up, and I won't know this until I get there, by the way, and once I bought the ticket. But there's a chance that it's actually not going to be Tom Cruise starring in the movie. It's going to be some pud, some no-name putt, some backup pud, some, you know, dufous background actor is actually going to be playing the lead character. And the Boren identity, it's actually not, it's going to, Jason Boren is going to be played by some dickhead. Can you imagine if that were the case in that? But that's what it is in basketball, because you know that there's a very good.

possibility that depending on what city you're in, and that used to really be a factor was the city. Like, oh, LeBron's coming to Memphis? Well, he ain't going to play. You know, that was the reality of all that shit. So can you imagine it was like that in movies or a concert? Hey, we're going to show up for the concert tonight, but there's a really good possibility that Steve Perry's not going to be here. It's going to be the other guy. A bad example, of course. But like, there's a chance that when I go see the Eagles, Don Henley's not going to be singing vocals.

He's taking a night off and some other dickhead's going to come up and play the drums and Desperado. You probably wouldn't spend $500 a ticket for that, now would you, you friends? So why would you spend X amount of dollars on a ticket, knowing that there's a very good possibility that you're not going to see some of these guys in?

And now they don't even seem to care about whether or not they win awards or not, which is a huge factor, because that used to be like the argument is, well, you know, they'll go out and they'll, they're going to have to play a certain number of games because that's what makes you eligible to win awards. And now they don't give a shit about that either. So what do you do?

and that's the biggest issue be falling in the NBA. That game last night is an example of what's wrong with the NBA. I agree. It's not tanking. It's that because obviously Oklahoma City's not tanking. But part of it is creating urgency for individual games as well. And that's the biggest issue that every sport outside of football has is creating an urgency for you to attend these games. That game meant absolutely nothing to Oklahoma City.

They're going to finish us the number one team in the league. And if they don't, they'll finish it number two. And who gives a shit? because the playoffs are a whole different world. But they're never going to change anything. They're not going to play fewer games in baseball or basketball, which they could. But they won't because there's too much money involved in it, so they won't do it. And urgency.

So, again, looking at the list of things that can make sports better and improve sports. You know, again, go back to my point about relegation, just relegate. If you were to go out and you were to relegate some of these teams, you never will. You should. If you just played relegation on this and said, hey, if you don't win a certain number of games or you don't finish at this threshold, you're playing in the fucking G League. It'll never happen. But that would help.

Imagine like you're going out there and your franchises are generating less profit if you're the Pittsburgh pirates and you could play against the Memphis Redbirds if you don't finish outside of the bottom four in Major League Baseball. But that is not going to happen. So to the point about hockey again, though, like look at what's happening to these hockey guys now. These guys are getting insulted. And the only reason they're getting insulted by. large number of people. Real talk is because they're a bunch of white dudes that play a sport that a bunch of people that are liberal types don't even bother watching. So they're just getting shit on by a bunch of people. And they're getting shit on because it's easy to shit

on them because they're white. And that's what's going to happen to those dudes, because that's like an accepted class of people that you can shit on.