The Press Box - Bomani Jones Talks Social Media on Trial, AI Use, and the State of Hip-Hop Media

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

Today on a special episode of The Press Box, Joel is joined by friend of the show Bomani Jones. Joel and Bomani start by discussing the social media addiction trial in California that found Meta and Google liable (03:23). They dive into a larger conversation about social media use in 2026, and whether you can still build a following on social media like you used to (10:45). Next, the guys discuss the reaction to their takes on Jay-Z and look at the state of hip-hop media as a whole (24:08). After that, Joel asks Bomani about his use of AI (43:56) and his thoughts on the general conversation surrounding AI in 2026. The show ends with a discussion about Will Wade being hired at LSU (53:46), before a quick conversation about the Jaden Ivey situation (59:32). All that and more, here on The Press Box. Host: Joel Anderson Guest: Bomani Jones Producers: Isaiah Blakely, Bruce Baldwin, and Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box. It's Joel Anderson without Brian Curtis, man. I miss him here. I looked to him for guidance. I wish he was here, but it's not going to happen. He'll be back next week. Until then, though, helping me up here doing,

they're actually doing the hard work. This is the easy work that I'm doing. They're doing the hard work. The producers, Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin, on the ones and twos, as I like to say. And on today's very special third weekly episode of the press box, we're going to have on my good friend and friend of the show, Beaumani Jones, who is the host of The Right Time with Beaumani Jones.

Very popular podcast. I'm sure you all have heard of him before. We're going to talk about if everybody should get off social media, including me. We're going to follow up on last week's comments about Jay-Z. I'll try not to get upset. And we're also going to talk about the state of hip-hop media. We'll find out exactly what Bomani, uses AI, by which we mean our artificial intelligence for.

And then we'll touch on Will Wade going to LSU and why headline writers keep saying Jayden Ivy got fired for his remarks about Pride Month. So, here's Bo. Beaumani Jones are the right time with Beaumonti Jones. What's up, Doug? Hey, man. Doing all right. Brother, how are you?

I'm good. And I just want to start off, set the terms of engagement here, and that my sincere hope is that I can be more generous and accommodating to you. than you are to me when I go on your show. What are you talking about? That's what I just want to, you know what I'm saying? Set it out.

I'm not going to do you how you do me and call me a hater and have people call in and say I'm a hater and run a hole. I don't think you understand this. I don't have people call in to say that you're a hater. People come from my show to go check out the ringer tailgate. And they come back and they're like, damn, you was right. No, bro. No, bro. Some people, that's not.

host on the ringer tailgate. It is more convenient for them to portray me in that way than anything else. I'm not a... It's just really... I think of myself as a bleeding heart. I'm a very sensitive person. You're sensitive. That is correct.

Yeah, but you're saying it with a negative connotation. I say sensitive. It's like, I really feel the world. Like, that's the people around me. I really feed off the vibe of the world around me. And I respond to it. Joel, you have told me with a straight face, I am motivated by spite. I mean, sometimes I am. No, not sometimes.

You are motivated by spite. That's what haters, that's how they exist. That's how they live. That is your fuel is spite. People that, people that doubt me a hate on me. I don't just go out looking for it. My hate is not looking for some sort of way to attach out to the world. That's what you do.

That's what you do. That's what you go to the comments. It's you go look for it. But those are people that are coming here to talk about me. Joe, you don't have to go look. You know what? That's something we are going to talk about. Actually, yeah.

So, yeah, let's just start there since you got us there. So we talk about this all the time offline listeners. And I would both. So did you follow the trial in California last week that ended with the jury ruling that Mehta should pay $4.2 million to a woman who claimed that social media led to her anxiety and depression? So I did not see the details of it. it, but it sounded like a good idea to me.

Wow. Okay. So, yeah, right. She said basically the Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, it created this snowball effect, made her depressed. She's 20 years old now. She won $4.2 million via this jury's decision. I think that meta is pretty much, I mean, first of all, that's a drop in the bucket for them, right? And they're probably going to appeal it, though. But when you hear that, what do you think of that? I think, since I have given a decent bit of the last 18. to 24 months of my life to reading all kinds of books

about like how bad all this stuff online is for us, like to a point where I can only quote the books but so directly because I've read so many of them that they just all kind of run together. But the truth is they know this stuff is bad for people. Right? Like they are aware

at the, is it deleterious? Is that how you say it? Deleterious effect? Yeah, there we go. They aware that shit's fucked up. They know it. And so I think I was surprised that they lost the lawsuit simply because of what precedent it could perhaps send. And that's where the appeal I imagine in this would be interesting. But all the research seems to indicate that these apps are, I'm trying to think about who's coming out, who's coming away from using them as better people. I don't know like who it is that could make that argument. You can make the argument that you parolated into some money, right? Like turn it into some

kind of hustle, but in terms of like truly being a better person, it seems very clear that social media in particular is kind of inflicting the sickness upon people and is designed to be addictive in the affliction of that. And so them losing that lawsuit, I'm like, ooh, who's next? Let's see what else we got. So you think it's the tip of the iceberg there, basically? I mean, all I'm saying is why would I not sue them for something very similar if I did not see this see somebody just win? Huh. Well, okay, so you, this is one thing, and we've talked about this a little bit. You don't, I think a lot of times that that part of the social media experience is overblown. There's like, oh, people are really angry and mad and they communicate and some of the, they show their worst selves on the internet.

But what about the people who meet friends on there, who fall in love on there, who find community on there? I felt like I got to know you first through social media, and that's how we ended up becoming friends. So what about that stuff? Do you not take that seriously? No, I'm just asking when's the last time it happened. Right? So I think one of the more underrated moments in the history of all things, social media,

was the invention of the infinite scroll, right? Because, you know, I think there are people like people may have forgotten this, but there was a point where you could get to the end of whatever it was, like of all the people you were following, and then they got the bright idea, and they're like, okay, so why don't we just give them more people, right? Which did add it up and got stacked into the place of, but why don't we just create a bunch of AI stuff?

And Zuckerberg coming out in public and saying, we think you'll love your AI friends as much as you love your actual friends. And I think that when he said that, he didn't mean it in terms of like your friends in real life. I think he meant it in terms of your friends online, because what your friends online are are portals to content. And what they're saying is we will provide you more content and we think you'll like that content

as much as the content that your friends make and most of the content that your friends make sucks. I think early in this when we all showed up, like there's a lag, I guess is the point that I'm going to try to make is that when we first showed up without having social media there, we showed up as the selves that we were. And then we all kind of morphed into the patterns that were established by the medium and all the things that come up.

Like one theory that is one book, again, which I can remember the name of it. But a point they made was we talk about the idea that all of this exposure to each other and talking more will make it difficult for there to be racism, sexism, homophobia, so forth and so on. Because the more we talk, the better we'll get to know each other. Even though actual research indicates that the more interactions that people have like that, the more likely they are to dislike each other. It takes a lot more for somebody to say something that makes you say, wow, I'll love that person forever than it does for you to say, you know what? I'll never listen to anything else that that person says. So, yeah, I think that there was a time where people could do those things and then meet those people. But I think that at the time when we were talking about that, that was much more the purpose with which people engaged the platforms.

I don't think that's why people engage the platforms now. I think people engage the platforms now for the reason that people who smoke cigarettes smoke cigarettes. It's because they used to smoke cigarettes. Man, I don't know. Sometimes. And hold on, I would like to make the note. It's very interesting that you think that the notion that people are online going there to be there is overblown. Because what do I hit you up to talk about every couple of weeks?

You won't lie being angry. So Bumani thinks to bring people in that I'm an angry person and that what did you say? This is because we talked literally about this yesterday. I believe that you online, you are presenting as a person who is not happy. I can't believe that, but I have to, you know what it is? It's like a person that was on the real world and they're like, oh, man, I went back home and I saw that version of myself and that didn't feel like me. So I feel like they're not getting a chance to see the, but I do take what you say seriously. Joe, you got on one day and said, Bow's going to call me and tell me to get offline and to be honest, he's right.

Because you would call somebody some variety of home over something that probably didn't require that, probably do a person. person that wasn't a person. Because that's the thing about Twitter. Twitter, zombie land at this point. Like, it is a simulation of a social media network because so much of it now is bots.

And what they figured out is, we don't even need them to be people and they'll argue, they'll argue with whatever it is because what they're doing is finding the anger and stoking it. Like, my 4U page

immediately gives me whatever wild shit you just said to somebody last night or that morning. Oh, man. Well, you know, for whatever reason, I'm getting a lot more Nick Fuentes content on on Twitter.

Yeah, because they're trying to keep you round up. They're like, Joe getting us this bread, man. Keep him going. That's crazy. I mean, the thing is, is that I do take what you say seriously, but sometimes I am going there looking to be like, all right, well, what are people saying? Less so on Twitter. I truly believe,

and I'm saying this directly to my tailgate co-host, if they were not on Twitter, I probably would have not gone back to Twitter. Because I kind of walked away from it. I was more on Blue Sky at that point in Instagram. But I Because they're on there, and that was a way to promote the show, I was willing to do it. But, yeah, I don't think Twitter makes me happier.

But I do think there are some people out there. I mean, Dragonfly Jones is out there. Your boy, you know, he's on there, right? Yeah, I mean, he is an amazing outlier in a number of ways of being able to be on Twitter for all this time and kind of be the same as he was. Now, look, I, I – I – there was a time where I dare I say a bit of an influential figure on Twitter. And a big part of what I was doing was I was firing people up, Jack. Well, you started a whole account called Hater Gallagher, by the way. I know.

I started Hader Gallagher, but the thing about it was Hater Gallagher was ridiculous. Like, the point of Hater Gallagher was to take me embarrassing people off of my main timeline and create another space where people could just go over there for it. It had my name on it. I didn't pretend like it was anybody other than me. But I would just say wild stuff back to people. Like, I was truly amused by watching the change in the way that people interacted with me as I went from local radio hosts to satellite radio host to television personality. Like, I noticed I didn't change, but the way people responded to me changed. And I was like, oh, this is really interesting.

Then it reached a point where I was like, I can't tell if these are real people anymore. But I also recognized after a point that there was somewhat of the interaction that I, guess I was addicted to, right? Like, I appreciated having the feedback. I liked interacting with my audience. Like, I liked being the guy that you actually might be able to make friends with. That happened to be the dude on television. You know what I mean? Like, I appreciated being able to do that. But then it just reached a point where I was just like, I turned on all the filters on Twitter that you use to fade out the bots. And I wasn't getting any interaction. And so I concluded to myself that that's not possible, right? So I turned all those filters off and then I realize, no, it's all just still bots that are responding to me. And so now,

but alas, at least a year, maybe too, I don't engage at all with what people have to say to me online because I don't think, I don't think there's anything positive out of it. And in the beginning, I was interacting with people who liked me or like fans or whatever. Like it was a positive experience, that interaction. Now, just about anything anybody has to say about me that I see online is overwhelmingly negative. The people who like you don't talk about you on social media anymore, they talk about you in group chats. If you have a Reddit for your own show, you want to hear it.

Like you want to meet your frenemies. Go to the Reddit for your own show. Like, you know, this is, this is just what it is. So these spaces have not become places that people go to be happy. It's places that people go to be mad. I hope people don't walk away from this thinking that I'm an angry person or a person. Because I mean, I feel like what I'm doing

is basically a loose version of haters Gallagher. The difference is Hater Gallagher was clever and somewhat whimsical. And you just... You sound like a lot right now. No, no, no. I'm telling you.

Look, man, somebody say they don't like me on TV. I'm saying I took his mom with a red lobster last night. That is nonsensical. It is ridiculous. And that is the point, right? Like, it's just there. to be absurd. You'll be over there heated.

Oh, oh. Joe, Joe, Joe, you'll be over there heated. Let's actually play somebody that is heated because I want you to hear. Look at that. Look at that diversion. Yeah, you like that? You like that? Yeah, no, that was, I would actually say that was very professional. The unblocked man was coming and no date pitch. So, on the other hand, Taylor Lawrence, but actually I would like to have on the show someday. She posted this video and I'm going to take a few seconds from a clip here. We're going to play right now.

People talking to each other online. Regardless, the big issue here is the legal precedent these cases set and the political agenda that they're being used to push. As soon as the verdict was issued in the social media addiction case, the parents of social media addicted children sprung into action pushing laws that they're advocating for. And those laws are mass surveillance and identity verification laws. They want to remove all anonymity from the internet and allow the government to censor any content, deemed harmful to minors. This means content criticizing ICE, criticizing billionaires, LGBTQ content,

or reproductive justice and health information. Groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Social Media Victims Law Center who are leading this charge are using this verdict to manufacture consent for the Kids Online Safety Act and repealing Section 230. Most importantly though, politicians are using this idea of social media addiction to enact mass identity

verification on the internet. So do you not take that critique seriously? I take it very seriously. I think she's correct. Okay. I didn't say I had solutions. Okay. All right.

Okay. Right. Like, I don't think, yeah, no, I do not think that the solution to what that lawsuit discussed is to then do the things that they're trying to do, right? I think what perhaps is the biggest problem is the opacity of the algorithms. And the fact that these companies will not share what's going on with their algorithms because they believe they are proprietary and there's something to that.

Like there's, I don't know if there's anything more valuable than the TikTok algorithm because it's so good at keeping people around. Like this is the big value that that company has. So she's not wrong in what she's saying, but it doesn't change the fact that there is a problem that needs to be dealt with.

What she is describing is not terribly different to, man, y'all say the cops are killing too many people, how about we just give them body cameras? that'll fix it and allow us to surveil you a little bit more. That's true. You know, like, I'm reading this, are you familiar with that Naomi Klein book, Double Ganger? I'm familiar with it, not read it, though.

Okay, so I'm about halfway through it. It's really interesting. But one of the points that she makes in there is about, like, just the idea that there is this mirror world. So, for example, we have a massive problem with surveillance at our society. to. And the solution to that or the response to that from a lot of people on the right, like in the Steve Bannon world or everything, was the vaccine passport is the problem and that's the surveillance that we need to shut down, right? It's the idea of, it's what I say about Tucker Carlson, which makes him interesting, is that Tucker Carlson has a point. What he does with that point is the problem. His point, these corporations are going to be the death of us. 100% correct. He then takes that to be mad at the Mexicans. Hey, wait a minute, man. I don't know. don't really know how you got there from here. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so this seems like one of those examples, right, is that what Lorenz is calling out. And I expected you to play some clip for her that I would despise, but that didn't happen. Okay, see, it looks, a little surprised. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but no, but it's just like, yeah, okay, so we have this problem with what social media and addiction

and everything is doing to people. And so where I think that gets fun is people like to limit that discussion to children. because adults don't want to confront their own shit. And these adults are addicted in very, very similar ways. But it's like, oh, yo, we got to do this to protect the kids while they're sitting there scrolling, you know, scrolling away and doing the exact same things. And so, yeah, right there, they're like,

oh, man, we got this problem with addiction. Here's the solution. And it's like, hey, hey, hey, hey, no, that's not what we're talking about here. I mean, I guess do you have a preferred, preferred world or something prescriptive? because this is a show about media. You're a young journalism grad,

or a media grad, or you want to get into news or media content in some sort of way. How would you recommend them engage with social media then? I don't have any evidence that you can truly build a brand on social media now, like I did 15 years ago. So think about it this way.

How much effort in this point in time do you really put into, like, following new people? They have to recommend it to me. I'm not just going to go look over. Right. And the truth be told, with the for you tabs and things like that, it serves the purpose. It sends you stuff to occupy you. And that's all they're trying to do is occupy you. And so it gives you enough there to occupy you.

I don't know if you can use social media to build it any more than or any differently than the idea. You need to go get a job and then you write stuff and then the stuff you put on social media then goes around. But like, I don't know the last time that I came across somebody new and young. Well, no, okay, I think Deonté Lee at the Ringer, who I have on my show now a lot, is like one of the last people that I remember.

I was like, oh, I discovered, or I came across you online in that way. My recommendation for young people is, how about you get good of your stuff? And what the reality is, other people going to be the ones to bounce it around. I don't know how much it's going to have to do with you. Like, think about how many times, like, how many clips or how,

How many things you see to get aggregated to bounce around, how many of them are originating with the creator, right? I'm even watching Stephen A. Smith retweet the Daily Caller account that aggregates him. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Well, what about a mid-career journalist like myself? You think I need to get off is what I'm saying.

I think you specifically absolutely need to get off. Like, look, I'm not really on anymore myself. Like, I'm a mid-career journalist, I would argue. The right-time account sends out stuff. every now and then I'll send a quick thing or whatever that I see. But I don't think social media is doing anything positive for my career that an account that sends out my clips. Can I do?

Fair enough. My next question, no, do you think? Like, what do you think is doing? I think, so I think your situation is somewhat interesting in this particular time because you are doing like this podcast and that podcast. you are doing things that are more so about your personality than you have for the other parts of your career, right? Where you, you know, you just got a Joe Friday with it. And so maybe there's a benefit in introducing yourself in a way to the audience through social media.

Maybe one could make that argument. But now I think the clips are the thing that are doing it, like me talking about you is going to do more for your career than you talking about you. In the same fashion that you talking about me is going to do more for me than me talking about. about me kids. That's probably right. I mean, there were a lot of people in the comments that said, I saw Van and Bo talking about the show and they came over and started looking or whatever.

Yeah, like, that's what it is. But like, of course I'm going to tell you my shit is hot, right? Like, yo, I'm listening to this guy's show. Why? He just told me how good it was. I turned it old. I mean, yeah, you know, the thing is, though, and Jamel Bowie makes this point, a friend of mine as well,

Jamel talks about that if you want to be a serious person the media and a communicator, you're going to have to start doing the short video clips and uploading them yourself. Like he does, he's, I mean, he's very committed to, like, developing his own YouTube channel, and he has, like, a very big catalog on TikTok and everything else. And I kind of feel like that's the kind of thing that, you know, that we all have to do. And social media is a big part of that plan, right? I think that is a fair point, though I would be curious to know what his end goal is from that.

Like, not that I can't see what it might be, but I don't know specifically why he feels, he works for New York Times, right? So I don't, you know, so I don't, I don't, I would be curious to know more about exactly what he wants, but I think that's in line with what I'm saying. Put the clips up and go. My point is not that you shouldn't have an account in those places. My point is that you should not be part of the human ecosystem behind the place. We need to move on from this, but I'm going to say,

Anytime you see influencers or anybody with lots of followers talking, one of the things that you'll notice if you go into the, they are interacting with people to comment on their content. I know, but you aren't interacting with people. You are interacting with, as they have put it, Claude, 34, 5, 7, 9, 2, 371, 4, 6, 7, 5,9, that's my issue particularly with Twitter is they aren't people. But if you have the self-control to interact with people,

who are simply making conversation about what you do, then cool. But if you don't, I do that. Then don't. I do that. I think that sometimes people overlook that sometimes I'm in there talking. I said if you have the self-control to only interact with those people. And you do not. And by the way, I don't really have it either.

Therefore, I'm not there. Fair to. Let's move on because I got a lot to get. to. And I don't know how much time I have. You're a very important person. Makes a lot of money. So I don't want to waste your time. Yeah, he go. Yeah, he go. Yeah, you go. That was a little bit of that shade right there. That was a shade. No, that's real. That's real. But so, do you listen to music or do you just skim through it? Oh, man, we about to be and Joe about to make our lives harder. We both, we both

was under siege last week. A lot of people. A lot of people. A lot of people. A lot of people, were introduced to this show through via JZ comments. And so what do you think of the follow-up, the week you've had since then? Because I've thought it was ridiculous and it actually has made me sad. So I thought it was ridiculous, but I always go through this thing where I have an understanding that the people at my job who cut up videos for social, that's what they're going for. It's true. Right.

Like what they're going for is engagement and what gets engagement is riling people up, right? Now, what is interesting is that, and I want to be very clear, I watch every clip before they put them up. Because I'm more concerned. I'm less concerned with whether it riles people up than I am with whether or not my position was misrepresented because this is being shared with people who are not going to come back and listen to my show. The people who do the social account, their incentives are about social engagement. engagement, not about whether anybody goes from that place to the actual show, which is the only thing I care about. I care about the opinions of the people who listen in home. I do this

for the people who really, really rock with me, right? Like, that's who I'm in this for. I didn't see as much of the Jay-Z response to me, because, again, I don't really engage at this point with what people have to say. Like, I say my piece. You get to say your piece. What I thought was interesting about the responses that people had to mine was, and the social clip that went out was me saying that I personally don't

care to Jay-Z got a billion dollars. I am personally not inspired by the fact that he got a billion dollars. And whenever I hear him say something that's about something larger than really rap. I'm like, hey, why don't we

get back to rap, huh? which people took as me saying, well, are you telling Jay-Z to shut up and dribble? And the answer is, kind of. Okay. No, yeah, no, look, man, there's some people I don't want to hear talk. That's right.

I'm not saying that you don't have the right to talk, right? I'm not saying that he's, okay, I'm saying he's out of his depth on certain topics. But the idea that I don't care, I think that's the part that I found while. I don't care with Jay-Z, think about this stuff because of what he's demonstrated to me he thinks about. And so I don't, like, I'm not interested in his thoughts on these larger matters.

I don't, I think we've made a mistake by making him something more than a rapper or businessman, right? And so, and I don't see the businessman. The businessman has become the sage in American society at this point. And I don't agree with that. Like, there's a place that academics used to hold as the people that you're supposed to listen to or preachers or people. And now it's the billionaires that people think they should listen to. And I'm like you, I listen to what he said. And I'm like, no, man, he ain't really,

he ain't really hollered about shit right now. Like, why are we doing this? But we have reached a point now where we're 35 years beyond the Cold War. People who critique capitalism, it's beyond the grasp of people at this point. Left or right is completely beyond their grasp. And the idea that I don't care that he's rich broke. I feel like it broke a lot of the brains of the people who were responding. It sounds like, I'm trying to channel their argument.

it sounds like you're being a hater, right? To them, it's just like, oh, yeah, why don't you care about the accomplishment and the effort it took and the hustle it took to become a billionaire and the talent it took? And that's what they're hearing. They're not hearing that, man, the one way that we know that he was prepared to become a billionaire

is that he was willing to sell crack. You know what I mean? Because it's like, if you're willing to sell crack, it just shows that money is a motivating force for you. And like you and I, we didn't get into these fields to get rich, right? These were things that we enjoyed doing, thought we had a talent for, and we wanted to be in that, in that, in this particular arena. But if we had wanted to be rich, this is not something we would have chosen to do.

So it's fair for us to be like, if that's what you're motivated by, cool. But I don't give a shit if you make a million dollars. But to me, it's the level past crack, right? Yeah. And so, and what I mean by that is, if you tell me that you sold crack to survive or whatever, because that's what the game was where you were at. Right.

I can hear you out. Yes, sir. Yeah. Fair. But once you move up the chain a few steps, you did not do this to survive. Right? Like, once you get to the place that it appears that Jay-Z reached as that dude,

this was no longer about survival. This was no longer about the urban jungle and, you know, what it took to get to where you were. No, man, you was about that money. And so what it is that people seem to be asking me to respect is that and what Jay-Z says, this system was set up to stop somebody like me. And that's yes and no. The system has been set up to stop black people.

But the system has not been set up to stop you from selling crack to black people. The system is actually right there for you to do that. In a lot of ways, you kind of sort of like follow descriptive. You were an agent of the government in a lot of ways. Yes. So what I've felt like, Jay-Z has been saying for a very long time, and what I'm supposed to give him respect for is

he managed to be just like them white people that he said was trying to hold him back. And so if you want to argue that he broke free from the constraints that were placed on him, okay, but if the reason that you broke free from it was to become one of them, and that's the life he lives. Right?

And I'm not saying he's, He lives the life of a white man, but the people that run the game that he say is holding them down, what are you doing if you right there next to them doing the same business as though? Right. Right. And so, no, that doesn't inspire me, right? I get to, I think there's something wrong with what they do. Yeah.

I am not inspired by you getting there to do the same thing as them. And if you are inspired by that, I'm not even really talking about you right now. But why are you mad at me? Because that's not what I'm about. I had people say something about how it appeared that I had lost touch. I can show you articles from 13 years ago about me talking about this same thing. I can show you articles of me seven years ago talking about, I'm like, I've stayed where I am on this matter. It's the internet that's broken people's brains it made it such that it's so tribal that you can't even engage the thoughts.

It's like, I think this is my personal frustration and maybe this is ego talking. I felt like I'd earned enough equity that with some of the people that if you disagree with me that you would try to hear me out. Yeah. You know, no, man, they just ride for Jay-JZ. Of all the people to be their daddy.

Oh, man, bro. I mean, and the thing is, it's like, I don't even think, we're not even necessarily making a really strong critique, right, of Jay-Z. We're just saying with either, this is who he is. And with me, I was like, I actually, and I thought the GQ interview, my opinion changed on it once I heard Joe Button

and them talk about it a little bit, to be honest, because I was like, oh, okay, like people that want to hear about rap, they want to hear about his relationship with Jay Cole and his opinion on the Drake and Kendrick beef. I guess it met that bar. But what I wanted to know, what is your relationship with Collin-Chappernet? Right? Like, that's the kind of stuff I wanted to know. Like, you said, you said we're beyond kneeling now.

You still feel that way? You know, that kind of, that's what I wanted him to talk about. And I felt like people got mad at me because I just wanted to hear more about that kind of stuff. There was an opportunity. He doesn't do this a lot. He doesn't talk to media a lot. I just would have liked to have heard more. Yeah.

And I agree with that. And I think in line, I was thinking about this earlier. And I'm curious if you feel similar to me about this. You know what I respect more than Jay-Z making a billion dollars? JZ making a reasonable doubt. You know what I care more than JZ making a billion dollars? JZ making blueprint. Because that's what I care about.

Yeah, man. Right? Like, I don't know how much money prints made. I have no idea. That's not what fires me up. That's not what gets me going. You know what I mean? And I think, but that's the next level of JZ, though.

With JZ ushered in, which is very interesting, is the idea, the idea of the rapper as the same, CEO, which is different, I think, than Puffy and Master P, who were CEOs, who became rappers. But the rapper as the CEO, where that's different is he wasn't never going to be Dr. Drake. You understand what I'm saying? Right. He wasn't never going to be one of these cats that got jerked. And it became a rap talking point, basically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're doing, like I'm going to say, you sell the records being you, but still you try to be me, right? Like, you guys are doing all of this. but I'm the one that's got all the money so who's really winning. As a result, rappers couldn't even be broke no more. You got to show up with a big ass chain. It was totally...

Because don't nobody listen to nobody that's broke. When I respect dudes who can really rap. Yes, right. I mean, it was actually... I'm not going to say it was like a part of the charm, but rappers, the rappers are my youth felt accessible to us. YouTube felt like somebody I could have gone to school with.

You know what I'm saying? If somebody that was cool, and I was like, oh, I see him in a local show. or something like that. And like all of a sudden, like to admire somebody who's just a working artist, it feels like, well, how many albums did he sell? Can he sell out arenas? And it's just like, well, I've never cared about that.

Like if the music spoke to me, I didn't care about like how many platinum albums they had or gold albums, whatever. I didn't even started, I never even started really thinking about that until like the 2000s, I think. And maybe I don't know if Jay-Z is a big part of that or not. Yeah, no, I just don't know why I care how much money Jay-Z got. I just don't care. Let me, so I'm going to, so Jeff Perlman, legendary sports writer, somebody, you know,

in respect. Yeah, my buddy. Yeah, a biographer who recently published a biography of Tupac. I actually talked with him for that book. I've not read it yet. I warned him about some stuff that was going to come to him by writing about Tupac. And it seems like that came true times a million. He seemingly had a really miserable time with it.

But he's been talking about. about the state of hip hop media and how bad it is. And that, like, there's, the people that have sort of taken it over are people that are, you know, the YouTube accounts that pay for their content or whatever and everything else. So what do you think about the state of hip hop media right now? I don't even know outside of those accounts, like, what is truly, what truly counts is hip hop media. Damn. Well, what I mean by that is the tent pose of, like, the source.

Bob, double XL, rap pages, you know, you get farther down the line, ozone would be an example. Hell, shout out to murder dog, right? Those aren't quite there. So I guess you have what,

like, complex would be an example, like revolt does, you know, like I don't know who exactly we're talking about. I know that in this discussion, he's talking about like art of dialogue, DJ Vlad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, those sorts of people.

And, I mean, he's, right in the sense that if you're buying the interviews, that's not, if you're paying for the interviews, that's not really what this is. The part that gets me about it is, and look, all of us who do like camera stuff or whatever, we wound up here and made this mistake, let somebody hit us with some first class cap, right? Like, you're like, go back, you're like, wait a minute, that's not true. Or I've even been in one where it's like, oh, I do that wasn't true. And he said it, but I wasn't exactly like,

I wouldn't prepare it to be like, hey, man, why you lying to me right now? But it's a lot of capping and the rapid on those interviews, and that's Perlman's issue. It's like, look, man, I've been out here on the grind, on the ground, going to talk to all these people,

getting them to talk to me, and now somebody's throwing out this money and is capping to rap and nobody's doing anything about it. And he's right about that. Like, that space of interview that just winds up being aggregated and going around. I do agree with him that that is a bit problematic. I don't know, and this is where I worry about the way that Jeff put it out there,

especially because he's sitting there talking to another goofy white man while they talk about this. So it doesn't land like exactly the same way as I would like it to. But I'm just not so sure that that's only about hip hop. Right. You know, I think Jeff took on a Herculean task. Yeah. Deciding to come over to this side and do this. And there were going to be people who were very resistant to that.

he mentioned that Kevin Powell said that he's only writing this because of white privilege. I think two things could be true at once. I think that he could get the opportunity because of white privilege and also write a good book. I haven't read it, but it's on the board that, you know, like I'm not saying that the book is bad. It's possible that he could have done it.

I get, but I also get Jeff's point where he's like, well, why ain't you write it? Yeah. You had the interviews. Ain't nothing stop you. It was shocking when I did Slow Burn 3, Tupac and Biggie, the paucity of biographical information about both those dudes. So Cheo Coker, who's legendary hip-hop writer and Hollywood TV man now,

wrote a biography about Biggie that was published through Vibe magazine. And it was pretty good. I wonder how he would approach that book now. He had a little bit more time. He's a little bit older. But yeah, like, there was nothing really out there for them. And I was really surprised. I was like, oh, my God.

Like, nobody has done the Tupac thing, right? Like, nobody had done, like, a major, well, I guess our boy, Justin Tensley did the biggie book. I need to, you know, I got to be honest. I've been, you know, I've had a lot of shit going on. But I need to catch up on that as well. But, yeah, I mean, it's just there, there is, it seemed like there would have been a moment that those books would have been out there. And they just did not come out until recently. So, yeah, I don't.

And I know that, like, when the. when the book came out, if I'm not mistaken that Justin wrote, a big part of it was the publishing house being like, we're coming up on, what was it, 20 years since Biggie had been killed, or 25 maybe. I feel like it's been more recent. I think it came out in no two. I mean, in 2022, but it's like, okay, so it's been 25 years.

We need to have a book out here about this. I think maybe I find it most interesting that nobody was that curious. But I also think another part of it was, to be fair, there was a lot of people hold out so that they could get paid off the story themselves. That's right. You know, like a lot of people that maybe got some footage

or whatever it is, and they kind of like, oh, well, I'm gonna do my spin on it. Like I had one thing that I wanted to do a documentary on. I talked to a buddy of mine like, yo, let's get out there. But the problem was all the people involved are like, well, yo,

why don't we do it? And then we'll get to bread, but they ain't never going to do it. Right. I mean, I ran into that over and over again with that slow burn season. It's like, yeah, we actually going to be doing our own thing,

no needing us, you know, collaborating with you, because why will we do that? And I was like, all right, well. And not one piece of it came out, huh? No, man. I mean, Kevin Powell would have been perfect for the two-pies book because he actually met him, had a relationship with him.

And he had told me, this was 2019, that he was working on that book. I still haven't seen it. So anyway. To your point, though, about what hip-hop media is, I was actually thinking about this. It's Joe Button podcast. It's drink champs. It is what it is.

That's where all these interviews are taking. place now. Even if it's not like the ones where it's the payola or whatever, it's like those places right there. That's where all that media, that journalism has happened. And this is my hot take on that. I don't even think it's hot, but I have worked, I studied economics and I've worked in sports media, which is to say that I have spent the majority of my adult life in spaces that ultimately wound up influencing all the spaces around them that became kind of apex predators in terms of thought process and approach. So in the social sciences, the economist won, right? Like, you got to have a certain quantitative ability to even do sociology, do political

science, whatever it is. But the influence of the economist, the paradigm of utility maximization and looking at incentives and all that stuff, it won out and you see it everywhere. Jeff Zucker used to say that he wanted CNN to be like ESPN. And now you look at news television and it's really structured very much like sports coverage. Joe Button, as I recall, was very transparent about the fact that he kind of wanted to be the Stephen A. Smith of rap stuff, right? And you look at the way those shows are programmed

and the way they're formatted and the way that people ask the questions or whatever it is. Everything is being treated like sports. But the other way where it's being treated like sports is in the interview space, which is to say everybody's talking to day potness. Yeah.

Now, I can't remember who it was. You and I watched this once. It was Cameron interviewing somebody. I can't remember who it was, but I had to say he did an excellent job. Oh, the Punisher. Yes. Yes. He was the punisher, the dude for the dude.

But he did an excellent job in that interview. Like, I think I, Cam, who's, Cam was the last guest that we had on Game Theory with Bobani Jones. Really? The last person that we had on. And it's interesting because we had to fight to have him on. It's so hard. I was trying to get him on here, man. Yeah, the network, the network didn't understand what the deal was, right?

But we were like, I saw where it was going with him because he's just, he's really smart. He's really charismatic, you know, say whatever, right? But interviews by and large now are people go talk with their homies where it ain't going to be no hard questions that you might have to answer. And that's kind of, you know, and to be fair, hip-hop media has always been a little bit incestuous. I mean, in that regard. Everybody's homes and shirts for people they covered. That's right.

That's right. That's right. I mean, I mean, look, Dreamhampton is a legend, right? But she was friends with Pock and Biggie and wrote about them and did work with them, right? I mean, so that's just... Yeah, I think it's more Big and J. Big and J. That's right. Yeah, not Pock. That's right. Big and J. But yes, yes. So, I mean, that's always kind of been the thing. I mean, shit, Kevin Powell ended up being friends with Tupac, right? Well, I think that people ultimately become friends with people they cover, but the difference now is you're being covered by your friends. Right. Like, it's one thing It was like, yo, man, I spent however much time hanging out with this person talking to them, getting their deepest thoughts.

Right. Yeah, you might get cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Imagine doing that, you know what I'm saying? Interviewing your friend on your show. That's unethical. Yeah, but I might hit you with a horror question. You know what I'm saying?

You do that. You do that. And likewise. Well, I'm going to, I'm bouncing around because I feel like I've been talking to you for a long time and we've been, we've been lingering. So I got to get you asking about AI because I know that you. are interested in AI. And every player. Very, very good player.

2001 was too late. Come on, Gary. You talking about something else? Yeah, I'm trying to say. But who, I mean, see, and that was, this is why I take offense to the idea

that you thought Hader Gallagher is so much better than my responses, but whatever. Oh, no, Hader Gallagher. That was not a Hater Gallagher level of, I mean. I took your mom with a red lobster. I didn't come up. But anyway, you've actually.

That was after Pat. That was after formation. No, the best line I ever had was some dude after Press died asked me, and I did it on my real account. He was like, well, when's the last time you listened to Prince? I'm like, yeah, your mama played. I mean your mama listened to Let's pretend we're married, and then she took me to red lobster.

It was right after the formation to come out. Thank you. Thank you. It was excellent. That's all right. That's all right. That's good. I give you that.

I like that. Thank you. I like that. You've taken to AI more than most people I know. You use it. I mean, oh, I think I've taken it less to AI than most people you know. Okay. That's an interesting thing.

Yeah. So, I mean, because you, I mean, you use it to planning trips. You do some things with you. You ask the questions. Your show at one time had an AI advertiser. Yeah. What do you think about the conversation around AI in media? Because I don't know if you've been paying attention.

Some writers are coming up and saying, hey, I use AI as a way to get started on my articles. I'll use it as an editing system. whatever else. And some people say, oh, no, that's not. You're taking away the job of thinking and giving it over to this, into this AI thing. So what do you think? Like, what do you, the uses of AI? What are the good and bad uses of it? I use AI if I am dealing with something where the choices are infinite and I need to whittle it down. Okay. Right. Like, I need to make it small enough to get my hands around. So, for example, if I'm like, I want to go somewhere, I know the kinds of places that I want to go. It's a giant world. How do I decide what, like,

where I want to go on a vacation? You know, so it's like, so for example, where do you travel in August that has good weather? That's a very difficult thing to pull off. Mm-hmm. Right? And so, okay, I don't, I suppose I could go to a table and look at the weather. and every place in the world and then go from there. But no, help me whittled down infinite options. I'll tell you another place where I use AI. I would not say I can cook per se, but like I can make food, right?

But what I don't know is recipes. And so, hey, I would like to do a Cajun-style chicken pasta. Boom. But it's not terribly different than, it saves me some steps from like a Google search on such a thing. I don't like the thing. It spits out. Okay, give me another one.

Again, where it's infinite and it whittles down, I think that it can be helpful, and I don't think that this counts as using it as a substitute for thinking. If I have a bunch of disparate ideas, like, how do I put something to, how do I make something out of this? And so you can ask the chat

to help you make something about it. And by the way, it's not going to get it right necessarily. But once it does, it's like, okay, I can give my hands around this and now I can, you know, perhaps turn it into something else. Like what I'm not good at is organizing my stuff. You give me a mass of chaos.

I can give you a finished product. If I need to give you an in between step, then we work in a game where you need to be able to write great proposals and synopsies and the likes before he goes out there. Like I can, I got one documentary idea I told you about, right? The basketball idea. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

I can't, I can explain it to you. I don't know how to write it down. That's right. You know, and so the AI is helpful in that regard. But what I'm not asking it to do is to write anything for me, ever. What I'm not asking it to do is to come up with an idea for me. No. So you would have never used any piece of it for the, and I can say,

you're working on a piece about Trinidad Chamblers for Vanity Fares. Yes. Would you use AI any part of that work whatsoever? I don't know if I would, but I didn't. Like, it never, there was nothing about that story that made me think I need to ask AI about what to do. It was so funny because I was talking to somebody about this and I was, I was having trouble wrapping that piece coming to the end. And what I ultimately decided was my editor gets paid for a reason. Let's work on this together, right?

Right. If that's what we need to do. And I had not thought about it. This person was like, I'm surprised he didn't ask Chad GPT how to wrap it up. And I was like, it never dawned on me. It never, like, it would never dawn on me to use AI to write. Yeah. Like it would never, like, maybe I feel like Bun B talked about how back in the day,

he used to never do punch ends. Hmm. Every verse was all the way through. Huh. You know, like I would never think of using a punch end in that way. I just, and I don't, I don't think that makes me, like, evolutionarily superior or any sort of thing. But I would never think to ask AI to do something that I don't think,

I think I should be capable of doing. What do you think, again, there's a generation of kids that are coming up. There's some newspapers that are like, you let AI do all this shit. You make phone calls and you look up stuff like, you know, and you feed all this to the internet and get out and think about stuff, but you're not going to be doing any writing. What do you think of that approach to it? Because like they're good, I mean, it seems like increasingly that's what they're asking people to do.

And like, that's not really the kind of thing. I think that you can just pick up as a professional. It seems like I think you had to start in college. And that brings up the whole, you know, idea of like, oh, man, like, is that really what we want college students to be doing, fiddling around with AI and handing over a large part of the thinking process to the computer? All right. So first of all, I want to start by making clear what I think is the biggest problem with AI is the horrendous effects it's going to have on the environment. And what we are is no different than cryptocurrency in the sense that we are setting the world on fire. to make money.

Like that's the whole point of it. You can argue that these tools are increasing a level of productivity or whatever it is, but that's not what these companies are actually using them to do it. It is using them to buy in large, replace people.

And I agree with you. You got to learn how to do some of those things. Like what you're talking about is basically the equivalent of why we don't put a calculator in a five-year-old's hands. Right. Like you got to learn how to,

you got to, there's some hands-on parts of it that you have to do. Like when I was in graduate school, all the stuff that we learned how to do were things that computers could do. But it was a recognition that you needed to understand them. And with the AI you do,

because this AI be spitting out some bullshit when they try to do these summaries, you know, and everything else to come up with stuff. Like, it's not necessarily giving you what you need. And so if your argument is, when we're going to have the AI to do this little grunt work and then you just need to be out here

making phone calls and do that stuff, yeah, that sounds cool until they start laying the people off. Like what I have not seen that I think is the most disheartening part is that these companies have not taken this as an opportunity to reallocate labor, right, and to figure out different ways to make the labor stronger, make it more productive, expand the ceiling of what is possible of what we can do. Instead, that it's like, yo, man, we figure out how to get this stuff done cheap.

The other part of it is, and this is, I don't think, is discussed enough in the media spaces. Financially, this isn't working out yet. For these companies. They haven't figured out how to make money with this shit. Yeah, they're huge valuations based on what people think might happen so far.

But this is the second of two consecutive years that was supposed to be make or break for the AI. Right. What that tells me is maybe we ain't broke, but we ain't made.

Right. And I've seen nothing to indicate that this year has been the make year either. There's real questions about what's going to happen with Open AI. You know, like with Larry Ellison,

and I don't think you've seen the thing about how his valuation has plummeted in, the things that Oracle just did. He's losing money at everything. Yes. Like, yeah, right, yeah. Then add to this, the computer chip situation.

Yeah. And what would happen if the Chinese went into Taiwan and like what the United States has been saying? This is fraught to the point that it has the potential to mess up journalism because it has the potential to crash out this economy. Mm-hmm. But it's really cool. Like, I'm telling you, for the travel stuff, it is incredible. I spend way too much time talking to it about that. But that's basically all I really talk to it about.

It's like, okay, so what clothes do I need to go to this? this place. Okay, like, you know, those sorts of things. You know what I did with it recently? I asked for a sprint workout. I was like, hey, man, what's a good, give me a good, give me a good sprint workout. Give me about 10, 12 weeks so I can get up to speed and it spit something back out at me. I just got to tweak it up a little bit, you know. Well, you also got to figure out whether or not it's actually a good sprint workout, because let me tell you something you can do. You can go to Chad GPT and be like, hey, write me an essay in the voice of Beaumani Jones. And let me tell you what it'll do. It'll write you an essay.

Wait, have you done that? If they're impression of, if their impression of anything else, it's like it's impression of me, it ain't that good. Oh, man. I have never even, man, I mean, how bad was it? I mean, can't a machine be racist? That's the question. Well, I mean, the people feed the information.

And the answer is yes. Yeah, right. Yeah. I had a couple more questions, but I almost feel like I need to end there because that was... No, man, you got a couple more. We do a couple more. Okay, all right, cool. Look, I've got two questions, and one of them is that Tate wanted me to ask you this, just to kind of throw you off a little bit.

Will Wade, what's... Like, what do you think about him being a character in college basketball? What do you think it says that he's able to go back to LSU? while like Book Richardson, probably is never going to work in college basketball again. So that's the part that gets me is the book Richardson, Chuck Persons. For people who don't know,

there was a big scandal a few years ago where, I mean, basically, schools were paying money to get players to come to their schools. But the way the gang worked back in the day is these assistant coaches, often black, were the ones who were responsible for getting the money up,

for delivering the money. They're the ones on the ground doing all this stuff, right? Chuck Person, he was an assistant for Bruce fucking Pearl. I think his coach of career is over because he got caught up in that. He got busted, right? He got indicted. Yeah, absolutely. Book Richardson was an assistant for Sean Miller.

He got caught up. Will Wade was on a telephone call talking about how he made a strong-ass offer for a player. And he ultimately got fired from LSU, took five years off, went to McGeece State, wound up at NC State. now is back at LSU. I would just point out that we talk about Will Wade and this, but we don't talk about Sean Miller, which is just a little bit odd,

because Sean Miller was just as caught up in this. His assistant book Richardson was the one who got caught up. Sean left Arizona. He didn't really get fired, right? But he left Arizona, went back to Xavier where he had worked in the past and now he's worked himself to Texas. And look, Arizona and Texas are somewhat parallel jobs.

ElBuddy's back at LSU. What happened was what they did ain't cheating no more, and therefore nobody's really mad at it anymore. And so he was allowed to go back. What I find to be interesting about Will Wade, for those of you who don't know, is that it's been known that he was going back to LSU for months. And he lied about this and lied about it all the way up until the end,

and he left North Carolina State and didn't even tell him. His agent just sent him an email and said that he was leaving. And, like, apparently he went out a contract on a house on February 23rd. in Baton Rouge right after they beat North Carolina and then they only won one more game the rest of the year. Yeah, they were like one in eight, something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got spoke the rest of the way out.

And what I found interesting about that story was, brother, you ain't got to lie no more. Yeah. Like all the rhetoric, you're not selling these kids anymore on the fact that you're going to mold them as men. That's not the story anymore. The story is how much money you're going to pay them. Right.

Okay, so if the money's taken care of, like Tommy Lloyd and all this backflipping he's been doing to try to act like he's not. interested in the North Carolina job, hey, man. But I say, but without saying he's not interested in the North Carolina job. Right. Y'all don't have to lie anymore. You can say, hey, we'll see what happens at the end of the year.

These kids, hey, these kids are leaving after every year, right? Ain't none of them worried about whether you're going to make them a better man no more. You ain't got to tell that lie no more. Right. Right. Well, I mean, I guess the thing is that they have to sort of, that's still, I mean, because you're one of those people that think. their college sports is in some sort of peril, right? So they do have to give some,

they have to nod towards some of the amateur stuff and talk that went with it, the molding of young men and women, you know, the academic part of it, but being part of a college community, they have to nod toward it somewhat, but it just seems a little bit out of step when you're bringing in a dude like Will Wade. Hold on. Who's really still nodding toward that? because I tell you, who's not nodding toward players. Like, Don't Staley just talked about this early this week. She's like, the first question they're asking about is the money.

And we need to go ahead and talk about that right now. Because otherwise, why are we wasting anybody's time? Like, this is a job at that point. I think college sports is in financial peril. Like, I don't know if what is going on, if they could continue to pay for this in the ways they are, especially with the revenue sharing beginning and everything else. This NCAA tournament has actually affirmed to me

that in terms of the aesthetic, they're still just fine because the kids still look really happy about winning. And they still feel like kids. Like I think that part, I thought the NCAA had a fair point in questioning whether or not professionalizing these athletes would affect the enjoyment of watching it. Because we don't like minor league sports, right? We don't watch that on a national basis. Ain't nobody selling 20,000, selling 20,000 tickets to go watch people play minor league baseball.

Like I thought it was a fair point. But this tournament has looked and felt like the tournament. But I'll tell you this. Watching Darren Peterson, after they lost looking completely, completely unbothered. I did not like that. I mean, he's just, he's just a different cat, man. Like, I mean, you can't, I mean, he's what, the comp is Kauai, right? Like, in terms of like demeanor, uh, orientation towards the world. And so people just can't read him yet. You know what I mean? Like he always,

he was always going to look like that. But them booza boys look sad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad they did too. I wish, I wish they was a little sadder. You can't keep, you can't keep, uh, uh, uh, uh, cam down. He's going to be a, in a few months. Do you want me to ask you about Jaden Ivy or Stephen A. Smith and Jason Whitlock? For now, I will say Jaden Ivy.

Like, there's a broader Stephen A. Smith, but Whitelike is no fun. Here's what I want to ask about Jaden Ivy, and I'm curious what you think about. Okay. When the Bulls let him go, all the headlines were Jaden Ivy let go

after anti-LGBQ comments. as if he didn't say 50 million other crazy things. He's insane person. How did that become the framing? And by the way, how did that become the framing? And then from there, so many people who were ready to get their Leviticus on after the fact to ride for Jay Nivey, like, are you paying any attention? The issue here very clearly is that he is unstable and seem to have a bit of a break.

and I heard whispers of his instability when he was coming into the league. Which is to say that everybody around the NBA had to hear it if I heard it. So how did this in the end turn in? Why did he get framed as that when he had gone so far off the ledge with all the things that he was saying that narrowing it that? Did the bull say that that was why they released him? Because that's not what I saw. No. I think it's the people that,

really cynical about this stuff, and they saw an opportunity to further malign and marginalized gay folks, man. I think that's what it was. I get that from them, but I'm talking about the headline writers. Oh, yeah. I mean, it was the most incendiary thing, right? Because it's kind of hard to say Jaden Ivy released after asking reporters and teammates if they fornicated before marriage.

No, Jaden Ivy released after unstable tirade. Yeah, that's true. Because that's really after weird IG video or whatever it is. Like it was so much that he said in that that to then go and particularize that thing, I thought that that was what was cynical. Right.

Was the idea to jump for clicks. And then that's what I'm saying. Then it turned into the thing for the other people to talk about, well, because now, look, they read a headline that says that's the reason why he got released. Now these people think that's the reason why he got released. And so now they feel like he's being persecuted for being Christian. Now, there's a question to be raised about whether or not being crazy is a fireable offense.

Like, I think there's some depth to that one because that seemed to be the issue. Well, if he was crazy and good, maybe it would be less of an issue. But he's not a good enough of a basketball player for them to want to go through this. We went through this sort of with Royce White, right? Yes, but this is he has a much better. player than Royce White. Like, I mean, look, we got, he's, he's out 15 points a game for his career. Like, he started off much better.

And then, like, I don't, I have not paid enough attention to his career to know if is an injury situation or whatever it is. But this is, I mean, we're talking about a dude that was, I believe, a top five pick. Yeah. He was pretty, man, I saw a play at the, uh, the first time I ever saw Victor Webb & Yama. I think he was on that team with Kenny Lofton, you know, the big kid. And he was on that team and he was, I mean, he jumped out to gym. Like he was an incredible athlete, very explosive.

So I thought he was going to be really good. But yeah, to your point, I had not heard anything about him off the court until you brought it up right around the time he got drafted. And I was like, man. Yeah. By the way, he ever 17.5 points a game last year on a team that went to the playoffs. Now, granted, he only played 30 games. But this is not, the he's not good enough to put up with this. it's because the this is a this.

It's a huge this. If the this was just what he said about pride, he still plays for them. They make him go take some classes. And Jonathan Isaac's still in the league? This is what I'm saying. He don't even really play. He'd make a lot of money.

Yeah. Right. No, no, this was the framing of it was. And what's the stuff you say about gay people was absurd. But the framing of this was cynical on that end and then led to a cynical internet-generated response, pick your tribe,

choose your fighter, and then go from there. But that was the part that was interesting to me was how anybody could listen to all that madness. We only played four games with the Bulls.

And you saw what made them shut him down, right? Wait, which part? I think Joe Crowley of the Sun Tives reported this, that he had suffered a knee injury. And then he pulled up

and he told the Bulls that the swelling had gone down. and that God had healed his knee. And then they shut him down for the year. Oh, man. This is what I'm saying, man. His issues, like he had a full on moment, right? I don't want to diagnose him.

So I would just simply call it a moment. And to limit that to one particular part of the content of what he said, I think, is missing the point. I think that's fair. And the thing is when you say media, I don't know what media is anymore or what media we consume. because there's only a few places I'm going to be reading Jaden Ivy information that I'm like, oh, I know that I can trust this. Yeah, I'm going to tell you this.

The Athletic, you know what I'm saying? Maybe Shams on Twitter. What? I'm Googling J.Nivey here, right? Just his name. Okay. Why the Bulls wave J.Nivey after pride remarks. Jay Nivey just fired for being Christian.

Then it's apparently something with his girlfriend and everything else. Like, it was a Christian post. That's the Christian Post. That's the Christian Post. That's the Christian Post. Clutch points. Yeah.

Jay and Ivy claims he was cut for preaching the gospel. Bulls claim release. This is for Fox News. The reason, claims Bulls reason for release is a lie. I'm just telling you, this story is about something way bigger. And we're too lazy to even get into.

Are you allowed to fire somebody because they've lost it? Right. I mean, that is a more interesting, nuanced question. But the thing is, nobody has said that he's lost it yet. And like, that's sort of the tender. That's the- Well, Billy Donovan seemed to pretty strongly intubate.

That they offered him help and he did not take his sister. Did you see in that Google search, it said, Why the Chicago Bulls waived Jaden Ivy after Pride remarks? Yes. Ebony Magazine. Yes. What? Ebony Magazine.

Did you know that Ebony Magazine was still in the league? It's not, no, I did not know they were still in the league because I could have sworn that they had retired. I thought I thought I remembered them being put on the waiver wire a couple years ago. I thought, yeah, I thought, you know what it is? I think that the whole operation got relegated. That's what it was.

That's what it was. I think that's what happened. I thought they were collecting a pension and everything already right now. I had no idea. Well, didn't Junior Bridgman before he died by them? Oh, really? Junior Bridgman, who was involved in the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar trade from the Lakers to the Bulls, right?

I mean, to the Bucs, the Lakers to the Bucks. Yes. Junior Bridgman, who ended up becoming, Junior Bridgman was a billionaire or something close to it. I don't know if he got to billionaire. You want them dudes that, like, got him some Wendy's. You know what I'm saying? And made it happen.

But, no, yeah, he purchased Ebony and Jet for $14 million in 2020. I don't know what happened after that, but the family, you know, had that. RIP. Junior Bridgman. Indeed. It was greatest. Beaumain, brother, thank you for spending time with us over here at the press box today, man. You want to promote besides your show?

Anything else? You're going to get a live show going in Atlanta soon too. Yeah, yeah, live show in Atlanta on May to 15th. Check that out. Check out the right time. Four days a week. Available, all fine podcasts are giving away for free. Yeah, working on a story about Trinidad Chambliss trying to get that cracking.

Yeah, man, I think that's what I got. Okay. Well, brother, thank you very much. And press box listeners, I don't know what the schedule is next week. Don't ask me. I know that I'll be here next Thursday. And I assume Brian will be back from vacation, but I don't know for sure. No, I'm just joking.

Brian will be back next week. And he'll be with Dave Shoemaker on Tuesday. And then I'll be back on Thursday. So until then, for my boys, Isaiah, Bruce, Beaumani, Allison, Van, Van, Tate. Tate was on this show, too, man. by the way. Shout out Tate. We appreciate y'all coming through and we'll see you next week. Thanks so much to Bumani for spending so much of his precious time with us. He's a millionaire.

He's very busy man. His time is very valuable. So for him to spend that much time with us, we need to have to pay for that. So you're welcome. Anyway, thanks to my guys, Bruce and Isaiah had a lot of fun with them. I put them through hell by doing all this talking. And I hope people appreciate what they were willing to do for you guys. by putting out this extra episode. And thanks to the press box listeners for putting up with me in the driver's seat this week. I don't like being in here.

I just like being able to be the wingman. I like to shoot. I don't like to have to handle the ball. So we'll have Brian back for that next week. And David, they're both going to be back on Tuesday when they'll both be sharing more lukewarm takes about the media. Appreciate y'all.

See you next week.