The Press Box - Chris Wallace and How Sportswriting Got Weird. Plus, Chris Mannix on the NBA Bubble

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker dissect the interview Trump had with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, and Wallace's unique position in reporting for 'Fox News Sunday' (2:30). Then, they talk about the strange position sports media types find themselves in as they cover the sports restart (28:10), right before talking to Sports Illustrated writer Chris Mannix from the NBA bubble (36:30). Plus: the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, I'm Jason Concepcion. I think it's too much energy to start with, 20% less. Okay. Hello, I'm Jason Concepcion. I don't think that was it either. 5% either direction. Either direction. Okay.

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We have a podcast coming out. It's called The Connect. and it's fucking cool. Each week, Shay and I will talk about two movies and the theme that connects them. For example, for our debut episode, which comes out July 22nd, the theme is work friends.

I'm talking about 1999's office space. It's about three friends who work at a technology company. And I'm talking about 1983 Scarface, which is about two best friends just trying to make their way to the top of Miami's very competitive cocaine industry. Another theme we'll have is mean mentors. I'm talking about Fletcher from Whiplash.

Jason's talking about Miranda from the Devil Prada. Another theme. How about Matthew McConaughey doesn't understand outer space? I'm talking about contact. Jason is talking about interstellar. And yet another theme. Oh man, why'd you do that? I'm talking about juice. Jason's talking about ladybird. There are categories and bits and contest. It's a whole thing and it's going to be great or it's going to be terrible. I don't know, but I'm excited to find out. Me too. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers. You've got the press box. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here. We got a lot of stuff for you today with three days till the start of Major League Baseball season.

We'll talk about the absolutely strange position sports media types find themselves in as they cover the sports restart. Are we supposed to root for a flawed comeback or root for keeping our jobs? Next, we'll talk to Sports Illustrated writer Chris Mannix, who is locked inside the NBA. bubble in Orlando, Florida. Why do you go to the bubble and what kind of journalism will win out there? All that plus David guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, the big media figure of the weekend was Chris Wallace who interviewed Donald Trump on Fox News Sunday.

I want to dissect the interview with you because I'm interested in Chris Wallace and the sort of unique corner he staked out in a media universe that hates Fox News, but greatly admires him. Let's start with the most widely traffic clip from the interview. Donald Trump claimed that Joe Biden said he wanted to abolish and defund the police. If you know anything about politics, you know Biden has very famously sidestepped the whole abolish and defund business. But listen to how Wallace handles it.

And Biden wants to fund defund me. Sir, he does not. Look, he signed a charter with Bernie Sanders. I will get that one, just like I was right on the mortality rate. Did you read the charter that he agreed to? It says nothing about defunding the police. Oh, really? It says abolish.

It says a fund. Let's go. All right. Get me the charter, please. All right. Chris, you've got to start studying for these. He says defund the police. He says defund the police.

They talk about abolishing the police. They talk about illegal aliens. I look forward to seeing that. Well, you know, you must say he's willing to go totally. to toe on a matter of fact. It's interesting that he's, I mean, it's interesting that, I mean, you can see Trump sort of like shrinking under the pressure, although it's not that much pressure, also under the noonday sun or whatever. But, but yeah, I mean, this is a, I mean, what are we, what are we getting at here?

Is he that he has Trump lined up? Yeah. I mean, to me, one, you have to have confidence in your prep, right? to know that within that Biden, Bernie Sanders pact, there is no line that says abolish or defund the police. Because if you're wrong, Trump's large adult sons are going to put the clip up on Twitter. Oh, yeah.

And declare victory and say, ha, ha, dad clown the MSM, he wins. You know, they tried to lie. But you see that Wallace is totally prepared. So it's like a gift from the TV interview gods for Trump to be saying, Well, bring the paper over here. I'm going to find it, right? It's like the David Frost forced ghost is just smiling at you right now.

Like, you got him, right? So let's just set it up. Let's just let him do it. And fast forwarding just a couple of seconds through the interview, here is Trump reading from the paper, presumably the Biden Sanders policy pact, trying to find the words abolish and defund. So let's see what this says here. Prosecuse and sanctuary cities incentivize illegal. alien, expand asylum, abolish immigration detention. No, that's not what I will find it.

Okay. This thing is many pages long. End prosecution of illegal border crosses. Support deathly and these are the worst thing. Sir, I'm not, I'm not disagreeing with you on any of those. I'm disagreeing about defund police. The White House never sent us evidence that Bernie Biden platform calls for defunding or abolishing police because there is not.

It calls for increased funding for police departments that meet certain standards. Biden has called for redirecting some police funding for related programs like mental health counseling. I think the only way Wallace could have won up him better is if he had just, if he had come prepared with like a pink inflatable version of the policy paper that they had both sides. Trump waves it over and he just has to like comb, he has to just pour through just something that looks absolutely ridiculous to be holding. But I mean, we would think. that it would, I mean, you, in another situation, I feel like we would be raising our eyebrows

at the, you know, whoever had failed to prep Trump sufficiently on this point. But I think what the president has proven over, over again is he's often just completely Teflon in these situations. And somehow, I don't even know how to break it down. Maybe he was just caught unawares because of the, because of the network. But he seemed to be, he seemed, he was caught flat-footed on this one. He wasn't, he wasn't. He wasn't. Trump or Wallace was somehow able to get him off guard. Well, we always talk about how Trump kind of lives in this Fox News created feedback loop. So there is a supreme irony that if you are in this feedback loop where you are absolutely certain that Joe Biden is for defunding and abolishing the police, that you should then walk into the trap on Fox News on the same channel.

Yeah. And you see how skillfully once he commits to the fact that it's not just that Biden said this, which Trump could just claim, even though Biden's never said it, but the fact that Trump is committing that it is in this particular policy paper, Wallace absolutely knows he had. I think one thing, David, about TV interviews of Trump is often we can't decide what we want out of them. We either want the interviewer to just confront Trump and basically have an argument, or we want. them to kind of skillfully maneuver Trump into revealing information or saying a potentially damning something or other. Wallace is one of the few people on Sunday that I've ever seen do both at the same time.

And I think that's part of the skill of this interview. Listen to this exchange. Trump and Wallace talking about renaming military bases that were named after Confederate generals. The National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA, you have threatened to veto it. Because in the bill, and this is supported by Republicans as well as Democrats, it would rename Army bases, name for Confederate generals. Now, this is a bill that funds military operations.

It gives soldiers a pay raise. You're going to veto that? No, because they'll get their pay raise. Hey, look, don't tell me this. I got soldiers, the biggest pay raises in the history of our military. Understood. I got soldiers, brand new equipment, brand new jets, brand new rockets, brand new $2.5 trillion. I did more for the military than any president that's ever had this office.

Because I think that Fort Bragg, Fort Robert and Lee, all of these forts that have been named that way for a long time. Decades and decades and decades and decades. But the military says there for this. Excuse me. I don't care what the military says. I do. I'm supposed to make the decision. Stop it right there for just second, Erica.

Perfect interruption, right? Trump is going full filibuster there. He interrupts him and Trump says, who cares what the military says? I don't care what the military says, well, you know, you can't overstate how, again, Teflon Trump can be at these things. But I don't care what the military says would be the I didn't order the code red of this of this campaign in any other cycle. We'll see if anybody remembers. Can you imagine Joe Biden with that soundbite? I mean, it would be absolutely deadly.

And by the way, I'm sorry, you're damn right. I ordered the code right. Sorry, I got that totally backwards. On a ringer podcast, we need to make sure we have that wording absolutely correct. By the way, Trump 15 seconds earlier, David, had talked about getting pay raises for troops. And we suddenly got to the code read like 15 seconds after that. It just literally doesn't make sense. Anyway, Erica, please continue with that club.

I'm supposed to make the decision. Fort Bragg is a big deal. We won two world wars. Nobody even knows General Bragg. We won two world wars. Go to that community where Fort Bragg is in a great state. I love that state. Go to go to the community.

Say, how do you like the idea of renaming Fort Bragg? And then what are we going to name it? You're going to name it after the Reverend Al Sharpton? What are you going to name it, Chris? Tell me what you're going to name it. Really weird drop of Al Sharpton's name in there. People pointed out on Twitter. I'm sure just a coincidence that Donald Trump picked a notable black civil rights leader to throw in there.

I mean, that's just nuts. Yeah, but again, I think that answer, it's subtle, but I think that answer comes from Wallace, right? The skillful interruption that pushes Trump in one direction, then you let him talk and then you get to the Al Sharpton sound like. I mean, to me, to me, that's, again, it's subtle, but it's easy to botch that. It's easy to come in at the wrong moment to do too much or too little and he did just enough. We should say this about Chris Wallace, David. Whoever occupies the role of Fox News truth teller is going to be. going to get rave reviews, right? You get like a 30% bonus. Shep Smith, Carl Cameron was in this

role because whenever Chris Wallace, like, says something about Trump on Fox, it allows liberal Twitter to go, huh, look, even Fox News has had to admit that the Trump administration has gone too far. Well, and it also allows Fox News viewers to say, uh, look, we're not, I mean, look, look, we're, we're, we're even handed, you know, I mean, so it kind of cuts both way. I guess that, that statement that I just made cuts both ways. I'm not trying to make it seem like that's necessarily a negative. I do wonder if, I mean,

are we supposed to look at Chris Wallace, obviously in the context of this interview? And he does, he does pull up great interviews like this, about once or twice a year. And I find, we find ourselves talking about him. But is he technically the,

the, the champion of Fox News truth telling? Or is he just the interim champion after Shep Smith relinquished the title? Like, did he, has he earned it to I mean, does everybody, is he undisputed at this point? Did this interview

seal the deal? Well, he is big enough to host a presidential debate as he did in 2016. Yeah, but he's not always a truth teller. It's not all, he's not, I mean, I don't know that Shepard Smith had a much smaller platform, but was the undisputed champ for a number

of years. But I agree with you. I think that in some ways, I mean, listen, Wallace has always been, has never been doctrinaire in any sense of the term, and certainly not in any sense that you would define the Fox News ideology, right? He did seem to be, he has seemed to be comfortable trafficking

and some of the more conspiratorial aspects. And not, that's overstating it. He believes in the liberal media bias. I guess that's early. He pre-s professed that. He seems to be fairly, I think, even for the people that are, that are cheering him on on Twitter right now, he's, he's certainly much more comfortable with his place literally

on Fox News than some would like. But, you know, for someone who is, it's hard to find a lot of damning intel on. It's not like he's a truth teller in the way that like, I mean, he doesn't have the, he doesn't have the YouTube truth telling highlight reel that Shep Smith did. Yeah. And I, and I think that's partly because of his format, right? It would come more through an interview like this one. Tough questions, good prep, good pushback, rather than like I just have a essentially a news or talk show during the day where eventually I just am mad as hell and can't take it anymore, which is more of the Shep Smith thing. You're right. No, that's totally right. And one thing that's interesting about his Twitter cheering section, right, is that Chris Wallace is

very purposely not a resistance hero. He came from network news. As you said, there is a sense about him that he was, that he is uncomfortable with the way a lot of news about Trump has tweeted Michael Grinbaum in the New York Times had a profile in June where he says, quote Wallace has scolded mainstream journalist for showing anti-Trump bias a big mistake in his

words, but he's really trying to be like Tim Russard, right? Bring me a politician of any stripe and I'm going to grill them on the air. And that's what I want to do, right? That's his form of, it's not Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, truth-telling,

it's not Chris Cuomo because it's certainly the volume is turned way down. I feel it's more russardy than anything else and that's sort of what he's trying to carve out. There is a sort of,

I don't know if it's really an old school element to his presentation, but there's a, yes, kind of a smarminess to it. I don't know. Tom Skokin might have to

adjudicate that definition, but like a smugness to his overall presentation that feels a little bit old school. But there's, in a world in which certainly the people that are the other people on his network or the other people sorry the other fox news personalities who are getting this sort of interview opportunity are so far to the obsequious

side of the spectrum that it's it is impossible to even compare them right um even those other mainstream media personalities you know i mean i don't i can't i can't even imagine i mean the other people on his level do are don't evoke that sort of old school i mean that that that smugness you know i mean George Stephanopoulos might be a smug person, but his on-screen personality is not smugness in the way that Chris Wallace, he puts this thing off. And I don't, and I'm not saying this as an insult. First of all, a little bit of smugness is totally fine by me

in almost any situation, but also in this. Check out the press box podcast. In this situation in particular, I think it's a sort of a subtle, it's a subtle knife, you know? I mean, that he can use that. He uses his demeanor as a sort of, of cudgel against someone, particularly someone who has a really high opinion of himself. To me, it's a very network news vibe, an old school network news vibe. And it's one of the funny

things, you know, I've had parts of this conversation a couple times is that network news as a kind of, you know, big tent thing that everybody watches does not exist anymore like it did when we were kids. But the network news vibe is very useful sometimes. Brian Williams, for all his fabulous gives off a very useful old school, I'm the anchor here vibe, right? And sometimes like on an election night or even on his show at, on MSNBC, you're like, I like this.

I can like Chris Hayes, but sometimes I want to be in the hands of this particular media figure. And that to me is exactly what you're talking about with Wallace. Right? Something very assured, something very unflappable. I'm not going to get into this giant like

rockem sockham robots battle with you. Mr. President and yell at you, I'm just going to be completely confident in my skin, in my prep, and I'm going to go right back at you. And you mentioned, you mentioned Russert earlier in terms of being willing to go toe to toe with whoever sitting in front of him, no matter what the political stripes, whatever else. But Russert in that sense is really the opposite, right? I mean, that's the other side of the coin. And the Russert literally and figuratively rolling up the sleeves sort of on screen.

personality has really won the day in modern media, right? I mean, there's a lot more errors of Russert out there when you look around, including a lot of those primetime hosts on both sides of the spectrum. And Chris Wallace definitely stands out from the pack because he's got a little bit more of that

button down vibe. Maybe it's not Russet, actually. Maybe it's more Ted Cople than Russert. Yeah. Because Cople, I think, and I don't know whether either of these guys would find that a compliment because they both worked at ABC News at the same time. But, but But they had to me that same manner, you know, Mr. President with all due respect kind of thing, right? There was a little softer than Russert's theatricality.

Really good point about this interview by Michael Sokolow, who's an academic and writer on the media. I saw this on Twitter. He says, everyone's pointing out Wallace's success interviewing Trump. But nobody notes the single most important reason it worked. The interview wasn't live, which limits stonewalling and evasion. The two best Trump interviews, Leslie Stahl and Wallace, both Tate. that's a really good point because not only

the clip we saw earlier where Trump is allowed to sort of look at this paper and then Wallace comes back in the narration, there's another one, which we won't play here, but go look it up if you want to, where Trump was sort of filibustering about coronavirus mortality rates and brings out this chart, right?

If it had been a live interview, I think he would have been allowed to kind of like bring the point to a stalemate, but Wallace again is allowed to add narration after the fact that actually this chart is incredibly misleaving. Yeah. It's funny that you mentioned Leslie Stahl, it was a really good point in comparison, but before I was

even thinking about her, that voiceover that Wals was able to use in this interview made me think of 60 minutes, right? I mean, it's that, that's exactly, I mean, that's the, who knows if they invented the form, but they've certainly perfected it. And the idea of as a culture, we don't really give a shit

about news anchors anymore, right? I mean, we don't watch the CBS evening news and say, as a culture to be, and and listen to them to be our voice of truth, right? I mean, we get our truths from different sources, unfortunately, now. But there is a very, but there is a, there is something powerful about that, I don't know, ringing the, there's a Pavlovian reaction to like, hey, that's 60 minutes.

This, what they're doing means he's saying the true thing, right? The way that voiceover comes in is just like, like a margin note from the editor coming in saying, like, you know, whatever. Like, that's an asterisk that you have to acknowledge as truth. that's totally true. At least to people of our age group. I wonder if younger people have that same Pavlovian reaction, but you and I sure do. Maybe Trump's biggest argument at this stage of the election, David, is that Biden doesn't have the mental acuity to be president.

This is something he says over and over again. He said it in the interview that aired Sunday. I want you to listen to Chris Wallace parry that point. Who is more competent? Whose mind is sounder? Biden beats you in that. Well, I tell you what, let's take a test. Let's take a test right now.

Let's go down. Joe and I will take a test. Let him take the same test that I took. Incidentally, I took the test too when I heard that you passed it. Yeah, how did you do? Well, it's not the hardest test. No, but the last picture and it says, what's not? No, no, no.

You see, that's all misrepresentation. Well, that's what it was on the web. It's all misrepresentation. Because, yes, the first few questions are easy, but I'll bet you couldn't even answer the last five questions. I'll bet you couldn't. They get very hard the last five questions. One of them was count back from 100 by 7.

And let me tell you, you couldn't answer, you couldn't answer many of the questions. I'd get you the test. I'd like to give it. But I guarantee you that Joe Biden could not answer those questions, okay? And I answered all 35 questions correctly. Did you hear that really subtle where he said count backwards by 7 from 100? And you just really like lightly on the tape here, Wallace say 93. that's fantastic.

Yeah, no, I mean, I can't, I really thought he, watching it live that he was going to go in for it right then and just be like, do you know what comes next? Yeah, I mean, it's just, the fact that he got Trump to like go in to squabble about that on something that again, that's available online. And you know people watching are going to be like, oh, wait, I can Google this and like take the test myself. Trump has no, if Trump doesn't realize that he's speaking to an online test taking culture, then he, then he's as well as lost this election. He doesn't know he's talking to at all. But, yeah, I mean, it's a tough argument. I mean, it's a really tough line of attack for, I mean, for Donald Trump. And it's certainly, no matter how do I say this, Trump's most effective lines of attack are

not going to stand up to scrutiny. So I don't know that it needs to be going in on this test. I thought it was a mistake for him to even go in on in his rally. But he's better off just saying, look at this dodo and laughing than trying to compare. hair of the two, right? I mean, the last thing he wants is to set up a sort of like presidential decathlon, you know, I mean, we don't need. Odyssey of the mind. I said, I mean, listen, I said repeatedly four years ago that Hillary Clinton could have won the election by challenging Trump to a pushup contest. I mean, it's like, it's there's, there's, Trump is a very impressive person in a lot of

ways until you actually have to compare him to anybody. And that's, you know, I don't think he catches the second half of that. Since we're talking about Wallace and Fox News, can I just check the status of the liberal bias detector over here for just a second. Joe Biden had been in that seat and Wallace had done a similarly skeptical, tough interview that touched on Tara Reid's allegations,

that touched on the crime bill. If he had been in that seat. Yes. Okay. Would how much of the Twitter cheering section would still be intact at the end of that hour long interview? Oh, I mean, that's a good question. I think that, well, I think Terriads a little bit is maybe a little bit of a touchy subject.

He probably would have come. He probably would have brought it up. Oh, he 100% would have brought that up. You know, I think it's fair to assume that there'd be a lot less, there'd be a lot less, you know, rooting for him. But I think that has as much to do with, I mean, it's about expectations, right? I mean, certainly the people who are rooting on Twitter are probably, are large. politically anti-Trump. That's what I mean.

There's a situational Chris Wallace fandom here. Yes, it's situational, but it's also a matter of, we don't expect anybody to be called to task in 2020. You know? I mean, one would be,

people were surprised when Obama did the Super Bowl interviews with Bill O'Reilly and knowing that that was like probably a pre-negotiated softball platform like no other. You know what I mean, but like it's people don't expect

anything like that. So to see somebody who's given the opportunity to interview the president or a presidential candidate, you know, theoretically put their career in jeopardy by asking these questions. I mean, I think that's what we're cheering for, right? I think so. I think so. And as you say it's rare, partly because of the decline of network news, I think,

his figures in there, right? And there's all these safe harbors for politicians to go on. That kind of confrontation is pretty rare. I'll leave you here, David. As a child of the southern United States, how much did you love the cicada noise that was playing over part of the interview? The soundtrack of my life, man.

We got those like crazy in Louisville. I mean, and those were, that was both my dreams and my nightmares go to that place frequently. Those, that's a very, very evocative noise. I'm glad that Trump decided to go sit out in the boiling heat just so that could be a part of the interview. I still don't know why that happened. We were chatting with that before we came on.

Yeah. There had to be something better than like, it looks pretty out here that would lead someone to make what could be just a categorical misstep. As also a child of the South, that looks like the kind of day where you'd be like, why don't we eat lunch outside? It's beautiful. And then you'd have like two six ice tea and be like, you know what?

Let's go into the air conditioning. All right, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week, David, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they will always be gratefully received. David, have you noticed the Trump campaign's embrace of boaters? Boaters? Voters? Voters or boaters?

Boaters? People that own boats. Trump tweeted, love our boaters, love our country recently. There have been boat parades throughout the country to honor Donald Trump's birthday this summer. A Trump campaign email noted, and this is where I have to say, I am not making this up. ain't nobody running through a brick wall to vote for Joe Biden and he certainly won't be having a boat parade anytime soon. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write,

as political scientists know, elections are decided by the median voter. I like that. Oh, that was nice. Elsewhere in Trump world, the president's social media guide Dan Scavino tweeted a video, David, that included a song from the band Lincoln Park.

Turns out Lincoln Park was not into that. The band, quote, did not and does not endorse Trump, nor authorize his organization to use any of our music, they tweeted. After trending on Twitter, the social media service removed the video. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. They tried so hard and got so far, but in the end, it didn't even matter. Thanks to Bacon and Jungle for that. And on Friday night, David, I don't know if you notice this, but noted nonfiction author Susan Orlean went on a drunken Twitter bin. just one example from the author of the Orchid Thief.

Quote, okay, a newborn cult rocks. It totally, and he thought my hand was his mom. It was not. He has tasted life's infinite tragedy. As I mentioned earlier, I am inebriated. It's an actual example. Tons of great jokes. The perfect COVID-Times novel has been written,

and it is Susan Orleans' Twitter feed right now. When I used to drink, I always thought I was the type of drunk Susan Orlean. was tonight, but come to find out I was wrong. That was actually a Jason Isbell tweet, by the way. And my fave, I just want to know how many glasses of wine it took for Susan Orlean to become the new drill. If you're waiting for Tad Friend and Joan Acochella's drunken Twitter binges,

congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, time for the notebook dump. And I don't know how to put this other than we have reached a very, very, very moment in the history of sports writing. And to illustrate that, I want to give you one tweet from Andrew Greif, who covers the Clippers for the LA Times. This is a tweet from a sports writer in the summer of 2020.

Can confirm that Montrez Harrell has left the Disney World bubble to tend to a family matter, but is expected to return per a source with knowledge of the situation. Sham Shirani was first. As of now, the Clippers have one center known to be in Orlando. one center known to be. I was trying to figure out over the weekend. Nothing wrong with the information in that tweet, but just the wording of that is so summer 2020, it hurts.

A center known to be in Orlando. We are not only covering an NBA restart that's in the bubble, we are in this weird sports writing bubble where we're trying to do a couple things at once that I think are interesting. I wrote about this last week. On the one hand, we're covering a restart that's pretty obviously fraught, flawed,

impossibly flawed, you might argue. Mm-hmm. But as sports media people, and this includes David and Brian, we really need the sports restart to work. Yeah. Because if it doesn't work and sports gets canceled again, we're screwed. It's true.

It's true. And listen, there have been a lot of podcasts, or at least a handful that I've listened to featuring reporters who are inside the bubble. Our boss Bill Simmons did one last week. There's a limit to how interested we are as a culture in what life's like inside of the bubble, right?

I don't think the best podcast interviewer present company possibly accepted are going to be able to turn a weekly interview with anybody who's in there into audio Big Brother or something. I mean, there's a limit, like we need the sport to happen is what I'm trying to.

to say. Yes. To keep our interest up. The media naval gazing can only go so far. Yes. Yeah, I agree. And I think we've, like, we've been lucky enough to have through the summer if lucky is the right word, like a couple of big transaction things, right?

Like Tom Brady going to the Bucks being the biggest. But all those hinge on sports actually happening. I mentioned this in the story last week. Like Tom Brady of the Bucks is a great story. But only if Tom Brady actually. plays football for the bucks. Yeah, that's true. And it's also, I mean,

probably we can get into a much deeper, more irritating conversation about modern media. But like, even if it were someone of this caliber of Tom Brady, who was not Tom Brady, I don't even think that would have been nearly the story. If the only conversation this summer had been about, I mean, if Cam Newton had signed with the bucks and Tom Brady had stayed with the, with the Pats,

there's just a limit to how much, I mean, to how interested we could be without actual games being played, you know? I mean, it's a totally different thing. Yeah.

And it's, you know, sports writing in our lifetimes has become so transaction based. Yeah. And so we've been able to create so much daily content around those things that it's like,

oh, but wait, the games do have to happen, right? Yeah. Transactions can become outsized and importance and sometimes more important

than the actual games that happen, but only if the games are actually still played. At some point, that stops. The other thing that's been so striking about this moment from a sports writing perspective is sports writers just have not been able to do their jobs in the normal way, thanks to all the protocols put in place by the coronavirus, before the coronavirus, I'd say. There was a scene at Yankee Stadium during practice the other day. Jean-Caro Stanton hits a line drive. It hits Masahiro Tanaka, Yankee pitcher in the head. Okay. Tanaka goes to the hospital. But because sports writers can't go in the locker room, the Yankees get to pick the two players that are going to talk to sports writers.

And guess what? They didn't pick John Carlos Stanton because why would they? Right. If he's not forced to talk by writers coming to crowd around his locker and be like, hey, that was a terrible thing. How do you feel about that? He doesn't have to talk anymore. All these interviews are almost all of them in baseball so far have been handled. on a Zoom call.

You thought the NBA podium was kind of awkward during the playoffs? Imagine the sort of Zoom call thing where everybody's sort of waiting for their chance to ask a question. Yeah. Super, super weird. So that's there. You know, everything is going to be long distance. It'll be interesting to see what we get out of the NBA bubble. Kendall Baker writes an Axios newsletter and he had this point the other day, which I thought that was really smart, which is that in this kind of new weirdo sports writing reality, the players have become,

even more of the content creators than they were three months ago, six months ago. Sure. Which is to say that, like, you've seen all these, like, videos coming out of the NBA bubble. We've written about them and talked about them on the ringer. All of a sudden, that has kind of replaced sports writing even more than it already was. And you sort of have to wait for the player to make a video to get news or whatever we call that from the player, him or herself. There have been a lot of ways in which, you know, sports media has been insulated a little bit from the tragedies, but fall on the rest of the media world over the past decade or so. And they're servicing not impervious to all the technological changes, but there's certain things like, you know, humanity's need for gamers that will, that have survived, I mean, that have allowed them to survive in a slightly different way.

I think we're now in even more of a race to see who can win the SEO battle to post C.J. McCollum's Instagram photo than ever before. Like that's it. I mean, that's really where we are. And we need sports. That's why we need sports. Well, I would say that we were already,

you know, back in January, we were already there in terms of posting racing to post C.J. McCollum's Twitter photo or Instagram photo. And in a month, we're going to be even more in that place because, you know, we have what, like a dozen NBA reporters total in Orlando. They can get one-on-one interviews, as we'll hear in a second here from Chris Mannix. But they're not going to get many of them. And basically the entire rest of the NBA press corps, ringer staffers included, are somewhere else at this point.

So I just don't know how much we're going to get. And the other thing is, you know, baseball starts up this week. most, I would say, at least of the first round of ESPN baseball announcers, are not going to be at the stadium. They're going to be calling the game remotely. They're going to be watching a slightly more souped up television broadcast than David and Brian could watch. Yeah. And calling a game from there. So it's like, it's almost like sports media in absentia that is happening.

And again, I'm fascinated. I wish it weren't happening this way. I certainly hope, like I said, that sports happens because I don't want everybody to get laid off. At the same time, if we do this from afar, I'm really interested in saying just how much actually changes. Because I'm kind of thinking it's not going to be as much as we think it's going to be. Again, I'd rather the writers be there and have all those tools at their disposal. But I kind of think what they come up with is going to be fairly comparable to what they'd come up with if they were at a stadium. I think definitely in the short term.

I think it's a lot more feasible. I would say this. It's very feasible in the short term that you're right. I think that on some level, and maybe I should be leaning more on advanced metrics than on the eye test, but I think on some level, I mean, on a deeper level, there is something to be lost over time about that sort of detachment.

But right now, I fear that you're right. Well, it's not abandon this train of thought because we've got a correspondent in the NBA bubble in Orlando. Here's Chris Mannix. All right, Chris Mannix writes for Sports Illustrated and hosts the crossover podcast. He's been in the NBA bubble in Orlando for a week and you can tell because in a video Chris posted the other day, you could see the keyhole of the door of his hotel room behind him. Zoom calls used to be about bookcase credibility. Chris is making them about keyhole credibility.

Thanks for being on the press box, Chris. The blandness is what I go for. Some people try to get the unmade bed. I just want you to see the keyhole. and the blank wall. Can we get that little notice where you have to check out by noon that every hotel posts,

you know, right by the door? I think you could really mess with this. I think anyone in this bubble now is anxious for the proverbial checkout. You know, they are ready. And look, we don't want to sit here and pretend like it's Shawshank, but, you know, you're in a room

and you're just kind of climbing the walls a little bit and everything going on around you, you obviously want to get to and start getting to practice. I'll tell you, like, I've signed up for, like six practices to go to on the first day. So I'm just ready to get rolling. So a couple weeks ago when I was talking to basketball writers about whether they wanted to go to Orlando and quarantine themselves in this bubble long term, the two things that they were worried about was one,

getting sick themselves and two leaving partners, spouses, kids, parents for an extended period of time. How'd you work through that stuff? It was pretty easy for me. I'm not married. I don't have any kids. So it was, you know, the circumstances were decidedly different from a lifestyle perspective. I mean, I've, during the playoffs, I kind of ordinarily, I just basically block off, you know, 20 plus days a month to be on the road anyway. So if you're going to cover a postseason, I mean, you might as well do it without the travel. It just takes one layer of inconvenience out of it all. The health issues certainly were something to consider initially, but I don't have any kind of,

pre-existing conditions and no medical issues and going down there. And you had to believe that regardless of whether you think the NBA bubble is going to work or not, and regardless of whether you think of the state of Florida at the time, you're going into a place that is attempting with every possible measure to be the safest place on earth, basically. So I couldn't think of a more safe place to be as far as avoiding coronavirus than inside this bubble. The other concern in writer's minds, while they're thinking, oh, wow, this is going to be something for the history books.

This is going to be something to have witness, to have been there. The question was, what am I going to get? Because we know sports writing over the next several months, maybe more than a year, is going to be restricted from what we're used to. What did you think you were going to get in Orlando? Yeah, this was something that I went back and forth with my editors. with the league, just trying to really ascertain

what kind of value there was going to be. Now, you can get one-on-ones with players and coaches down here. That obviously has value. How often players are going to be willing to do it

still up in the air. What level of player will be willing to do it? A lot of that comes down to your relationship with the team and the player. There's nothing to do necessarily with your access.

So that was number of, I felt, there was value in doing that. But, you know, kind of coming up, I mean, I didn't, I came up really as a magazine writer. I, you know, worked to the Boston Globe, you know, in college. But my entire journalism career has basically been spent at Sports Illustrated. And, you know, I just, the guys I read routinely and fact-checked routinely in my early days, whether it was Jack McCallum or Chris Ballard, Ian Thompson, great writers, they wrote

scene really well. And Lee Jenkins did the same thing a little later on when he came to SI. And I think that's something that you're going to get incredible value at. Like, any game you want to go to, you're going to be 10 feet from the court. And not only you're going to be 10 feet from the court, you're not going to have the background noise of crowd to stop you from getting the kind of stuff that you would be able to get. So I thought there was incredible value to writing like a daily sights and sounds kind of piece. Like you can, you know, you put stuff away when you're trying to write a magazine story, which I will in the next few weeks. weeks, but every day just kind of writing what you see because there's only, I believe,

10 of us inside this bubble. Everybody can't be everywhere. So, you know, if you just can write, you know, what you see, I think that presents enormous value to the reader, to the viewer, who are not going to be able to just go anywhere to a blog or whatever to find out what's going on inside the bubble. That's so interesting because I think if we were in a press room, an NBA press room in normal times, we look around and say, okay, that writer is really good with agents. and that writer's really good with sidling with players,

just going up to LeBron's locker and getting something that they can store away. And that guy's really good at like advanced analytics and metrics and that kind of stuff. But you're saying that scene, because there's such a small group of people that just looking around and seeing is going to be the skill or one of the skills that's going to be big in Orlando. I do. And I think there's enormous value in it for a reader trying to really understand what's going on. Now, I think there's a, you know, it's funny. And I've been thinking about this a lot, like what I'm going to write, how I'm going to write it. Like, you also don't want to risk burning a player by just writing that he was cursing out another player on the court.

Like writing something so mundane that you have to balance out your relationship versus the kind of the information that you're providing. But 90 plus percent of the time, like what you see, you know, what a coach says, what maybe you can even hear something going on. in the huddle, like in the moments before, see something going on in the huddle. I mean, it's a, the main arena is just a pretty big arena. And you're going to be able to see and hear so much from that vantage point. I mean, I vaguely remember the days when you could sit courtside and, you know, some arenas still do it, but get that kind of access regularly.

But, I mean, living in New York for as long as I did, there was no point for going to Knicks games. Like, Nick, the Knicks that nowadays put you up in the Rack's, afters, you're better off watching on TV. This kind of access, the things you're going to see and hear and be able to report on, I think that's going to have tremendous interest to a reader. How tolerant do we think players, coaches, officials are going to be by you quoting what they say on the floor? Because we have the Sam Darnold example, I think, for Monday Night Football,

which is actually one of the underrated media moments the last couple of years. Because as soon as we heard what players were actually saying on the bench, the Jets and coaches were like, uh-oh, we're done with that. that never, never again. How much can you push that, do you think? It's a good question. And I think you just got to be by feel. Like you, if it's something relevant to the game, like let's say if LeBron is walking off the court during a timeout and says something like I can't, I can't see anything. I can't get anywhere. Like they're bottling me up. Like stuff you wouldn't see ordinarily. That's fair game. If it's just like LeBron cursing a J.R. Smith, for lack of a better example, like that's,

maybe that's something the kind of pitch you sort of let go by because you still want to, you know, maintain relationships, you know, with these players and with these teams. So if it's, if it's related to the outcome of the game, like the Sam Donald example, like he's seeing ghosts out there, that's relevant to the game and how it's being played. If it's relevant to the game and how it's being played, I think all that is fair game. All right. So let's talk about your journey, if that's the right word for it, to the NBA bubble. You start in Boston, fly to Orlando. was this your first flight since the coronavirus took hold? Yeah, I mean, I think it was early March when I last flew.

And like most sports riders, you're on a plane at least half the month. It feels like whether it's easy trips between Boston, New York, or going somewhere else. And it was a strange feeling, you know, getting to the airport and just seeing all the changes that they have in place, you know, the socially distance markers. And also just little things like, you know, seeing the flight board, which is. usually packed with, you know, 50, 60 flights going off at one time. There's maybe 10 or 12 on that board in Boston. I flew on Delta, which flies, I think, 60% capacity each time. And, you know, you've got a whole road to yourself, you know, drink service is basically just handing out bottle waters for the entire flight. And, you know, there's, you take a lot of precautions

when you go and do something like that. So it was all mask all the time for me. And there's a car waiting for you in Orlando that basically delivers you to the bubble and you've been in your hotel room for a week now? Yeah. Once you land and clear the gate area in Orlando, you become part of the NBA machine, right? They have somebody waiting for you. I took was in a car with another member of the media and, you know, they took us to the Coronado Springs, dropped us off. We get our wristband and basically we're whisked to our hotel room and told under no circumstances are you to leave the room?

If you need drinks, they will bring them to you. If you need ice, they will go get it for you. They're very diligent with all this. The only time you're really supposed to open that door are the three times a day they bring food and the once a day when three technicians show up to give you your daily COVID test. And you've been taking this every single day

since you've been there at COVID test. Every day you get it. It's funny. You get it on Sunday. And, you know, the things are, you know, it's obviously a work in progress down here. But you get it on Sunday. And you're told that if it's all clear, you get an email. If there's an issue, you'll get a phone call. So the first day, like I've seen some of my colleagues here, Mark Medina from USA Today, you know, tweeted out like a picture of his email, like saying like, I'm all clear. And like for two hours, I'm sitting in my room like, holy shit. Like what? Is this a problem? At that point, I've effectively, mentally given myself every COVID symptom possible. Like, I'm like, oh, there's a cough and maybe I have a fever and all that. So there was some lag time there. I finally got an email, like it was 11 p.m. that night, you know, giving me the all clear. But that was after I sent several text messages and emails to the PR officials that are here, like, wondering, like, is that call coming in soon?

Is there an issue? And that was nerve-wracking for sure. Now, you said it's not Shawshank being there in the bubble. And thank you, by the way, for using the correct. reference on a on a ringer podcast we appreciate that um have you found that a lot of the kind of personal interaction you would have had with basketball people whether it's coaches players is that just all migrated to text and do we think that's all just going to kind of go into that realm for the time being yeah i mean there's so it's interesting there's for the most part yes the answer

that is yes it's interesting it will be interesting in the coming weeks to see what kind of interactions you can get now the best example of what could be possible is golf, right? Like, we're, I guess, not supposed to be playing golf right now. I know a lot of different coaches and even players that I could play golf with if we're given the all clear by the NBA,

but I think for the moment, I think for the moment, they want to make sure that media members are not taking up time that could be used by players and coaches. So if in the next, I think it's more of a guess on my part, I think in the next couple of days, if it turns out that golf isn't as popular as they think,

they'll let media members go out there and play. And look, I suck at golf, but I wouldn't mind playing with, you know, certain coaches and players that might be down here just to, you know, just to talk, just to talk about what, you know, their experience has been like and, and see if you gain any kind of insight into what they're going through. And that's not normal, right, during an NBA season, that you would be able to get a bunch of rounds with, with people. Is it? I mean, God, I play golf a couple of times in the summertime.

And honestly, in preparation for this, in anticipating this, I did hit the driving range a few times back in Boston when it started to warm up, just to see if I could get my game on a level. It's not embarrassing. But no, you wouldn't. I can't even remember the last time I played golf with an NBA type, or at least an executive or a coach. And so it does present, like, an opportunity where you're alone-ish with a guy

or guys for, you know, three, four hours. maybe and and there's definitely value in doing that. One complaint I hear all the time for basketball writers is about over credentialing journalists in a locker room. It's not just, you know, tough questions, right? It's that NBA players find themselves surrounded by people, this crush, especially in a playoff situation. Do we have any hope because there are so few of you down there in the bubble that these guys

will be a little more giving, a little more interesting, a little more in their answers? just because they're not facing such a giant mob? Yeah, no, I hope so. I think it all depend on, you know, what kind of access that you're going to get in these either small group, not even small group, one-on-one situations. Like, it's been made clear to us, like you can't just walk up to a guy after practice

and hold a tape recorder in his face. In fact, like, one of the things that came up in one of the early calls was, you know, just how do you record an interview? Like if there's no table, you know, you're going to be six feet away. It's some, like my record doesn't really pick up a lot. I mean, it'll picks up some, but it'd be tough to kind of get exact word for word from six feet away. Is there, can we guarantee we're going to be sitting at a table? So I think a lot of it's going to depend on the logistics of it.

Theoretically, I hope so. I do think that there's, you know, there's an over credentialing in locker rooms. It makes it difficult to get things done. I think it's just as bad now on these Zoom calls because, I mean, guys aren't even looking at, the guys are even looking at faces, though. Like, not about over credentialing on the calls. Guys can't see your face.

So if they're just kind of sitting there looking at a camera, it's kind of challenging to get anything more than a stock answer out of them. So the hope is that in talking to people individually, you'll get a little bit more out of them and a little bit more than just the stoic kind of standard answers. Yeah, I think the Zoom call thing is just turned everything into a podium interview, which, you know, in the playoffs, we just do podiums, right? You don't for a lot of the big stars.

You don't see them in the locker room. And that's bad because podium interviews generally suck outside of a few, like, basics about the game. Well, let me say this. Let me say this. I'm less down on the podium interview than you are, especially in the playoffs, because, I mean, locker rooms have expanded. They're bigger than they used to be. But they're still not enormous. And you're still kind of, if you're trying to write something, you know, if you don't get in front of the guy right away,

it's occasionally difficult to even get a question off. At least with a podium interview, you're going to get your question and you're going to be able to look at the guy. LeBron's great oftentimes at podium interviews. I think he gives some really good answers at podium interviews. And I think part of that is because he kind of sees you. He's looking at you.

He's engaged with you a little bit. He doesn't, you know, oftentimes if you ask a bad question, he's not going to give you an answer to it. I like that about him. So I think there's more value in those podium interviews. These Zoom things, they're just like looking dead ahead and, you know, there's just really no engagement to, it's just a zombie version of, of the podium interview.

It's really funny. I saw one the other day and Buster Only. It was a baseball one. There was a box marked Buster Only, but the camera was off, you know, and it's just like, this is beyond, beyond parity. Do you worry as I do at all that while we restrict access, for good reasons during the coronavirus, that some of this access will not come back when the virus is gone? I do. I do worry about that.

And look, from an NBA perspective, they've been adamant that it won't go away. I can't speak for other sports, but the NBA has said that when this clears, whether it's the start of next season or, you know, whenever it becomes safe, that we can go back to doing everything that we've done because it might seem trivial to some people, but, you know, being, especially for me, pregame is where it's at. Like, postgame, whatever. Like, there is value to it, certainly as crowds dissipation. during the regular season, you get to a guy, but pregame, you know, a guy hanging by his locker is a good chance to get to know him a little bit. And the NBA's been vocal in saying that it's going to come back. I just have to take them at their word at this point that it, that it will. But that's a genuine concern that, you know, all, this all works. Let's do it all via Zoom. Yeah, guess what? Nobody has to come into a practice ever again. That doesn't really fly with

99% of the media out there. All of us sports writers and especially a busy sports writer like you have had four months where we've essentially had a sports cleanse. You know, we have not had the kind of things to chase that we normally would. Has that made you look at the job differently at all? Have you entertained any thoughts about your profession that you might not have had time for in so-called normal times? You know, it's given me a greater appreciation, I think, for, you know, the, I don't know the value of live sports, but the job is so predicated on live sports, obviously, and seeing what's going on around the country with, you know,

sports properties, including my own, you know, cutting staff and people losing their jobs. It's just, you know, I mean, look, there's a lot of flaws with this job nowadays. You know, you have to do 15 different things as opposed to maybe one that it might have been 20, 30 years ago. But doing it, like kind of getting back into it and getting able to write about Ben's Simmons moving to power forward or LeBron losing another guard.

Like it just stuff that might have I guess seemed monotonous to write about the time that I'm just maybe more eager to write about it right now like anxious to put proverbial pen to paper and write you know how is how in the world are they ever going to replace Rajan Rondo? How is that good?

Even if you're a little hyperbolic in that kind of writing it just gives you an appreciation for just how good these jobs are when you're able to do them. It's funny, isn't it? Is Ben Simmons playing out of position? It's like the most incredibly normal piece of NBA content, but now seems actually exciting.

I can't wait to write that. I'm dying to see it. Like, that's the first scrimmage I want to go to. You know, I'm like, you know, looking up Shake Milton stats and watching old clips of him and how is he going to play. That's a lineup that never used. It's just the mundane has become really interesting at this point. And I hope it stays that way.

I think it's going to be, it's going to be wild out there. I tell people all the time, like, I'm, the one thing I'm betting against is Chuck. Like, we're not going to see Bucks versus Lakers. I don't believe that. I think it's something incredibly unusual is going to happen, whether that's because of a coronavirus issue or because of something else.

I think something wacky's going to happen down here. We're talking to Chris on Sunday, and he's less than two hours away from being able to leave his hotel room for the first time in a week. And Rome was the word you used with me. Okay, so before we go, what is your roaming game plan today? What do you hope to possibly get out of roaming around the facilities there? I think I wouldn't mind, you know, bumping into somebody, you know, it's just anybody that.

Figuratively, not literally. Figuratively, yeah, figuratively from a social distance bumping into somebody that I haven't seen in a while, you know, whether it's a coach or a player or. And then, look, I think day one, it's about getting the lay of the land of the campus. Like one thing that terrifies me, and we had a briefing on this on Saturday, is like, look, there are clearly marked areas where you cannot go. Like, here is the boundary. Like, you cannot leave this boundary. Like, what terrifies me is if I'm like, all right, I'm going to go for a run and actually run past the boundary, am I like Bruno Cabocalo or Reshont Holmes? So they're sticking

me back in quarantine. So it's like, I think day one is like, all right, let me find my spots on where I'm going to try to work out, where I'm going to get my coffee in the morning, like just the basics of of this campus so I don't screw it up. So don't become that guy that gets reported and has to wind up back in quarantine. I really hope Malika Andrews and Mark Stein aren't calling the snitch line, you know, to report that you've, you've been seen outside the bubble. That's that's one way to winnow out the competition. Let me tell you.

I'm telling you there are, you know, I know there are coaches that are calling the snitch line. Like they're like, I wonder if it's going to become gamesmanship at some point. if like you have a snitch coach. If like there's someone on your staff, you like look around, watch, make sure if you see a guy walk outside the boundaries and if he's playing on a team we might play, like is that become part of the games?

I've heard coaches joke about it. I have not, I don't know if they're actually serious. If they'd actually use the snitch line to report somebody for a violation. I'm not sure yet. Chris Mannix, you can read and listen to his bubble diaries from Orlando

at Sports Illustrated. Chris, thanks for joining us. My pleasure. All right. It's time for David Schuemaker. Guess is a strain pun headline. Woo. Thursday's headline about a bird that bit the Brazilian president was Reh resistance.

We got votes. Welcome to the Rehistance. I really died on that one. We got votes for Rea-A-Ality Bites. Pretty funny. And even more skillful. Blame it on Ria. Since it's Brazil, that's pretty great.

Today's headline comes from Srinivas Murthy. It's from the CBC up there in Canada, David. Kind of a sad story. A couple in British Columbia opened an arcade stocked with classic 70s, 80s, and 90s games. Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Street Fighter, the kind of place you and I would be hanging out if we lived in British Columbia. Absolutely. Then as the popular headline goes, the coronavirus hit. And now the couple, yeah, I know.

So the couple's cool arcade now has mask regulations. and you have to disinfect the games, which kind of takes some of the romance off. We're looking for a headline here that plays off the classic Nintendo Entertainment System game franchise. What was the CBC's strained pun headline? So Super Mario Brothers? Is that what we're doing with it? Is that where we're going?

The popular franchise? Yes, sir. Super Mario. This is very strained. I'm just not like super masquio brothers or super

that's very strange I mean I'm super brothers is the word you're going to want to have fun with here brothers Super Mario

no that's good though he's not heavy he's my brothers uh okay brother is am I going for like a

coronavirus thing here just kind of more like a word for a oh oh oh oh uh oh brothers where art thou no super mario blank and it's it kind of means annoyances let's say super mario bothers super mario that's it super mario bothers super mario bothers is the answer that's really the answer yes i great gratitude inform you super mario bothers i'm just gonna let i'm just gonna just gonna put a pause in here he is david shue-mayer I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Alveda. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. We're back Thursday. I don't think we have anything to plug. But hey, why don't you share the pod? Should we ask people to share the pod, David?

We've never actually asked this in the history of the press box. Do we get one of these? Yes, we do. Five stars, share the pod. I'm just, just repeat all the, all the things you've heard other more competent podcast hosts ask you to do. We'd love you to do that. We really would appreciate it. Because if you do, we get to come back with more Lukeworm takes about. the media. See you then, David. See you, Brian.