The Press Box - Is Sports Journalism Dead? Plus: Google’s Killing Search and Fear and Loathing on the Wemby Beat.

Episode Date: May 22, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Joel is back, and he’s here with Bryan to talk first about the sale of New York magazine. Then they talk about the changes coming to the Google search bar (9:13), whether sports journalism is dead like Dan Le Batard said (21:53), and more. Then they are joined by San Antonio Express-News sports columnist Mike Finger to discuss what it’s like covering Victor Wembanyama (58:27). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel AndersonGuest: Mike FingerProducers: Isaiah Blakey, Jon Roemer, Oscar De La Luz, and Sarah Reddy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to Pressbox. It's Brian Curtis. Back from vacation, it's Joel Anderson. Hey, man. Brian, it's good to see. You see your smiling face again. Yeah, man. You know what?

A lot of people, you know, because every night and again, I read the comments. I try not to. A lot of people didn't think I was coming back. But unfortunately, I'm here. Do people really think that? I don't know. I think it was more wishcasting. You know, I've done a really good job.

I don't know if you know I was on rewatchables a week ago. I heard it. People hate me. You know what I'm saying? I'm fine with that. But I have avoided the internet. And so that was one good thing about being off last week. I was just off the internet as people were laughing at me falling down at the UCLA practice facility.

And bringing down their favorite podcast about movies they used to enjoy. You didn't read one comment last week, for real. I mean, yeah, come on. I don't believe you. I read a couple. You know, I felt like you, by the way. Can I tell you when I went, so I was at the airport, I don't know what happened. Like there was something going on with my computer.

And I bought this book. It's about Joan Didion interviews. It's just a series of interviews she gave over the years. That's cool. Yeah, man, it was actually really good. I didn't finish it all. I got through maybe like, you know, the first. It has interviews with Pacifica Radio, the New York Times.

book review, interview magazine, salon. I think I got through the fresh air interview with Terry Gross. And so the next one up is Hilton All's at the Paris Review. So, yeah, it was really, it was a good book. I mean, I just, I needed the inspiration, the writerly inspiration. And she's a, I have a lot of admiration for Joan Gideon. So it's good stuff. Something wonderful about an airport bookstore, because for the next couple of hours,

maybe for the only time all week, you will have a chance to open a book. Absolutely. And if it has the right book, you're like, oh, good, here we go. I got this. I got a little time all to myself. Nobody wants anything for me. I don't have to have the Internet on if I don't want to. And in fact, the in-flight Wi-Fi was pretty bad on that flight.

So I made the right choice. Producers Isaiah Blakely and John Romer are also here with us. Coming up on this here podcast, Google is coming for journalism. Again. Oh, no. Dan Levitart says sports journalism is dead. we've got things to say about that. Jeff Bezos is breaking his silence

about the Washington Post and San Antonio columnist Mike Finger is going to stop by to talk about Wimby and the Wimby Media Circus. Can we touch this New York Magazine sale before we move on here, Joel? Yeah, sure. James Murdoch bought New York Magazine yesterday.

Yeah, I saw. Tells the New York Times he is interested in longer form, thoughtful journalism that can really speak to the culture. Now, if you've lost track of the Murdox, James Murdoch is not the Scion, only in journalism, who was chosen to run the right-leaning company. He is the Scion who is now creating his own media empire. Yeah.

Though he denies it has anything to do with his dad telling the Times, I'm just trying to build a great business. No succession here, nothing to see. It would be tough to sort of compete with your brother by buying Vox. I mean, again, like, Vox sold for a pretty hefty price. Were you shocked by the $300 million number? I don't know how much anything is worth anymore. Right.

I was shocked that podcasts, that Vox has a roster of 50 podcasts, according to the times. Yeah, that, I did not know that. I did not know that. That's my fault for not knowing, but I did not know that. I know about Pivot. I know about Ested Herndon. Yep. I know about today,

explained, and then I kind of lose the plot. Man, America actually, that's a stead pod. There's a lot here, man. You know, it's just interesting to me because I remember when I was at BuzzFeed in the mid-teens, and at one point people were throwing around a valuation of like a billion. And it sort of made sense. I was like, well, we do have a lot of properties. This is a really buzzing media company, like, in that moment.

And then I don't, I mean, I don't need, like, you know, Byron Allen just bought it for grits and tattered clothes the other day. So I don't, I don't know. And it's Byron Allen. Byron Allen owns a Weather Channel, though, man, you know? He's going to have the Stephen Colbert slot on CBS. Hey, man. Starting tomorrow.

Have you consumed a lot of Byron Allen content? I have it. I want to watch. comics unleashed. Okay. Just because it has been talked down to me so much. Oh. Because you don't know when these shows were recorded.

And I was told the other day that dead comics sometimes appear on it. Oh, man. Like Sam Kinnison. Some of the shows are perhaps a little dated. I used to watch, because Byron Allen came on after, you know, when you were a kid, like, TV would just kind of go off, like, the programming. And so Byron Allen would show up and he'd be interviewing, yeah, whatever celebrity was doing, you know, a media tour or had a movie to pitch. And I mean, he seemed like an amiable guy. Like I didn't, you know, I just, I would have never expected him to be in this position.

But yet, to the broader point here, I'm shocked that Vox's worth 300 million, but in a lot of ways it's inspiring. I'm like, oh, great, there's still some people out there that are willing to spend tens, hundreds of millions of dollars on media properties. To me, that can only be a good thing, right? And that person is James Murdoch. Yeah. James Murdoch. Are you suspicious? Not of his political motives.

Okay. I do think there's a worry of what does he want to do with New York Mag. Oh, yeah. You don't buy these things to keep them the same size. You buy them to blow them out, to figure out things. I've seen, you know, it's like, well, will he create a New Yorker Festival for New York Magazine, and that's simple enough.

But I just wonder what form those new things will take. That would be my question. Because there's not a lot of information. You know, thoughtful long-form journalism. Oh, that sounds great.

Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. You know, if it's kind of a prestige thing to own New York Magazine, something that lots of people like, you and I like, that's cool. But what does he want to do with all this stuff?

that's a great question uh you know i i assume he sees a lot of potential in it i mean new york magazine and like the new yorker the atlantic like i'm i'm sure i'm missing somebody but i feel like those are the three of the top four or five magazines old school magazines that have thrived in this new era they found a way to stay relevant and they reg i mean i remember when i was at slate regularly people would get upset at how great New York Magazine's ideas where to do things, right? Great ideas, great packaging. It's just really smart and really fun.

Like there's always just like a lot of fun. Or just like absurd stuff that makes sense, you know, written very well, thoughtfully considered. And so yeah, I would hate if anything happened to that, of course. Yeah, thoughtfully considered. And then there's some just bad shit personal essays that are in their own category that have done quite well for New York Magazine. I mean, look, a lot of people have tried the personal essay stuff, you know, and it hasn't worked out for them for what. I don't know if it's the editing, if it's the, you know, the ideas in the beginning, but they seem to have a knack for figuring out this person has an interesting story and this is how we're going to tell it.

And not everybody can do it even though it seems sort of, I think a lot of people think they can do it. Websites that were not part of this deal. Mm-hmm. The Verge. Man. Eater. Yeah. SB Nation?

What's going on at SB Nation right now? We could do a whole fascinating 15 minutes, maybe a whole podcast on SB Nation in its many forms

over the years. I mean, that was a, that was a go-to website for me, maybe, what year is this? 20-20-20-20-year?

What's going on with SB Nation? I do not know the answer to that question. Yeah. That's sad, man. Go ahead. Let's talk about the Google

asteroid if we can. Oh my god, yeah, let's do it. Or the death of the blue link. Sarah Perez over at TechCrunch writes, the era of 10 blue links is officially over. That's because Joel, Google is getting a new search box. A reimagined search box.

So for the better part of 25 years, Google worked like this. Joel or Brian typed it into their browser. We typed in our search terms and we got a list of blue links. And by clicking on one of those links, you often got sent to a journalism outlet, which relied on your traffic and perhaps even your subscription to survive.

Well, starting recently, when you entered a search term on Google, you got the dreaded AI overview. Yeah. Which is now being used according to Perez by more than. than 2.5 billion monthly users. Terrify. Billion monthly users.

Terrify. And now within that AI overview, which has already discouraged you from clicking on any links, you can ask conversational questions. You can ask additional questions about the search, and Google's AI tool will refine those,

will give you refined answers, I should say, to those questions without actually encouraging you to click on links. Yeah. That's tough. Do you think it's funny that this happened? Not funny, but that this is ironic that this happens in the same month that Ask Jeeves died an unceremonious death? I had not thought of that connection, but that probably belongs in the penultimate paragraph of the data search.

Yeah. I had an example of this that I wanted to share with you. And it's a personal example, but I thought it was interesting. Yeah. So last week, we lost a sports announcer named Charlie Neal. Yeah. Charlie Neal, who was a very significant figure because he brought college football to BET in the 80s. Mm-hmm.

And I thought, well, this will be fun to experiment with Google's new search today. I went to, I asked Google, I should say, typed it in. I said, you know, who was Charlie Neal's broadcast partner on BET? Wow. Very specific. Okay. Very specific. Now, AI overview came up with the answers by looting the story I wrote for the ringer about Charlie Neal.

Oh, man. And other outlets, they came up with the answer that Charlie Neal's partner on BET was Lam Barney, the Hall of Fame cornerback with the Detroit Lions. And there was a tiny little link that said, the ringer there. but of course there's no need to click on that and actually visit the ringer because the AI overview has told you the answer to the question. Yeah. Then I went to this new part of the Google search, which is called Ask Anything. So already, wait, we're away from the blue links now.

We're just completely in the AI overview world. And I asked, Google, I said, was Limbarting known for being funny? Huh. It's kind of a leading question because I know the answer to it. Uh-huh. And the answer was yes, Lem Barney was highly regarded for his sly comic relief and witty, dry sense of humor in the broadcast booth.

Okay. And then the AI tool gave me two answers. Two examples. I knew what these examples were because they were both from the story I wrote about Charlie Neal for the Ringer. Oh, man. And I specifically remember

that I found these examples by going through entire HBCU football games on YouTube. Wow. To listen to Charlie and Limb, so that I would have some examples of stuff Limbarnie said on the air because people told me he was really fun.

So I watched hours and hours of tape when I was putting together this story. I came up with a couple of little examples. And now Google has shoplifted those examples from my story so that you don't even need to click on the thing that I wrote. That's what's happening here

from the point of view of us journalists. And now it's happening more efficient. Yeah. It's already happening with AI, with the AI overview. Now you can ask an additional question. Oh, here's another way to avoid clicking on the ringer.com and finding the answers you see. How did you feel when that,

I mean, because you're talking about this, like sort of very matter of faculty, but did you feel like somebody had committed theft? They had broken into my car. That's how I felt. Yeah. And that's what's happening every day. Yeah.

I mean, that, and again, it's like one of those things where I understand this from a consumer point of view, and I am often that consumer rather than the journalist. My son had some English homework last night, and we're looking for synonyms. You know, what's a synonym for cumbersome? Now, was I clicking all the way through to the Merriam-Webster link? Nope. I was not. I was reviewing, I was relying on AI overview to find out that unwieldy was a synonym for cumbersome. I would have never thought.

See, I still go, I would put Thesaurus.com in. That's how old I am. Were you using ass Jeeves until a couple of weeks ago? I mean, it wasn't off the table. Thesaurus.com. You don't go to Thesaurus.com? No. Oh, man.

No, Joel. Whenever I'm writing a story anymore. Which is currently. Like, I have a story to put, like, three stories due sometime in the next, you know, two weeks. And, yeah, I'm used at thesaurus.com. I thought all everybody did that. Shoutoutthosource.com and dictionary.com. Twins.

Yeah, if you insist, I'll take your word for it. Oh, man. But you understand as a consumer, this is enormously convenient. It is, if you, the thing about the AI write-up at the top is that, and this could, again, this is probably an age thing. My wife has called me a ludite, right? Is that the way you say it? I always thought it was let's like let'site but let's go with it okay let i'll trust you on this um i like i don't trust that that first initials thing that it spits out at me like i i want to know

and i'm going to the links i always want to go down a little bit further in the search like i just never accept the first thing because i'm i'm trained to think is this some sort of a sponsored ad is this you know what did this come from I know that sometimes they get information wrong I don't know where you know where the source is and so I kind of want to do that but I think that could just be

years of skepticism about what I read on the internet you know I was well learned skepticism because it's often wrong yeah I've often said like what date did this sports thing happen I get an answer and then I double check it because I don't want to rely on the AI answer for something that would be in a piece

or even on a podcast. And it turns out it's just completely wrong. But you and I are journalists, right? Look, we're trying to, we're trying not to put garbage into our stories or into our podcast. Right. If you're a regular person,

close enough sometimes is close enough. Unwieldy is indeed a synonym for cumbersome. Well, I was going to ask you, so you're doing this with your son. And so, like, what did you, I mean, did you say, hey, we should look up, we should go a little bit further down,

see what the source.com is talking about. maybe you should do that from going on. So you just accepted it. Because you're training him. I know that those two words mean roughly the same thing. That's great. I could verify that one on my own. I just couldn't think of it at the moment.

Right. I mean, what do you say to your son or your daughter about using the internet under those circumstances? Then did you say that, well, normally I wouldn't do this, but this seems, you know, fairly airtight here. I'm not sure we had a teachable moment. we had to get the homework done.

We had to get the English homework done. Yeah. But if we had had a kind of made for NBC in the 80s moment, I would have said, son, don't rely on the Google AI overview. Click through the actual links because that will support websites that are putting actual content into the universe. But how did I feel? I feel like I was shoplifted from. I feel like my car was broken into. But I understand on the other side of it, why most of the most of the job.

people just don't care. Right. And it's going to be very, very difficult for us to convince them to care. Yeah. I mean, people are getting trained into believing the first thing that pops up, the first search result. It always has been like this, though, right? Like, it has always been difficult to get people to click through,

which is why websites and other junk advertisers or whatever, we've been trying to game the system to be the first result, right? Yep. So that's all, this has always been an issue. But now it's not just that we don't know how, you know, verifiable this information is. Now it's, it come by via robbery, right? And yeah, I mean, that's not going to be a problem for us, but I fret about what it means for everybody, you know, the generation of kids that aren't, they're not going to look on page three of their

results, right? And are we sure it's not going to be a problem for us? We're still working, right? I know we don't rely on search in the way a lot of websites used to rely on search. Yeah. Sometimes ruinously so, but you're talking about writing, turning in a written piece of journalism. I don't feel good about writing. And I have not had access to LexisNexis since I've worked at the Ringer, and I don't feel good about it. I want that, you know. And so I will always go to newspapers.com or whatever else to back.

Like I just think that that's just going to be who I am. And I want to, sometimes I feel like, oh, man, I'm finding a really good link down here on page three or four that, you know, some people may overlook and, you know, click on whatever. But that's just how I feel. And I'm not, that's not better or worse. That's just how I am. I'm skeptical. I will, I think I will probably always do that. Now, will my kid do it? Will my kids do it? I don't know. I'm going to try to give them that teachable moment. But who knows? What do you, what do you think? Like, what should we do about this? Like, we can't just let people steal from us, right?

Well, New York Times has filed lawsuits against AI companies. I think that's one solution. When that's happened in the past, there's always some accommodation, so it's almost like you get paid off and then you go away. Right. But the idea that you're just going to, your labor is going to turn into this, you know, just grist for the, for the AI overview

and for the ask jee-style questions. that come after the air of view is just i mean it's it's unbelievably to me it's just it's insane it's so it's so stupid like it's like oh well why are we why are we doing this like what's the point of this we can talk about grand media strategy and say hey don't rely on search get people to subscribe your podcast build a brand that's not just like hey you know we're throwing some some bait in the water and we hope you find us right we want we want to we can talk about that but as a as a moral proposition, I have, I got nothing. I got absolutely nothing for you.

I just, I mean, there's no way to pull your stuff off of Google Assing, right? And I don't think anybody would want to do that, even if they could just on the off chance that somebody like me is out there trying to click through to links or whatever. But, you know, when I blog, I used to blog, you know, from like 2008 to 2010. I had my own blog and everything. and I didn't, at that time, I had not gotten into the habit of going through Google. I had a blog role, you know, and I would go through those blogs regularly, and that's where I, and then, okay, Google Reader was something that I used fairly regularly.

And, of course, they took rid of Google Reader. But I just wonder, again, if the people that can hear the sound of our voice, I hope you go to websites, man, because I try to do that now. I've been trying to train myself in the last year or so to be like, what's happening? happening over on New York Times.com. I just want to see your front page, you know. Click through. Click through.

I saw a headline on a actual website the other day. The headline was Dan Lebitard declares sports journalism dead. That's from awful announcing. They are on it, man. Awful announcing. They are on it. Dot com. Dot com.

Now first when I saw the headline, I thought, I don't know. Did Dan Lebitard really say that? this. And I listened to the clip and he was talking a lot about streamers and Stephen A. Smith. Yeah. Headline might be a smidge, a smidge too much. Mm-hmm. And maybe a smidge, you know, overplayed. And then I went to the, um, the YouTube link to Dan Levitart talking about this. And the thumbnail headline was journalism is dead. Yeah. So I guess we can attribute that. opinion to Mr. Lebitard.

He absolutely said it. It's funny. I have two reactions that. One is I love that in a segment that is partially decrying hot takes, that segment is named Journalism is Dead. Yeah. All of journalism is dead. We all got to do the clip things, man.

We're all playing the clip game. Those hot takes are tipping after all, are they? Not just for Stephen A. Smith. Hey, man. I mean, Fandul and everybody can't, it can't do it all of them. We got you got to chip in, you know. Anybody who writes think pieces, you're tempted to declare something dead because people will react to that.

Yes. And I always like to fold in a little unfact-checkable nuance into that discussion. Sports journalism is dying. Yes. Is dying. Or even better, the twilight of sports journalism. Yes. The midday sun could shine again.

This is the twilight. of sports journalism. Also, when you say sports journalism is dead or just journalism is dead, every living journalist sees that headline. I can't wait to respond. Oh, my God. Didn't you, in your mind, picture Don Van Nett on the other side of Miami spontaneously combusting?

Oh, man. When he saw that awful announcing headline? I mean, you know, there's just, you know, a 27-year-old working in Chilli-Coffee, Ohio. that it's like I go to I cover city hall and preps I do all that every day there's no way sports is dying you know but I you know when a I'm trying to remember what year it is that Nas did the song hip hop is dead what's your favorite Nas song Brian oh um yeah yeah ain't hard to tell probably that sure that was that's what I was gonna say good song good song um he did a he did an album a whole album

called hip hop is dead. It came out to end of 2006. And then when they pressed him about him, he was saying, well, no, really, it's kind of dying. And, you know, I want to bring it back to the art and everything else. You know, now it's talked like how a New York rapper talk. And that's, I felt like that's what Dan Levitar was doing. Like, it was like, it was an, um, an outrageous thing to say to get people's attention. But I think the thing, the problem with it, though, is that anybody who cares about it already sort of knows, right? And so, like, you saying it like that, I don't know. I mean, again, it feeds into the clip farm. But, you know, the other thing that's kind of weird, you know, you founded Metal Arc Media. You have Pablo Torre. Not you, Brian Curtis.

Yeah, not Brian Curtis, unless I, you know, you've left out some things in your biography. you're the person that greenlit and brought over Pablo Torre finds out that just won a Pulitzer right the sport uh what was it was it was it was it was it sports general it was it was a pulitzer for for podcasting and then he also won a national magazine award for podcasts yeah i mean it premised largely on the idea that journalism is what keeps that show going it's not the shows necessarily about Jordan Hudson it's about you know the inmates and the last you know their

fandom with clippers yeah the clipper stuff right so I'm just like well I mean what do I mean how would Pablo feel about that you know

sure and also like what are we going to do about it to ask the question you ask about Google yeah if we think sports journalism is dead or dying or in its twilight shouldn't we be acting on that? Yeah.

Well, I mean, if you think it's dead or dying and you kind of, you said it's in its twilight, I mean, that's sort of, um, we sort of accepted the fate, right? Like, I mean, I don't know. Why should we do that? I mean, I remember Jamel Hill when she started being a talker at ESPN instead of a writer at ESPN. Mm-hmm. She had this great term.

She called herself a former journalist. Acknowledging that while she was still doing her job conscientiously, there were people in locker rooms. digging stuff up. Right. That we're doing a very, very different job than she was doing. Right. And, of course, what's changed since then, that was almost 10 years ago now, is a lot of us have become former journalists.

Yeah. Talking on podcasts more than we're writing. Absolutely. Talking about things, fussing about things instead of doing capital J journalism. You and I very, very much included in this. Yeah. But why, if we're former. journalists to one degree or another, why can't we just do journalism?

It takes too long. It's really hard. Okay, well then, you know, obviously it's death is not that important. If it's all, it takes too long. Well, and also I think the people, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, and I'm And I think that professional sports teams, even though a lot of them within their contract, their player contracts, they mandate media access, I think a lot of them are doing their part to squeeze out media and make us less relevant and kill us.

Undoubtedly true. Yeah. And so, like, Jalen, you know, again, once upon a time Jalen Brown would have spoken to, I don't know, whatever, whatever, it might have been Dan Leviton. To be honest, I mean, you know, 15, 20 years ago and talk to him about how he felt about the season and to clarify his comments about, you know, this was the best season, one of the most fun season I've ever had and all that other sort of stuff. But now Jalen Brown, and he said it in his stream, you know, I can talk right to my people right here. I can go live right here from the comfort of my own home.

And so, yeah, I don't know. I mean, the only thing I figure, and it just seems, I mean, it seems both futile and, like, I'm covering myself in, like, false glamour or whatever, false glory. I don't know what the term I would say here, but I'll just keep doing, try to do some journalism when I write. Sure. That's what we can do. I think it's worth defining what sports journalism is. Yeah. If we're making declarations about something's death.

Yeah. Right now, I would propose to you that if you just take podcasts, just podcasts, not even written work, there is more sophisticated commentary about what's happening in the NBA conference finals out there than there has ever been in human history. That's true. You and I are from the newspaper era. It was an awesome time to grow up when the Louisville Courier Journal could send a reporter to the NBA finals. And they would actually sit courtside instead of 50,000 feet in the air, you know, looking down, like they were watching television.

And you would know who they are, too, by the way. Sure. You were journalism. Yeah. Right. That was a really cool time. But I would propose to you that when people are breaking down NBA games in incredible detail and with an incredible, sophisticated knowledge of the game, they are doing journalism.

Okay. I'm not writing them out of the journalism category. There you go. They may be doing a podcast. They may be like, you know, SGA needs to step up. That's journalism. I'm sorry. It just is.

Like I'm not going to push those people out of the category because it's not written or it's not a particular kind of journalism. Now, if you tell me like, hey, few and fewer people are actually being sent to the game and going into the locker room or at least the media room after the game, true. If you tell me it's much less likely we get an in-depth profile of Jalen Brown in 26 than it would have been in 2006 or certainly 1986. Absolutely true. If you tell me it's harder to publish stories that annoy or piss off the people who are running these leagues, the people in power, okay, we can talk about that. But there's a lot of journalism out in the world. And I don't accept the idea that because it's not a particular form that we're missing a particular thing that journalism writ large is dead. Right.

And also, I mean, I think you guys talked about this, that, you know, I think Jalen Brown was taking a very sort of, in the way that I just was a second ago, taking a sort of very narrow thought of what journalism was. Like, he has an idea of what journalism is, right? And it may not necessarily line up with what we think it is. But, like, he seems to recognize that what Stephen A. Smith was doing here, that's not what I consider journalism. But it could be that seeing a Kenny Beecham stream is something that he considers to be journalism or whatever. And the ideals that are undergirded. But he was specifically pointing out Stephen A. Smith is somebody that didn't practice it.

And I was like, well, you know, at least he was interested. I don't know if it was, you know, just, it was just, you know, a sort of a deflection and an argument. But he seemed to care about journalism and like how the relationship that media has with its players. I'd be interested in him going one by one through the people he sees in the Celtics locker room every week and being like, is that a legitimate journalist?

Is that a legitimate journalist in your mind? Is that person practicing journalism? And I don't think he's different than any player in the history of the NBA other than he has an Instagram account on Twitch stream. Like if we went, again, if we went up to 86 Celtics and like asked Larry Bird and Kevin McHale, is that a legitimate?

Dan Shaughnessy okay Is Bob Ryan okay Jack McCallum Yeah we'd get some really Very varied answers on that But so I don't I don't know how much stock to put in that You know I think a lot of times

I don't think it's I don't think his opinion is not worthy Or not interesting Right But I think If you're the person who is covered You have lots of different opinions The Stephen A part of it is very interesting

And clearly that's part of what Dan Lebertart is talking about Isaiah can we run this second clip here Here is Dan Levitart on Stephen A and ESPN. I and we came up in a generation where ESPN decided to give the journalists the nerds voices that mattered. And that became the norm. But the way that we use those voices are now different. And Stephen A, in order to stay ahead of everybody else, has to evolve the way things are said in order to stay ahead of everyone else.

he's competing with. And that is a contaminant that makes the divide even larger than it's ever been before. So I think it's really interesting what he's saying. And I think he's certainly right about ESPN to go back to the John Walsh days when like, we're getting Chris Mortensen in here. Yeah. We're getting Tim Kirchin in here. We're getting Dan Levitart and Stephen A. Smith in there. John Clayton. Yeah. Absolutely. And then Stephen A with Skip Bayless, another former print guy, we're able to create first take and are able to show ESPN this different path

which leads us to ESPN hiring Pat McAfee. Right. And leads ESPN, at least part of ESPN in a different editorial direction. That changed things, right? Like that changed things within inside of ESPN.

Right. It's part of what Lebertar is reacting to. Right. I think we're talking about what killed, is killing, is putting sports journalism into its twilight, Stephen A wouldn't be in my top 10. Not at all.

I don't even know if he'd be in my top 20. Yeah. I just don't, like, I understand, like, I don't consume much of it unless we're talking about it on the podcast. I don't love it. I've purposely ignored whatever is happening between him and Jalen Brown

with all my heart. I have tried to ignore that story. But is Stephen A. Smith killing sports journalism? man again he'd be way down my list of culprits i feel like that's just i mean you know we all become old right and i feel like that's dan lebertar being an old guy complaining about something that he doesn't like i mean really the thing is you don't have to blame skipping uh skipping step in you know who you could blame for all this mike will bond and tony cornheiser they provided the bottle for all that. Everything that flows from that, from the, from part in the interruption,

like gave birth to everything else. It was like, oh, we could just have two sports writers on here arguing with each other. And sometimes the story is about the story itself. And sometimes it's about the relationship between those two people. We talk about that here all the time. Brian did a lot of podcasting. It's, you know, the relation, people caring about the relationship between the two people that are listening to. So, you know, I've did, I do find it interesting that people always go to Stephen A. Smith when all he did was, all he did was basically get into the position of Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon, and people decided we like seeing more of him or we're going to watch more of him. And they elevated him in a way

that Tony and Mike, they still have a very successful show, but they decided, ESPN decided, it let's ride with the Stephen A thing. Or I think you could think I don't love what he does. I don't really like what he does. But broadly speaking, that's not why we're here. Yeah. That's what I'm saying.

I don't know what their relationship is. At one time, they seem to have a pretty good relationship. When I listen to the Levertar show regularly, like Stephen A. Smith would come on. And sometimes it would be as a result of Dan saying something like this, right? I don't know what their state of their relationship is, but it makes me wonder if Dan is an old, angry guy, and he found a scapegoat that everybody can agree to.

Stephen A. Smith has a lot of people who watch them, but it's also really easy to score points hating on him. Sure. But here's the other thing. Think about their approaches to their job. Stephen A. Smith sees somebody like Jalen Brown or LeBron or KD, just fill in the name. A person he, I don't know, doesn't like it's the right,

way to say it, but a person he's like, you're doing things the wrong way. He's going to create a moment. He's going to position himself against a person on the air and turn it into a feud. What did Dan Lebitard do when he saw a player that was deemed problematic, a locker room

cancer? He went and wrote an ESPN cover story about that person. ESPN the magazine cover story where he was like, I actually want to listen to you. I want to explain who you are. I'm going to argue that if maybe you're not right about everything, maybe you're not, you know, maybe you are what the people say you are, but you deserve to be heard and your point of view deserves to be understood. That's how Dan Lebitard. So it's almost like the exact opposite approach.

It is. It is. But I mean, again, I don't think, I think, I'm, I don't want to come off as if I'm defending Stephen A here because I found two real problems with what happened here. But before I getting to that. I was like, I thought, Stephen A, this started out fairly innocuously. It started out with Stephen A. Smith and being like, please be quiet. Like, don't say what you said at the end of the season because it gives people, it opens up people to attack you. And because, like, Stephen A. Smith is not a delicate person. He doesn't talk, you know, there's not a lot, it's not opaque. Like what he says is very clear. And, um, wait, I think I said that right. Anyway, but the, the point is, is that Stephen A. Smith, like, when he says something like, be quiet,

Some people read it differently and they get offended. And they're inclined to get mad at Stephen A. And so Jalen Brown responded to Stephen A. Jalen Brown probably would never respond to anybody else like that in media. Like it wouldn't be worth his time. It wouldn't help his stream. I'm sure that like there's an element. He's trying to build out his own audience.

You say something about Stephen A. You're famous enough. Stephen A may say something back and then boom. Now people might tune in the next time for the Jalen Brown live stream. So I didn't think even, even the thing that happened with Stephen A is that once Jalen Brown went at him, it left the realm of journalism, right? And like, I think anybody can relate to certainly me. If somebody's talking shit about me on the internet, sometimes I feel inclined to respond. You leave the realm of journalism as well.

I leave the realm of journalism as well. Yeah. And so Stephen A went there and I don't like that. But haven't we just seen this with Stephen A like five times? Like I understand what you're saying And I agree with it But I'm just like, didn't this happen with him And LeBron?

Doesn't this happen all the time? Yeah. KD. Okay. So at some point maybe I'm just, I just am used to it. Right. Well, that's what's, again,

so what's the big, why did journalism start dying today? Why is it dead today then? Well, the other thing they talked about was Shams in the Amazon story where Shams broke the MVP on Sunday. Right. Instead of letting Amazon talk to it.

And Blake, Griffin said, hey, you nerd, go have brunch. And to me, it was such a funny story because obviously Blake Griffin was making a joke. Right. People just look at videos on Twitter now. They don't click through. They look at videos on Twitter. They're like, he's really mad at that other person.

I'm like, if you're watching something that's on a sports television show or a podcast, the people are probably performing. Yeah. Or they're just being ironic or whatever it is. They're probably not actually mad. I don't believe Blake Griffin was mad on behalf of Amazon. executives. Exactly.

And also turning Shams into, you know, somebody who's exposing Scientology or writing the looming tower, he was reporting something that was going to be broadcast a couple hours later anyway. Right. Like, come on. Like, now he's the journalist hero? Yeah. Right.

I was going to say, like, it's kind of funny because if anything, Shams, I mean, I could not do what he does. There's clearly a way, he clearly has amazing sources. But he's an example. of why people might say that sports journalism is dead, right? Because some people think of him the way, I mean, we just had a whole argument

about the way sources are procured in media. We talked about Diana Rusini and Olivia Nuxi. Like, that's just in the last few years. And so, you know, I don't, when I hear Shams, I don't think journalists even. I don't, that's not,

I think, I felt like he's working in concert with, you know, the league and, whatever people at the league, I mean, he couldn't report that and burn his sources, right? Like, he, somebody, clearly he has somebody within the league or very close league sources, and he puts that out there. Like, he can't do that and risk ruining his source. So I feel like he's working in tandem. And, yeah, just, I didn't make much of the Blake Griffin comment in short.

To go back to the former journalist thing, I think where Levitart is right on is there are certain stories that have gotten harder and harder to find homes for in sports writing. I don't know that it was ever easy. You know, if we go back to the outlets that we were like, boy, they were doing great work. Yeah.

You know, sure they were. Were they doing it every day or every week in the case of Sports Illustrated? Were they really pressing, you know, leaning in? No, they were picking their spots. Is the answer to that question? Is it harder now where everything is, you know, cross-owned by everything else,

where, you know, you don't have media outlets, as many media outlets that can stand on their own two feet financially. Yes, yeah. Where players have an Instagram account and don't need us, you know, there's just, there's very little in it. You hear it then Jalen Browns, but it's very little in it for him to talk to the media. Right.

Because it just doesn't matter. Right. Who don't even need documentarians to make documentaries because they can just produce it on their own and make a sanitized version of it. And people will watch. Yeah. All that's real.

All that's real. What I would just say to all of us former journalists who are listening is we can help. We're not, we are not, you know, without recourse here, right? If we're worried about the state of journalism, we can do journalism. That's right. We are capable of that. I think that's true, but I also just have to,

face the reality that I think the reason sports journalism is dying is not because of any one individual actor. It's not Stephen A. Smith. It's not Diana Rusini. It's about people who say, I don't want to spend money on

that. I don't want to spend, I don't want to send a reporter on road trips. I don't want to have features writer in sports. We don't need a second columnist. That kind of stuff. And you're speaking from editors. We can go to Craigslist. you know, taking away advertising from newspapers.

We can go for dumb newspaper executives 35 years ago who didn't see the Internet coming. Right. And didn't, you know, fortify their news outlets as the world was changing. Right. We can name a billion things that have gotten us here today. Yeah. I don't think, to close, I don't think journalists are failing. I mean, they're individual journalists that are failing.

But as a whole, I think we are responding to the market and trying to work with the market. And the market is telling all the people that pay us our paychecks, it's not worth it. Right. And then the incentive say to survive, I need to try to be more like Stephen A. Smith or Dan Levitart or, you know, Brian Curtis. God, heaven help anybody who follows that last piece of advice. Speaking of, you know, fabulously influential and wealthy men, Brian, did you happen to catch the Jeff Bezos? interview on CNBC. He has more money than Stephen A. Let's put that on the record. Oh, man. If Jeff Bezos woke up with Stephen A. Smith's money, he would, somebody would have to die.

Like, he would be like, oh, like, my portfolio. Yeah. Like, I'm going, somebody is going to get hurt. But yeah, no, Bezos, who is, I think the fourth wealthiest person in the world right now, set down recently with Andrew Ross Sorkin, the financial columnist for the New York Times, co-anchor of CNBC Squawk Box, for an interview that comes in in about an hour. And I would say it was fairly comprehensive. I mean, it covered Bezos's thoughts on how much taxes. Billionaires should pay, working with President Trump, the need for more data centers, the Melania documentary, and perhaps, more importantly, for our purposes, Brian, running the Washington Post.

Isaac, can you play a clip here? Why lay people up? Why fire people? why do you have subsidized the business if you're back? Because the post needs to be a profitable enterprise that stands on its own to feed. But doesn't it? Yes. I mean, that's the question.

Some people say it should be a trust. And let me tell you why. Okay. Because it's a measure of its relevance. If people won't pay for our product, we're not doing, it's not a good enough product. It's like, you know, doing, it would be like poetry without rhyming. It's too easy. So we want, it's got to be something that people will pay for because that's a signal.

Right. It's a signal that we're providing a relevant service. Your paper, the New York Times, you guys make a ton of money. You guys are doing very well financially, and you're providing a service that people are willing to pay for. We can do that too. So, Brian, first of all, poetry without rhyming. Really easy. I assume that's news to poets.

But what did you think of what he said here? Boy, there's a lot there. Number one, I don't think it's crazy to think that media outlets should support themselves or mostly support themselves. Because as we've been down this road, if you don't, you are relying on the whims of Jeff Bezos. And we decides like, I don't want to lose $50 million a year anymore, then here come the cuts. So I totally understand that. but right after that I would say why is the Washington Post

losing so much money? Right. Because you kneecapped the Washington Post because you decided to turn its opinion section into a conservative slash libertarian slash whatever opinion section that has these really lame videos

they're putting out on Twitter and drove away a bunch of the paying customers. Right. Well, that's kind of the thing it's interesting to me, you're the fourth wealthiest person in the world. You're the jobs creator, this genius who everybody has sought out their opinions on the world. Why didn't you make it better? You bought it. You've had it for over a decade now. So you did make it better at one point, right? Like, I mean, you poured a lot of money into it and reap the benefits. And now things have

turned bad and you're like, yeah, well, you guys have got to make money. Well, I mean, what was your in that. Like you said, like he's what he made all these other decisions, but you're the business genius guy. So make it work. That's what's so crazy to me. He bought the post in 2013. Yeah. And think about that. Now the post, the post had some big years in there with Marty Barron, but the post has failed to innovate like the other paper he mentions there in New York Times. Yeah. It's failed to innovate like Amazon. I mean, it was not clear to me in when I was, you know, ordering books on Amazon over dial-up internet in the 90s,

that that site would become a movie studio that would be making James Bond movies. That's right. That that site would essentially become blockbuster video where I can rent a movie for $3.99, actually zero because we have weird Amazon credits that we're always getting. The movies always seem to be free.

All the time, he's talking about it. And it's like, well, where are the innovations like The New York Times has? Yeah. I mean, you could, I mean, I mean, presumably, you could have had Wordle. You know what I mean? You could have bought the athletic. There's nothing stopping you from doing that.

Absolutely not. You could do all kinds of things. Yeah. You haven't done it. You could have tried to keep Ezra Klein back in 2014, or you could have brought Ezra Klein back. Yeah. The idea that, you know, and again, like the Washington Post,

like how the Washington Post got here has almost as many culprits as how did sports journalism get here? it's not all of Jeff Bezos's fault the Post was in bad straits before he showed up Right The Post has had a lot of bad executives Right You know

But the thing is that in the Bezos During the Bezos years He signed off on those people Right I mean you said they had lots of bad executives Under your reign They lost all this money And you had to lay people off

So are you not the bad executive? That's the thing that always just sort of annoys me about media layoffs. And I'm going to get on a soapbox here. I'm sorry. But people get late, the employees, the journalists, they work for very little money oftentimes, and they try to make happen

what the managers tell them and the bean counters tell them to do it. We're going to pivot to video. You're going to write shorter, you know, write shorter pieces, file from, you know, tweet from the scene of the story, that you're writing on. They do all this stuff, right? And then when it all goes bad, all the ideas

you had or the ideas you copied from somebody else fail here too, you lay off all those people that did their work and blame them for it. I don't hear a lot of responsibility for why I fucked up. This is my fault and I'm sorry. And it hurts me that I had to lay off a lot of people in this terrible economy. But that just, that was terrible. It made me think, Brian, I'm like, why are you doing this? Like, why are you, like, why are you talking to it in the first place? Oh, why are you talking to Andrew Ross Sorkin? Yeah. I think unaccountable people recognize the need to be accountable once a year. That is great. Right. They all give like one interview. And maybe, and maybe this is it. And he is here. And he is.

you know, he's, we've heard about these, these moments where he's talked to people at the post and, you know, been a little more, it couldn't be any less, but he could be a little more present somehow in the running of the paper. Yeah. But I don't know. When you talk about, like, taking responsibility, the one idea we know he has his fingerprints all over, not through a publisher or through an editor, but he himself, Bezos has his fingerprints on is the opinion section. Yep. which has dozens and dozens of views on the videos they put up on YouTube. You'd be sitting on their YouTube channel. I mean, it's hilarious, right?

And like, it didn't work. Yeah, it didn't work. You got to pick the person to run it. Yeah. You got to pick its editorial direction, which seems to be all going one way. And then also Will Leach is still writing for the section I learned today. Oh, see, yeah. I was like, oh, Will, we'll still, we'll still going strong over there.

So that's interesting. But like you you did that and it hasn't worked. No, no people are like, I don't want, I don't want this. Yeah. This is something I want to watch. Right. This is something I want to consume. Okay.

You're the one also that decided to not endorse a candidate in the election. And that had a lot of consequences too. In fact, I would argue that's what the hemorrhaging really started then, right? Yeah, I mean, I, I, I mean, there was a massive loss of blood when that happened. Yes. I think the post was already losing lots of money before that happened. That's true. That's fair. But obviously, like a huge number of subscribers were chased off at that moment.

We're like, this isn't the place for me anymore. Right. And may never come back because now they've been told this, isn't it? When you said, why is he doing this? I thought you were going to give it to the question of why does he still want to own the Washington Post. So Andrew asked him that question. And he says, you know, my vision is to make sure that the post is, A, the post, right?

There was what, and he talks about how it was unprofitable when he bought it, and the newsroom is even small, you know, the newsroom was smaller back then and he'd done some things, but he doesn't really give an answer as to why, like, he lists all this data. And that was one thing that kind of kept coming up again over and over again during the interview when he was talking about the average salary of a nurse in Queens and how much the average New York City school student gets. per year, I think it was like 44,000. He had memorized a lot of stats, right?

And he had a lot of data on hand. And he was ready to spit that back out at people and be like, I did make it profitable once again. But he doesn't really answer why he has it. And I wonder if he doesn't know or maybe he's not that somebody is forcing him to own it. But I wonder if it's like if he sells it to somebody. He doesn't want it to die on his watch, but also like Trump's kind of over.

your shoulder. If I had to guess, I would say there's a value in that opinion section being neutralized for the next two and a half years. There's probably a value. Now, that isn't to say that the paper does pisses Donald Trump off all the time, the actual paper. Yeah. By reporting, by breaking stories, by, you know, pointing out all, you know, doing all kinds

of things that Donald Trump doesn't like. Now does Donald Trump say, oh, I understand, Jeff. You can't, you don't have any. anything to do with that. It's just the opinion section that's now much friendlier toward me. I don't know, but that's the only guess I have because of this, he doesn't, he doesn't seem interested in it at all. And it's, and it's become, you know, a drag on his other, clearly on his other, you know, on his, I don't know if it's a drag on his assets, but it's at least threatens to be a drag on his assets. So why would you own it at this point? Yeah, I know.

Well, I mean, the thing is, though, who out there can, who out there can buy it? It's another great question. It's always, you know, it's like a, there's always a worse owner around the corner. Do you think the Washington Post is worth more than Vox? You think somebody would pay $300 million for the Washington Post? What a Bezos pay for it? 200? Something like that, I want to say. It's 250? Is that right? 250? And that was, and that was a while back. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know What anything's worth now? Yeah. Yeah, that's tough.

I mean, I just, you know, he could, he could let it go, but clearly he won't. But the thing that I didn't, just to, I want him to take responsibility. You are the innovator. You could have innovated. You didn't have to wait until things were failing to be like, let's try this AI stuff. Or whatever. Maybe we don't, you know, I just always find that to be interesting. There's like, oh, the time to innovate is when all the other shit I was doing is failing.

you know so anyway it's a it's unfortunate and he said some other stuff too i mean speaking of trump he said that uh this second time around that trump has been a quote more mature more disciplined version of himself okay do you would you say trump two is a more disciplined version of trump one there is an argument that he's right but only if if you want all the things that are happening. By which I mean, Trump is like, the discipline is like, I'm not going to get suckered into hiring all these, like, Republican flunkies. I'm going to have my own guys.

Trump is accomplishing his goals in a more disciplined way. Yeah, he's like, I'm going to get, I'm going to get all, everybody around me has to be down for me. They can't have been here with anybody before, and I don't care what it takes. And that, that is a form of discipline. That's one, that, maybe that's what he meant. But it would have been nice to hear him,

Talk a little bit more about that. All right, I'm thoroughly depressed. On a happier note, here is our man on the Wemby Beat. All right, Joel, let's bring in our special guest. Mike Finger has the rare distinction of being a great guy on the page and a great guy in the press box. That's right. A legend. A legend.

Not that many people can say that. He is a columnist at the San Antonio Express News. He's here to talk about Wemby Mania, which he has witnessed at a distance of less than seven feet and four inches. Mike, welcome to the press box. It's so great to be here. I've known Joel a long time. I've known you a long time.

Just an absolute honor. Really excited. All right. So Wembe had only, only 21 points and 17 rebounds in game two. truly a pedestrian performance. But take us back to game one of the Western Conference Finals. What was it like to experience that pull-up three-pointer from Press Row? It's just you go back to as long as we've known of the Wimby phenomenon, right, from the very beginning.

I saw him play his first game in the United States as an 18-year-old when it was an exhibition against Scoot Henderson in Las Vegas. And every time it's like this guy cannot possibly live up to this ridiculous hype. The hype is just out of control. It's unfair. It's absurd. And then he just meets the moment time and time again. And the thing about him is he not only meets the moment, but he recognizes how to make the moment even more iconic, if that makes sense. Like he has a very self-aware understanding of just the absurdity of him and where he is in the world.

And to see him not only perform on the court and pull up from 35 feet with 20 seconds left on the shot clock and 30 seconds left in the game and take a shot that could have lost the spurs that game, it's really, it was something else, man. So Wemby musing on the MVP snub was the headline from his game one presser. What does he like in an interview setting? It's sort of surreal at times. The day before he was drafted by the San Antonio Spurs, he sat in his own ballroom in downtown Manhattan. He was the first NBA draft prospect ever to get his own ballroom. All the other prospects were in a different one. when B had his own. And he said, a first for any future current or past member of the San Antonio Spurs.

He said, I want to be the best at the press conference, which Kawhi Leonard never said that. I don't know if that's breaking news. Tim Duncan never said that. But he wants to be great at it. And, you know, it's a second language. There are moments whenever he doesn't know a word or an idiom or a phrase. And he will ask you to clarify it because he wants to get it right. Right. And he has this, he has a desire to be well perceived. He cares about how he's perceived with the same authenticity, I think, that Tim Duncan did not care how he was perceived. Like it matters to him. Some people might see it, you know, is that fake? No, it's just he knows what is images. He cares about how he answers every question. He knows how it affects his status as maybe

the future face of the league. And to be able to interview a guy like that, it's, it's, I mean, it's night and day from the Kauai days, from the Tim Duncan days, who were, I mean, Tim Duncan is real. Victor Wimbunyama is real. They're just real in really different ways. And if you're a reporter looking to fill your notebook, and by the way, if you're a reporter looking to fill your notebook, you're probably pretty old because no reporters carry notebooks anymore. But Victor's your guy. Just again, in a second language, to be able to always give you what you need, it's pretty special. So when it became clear that the Spurs were going to take one beat with the number one pick, which, I mean, once the Spurs got that number one pick, I mean, there was no question about what was going to happen from there.

The Rockets had the same damn draft odds as the Spurs. But, you know, you talk about, like, the privilege it is to cover him and, like, how good he is with the media is. And so it's clear that Wimby being there is better for you than if it was just like Dylan Harper and Sifon Kassil. So what did you, like, for your own career? Like, what is, like, Wimby being there for you meant for your career and the interest and dispersed? Because I can only imagine it must have been night and day from the years that preceded it. Well, just getting into the behind the scenes. media circus, which this is a franchise. I didn't cover all the way back to the first title,

but I was around for the last four titles. The Spurs were the team that everybody respected, that the national media always came and covered in May and June, but no one was really excited about the Spurs being there. Like David Stern, Adam Silver, they weren't doing cartwheels for another, like Spurs Pistons, Spurs Nets type finals. Now the most striking thing is this is kind of like San Antonio's never had this. The Spurs are kind of the cool franchise and they're the glamour franchise and they're the team that the national networks are excited to get to broadcast. And in terms of the media coverage in the old days, it was the San Antonio Express News,

talking to Greg Popovich, basically one on one after a lot of regular season games, talking to Tim Duncan one-on-one after regular season games. Now you have, you know, ESPN's there full-time, the athletic. NBA.com was there for a while. We have French reporters living in San Antonio now year-round. I mean, it's a contingent everywhere you go. And when you travel the league around the league, it is the event. It's the media event in New Orleans, in Memphis, in Orlando, in Milwaukee, not necessarily Milwaukee,

but, you know, places where you normally would not get any reporters coming in to, interview San Antonio Spurs before or after a game. They are, they are waiting for the Wembe phenomenon now. And that has been kind of an adjustment for the Spurs as a franchise to be considered the glamour team that way. And it's the the nuts and bolts of the Spurs way are still there, the way they do business kind of in a, you know, there's a through line back to R.C. Buford, Greg Popovich, Tim Duncan, even before that. David Robinson all the way through now. They've had this same GM and president for a long, long time, only their second coach

in three decades. But the personality makeover is really notable, and it's been something to really behold. Are you funny stories you can share about those national or international reporters swooping in to do their Wembee features? Well, it's just everybody thinks they have the original idea, the original question that hasn't been asked yet. And they're good questions. It's just they've, most of them have been asked 20 times. And now we're getting to the Western Conference Finals, the part of the postseason where really good reporters are coming in and asking really good questions and asking,

you know, Mitch Johnson, have you ever noticed that players kind of will dribble into Wimby and and dribble away. And it's like, yes, we've noticed that that has been a thing that has happened for three years now. And I mean, I will say Wemby's ability to handle the same question over and over again and find kind of new ways to answer it is pretty unique and appreciated. He does post-game, every game. He doesn't do a lot of the between-game stuff that Steph Curry and LeBron James used to do, but to be available every night and to do an English portion and a French portion is pretty good. And as a one thing, I will say just sports writer-wise, you kind of have to pay attention to what he's saying in French too. I don't, I haven't picked up

the language, but I have a good relationship with, we all have a good relationship with the French guys who are around. And it was just a couple weeks ago, you might have seen the quote out there that went viral. It went viral, not in English, but the French reporter, Maxime Obama, who's now a San Antonian and has lived here for a couple of years, asked Wembe about the idea that he shows his personality too much and that he, does that make him soft? And Wembe had said in French, I don't feel the need to carry the burden of hiding my emotions. And that's kind of like the quintessential Wembe thing of he's showing what. what he feels in a way that Tim Duncan didn't,

Kauai Leonard didn't, a lot of guys haven't. And he just doesn't see the need to be fake. And you see that with the way he says things in his French accent that I think would be perceived as cocky or full of himself if he said it in LeBron James's voice or Kauai Leonard's voice. He's able to say, I want to be the best player of the world and just be matter of fact about his greatness. and people sort of consider it charming in a way.

And that's been an interesting dynamic to watch unfold too. And him talking about SGA and the MVP, that's part and parcel of that? Yeah, exactly. I mean, he constantly surprises, and it shouldn't surprise you anymore, but we're all, Joel, Brian, you both know this. We have this sense during a press conference of a question that isn't going to work. like you the question of how much do you want to win the MVP um how much did this individual honor mean to you we're programmed to think well here comes the cliche here comes the it doesn't matter to me

even though it obviously matters to everybody wimby will just skip the cliche and go to yeah i really want to win the MVP i should have a i should win the MVP instead of sGA and that i just can't think of many other players who've been able to do that i mean you think of boxers right that are that are talking about how they're the best in the world. Not many players self-promote like he does, and that's almost like an unfair term to use self-promote. It's just honesty. And we always say we want honesty from athletes, right?

Honesty from interview subjects. It's hard to get on them for being full of himself, if that's the honest take. Well, you know, you're talking about Wembe, and I guess the best way to say this is generosity with the media, right? that that's a it's rare and he really puts effort into it you came up in san antonio under a guy who had a very different relationship with the media you're gregg popovic right and first all i'm just curious about like what what has it been like to go from from popovic to wimby but

also like what is it what's up with pop right now man i mean obviously people you know how much is he still around the team what's going on there we see pop uh had not talked to pop since I think two days before the stroke. There was a lot of concern for a while. He showed up. One of the most incredible sports performances I've ever seen in my life is the day he finally retired. And he showed up.

He had been recovering, rehabbing from a stroke that I think was more serious than they wanted us to believe early on. they were introducing Mitch Johnson, who he blessed as his replacement at the team facility. This was about a year ago, almost exactly a year ago last May. And he had not been in public. He had not spoken at all in months. The stroke happened October, November before. But he wanted to be there to show that Mitch Johnson had his blessing, to show that he was supportive of the next chapter.

and he came out to a podium they had set up at the practice facility, and he looked terrible. I mean, he was barely moving. He looked like a 75-year-old guy who had had some serious medical trauma. And Tim Duncan was over one shoulder. Mono Genobley was over the other shoulder. There was a moment when he stood up there, no notes, had not spoken in public in months and months, gave the speech that he wanted to give. and then there's this pause and there's this awkward several seconds where you're expecting oh he's not going to be able to finish this like somebody needs to step in Tim Duncan's

stone faced over one shoulder Manu Genobley stone faced over the other it's almost like they were letting him get through it the same way he had let them get through stuff and he caught himself he finished it up he was eloquent and I mean the risk that he took to go stand in front of people and knowing that he could just not be able to do it. It was one of the most amazing things I'd seen in person. And that's a long diversion from your question, Joel. But since then, we have not really heard him speak. He's at the facility a lot.

He does his rehab there. He's on the stairmaster, the treadmill with Tim and Manu and helping him out. He talks to Victor Wimbunyama. We see him bring rookies like Dylan Harper. and Carter, Brian aside, he has conversations with him. But the Spurs are very clear about he is not like some Spengali whispering into Mitch Johnson's ear and telling him about plays to run. And I mean, this is very much Mitch Johnson's team.

It's very much a new chapter of the Spurs. Pop is there to support. Pop's there to give guidance. And they love having him around, but he is not, you know, calling plays. Before you go, Mike, it's always funny to see a team like the Spurs. arrive or almost arrive, at least arrive in the Western Conference finals. How do you see that reflected in the players when you talk to him after a game? It's not supposed to happen this way.

And that's been the theme of this season. You go back through the history of every NBA champion, every NBA finals team back to like Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. You're supposed to lose first. You're supposed to ease your way. into this thing. No superstar goes to the NBA finals right away, especially a team that has not been in the NBA playoffs for six years to all of a sudden become a contender. And the guys around Wemby haven't been there either. When Deerrin Fox, who's played in one playoff series

for Sacramento King several years ago is your most experienced regular contributor in terms of postseason, that's not much. And they just don't know. better. And it's a breath of fresh air to see a group of guys that young who don't know they're not supposed to be there, kind of act like this is what we thought all along. And Victor sets the tone for that. He saw this coming a while back. I don't know, no, we're wrapping up. I don't know if you want to hear the most self-indulgent post-game interview story of all time. Please. That's what we're That's what this is all about. I covered the 24 Olympics in Paris, which is a great investment by my newspaper.

Newspapers don't do that anymore, but we wanted to be around Victor. We wanted to cover his every move and covered all the, for the whole two weeks in France, just talked to him in the Mick zone after games in Lil and Paris. He would come over. He talked to the group of French reporters. And it was great. After the gold medal game, which was an epic, epic game against Steph Curry

and LeBron, and Kevin Durant, Victor loses. I go down to the mix zone, wait for Victor Wu and Binyama to come over. Sean Powell from NBA.com walks by and says, hey, I think your guys go into the podium. I said, oh, you know, I forgot about the put. This was the, only the gold medal game had a podium. So to get to the podium, I have to go out of the mix zone, around this Bersie Arena in Paris, walked through another door to get there.

I'm running. I'm going crazy. Like, if I miss this, then what are people going to think? That's why I'm here. I'm stopped at the door to the press conference room by security. They said, you cannot go in. A very important man is in there. I said, yeah, I know I'm supposed to talk to that very important man.

I came across the freaking ocean to talk to that very important man. No, you cannot come. You cannot come. the very important man comes by escorted by bodyguards it's Emmanuel mccrone the president of France so so he comes out I get into the press conference room the press the press conference has started with French team coach von San colet and nicholas Batum Victor Wimbun I'm not there I ask where is Victor they took him to the mix zone so now I have to go all the way back around.

Sweating, just freaking the hell out. Because I'm going to miss this. I get back to this mix zone. It's completely empty except for a crowd of French reporters and Victor Wembeñama. And they're finishing up. And he's walking off. And I'm the only English-speaking reporter there

because all the Americans, the SPN and the athletic and all them, they're talking to Steph and LeBron and KD. They don't want to talk to Victor. I ask Victor, can I have one in English? He stops. He does me the biggest favor he's ever done me. And I asked him a question about what he got from this. He's got the silver medal around his neck. And I said, you know, the spurs talk about the currency of this experience and how you're going to spend it later. And he says, you know, that this meant the world. I'm learning. And I feel sorry for my opponents in a couple

years. And I said, do you mean in FIBA or the NBA? And he said, everywhere. And it's like, that is why you cross an ocean is to get that quote. And that's him living up to that moment. And that is what I think of in weeks like this. That was a couple of years ago. And now you feel sorry for his opponents. Like he's delivering on this absurd hype that he's helped build. himself. And I mean, I will never forget that until I die. Not only him stopping to talk to me, but delivering just like the ultimate money quote. And you think about it in Oklahoma City this week.

He's following through. Mike Finger, read him in the San Antonio Express News. May your notebook, if you still carry one, be filled with money quotes like that. Thanks so much for coming on the press box. Appreciate it. All right, that's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. He's Joel Anderson.

Pretty sympathetic. By Isaiah Blakely and John Romer. We've got a lot of content up at the press box this week, Joel. Yesterday I interviewed John Crackhour. I saw, man. About climbing Mount Everest, writing nonfiction, and 30 years of into thin air. Everybody should check that out. Absolutely.

Tomorrow in the old press box studio, Sarah Longwell, of the bulwark will be here. I'll be taking any questions. You want to ask Sarah. Sarah, let me know because I'll ask her. That will run as part of Tuesday's show, so stay tuned for that. We got regular programming next week.

No big, I mean, who's the same? Look, man, the real shit going on, guys, is when Brian and I went L.A., man, we brought Connor in. We had a nice Italian dinner. We did. Right over. Which part of town is that?

Los Feliz. Is that what that is? Los Feliz, yeah. Los Felas, yeah, man. And we were talking about ways to make the show better, you know, and doing things, getting more guests. And, you know, I feel like I've been getting hit up by people. You've been getting up by people.

And this is our shameless cry that, you know, if you, you know, just because you call it, I mean, you're going to get on the show. But reach out to us if you think he's got something off. Reach out to Joel, actually. He'll be sorting through those. Yeah, I'll go. Oh, I was forwarded to Allison. I'll forward it to Allison.

Joll, see you next Thursday with more little quorum takes about the media. Looking forward to, buddy.