The Press Box - LeBron James Is a Podcaster, the Shohei Ohtani Affair, and Covering the Royals with Jay Caspian Kang and Ellie Hall

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

On the Final Edition, Bryan has two guests for you! First, he speaks with his former teammate Jay Caspian Kang of The New Yorker. They kick off the show by discussing the gambling story involving Shohei Ohtani and his interpreter Ippei Mizuhara (1:32). Then they talk about LeBron’s ventures into the podcasting space with JJ Reddick (15:17). Last, they discuss the first round of March Madness and the reaction from Oakland’s head coach Greg Kampe after their upset win over Kentucky (38:40). Then Bryan talks with Ellie Hall, who discusses the royal family and how they are covered by the British press (40:34). This podcast was recorded before the announcement that Princess Kate Middleton has been diagnosed with cancer. Then, David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Host: Bryan Curtis Guests: Jay Caspian Kang and Ellie Hall Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a world where coaches are still the main characters, the players are now legally chasing the ultimate bag, and the game of basketball is always the top priority. There was only one brand you can trust to help you wade through all the madness. Hey, I'm Tate Frazier from One Shiny Podcast, and you can join me twice a week as we navigate the always entertaining world of college basketball. Every Monday, the ringer's comment helps me make sense of the biggest stories from the weekend, and on Fridays we talk to our many friends of the program. We're locked in on the best postseason in sports. Make sure you follow One Shining Podcasts on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers.

Welcome to Press Box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Brian Waters. Coming up, we're going to bring on the writer, Ellie Hall to talk about how the UK press covers the royal family. One note that we recorded our interview before Catherine, the Princess of Wales,

announced today that she has cancer. But first of all, Let's welcome in an old friend. You've read Jay Caspian Kang in The New Yorker. You've read him in Grantland, where we were teammates back in the long form before times. He is the host of the time to say goodbye podcast. He runs the NBA dark web like David Stern in his prime. Jay, welcome to the press box.

Hey, thank you for having me. All right, I think I can shove a media angle in here, but I would love to start by knowing. what you think of the story involving Shohay Otani and his interpreter Ipe Mizzahara. How freely can we speak on this podcast? We may speak freely. Well, look, I think that the real story is going to come out at some point, right? I mean, and by real story and I will try and speak as responsibly as possible here,

it seems like there are a lot of conflicting accounts of what happened, right? And that at the baseline, the story that's being told by the Dodgers in Otani is, I would just say it's like raises a lot of skepticism, right? Like the idea that one would just wire $4.5 million to a illegal gambling ring out of your own account. And that's the best way to steal $4.5 million. It's just wired to somebody else. I mean, maybe it happened, you know? I mean, I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I think that there's a lot of reason to be skeptical about it. And one of the thoughts that I had when it was happening from a media standpoint was, oh, man, who is going to?

Well, first of all, like it was the first time in many years that I really wish that I worked in a newsroom, you know, where I was just like, oh, man, that would be so exciting to be able to go and chase this thing because there's clearly something here, right? And then the second thought I had was basically just that I think that at some point somebody's going to break a different story, but it's going to be a weird one, right? Like you can imagine that something like, I don't know, Brian, like who even does this type of stuff anymore, right? Like big sports investigations, like Washington Post has some people, right? ESPN has some people. And I think at some point some stories will start to come out that where it'll be like in, the story would be like 35 one sentence paragraphs and each one will have been just incredibly

looked over by 15 lawyers. But then that'll break, I think that'll break the dam, you know, and then we'll start to we'll start to get more information on what actually happened. I was fascinated in the media play by play here because one of those people you mentioned who can handle a story like this, Tisha Thompson at ESPN was working on a piece. and Otani's spokesperson says, okay, it was Otani who was paying off Mizahara's gambling debts. That is the piece here.

And then provides ESPN with Mizahara who says, yes, I have a gambling problem. Otani was paying these debts, which seemed like a semi-reasonable and semi-exonerating explanation. But then Otani spokesperson comes back and says, actually scratch that. And then Mizahara himself comes back to ESPN

has actually also scratched that. Yeah. I'm ready to face the consequences. And by the way, I don't have a lawyer, which was just kind of a harrowing moment in this whole thing. I know. So, I mean, how in the world did that happen? Well, it was a 90, there are two things that were really striking to me.

The first is that they made him available for 90 minutes. I mean, when does that ever happen? I know that he doesn't play, but, like, I would imagine that sports teams don't allow anyone to be available, especially talking about something like this. We're just like, yeah, just go at it. Here's 90 minutes. He can say all sorts of stuff.

That's going to look bad for us. Just keep going. And then what was it? It was like 30 minutes later, or an hour and a half later is when they came back and said, actually everything he said is not true. I just don't understand what happened in that period of time between his interview, which was clearly prepped, right? Clearly prepped.

And then the second one where they said, actually everything he said is a lie. I'm just like, how did you even know that everything he said is a lie? Right? If there's a, I don't know. I assume there's probably a PR person there. Like, why didn't you stop this person from telling a clear lie, right? Like, if it was a clear lie.

And so, I don't know. I guess I have a lot of experience with gambling, right? You know, and I have a lot of experience with problem gambling. and I would just say that like this idea like from that perspective like none of this story makes any sense, right? It could still be true. I don't want to say anything libelous or anything like that. But that if you know anything about gambling, it's very hard to believe that this guy would be doing this, that Otani would be involved in or that Otani would not know about it, right?

And that this amount of money could be going to be placed in bets. It's really hard to place that much money in bets, honestly. And the idea that nobody would know about it, that the interpreter himself wouldn't know it was illegal, right? That's something he said. Like, all that stuff just doesn't make any sense. So I don't know. I'm just hoping.

When do you think the story is going to come out? Like, when do you think the sort of Washington Post? I don't know why I keep saying Washington Post. Post. I just think that they have a good investigative sports too. What do you think the story's coming out? I think you laid out the players pretty good there. ESPN certainly chasing it. Washington Post.

I put Nathan Fenno from the LA Times who does a lot of big sports investigations somewhere on the list of people who could break this. What do you think like weeks? I mean, I was really amused also, and this is a paragraph in the ESPN story, about that switchback we just talked about. It said on Thursday a source close to Atani gave an explanation for these changing storylines. As Otani's handlers tried to determine what had happened,

they initially relied solely on Mizahara who continued to translate for Otani. So break that out. So the spokesperson allowed a, what they say is a phony story to go out into the universe because they were relying on a translator.

Yeah. He was in the dugout, right? like up until two, I don't know, like 20 minutes before all this broke. So I, look, I think that basically the, from my perspective, at least, I think it will take weeks. I think it will take like two to three weeks because I think there's a lot of stuff that someone chasing this story would have to do. They would have to find, they would have to figure out every single bit of information about this gambling ring, right? and then they would have to try and talk to somebody who knew something about Otani, and then they would have to do some sort of like anonymous sources close to Otani

or anonymous sources on the team type of thing, which would be very hard, given that Otani has only played for one team, right, up until this point. And so, I don't know. And then that person would probably have to talk to people in Japan as well, which obviously you would want, I don't know, that would work best if you had somebody who said, spoke Japanese. So I don't know. It just seems like it would, it feels like a very hard story.

But man, if I was in a newsroom, I would be lined up, you know, with my hand up. Just like, please let me do this one. I'm Asian. I have a huge gambling problem, you know, or I have in the past. I know this world. Just let me do it. I would be begging for it. Is it because we're from the Michael Jordan Richard Asquinas generation that our eyes just light up like a pinball machine whenever we hear superstar athlete and gambling in the same sentence? I think so

yeah. And also I think it makes them kind of more relatable in a way. You know, Otani is so I don't know, it's sort of like each or a before him where we don't really know that much about him. Like this whole wife thing, right, where he's like

what was a quote, the quote was like, Shohay Otani has gotten married to a normal Japanese normal Japanese woman, I think, was the phrase, right? And nobody knew anything about her. And then she just appears. I don't know, he's, I think that this, I don't know, it makes me kind of like him actually better because, I mean,

let's say that he was involved in any of this. It would make me like him a little bit better because it would sort of make him human in a way where I feel like he hasn't been so far. It's interesting, too, coming in an era where gambling is legal. everywhere but California basically. So, you know, I don't know how much, you know, even a sports media member who wanted to high horse this thing could high horse it and then go make bets directly through the NBA League Pass app next in the next moment.

How dare you, sir, gamble. Actually, I want to know what you felt thought about that. Like, what do you think about all of the saturation of gambling content? because I know that like Herala Buss Bulgaris who obviously I don't know if the listeners don't know somebody who made a lot of

money betting on the NBA and you know he's sort of come out against it recently he said that this is too much that there's a that there are questions about the integrity of the game but there's also like questions about the way in which these companies are

feeding and force feeding these types of winning stories and marketing and everything and just shoving it down the throats of the users. And, you know, like, Drag Kings has experience with this before because the last time we saw massive, massive sports media marketing splits, it was from Draft Kings when Daily Fantasy started. I want to know what you thought about that. It's interesting. And so the idea is that there's a level of saturation that would be okay, but we are now past the level of saturation. Like I'm watching, I paid to watch.

all the NBA games and as I'm watching them now, the NBA or their media partners are serving me up a betting button and live odds to do that. That's the point we think is the point of no return or the point where it gets too much. Yeah, that and the way in which the bets are structured, honestly, where so much, such a high percentage of bets now that are laid are parleyes, right? Single game parlays, everything like that. And it's very hard to calculate what a single game parley is I think one of the ringer contributors David Hill has written about this

we talked about this where they basically are charging you much more big than they do for a normal bet and they can do that because nobody really knows how to calculate a single game same game parlay. It's like impossible because if you bet it's not like every bet is independent

right if you bet Devin Booker is going to have 35 points and he's going to hit over six threes those can't be independent. That's because the six threes are probably baked into the 35 points, right? And so then you have to somehow, I don't even understand the math, right? Like you have to know all sorts of math.

And then, of course, when this number pops out, they can just be like, yeah, I don't know. You know, the better is just like, yeah, that looks about right. But it could be like up to 30% 20% off, right, from what the actual odds are. So, yeah, I think it's partially that. And then it's partially this idea that, um, that they sort of push these winners and do this idea that you can transform your life because they always show these stories on social media of this guy you know they're like oh this guy bet a 16 like parley and here he is watching like france playing the world cup final or something

like that and um that seems irresponsible in the same way that like smoking ads felt irresponsible uh way back when so yeah i think that's the argument yeah it's funny too because I think how I know that argument is gaining traction now is not only Heralabob, but I was listening to like Dallas Sports Radio recently and they did a whole explainer about Parley's talking about the stuff you're talking about. I was like now so we've penetrated not only sports radio, but it's the responsible segment on sports radio. It's the more you know segment on sports radio.

Yeah, yeah. They're trying to educate the public, I guess, but I don't know. It's a tough thing for us to talk about just because I feel like sports media right now is so propped up by these gambling companies. And it's hard for people to talk about it, I think, in an honest way, because they basically run, they fund every single podcast, right? I don't know about the press box, but they fund everything.

I mean, every player podcast is underdog sport fantasy or draft kings or whatever. And so is it possible within that realm to have a press that actually talks about the gambling industry? I don't think it is. And so how are people going to get the information about what these companies are doing if the sports media is completely captured by these companies? By the way, big overworked Twitter joke this week. Rob Manfred asking Otani to play minor league basketball for two years. his punishment. Thanks to Kurt Young. I also want to talk to you about LeBron James

becoming a podcaster. Oh yeah, I saw that. Yeah. So you have a podcast. I have a podcast. Now, LeBron has joined us in podcastdom. What do you think LeBron wants out of this? I don't know, but I think that he

probably saw a lot of other players doing that. And he probably thought, well, I already made the barber shop, right? Like, why didn't that didn't really work that well. But why don't I have this? And I think that was probably it. But I think that there's another issue I think is,

and this is actually something I sympathize with LeBron a lot about, which is that I think if he made the argument that people don't actually appreciate how smart of a basketball player he is, which I think that LeBron is the smartest basketball player probably to ever live and has the highest hoops IQ and is really a genius, that this specific podcast, right, where he and JJ Reddick seemed to be diagramming plays and talking about basketball at a very, very, very high level,

that that sort of allows people to see that. You know, it allows them to see the way in which they talk about the game amongst themselves. NBA players. And I do think that the public probably wants some of that. I don't think they want a lot of it, you know, but I think they want some of it. Like they like when players say, you know,

I don't know, like before he rightfully became the prior, remember like Deshawn Watson would do this. He would be like, well, this coverage was here. And I thought about this. And that was like, you know, before we knew who Deshaun Watson was, that was cool, right? It was cool to listen to. Kevin Durant did it once where he was like,

well, you know, if Patrick Beverly is coming to me on here, I can, these are my option. Yeah. I can shoot over him and I can get that shot every single time, but why would I do that? And then he would explain why he didn't, why that wasn't a good idea. And I think the public likes that maybe like four times a year. I don't know if they need it a lot, they need it all the time, you know, but as somebody who likes, I don't know, I listen to all these podcasts like, you know, Nate Duncan and, um, the Dunker Spa.

I listen to all these podcasts about the NBA that are kind of high-level talking about plays. And while I am too stupid, I think, about sports to really understand all of it. Like, I appreciate it. But it obviously means much, much, much more when it's coming from LeBron. I do want to know what was his, like he, it is something I don't know. I think I talked to a lot of people about it. But in the 2015 finals, when he was just basically playing the Warriors by himself. and he just walked the ball up the court, you know, and slow the game down.

It was the most, like, intellectually interesting series of basketball I've ever seen in my life. I would love for him to explain what was going through his head, you know, why he did that. He almost beat them by himself doing that. How did he figure that out that was the right strategy? So, yeah, I don't know. I guess I would just say, I just want to watch, like with all NBA player podcasts, I just want to watch the clips on Instagram. I don't think I need to listen to the whole thing, but there's a good clip.

Yeah, totally. And it's funny, they're very conscious of the fact that even a person who is very locked into this can only take so many X's and O's. And they start the podcast, actually with Reddick and they're like putting some terms up on the screen. Like, we're going to, we're going to reference a play called Thumb Down and another one called a Horn's Chest. And here is a definition of that that is literally printed on the screen. And then they go to JJ diagramming it on a piece of paper, just like, so you will not be completely blown away. But the best part of the pod,

there's a whole very generic discussion of what makes a great basketball player, which is whatever. But the good stuff is LeBron, like talking over his own highlights and being like, when I came back in the fourth quarter against the Clippers,

here's what we were doing. And here's why they didn't stop it, so we just ran the play again. And they didn't stop it again, so we just kept running the play again. And we should just always keep running the same play if they're going to be like defending it badly. We should just run it over and over again

until they defend it well, which was good. good. I got a clip for you here of LeBron. This is like, this is like not X's and O's. This is LeBron just chumming the Twitter waters in the way that he expertly does. He's talking about drafting and his future ownership of an NBA team. The whole thing of the lottery pick one through 13 or 14. I don't even know what it is now when it cuts off like you've been a lottery pick.

But it makes sense why those guys, that's like 16 to 30, 16 to 42. why those guys be on real contending teams making impacts. Also, why is it the same teams that always draft well? And the same teams that always draft poorly. I'll tell you, when I get my team, the teams that draft well, those guys will be working for me for sure. Just you get to offer them a bag. Yeah, for sure.

You got to get it. OKC does an unbelievable job with that. That's a fact. That's a flag. Oh, my God. So we're teasing LeBron ownership. Sam Presti. Sam Presti and then kind of a sub-tweet about Rob Polenka and the Lakers drafting

abilities in there too. I mean, he's been making, he's been batting his eyes at San Presby for years, years, you know. And now it sort of makes sense why he's been doing it. And now I understand why. It's not because he wants to play for a Sam Presti team. it's because he wants Sam Pressy to run his team. All right, that actually makes sense. That's good, that's good news breaking stuff by the,

by the JJ and LeBron podcast. That's something that I'll definitely get aggregated by NBA Central or Dunk Central or whatever those things are. There you go. Please credit mine the game if you use that. What do you think of the way JJ Redick has positioned himself in NBA media to be a guy who goes on first, take and says, I don't accept the way you talk about basketball and the way you are framing

these arguments, you are dumbing down the game? I hate JJ Reddick still. I don't think I'm a North Carolina fan for the listeners and I grew up in Chappahill, North Carolina. J.J. Reddick is the big player I hated the most of, and it's not even close. I just despised him. Look, I know that that's not him. And actually, I think he's a great podcast host.

I don't think anything personally bad about him. But it's like a different level of hate with some of these cute guys for me. And it's just like I can't really educate myself from it. I'm sorry. And so. Some things are bigger than podcasts. Exactly. And I don't know.

I know people who know JJ at this point. And they say he's cool. And so I believe that, right? I just like, I just can't quite get over it. And nor do I think I should, right? Because he was the worst when he was at Duke. I hated him. And so I will say that when he goes on and he kind of starts pointing at the camera

and pulling people out, it's just weird to me. It feels really disrespectful, the tone that he has in his voice, you know. And it sounds like a Duke guy just kind of talking. not even like a Duke basketball player, just somebody who went to Duke, getting all high in my name, being like, I'm the smart one,

you're the dumb ones, I'm the good one, you're the bad ones. And I wonder, I genuinely wonder if, like, JJ regrets some of those, those hits, you know,

because, yeah, it gets more people listening to his podcast, yeah, it sort of makes, increases his profile. But I just kind of squirm when I watch it because,

first of all the premise is outrageous if you don't like it don't go on the show right like it's not it's not like you need to be there to like reform first take from the inside first take is fine i enjoy first take right uh like there needs to be this is where we're at like it or not and when you're saying we need to educate basketball fans right we need to educate the public i thought that was our job i was like when was that your job why did you think that was your job you're supposed to entertain the public um and guess i i guess that counts right the sort of meta like hectoring maybe that counts as entertainment for some people but i don't know i can't it just feels like a duke dude it's like steve bojahouski like screaming at me about effort on defense or some shit

like that i don't want to listen to it i love this so much because this is a great state school reaction which i also share where it's like you don't understand like i can I can process things in the world as a journalist, but also, you know, there's a lot of history. Runs very deep. Man, I hate that. Yeah, yeah. He was the worst. I think he was worse than.

He was worse. Wojo, it was hard to imagine hating someone more than Mojo, but then JJ Redding. I love the Mizan of this podcast, too, where we're sitting down and having wine. And, oh, yeah. Ron kind of plays the Somalié at the beginning, and he's, telling JJ which vintages he has brought for them to drink together. Paul feels like John Favreau dinner for five on ancient cable. Just sitting around talking having a glass of wine.

I know. Rob has this thing where it's, there's almost everything is through a filter, right? And it almost makes him feel distance at all times because you know he's thinking exactly about the way in which every single thing he does. how it presents himself and how it and i understand it because you know after the decision obviously one would be much more careful and it's like the same thing with tiger and that great story about uh um charlie pierce right like where he sort of changed after the charlie pierce profile in sports

it was a sports illustrated i think it's sports illustrated gq right um and uh with lebrot i think it's probably the decision did that and then um you know now he's He does all this stuff, but it just kind of always feels a little bit inauthentic to me, especially when compared to some of the other players we've gotten to know through player podcasts. We get to see somebody like Jeff Teague just be really funny, really try and break down what the life of a pretty good NBA player who made $100 million but wasn't great was like. And then you have LeBron, yeah, sort of.

screaming at you all the things he's into and just like, I don't, we already know you, dude. You've been part of our life. You don't need to reintroduce yourself. I'm not you. I saw that Sports Illustrated cover. When you were 16, I watched your high school game

on ESPN, man. You know, I was so excited when you got into the league. Like, I know you, right? Like, there's no reason for you to, for you to introduce yourself. Maverick Carter had an all-time quote to the athletic about this podcast. He was setting it up as a basketball show.

That's the context here, but he said, this is like two wine masters, Somalias, talking about wine, not necessarily you or me arguing if I like Burgundy or Bordeaux better. So you're positioning this as being about just basketball, not any of that first take nonsense, but then you're also positioning the two hosts as wine snobs.

I just love the cognitive distance there. Okay. Do you think that this podcast happened because LeBron saw JJ's clip about educating the public? And he reached out to JJ and was like, why don't we do that? And then of course, JJ would say yes. If LeBron James asked to come on my podcast about, you know, leftist racial politics and socialism, yeah, I'd be like, all right, LeBron, it's going to be a little weird, you know. But here's some books.

Yeah, here's the Riverside link. See you Friday. Yeah, on Friday. We're going to talk about Kamala Harris, and we're going to talk about elite capture. You know, it's such a meeting. We're going to talk. We're like, how should we think about DEI program?

I also love this response from noted podcaster, Draymond Green. He was talking about the LeBron pod. Here's what he had to say. I am a little upset that LeBron James is like going on a podcast, and he still haven't been on a dream. Remind Green show. But when it's your own thing, you kind of can't say anything. So I guess I'll live with it for now.

Pick the bone with them that I got to pick with them later. Nonetheless, that is coming out tomorrow. And I am excited to check it out. I hope you all are excited to check it out as well. So I love that. I've never felt closer to an NBA player where you're annoyed that your friends aren't coming on your podcast, but then you feel obliged to plug their podcasts anyway. that's we've really leveled yeah that's um it's so embarrassing all right before we go let's talk

march madness uh we got our requisite upsets yesterday the oakland golden grizzlies a mascot i could not have given you off the top of my head before last night beat kentucky dukeen beat b yu watching college basketball in 2024 did those upsets hit differently than they did once upon a time. Yeah, but I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm older. You know, I have a hard time figuring out why. Do you remember when Bryce Drew beat, I believe it was Mississippi, I think, right?

Like when Bryce drew hit the shot. I think when I was in high school, in middle school, it was different just because I was in Chapel Hill and college basketball was basically religion there. And I imagine that you have similar feeling about college football, right? where it's the only thing. And we would watch the games in school sometimes. So when there was an upset, it was the biggest deal in the world. And because they would, you know, they would hop from game to game.

And so you felt like you were like, if it switched games, you knew that something huge was going to happen. Now it's like everybody, all the games are broadcast at the same time. They don't hop around. And I think in some ways it's cut out some of the drama of it, right? Because not everybody is watching it at the same. time but it could just be me being old. I'm sure for a lot of people that was thrilling. The other thing is I do think that it's hard because I don't think that there's, I don't think people know these college basketball players anymore. And so when they

lose like the big famous ones at the big programs, maybe it's not as, maybe it's not as impactful. I remember when the Carolina team that won in 93, I believe, it was like, Eric Montross and all those dudes, Derek Phelps. And then they had Rashid Wallace, Jerry Stackhouse on the team too. As freshmen, they lost to Boston College, I believe. Maybe they lost Texas Tech. I think it's Darwin. One year they lost Darwin Ham when Darwin Ham like smashed the backboard.

And those are like huge deals because we, I think those players are kind of famous. You know, like they were, and now we don't have any famous college basketball players. I'm a huge sports fan. I don't think I can name three players on Yukon, you know. I can't name one player on a lot of these teams, right? I don't know two players on Houston. Houston is the best team in the country. So I think that some of it is that we don't have a familiarity with the teams.

And so maybe when they lose, it's not as big of the deal. But I don't know. I will preface all of that again by just saying, I think a lot of it is that I'm old and I have kids now. And, you know, what really can break through? What is exciting? Was that Bill Curley and BC beating North Carolina? Am I remembering that correctly?

Am I mixing my... It was Bill Curley. Yeah, it's Bill Curley. And even a guy like that had some, you know, medium stature inside college basketball. And I would argue, too, that like, it's not just that we don't know the players so much, but the coaches, that whole generation of coaches,

is now basically retired minus John Calipari, who may be being retired as we speak right now after losing last night. And that was a part of it, too. So when those guys lost, you know, that was great fun to watch the face of a coach K a Jim Beheim and be like, aha, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jim Beheim is special. That's the top two on the power rate right there for happiest to see them lose in March. It's kind of like a shell shock walking around the court after the game, you know, trying to shake people.

Yeah. Billy Packer would be like, look at him. He's down 10 with him. Two minutes left, but he's still teaching. He's still coaching. Yeah. That was always my favorite part. You know, you mentioned this single CBS feed,

which I think did have for us old timers a certain, a certain coolness to it because you were hopping around between games. I would also say that in the old media universe, the first Thursday, Friday of the NCAA tournament was one of the few times in our lives when sports was on all the time. And now sports is on all the time, all the time. you can get up at 6 a.m. and just start watching things.

So that probably is some of the, something has worn off there too because we're just so used to being in the universe where it's like there are games happening and I can switch between them and it's not such a novelty anymore. I think that what you said about the coaches is correct. And I think that that's why the women's game has, outside of Caitlin Clark, the women's game has taken off because the coaches are so compelling.

And it's what's interesting is that it's not Gino that's compelling, right? It's Don Staley, Kim Mulkey. And, you know, they have big name. They're going to have, I think, in a few years, like, we're going to know these women's coaches across the country, right? We'll know the Stanford coach. We'll know Ohio State. We'll know Notre Dame, some of these big programs. And the coaches, yeah, the players leave.

The coaches are the ones that stay. you know as much as i hate j jay reddick and steve and wojo and brig paulus and shame baddiey j williams parlos boos or all those players you know they don't compare to how much i hated coach kay yes they were the avatar of hate absolutely i was this video of uh this guy in north carolina and Ivanka Trump, for whatever reason, was visiting North Carolina, and he's walking his dog, and he just starts booing her. If I ever saw Coach Day in public, I would definitely do that. You know, I would just boo.

It would be so inappropriate. Even if I think my kids were with me, I would just start booing. So, yeah, I think that the lack of big-name coaches is tough. I mean, is Dan, is Danny Hurley going to turn it to big coach? Probably not, you know, not at the same level as these guys. Not in the same way. Not in the sense of like my mom, who's not a sports fan, wouldn't know who they are.

You know, the old ones had such a big, such a big sort of stature, even outside of college basketball. I was thinking last night, wouldn't it be funny if Anthony Edwards had been a senior at Georgia last year? Not an old day's tribute here. Wouldn't it great win? It's just, wouldn't that be funny? if Anthony Edwards

would play his senior year last night. Yeah, yeah. And now instead we have 26-year-olds playing college basketball. We have 26-year-olds with nine COVID-year-olds. Instead of 22-year-olds. A couple things I forgot about the NCAA.

I would have, I don't know. It probably would have made the tournament awesome. A couple of things I forgot about watching the NCAA tournament. The NCAA commercials where they're talking about all they do for student athletes

and showing swimmers and volleyball players. always an amazing feature this time of year. The wildly... Most of us are going pro. There we go. Isn't that the motto? Yeah.

Yes. The wildly different quality of announcers from game to game. You're like, who are these guys? It's kind of funny. Yeah, 16's tough. I guess how many teams? I guess they need like eight, right, for all the tournament sites, basically. Yes.

This was the time of year you'd get. reacquainted with Len Elmore and Jim Spinnarkle. Right. Jim Sponarkle. Charles Barkley is in like year 12 of doing the, I didn't know anything about Drake. So I picked against them in the first round bit. Why do you think Charles Barkley does this? So it's like I truly didn't want to learn anything about the teams I'm covering.

Right. But why is he covering, you know, why does he do this? Why do he and Kenny do that? tournament every year and now. It made it feel more big time. What's enough for them? I mean, well, first of all, I think it was the answer to questions. It's just the Turner CBS partnership and, you know, let's put some more celebrities.

Right, right, right. Of course, yeah. It made it feel more big time. I remember when they started doing it, I was like, this is amazing. This is cool. But then it also made it sort of, it sort of described college basketball places, college basketball's place in the universe now. It's like, oh, yeah, right.

Drake, who were they? Right. Let's pick the other team. Right. Yeah, I don't, I guess it's like, yeah, maybe they're contractually obligated. I know why Kenny is doing it because Kenny obviously, you know, it's like a bigger thing for him. But for Berkeley, I don't quite get it. Like he's older now and someone was like, why don't you do this other thing at work?

I would say, I don't know, man, I've got enough money. Not me personally. I mean, I don't. But, you know, if I was Charles Barkley, I'd like, I don't like. Why would I do this? I know. I guess he must like being on television, which makes sense. I don't know if he's on television.

Most people on television really like that. They do. It's the only thing I learned from my years of being a television correspondent. And I was like, well, I don't like being on television, so maybe this is not a good job. All right. Last one before you go, I'm watching Oakland beat Kentucky last night. Greg Campy.

Now, there's a long time, E.NCA coach. Greg Campy's been the coach at Oakland since 1984. Oh my God. They were talking to him after the game, and he was talking about his star player, whose name is Jack Gulke, another name I learned last night, who did a bunch of threes to beat Calipari in Kentucky.

And I want you to listen to this quote from Greg Campi. Evan is with Greg Campi. You're going to have to just pulled off the greatest upset in this program's history. How'd you do it? This guy right here, he had no conscience. we talked all week

just go shoot it baby you're the best this guy right here he had no conscience now did he mean he was unconscious or maybe it was more like he didn't he wasn't worried about you know deferring to his teammates or anything

like that you know I think it meant you know don't just go out and do it for you you know go out and get 50 or 40 or whatever amazing message for college basketball coach if true, right? It's philosophical argument. I know.

Being a ball hog and just shooting. Sometimes I tell my daughter that before soccer games, I'm just like, you know, just go out and score a couple goals for you. Even your teammates aren't your friends? This is for you. Yeah, exactly. No conscious.

You need to tell her that next time. All right, read Jay Caspian Kang at the New Yorker and other places. Jay, thank you so much for coming on the press. box. Thank you. It was a pleasure. All right, let us bring in Ellie Hall. She was BuzzFeed News's official Royals correspondent.

Recently, she has written terrific pieces for Neiman Lab and the cut about not just the Kate Middleton photo affair, but how the British Royal Family is covered. I'm so glad she's here. Ellie, welcome to the press box. Thank you for having me. Before we dive in, I want to ask a question about you. You started on the beat at BuzzFeed in 2013. before Queen Elizabeth's death,

before Harry's estrangement, before the Crown even, why did you want to cover the Royals? I've been interested in the royal family since I was little. My godfather is British. He's an old Etonian. So when we would go over and visit him

when I was little, we would go to Hampton Court and Tower of London, and I got really into it. So when I started to BuzzFeed News in 2013, there weren't very many of us. And then news came out

that Kate was pregnant, So I looked around the newsroom and I said dibs and it just kind of went from there. So I got BuzzFeed onto the press release list eventually, dealt with the palace people. I've in the Royal Traveling Rhoda for three Royal visits to the United States. So that meant I got to go with the Royals to some events, cover them, send out my notes to everybody else. So yeah, I was always interested. And once I started, it became easier just not to stop. I had a version of this conversation when the ringer started, but did you have a fun convoy with the palace where they ask you, what is BuzzFeed news?

Yes, all the time. I would have to spell it out for them many times when I would call the press office and get the switchboard. All right. So this week we got a video of the Prince and Princess of Wales. William and Kate walking through a food market, which came out on March 18th, after covering this whole saga. What did you make of that video? Well, I knew that it wasn't going to stop the conspiracy theorists, just because we've reached a point now where nothing will, I think,

until she is seen in public a lot in events, and we can start having testimony from people who, you know, shook her hand or gave her flowers or something, that it was really her. But I thought this is good, because unlike the first paparazzi photo we saw, which was only posted on TMZ, this was it was published simultaneously by TMZ and the sun the British chaploid and then within

two minutes it was up on the Daily Mail another British chaploid too so I figured that that wouldn't have happened they wouldn't have paid that much money for it and once more the palace wouldn't have declined to block it from going up unless it was really them so I I felt okay good like this Maybe we'll get on the road to a normalcy, but no, it didn't happen. It's interesting you mentioned that first TMZ photo. So that was that grainy picture of her riding in a car. And that ran on TMZ, but it did not run in the UK papers. Why did it not run there?

The palace leaned on the British press. We actually know that for a fact. All of the world reporters in the UK were tweeting things like, you know, We're not going to invade her privacy. We've made the choice not to show this. Of course, they all wrote up that a picture had been taken and said where it was. So it was very easy for their readers to just click on over to TMZ. But a royal reporter named Emily Andrews posted on Twitter a few days later that the palace

had exerted tremendous pressure on the British media not to run the photo because they said, you know, it's paparazzi, it's unauthorized, she's recovering. We want to protect her privacy. So that, of course, was pretty interesting that they completely shut that image down, but they did not shut the video down. What was the nature of the conspiracy mongering about the video? That it's not her. That it is, there is a thriving business in the UK for royal lookalikes. So there are about two or three women who have, like, make their living as Kate Middleton lookalikes.

And the most famous one of them actually wrote on Instagram or made a TikTok or something. saying, no, it's not me. I was busy doing something else that day. They didn't hire a body double for Kate. But the people who are looking into it have gone super CSI on it, you know, pulling up old videos of Kate walking and saying her walk has changed or the height differential between her and her husband has changed. And I mean, for me, the thing about that is she's always wearing heels when we see her in public. It's very rare we don't see her in heels. So comparing as a woman, I can just say comparing the way a woman walks in high heels and the way a woman walks and sneakers, you're going to get a real difference in a style of walk there.

Let's go back to that now notorious photograph of Kate and her children, which appeared on March 10th. And then, of course, the next day the palace comes out and said, well, Kate comes out on Twitter and says, I do occasionally experiment with editing. Having covered the Royals for a long time, what did you make of the royal family or someone around the royal family manipulating an image like that? I, well, here's a thing. There have been images that have been released to the press in the past that people have suspected were photoshopped. So the way it works with the royal family is they take photos by themselves. Kate mostly, she takes photos of her kids. She's the number one photographer for the Wales family. And they release them to the press in order to keep the press off their backs, especially when it comes to the children. So those are called handout images. There have been handout images that look like they've been edited in before. And actually, some of them have been in the news recently because people have been going through the old images and finding examples of Photoshop. But this was so egregious that I was very shocked. It was absolutely

nothing they could have done worse than this. I mean, there are already all of these conspiracy theories flying around. The last thing you want to do in this situation is give conspiracy theorists any sort of reason to validate what they're thinking. I mean, if something has been Photoshop, they can now point to it and say, look, Photoshop, there's a cover-up. They must be hiding something. And they, you know, they just handed it to these conspiracy theorists on a platter. The biggest shock to me was seeing all of the wire agencies start pulling the image and those kill notices going out. And that went hand in hand with the palace's refusal to release the original image. Because if they had released the original image, the kill notices wouldn't have gone out.

They would have switched the image out. It would have been great. I think this is a is really going to damage their relationship with the press, including the British press, moving forward, because there's been a deal in place for so long where you take the photos, we run them, and everything's dandy. And now people have to worry about, well, are these photos accurate? Have these photos been edited? Or have you, you know, cut and pasted things together? Maybe we need to reexamine this deal. So it'll be very interesting to see how this works out moving forward. Just the phrase kill notice really gives it an extra air of conspiracy, doesn't it? Oh yeah, 100%. Sounds like a much worse conspiracy. What was interesting to you

about the way those alterations in the Kate photograph were uncovered? I was pleasantly surprised to see people, you know, going into such detail and labeling everything because I saw some of them, but when people really started looking for them, there were all of the things coming up that I hadn't noticed and that others hadn't noticed either. I think that it didn't help that their lives are so documented that people were able to, for example, when I wrote about this for The Cut in New York Magazine, go through Kate's engagements and find one in November where she and the children were wearing suspiciously similar clothing to the clothing they were wearing in that image. So yeah, it was, this whole thing has been absolutely insane. Every time I

think it can't get crazier, it gets crazier. I wrote you that your piece in Neiman lab, where you laid out how there's this whole British apparatus within the press and in the two palaces you mentioned. I think I learned more sentence for sentence from that article than I have ever learned from any article about the press. So I want to pull out a few things from there. There is something called the Royal Rota, a group of reporters in the UK called the Royal Rota. We, You'll explain what the Royal Rota is? Of course, yeah. So it is a group of UK-only outlets.

And they're sort of like the White House press for. So their only job is to follow the royal family. And sometimes there will be events where only one or two reporters can go in with the royal family somewhere. So let's say it's a visit to a charity or a hospital or something like that. You can't bring the whole press pack inside. So a reporter representing the radio, a reporter representing television, and a reporter representing the print will go in there. And what they will do is they will share their notes with the rest of the ROTA.

So everyone can write a story off the notes and the video footage that the people who went inside with the royal family can get. Now, the ROTA is organized by an outside organization, by an independent press organization. It's not run by the palace. and the people in the ROTA are very, very protective of their access, because they get more access than any other reporters covering the Royal Family. They get briefings that other reporters don't get. They will sometimes get press releases that other reporters don't get. If something's going on, you'll see the communications officers brief the ROTA members

with a little extra information that other reporters aren't getting. And when you're in the ROTA, you have a whole other level of access to members the royal family and their press team. So it's very access-based journalism and the people in the Rota have the absolute best access. And that's something that Harry and Megan didn't like very much. That was one of when they announced that, well, when they announced their plan for leaving the royal family when they originally thought they could do half in and half out, one of the key things on that list was we're not going to deal with the Rota anymore because they didn't like the fact that this very small group of British reporters,

were essentially gatekeepers to the rest of the press for information about the royal family. To use a comparison with the White House, again, these briefings you talk about from the palace that go to the rhoda. These are not public briefings. These are not posted online. These are off the record or on background, maybe I should say, given to the reporters. So it's not, they've not even been briefed if you read their copy. They just use these phrases you said, like, this reporter understands, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, and you also see situations a way. where it's very obvious that one of people on the press team was leading this briefing, and they allow themselves to be quoted, but you can't quote them as members of the press team.

You have to use phrases like a senior court here or a palace insider or a source close to the prince and princess, that kind of thing, which to me is just, and probably you too. As an American, it's just ridiculous. Just say you're on the press team. people will feel more reassured about whatever you're saying and whatever you're quoting in your story. If you can say it literally came from a member of the press team, they don't like that. And you can't ever name anyone. That's a senior court here.

Sounds like it came from a different century than our own. Wow. Exactly. Yeah. You write in your Neiman Lab piece that this is an era of not only distrust in the royal family from the public's point of view, but distrust in the press core that covers the royal family? Where did the latter come from? I think that there's a big, a whole bunch of different factors that's led to distrust in the press court covering the royal family. I think you can't discount the crown, as crazy

as that sounds. But in terms of big pop culture things that have influenced the way people feel about the royal family over the past few years, the crown has been a huge part of that narrative. It's been the way that a new generation has been introduced to some. of the royal family's history. And one of the things that you see in the crown are the people within the palace manipulating the press, the people, you know, give feeding stories against each other,

using the press as a weapon. I think that's definitely sunk into the psyche of people now that they're, you know, when they look at what the royal family is actually doing in real life. Also, Harry and Megan over the past few years, have said a lot of things about how the internal press team didn't protect them and lied.

for them and that the rec not the press team but the actual British press was actively involved in printing lies and that they would let themselves be turned off certain stories when they were given bad stories about Harry and Megan all of that there's been this level of discourse about how the palace and the media have a little bit of a too close relationship

They're a little too friendly. And even if you're not a fan of Harry and Megan, just hearing all of that, seeing those stories in the news, seeing stories about Harry's memoir where he talks about that, it really starts to, you know, sink in a little bit that, okay, there's definitely a relationship here that maybe we need to not trust as much as we do. Some of the most eye-opening stuff in his memoir, which I gobbled up. And it was very, very interesting to see him saying, oh my my mother-in-law or my stepmom is you know responsible for this leak and this leak and this leak

um you also mentioned in your name and story this what you called a lack of speculative tabloid coverage about kate in the UK before that photograph was released so the tabloids were not you know doing their sort of ravenous digging about the status of her health and they were also not even running happy stories you pointed out like hey she's doing great in private she's recovering what are we to make of that blackout? So it's interesting. I was talking to another friend who follows the royal family really closely, and she said that was one of the first things that really tipped her off that something was going on,

the sort of lack of tabloid coverage. The British tabloid press does not need a reason to write about the royal family. They will churn out five, ten stories a day based on nothing, or there'll be rewrites of other outlet stories. is just again and again, they'll take, the people who set themselves up as, you know, royal experts, the people who, you know, were a chef in the royal family household 20 years ago, you know, they'll say something on Twitter and the tabloid will write that up. So the fact that there was no fluffy coverage about Kate and what she's been up to was strange.

And also the fact that there was absolutely no speculation about her health. Normally, tabloids love to speculate about health, about what's going on behind the scenes. I mean, I can't even tell you how many tabloid stories have been written about whether or not Megan Markle had bunyan surgery. Like, if you want to Google that, you're going to see so many tabloid stories about that with, you know, zoom-ins on her feet when she's wearing sandal heels. So it was very strange that there was nothing about Kate. there was nothing about, you know, her parents.

That was the other big thing. You would think that the press might have staked out her parents' house to get photos or they would have tried to ask her parents something like, hey, you know, Mr. Middleton, Mrs. Middleton, how's your daughter doing? There was absolutely none of that. And just the complete dearth of any coverage really made it look like there had been a warning off of covering her in absolutely any. way. So, yeah, that was something that was very obvious to people who followed the

royal family for a long time and not the sort of thing that we've seen recently. Because the tabloids are just, they're always going to print stories. They weren't in this case. All right. Last one for you, Ellie. You've got a new piece coming out today as we record this in Vulture. It's about Rose Hanbury and you're going to have to help me with the pronunciation here. Who is the Marchioness of Chumley? Okay. You said that so well. Tell us what you have reported, uncovered, put together about Rose Hanbury. So one of the things that I think was an unexpected consequence of all of this Kate Middleton speculation is that rumors from 2019 that Prince William had perhaps cheated on Kate with one of their friends who lives near them. when they live out in the country.

And this all of a sudden was propelled into mainstream consciousness. And the royal family had done a very good job of shutting this down in 2019. They had sent out very threatening legal letters to all of the news outlets saying, like, don't, you're not allowed to report on this. Don't report on this. It's completely not true. And one thing that I have found interesting over the past few years is how stories about her have disappeared. The way the British press covered it, they've never explicitly covered it saying that, hey, we think there's been an affair. What they did instead was they published stories about a falling out, a friendship breakup between Kate and Rose. And it was very much sort of a read between the lines and see what's going on here kind of thing. But at some unspecified point in time after these stories were published in 2019 and 2020, they just disappeared.

They're not on any of these, mostly tabloids, websites anymore. And there was never any notification to readers that they were taken down. It's just, if you're lucky enough to find a link, it's a dead link. It goes either to a 404 page or it redirects to a home page. So my story isn't so much about the Royal Family as it is about the media that covers the royal family. So that, which I find just as fascinating as covering the Royal Family itself. So it's looking at that, it's asking some questions about the level to which the British press engages with the palace and how much pressure the palace can put on the British press to report things or to not report things.

So I'm interested to see what everybody thinks of it. It's been a lot of work. I've been wanting to write about this for a while now. I'm totally fascinated already. And I love that. Was it a daily telegraph story? People were passing around that was just an explainer about Rose Hanbury. Hey, we're just writing about this random person.

I don't know why, but I thought you might like to know who she is. So many outlets have done that recently. I think every major outlet has done that. But my favorite angle with this is because she's gotten so much prominence and everyone's looking up what she looks like and her biography, these old pictures from a photo shoot are coming out. Of her and her husband posing in their very large, very expensive country house called Houghton Hall. and these have gone viral on the Chinese version of Twitter

because Chinese people saw these photos and saw ancient Chinese artifacts that were illegally taken from China by Rose's husband's ancestors. So now there's this huge, huge thing going on about the morality of stolen artifacts and just it's gotten every time I think it can't get crazier, it gets crazier.

Unbelievable. All right, Ellie Hall, Reader at Vulture and then go back and read her pieces in The Cut and at Neiman Lab. Follow her at Ellie V. Hall on Twitter. Ellie, thank you so much for coming on the press box. Thank you for having me. All right, he's been sitting silently for 45 minutes. Just waiting to get in here.

It's time for the second weekly edition of David Shoemaker guesses. The Scrain Pond Headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about the theft of a shipment of NHL bobbleheads was nod very nice. Nod, very nice. Today's headline, David, also comes from the AP. It's about bees.

A swarm of bees forced a nearly two-hour disruption to the quarterfinal match between Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zevrev at the BNP Paribus Open. A man without protective covering used a vacuum to clean dozens of bees from an overhead camera. God. Can you imagine walking up with no protection and vacuuming up the bees? All right, I want you to think of a tennis match that had to figure things out because of the bee swarm. What was the AP strain pun headline? Well, see, now I'm just going to have to logic this out. You didn't say, is it a bee pun? You didn't say the word hive. You didn't. I didn't. It is, in fact, a bee pun. Oh, B. Uh, B. Uh, B. Uh, B. Uh, B. B. Uh, B. B. I wouldn't think too deeply about this. Tennis match.

B line, B, uh, B, uh, what is it? What is the tennis pun? The tennis match wasn't working out, so we went to the plan B? Plan B. Oh, that's great. Plan B.

I'll accept it. I'll accept it. All right, all right, David. You can go back to being quiet for a few more minutes. Thank you again for popping on here. That is the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Brian Waters. Okay, a couple things to get you up to date on.

Next Thursday, we are going to have a special episode of this podcast devoted to Evan Gershkevich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who is imprisoned in Russia. The episode's going to feature an interview with the journal's editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker. You're not going to want to miss that episode of the press box. and then on Monday, this Monday, March 25th, we had a slight change of plan. The man, the myth, the legend, David Shoemaker is going to be traveling. And I believe the euphemism we use on this podcast is that he's going to be on assignment,

which always makes a trip with a family and a minivan sound much more romantic. We're going to sub in Jason Gay, the Wall Street Journal columnist and comedy legend. Possible topics I'm interested in. there is a new CNBC doc about ESPN that just came out. We'll probably talk a little more March Madness. There's a story about Gannett and the McClatchy newspapers dropping the AP. I think I've got a slightly different take on that story. And you know, we will have more lukewarm takes about the media.

Have a fantastic weekend and I will talk to you on my.