The Press Box - Media Notes on the 2021 NBA Playoffs

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker provide some media notes on the 2021 NBA playoffs. They weigh in on whether or not this will be a lesser NBA title than ones before (7:13), discuss their perceptions of the teams left (17:56), and how sports media has changed over the years (24:57). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline.  Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Emmy Award-winning producer, actor and comedian Larry Wilmore is back on the air, hosting a podcast where he weighs in on the issues of the week and interviews guests in the world of politics, entertainment, culture, sports, and beyond. Check out Larry Wilmore, Black on the Air on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, can we talk about masks for a moment at the top of the show? Here's something we've never talked to you about before. Where are we with masks now, Brian? Yeah, well, it does feel like it needs an update, doesn't it?

Yeah, it does. Because we all know that the CDC and Anthony Fauci have told us there are a lot of situations we don't need to wear masks. And I saw one of these COVID Twitter guys the other day saying the best thing you can do this summer is live your best life. Which most people would not involve actually wearing a mask over your mouth while you're living your best life. But it is kind of in this strange ground between I should wear a mask. I don't have to wear a mask, but I kind of still feel comfortable wearing a mask. Or I'm not going to wear a mask at all. And I feel like every time I walk into a store, it's a lottery.

I see the whole constellation of people who are picking one of those things. And we're all in there kind of looking at each other. Like, what are we doing here? Yeah. I would happily wear a mask to go in just about any store. but it's now, I'm now enough removed from the mask life that I forget to bring it to the door of most of the stores. So then I'm, you know, if they were handing them out, I would put it on. And it is, I mean, obviously there's some stores you put them on.

I think I was in a big box store for the first time without one last week. In the middle of the day, there was nobody there, but it just felt wild. I mean, it just felt absolutely weird. It's weird, right? Yeah. You feel like you're doing something wrong? Sure. well yeah because we're doing something we've been told not to do for the longest time it's not there's

something like weird psychology to it we're just relearning sort of how to live normally um you know and like i've said before in the show i mean i i don't think it's there's really any value in like tisks tisking people who are wearing masks or if at any point even a year from now like whatever first of all i was just talking to my sister she's visiting my mom in charlotte north carolina and charlotte at least parts of it are sort of, you know, the kind of place where people might get a little dressed up to go to the grocery store. And my sister was complaining about having to put on makeup. And I was like, just put your mask on. It's like, nobody has to know, like, whatever. And that's part of the mask culture we're going to miss, I think, you know. You could just,

you didn't even have to brush your teeth to go outside for the most part. But, but yeah, I mean, listen, it's a, it's a new world. And people are going to come back from the old world at their own pace. There'll be some people who will be left behind. But, you know, as we have these conversations, it's always worth pointing out that there's still still a number of people who are for whom mask wearing is suggested by their, by their physicians, right? Very true. With certain illnesses and whatever else are going to be wearing masks. So if you do this stupid thing where you're like, I mean, you see conservatives, well, telling like lies about doing

it, but like claiming to have done on Twitter all the time when they're like, and then I told the guy, what? Are you scared of science? Or like, you don't believe in science? And that, and the man, the man I was yelling at was Albert Einstein. But it was. But yeah, so, I mean, that's a totally different, you know, subject. But it is strange to be going back to it. I mean, obviously, I was at the beach last week, and there's no mask wearing going on for the most part, except almost exclusively by, like, eight to 11-year-olds. There was a lot of, there was a lot of people who basically from, you know, or maybe younger

than that, but basically like elementary school students were wearing masks pretty religious. because they were, you know, they're right, they're above like the sort of seeming imperviousness of a lot of young, young children, but they're just below the vaccine age. So, you know, that's a bit heartening to see. But man, it was, it's, it's, yeah, it feels very, very odd. It feels very odd. It felt less odd on vacation. It feels now odd to be doing the same things you've done a million times, right? Going to the same places, going to the, run the same errands, but doing it without a mask. it's like I remember when my curfew was lifted at the end of high school I wondered how about you know yes yeah that I was such a rule follower you know I was I was

the one child who was actually trying to be home and not get in trouble on weekend nights and then it was lifted and you're like oh oh am I do am I doing something wrong at 1221 or whatever it was you know when I'm past the time well sure and then I mean at that point when it's just if the rule is just lifted it's just it's It's not like, well, now you're 18, you can stay out an extra hour. If they're just like curfew is, just forget the curfew. Yeah. It's perplexing, right?

It's like, well, then am I going to like lose this privilege if I stay out till 6 a.m. Maybe. So, so then, like, where is the safe time to go home? You just, you have to make all these hard, have to make all these, um, just really bizarre decisions. I was looking at my car yesterday. And I was like, okay, here are the things that I have like a huge supply of in my car at all times. one is masks one is pens

well good for you one is napkins yep but mostly that's a relic of the COVID era too because I was just eating in my car all the time instead of going into a restaurant

I'm not sure I need like a hundred napkins our family is religious about napkins in the car and saying that I have to admit we don't always have a giant trove of them because we go through them so quickly

I mean we're like we're like you know something out of like you know 1945 and we thought there was more paper than air in the world and we mean we just tear through those things man my number four slots so masks napkins pens and controversially is uh store credit from a used bookstore because i would just go in and trade in a bunch of books and they would give me a little slip for store credit but i would just have a bunch of these right instead of one mega slip if you open my cutter at least where is that in the car it's in the little center console because I want to be able to get the store credit for the used bookstore in one I don't I don't want to have David I don't have to open a bunch of things I want one motion how are you going so much that you know where to put it that's what's that's crazy it's a sickness a sickness you know well my friend I would just I would put him in the center console some in the door some in the glove compartment box and I would never be able to find him again I mean at least you know I know there's some organizing that needs to happen

yeah coming up on today's show David and I Share some media notes from the NBA playoffs. All that more in the press box. A part of the Ringer. Podcast Network. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoeemaker here along with Erica Servantis. David, it is NBA playoff time.

Mandatory plug, read everything on the ringer.com. Would you like to share some media notes that you and I have noticed about the NBA playoffs? Yeah, absolutely. Can we talk about the whole idea? that if Milwaukee wins the title or Phoenix wins the title, and I'm just picking the two favorites in the conference finals right now, or basically anybody wins the title, that this will somehow be a lesser NBA title

than one that was one when the major stars of the league were actually healthy and playing. Man, it's tough. Yeah, I mean, I think so. You and I talked about this a little bit before we came on the air, and I think that I'm in I think a lot of people are on the same or in the same place I've become so resistant to the notion of an asterisk season because well what was I mean like in our

lifetimes the first one was the short season was it was the lockout season right and then there's sort but and then I think particularly coming out of the COVID last season which was you know the the bubble season I don't know I feel like the concept of an asterisk season has just entered the vocabulary I mean entered our you know our Arget or whatever with just such reckless abandoned right people are just eager

to find reasons to say asterisk season and by the way can I just add for a second before you continue it was already in our Argett oh yeah yeah no it was it was dormant and it's just always waiting to come out yeah like going back to Roger Maris you know we love to look at something that happens in sports and say you know

that's great. That is technically what the record is, but because of X, Y, Z, PEDs, shortened season, injuries, whatever it is, that counts less than it does than it would normally. That's just like, that is a, that is loaded up for the debate shows and sports radio and podcasts and everything else. That's just a thing we do in sports media. Yes, but I think that the sports media part of it is, it complicates it, or the kind of everything as sports media aspect of it, whatever. Because you say technically this is a championship

and yet, you know, here are the qualifiers. I mean, I think what I'm resistant to and probably what a lot of other people are resistant to is the idea that we're a little bit closer to it doesn't count than it counts but. Right? I mean, they're actually, it's almost like you're trying to just like throw out the season.

And I think that if you, everything that's happened in this, crazy off, postseason. If you would ask everybody to, like, fill out a form before the season started, I don't think anybody would say a star gets hurt is disqualifying to the legitimacy of the championship, right? No one saying one player in the entire field gets COVID is not disqualifying to the legitimacy of the championship.

And yet, there's so many things happen that it starts to chip away. But that's different than saying it's an asterisk season, because there's making the talk radio argument that this is an asterisk season that this doesn't count blah blah blah but then there's just like the normal which I don't like which I'm resistant to but then there's the normal human thing

where you're just like yeah like it's like if you throw a party and three people show up you're like yeah it wasn't really a party you know it doesn't change the fact that the invitation said party it doesn't change the fact that like this was

proposed as a party and had all the elements of a party and everybody came and drank and went home, but if there's only three people there, you're just kind of like, well, someone said, do you go to the party at Brian's house this weekend? I was like, well, yeah, it's more of a get-together. You know, I mean, so these are normal, it's normal human psychology to sort of diminish the stakes of something. That doesn't mean the season didn't count, right? That doesn't mean we should throw out the scoring title just because the season was, it ended in an odd way, right? I mean, it's, it's still a real season of basketball with a real winner at the end.

normal human psychology to do that when it doesn't work out like you wanted to so let's run with your analogy if I'm throwing the party are different than desires but yeah okay but if I'm throwing the party and three people show up it is in my interest to go you know what that really wasn't a party that was a hang

just a couple of us getting together having a drink and you know I didn't have visions of a huge party and I would stipulate that a lot of this is those of us in the sports media, the team that we want to win the title because we think they're the best team, because they're our favorite team, whatever it is.

When they don't win the title, we then are more likely to say, you know, this one doesn't really count. I have a buddy, a buddy you know last year, who was loaded up to discount last year's title, but he's also a huge LeBron fan. And when the Lakers won the title, I never heard the argument.

that the bubble title was somehow less of a title than anything else. Well, because it worked out like he wanted. And so I would just put that, I'm actually going to be sympathetic here to the argument, to the sports radio argument of how we should weigh these things. But I will say, first of all, I think a lot of it just comes down to,

did the team you like or your favorite team win? If so, you will not think this is any less of a title. If no, you might think this is less of a title. I think that there's still shades of gray there, right? Because if... No way, dude. If it's your favorite team or if it's...

No, I know. I know that, of course, his team winning changed his perspective, sure. But if it had been... I don't even remember who was good last year. If it had been the... If it had been the Lakers and the Bucks or whoever in the finals, and it was just a knock-down, drag-out fight, and it went to seven games, and LeBron and AD did little... everything they could have done to win the game,

and somehow the Bucks just barely got across the finish line and won. That would still be, he probably would have still said that was a legitimate season, right? Because he was cheering, he was rooting so hard for the seven games, like it felt like a real fight, a real contest. Because the Bucks are seen as a, this is the other part of it. It's not just your favorite team,

but they're seen as like, I think last year would have been seen with Yannis winning two MVPs as like a legitimate contender for the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something is we can process that. There's desires and expectations, right? I mean, there's, yes, if something meets a sort of general sense of expectations, that's...

But what if the heat had won last year's NBA finals, 4 to 1? I think there would have been a lot of people going, yeah, you know, it was a weird year. Normal year, LeBron, we know LeBron James wins NBA championships. That's something we can process in our mind. And when he lost to the heat 4 to 1, we're like, oh, it must have been the bubble. That must have been a weird thing. Yeah, yeah, sure. But I mean, everything that happens around that I think matters too, but if it were just straight up, like you said,

the heat went in there in one and four games. Sure. I think that I think that would have been, if not the broad consensus, something closer to one. I mean, it's, sure, everything that happens matters. I am sort of sympathetic to the let's talk about how much this matters or in what way this matters argument. Yeah. When you say shades of gray, there are tons of shades of gray between we are actually putting an asterisk in the record book, which of course nobody ever does. And this counts just as much as every other title in NBA history. Or it should be, let's not say counts. That's the wrong word.

We should talk about this just like we would talk about every other title in NBA history. Well, okay, here's, you almost, you almost did it, said it there. Because the idea that it counts just as much as everyone is indisputable. And I think actually that accounts for some, a lot of the anxiety that we all feel moments like this and some of the pushback, right? because it's like if I don't say out loud, if I don't write this column, if I don't tweet this tweet,

pointing out that this is a somewhat lesser championship than last years or the years before, then we're all going to forget that it was a lesser championship in five years. And all of this discussion will be lost to history. If it's important for there to be distinctions and the level of winning, then we have to say that

and we have to say it loudly and we have to, you know, make that point. I think, I think that kind of stuff does happen. But there are, I mean, the flip side of that is it's still, it's a championship. No one's diminishing. I mean, the history. Of course. Tell me, yeah, I mean, tell me the extenuating circumstances in like the 1978 championship.

I guarantee there were some, you know, but like, we and we don't, I mean, Bill might know those. A lot of people might know those, but like, I don't know. Yeah, Bill, Bill definitely knows what those were if pop, if, if they existed in 1978, but you and I don't. that's true. It is a championship. No one's saying it doesn't count. But I'm saying like putting it in context. And I think that this season, to go, I think to kind of the more specific point,

feels so much more asterisky because, again, playing on expectations, we don't know, we can't even, we do not at this point understand the extenuating circumstances, right? We don't know if Kauai Liddard is going to make an appearance in this play. playoff series or in the finals if they get there, right? We don't know the answer to that. We don't really know everything that happened with Chris Paul's COVID apparent COVID diagnosis and return to the court or whatever that was.

You know, certainly there's things that we do understand on a sort of, on a sort of, you know, vague level as much as we ever would, like the, all the injuries that the net suffered. That's still a little bit impossible to come to grips with, right? I mean, this is the greatest basketball team or certainly the greatest trio ever assembled and we're playing with like one and a quarter of them at the end. You know, I mean, that's just, that would be a catastrophe

in any other season if it weren't for, well, there's just a lot of weirdness surrounding the Nets in general. And then the Hawks aspect of it where like all of this is kind of the good teams, the Lakers being gone, the Nets being gone, the good teams are gone, and this is being balanced out by such like a wildcard team like the Hawks. And even to a lot of people like the Suns, even though they're the best team in the West all season,

I think that adds to the feeling of illegitimacy for sure. Yeah. See, and that's the other thing, right? It's like, do we consider these teams to be great full stop? And if we consider them to be great and they want a kind of a weird title where lots of other teams were injured, it was a weird compressed season, then I think people would be saying, oh, okay, right? Like if LeBron and AD had been healthy and they had marched through this weird season, just like they marched through last year

a very weird season and won another title. I don't think anybody would be talking about this at all. It's just that these are teams that haven't won a title recently. And so we're sitting here, in some cases, ever, in the Clippers case, and so we're sitting here kind of going, well, how do we get our minds around these teams? It's funny with the Bucks because you mentioned like, the Bucks would have been a legitimate champion last year, but somehow this year's championship is being looked at like,

do we really want to give the Bucks credit if they were? win. But last year nobody, I don't remember people saying that the last couple of years. They thought they were just as legitimate a contender in the playoffs. Because the bucks almost got knocked out in every series or looked at times like they were absolutely being trounced by whoever they played. I mean, after game one of this series, it didn't look like they had anything. So, I mean, that affects our expectations to our perceptions of the teams, you know?

I mean, I agree. I think it's fun, it's fun to kind of go team by team and think. Which of these teams we would, is there any of the four teams that we would, that we would appreciate even under the best circumstances as the championship? Are you good enough for me and David to award you full credit for this championship? Weirdly, I think, weirdly I think that the team that will feel most legitimate at the end is the Suns. And it seems weird because they didn't feel legitimate even coming into the playoffs for me. But I feel like, because why?

I feel like it will process of elimination. I feel like if the Clippers, win, the clippers more than any other team feels like the team that's going to, that would win because of the absence of the Lakers and the, and the Nets. Because the Kawilis Clippers. They're the lesser

mega team. The Kauilis Clippers. Yes. But yeah, but even with Kauai if they had won. No, no, no, but that's storyline. We understand Kauai carrying a lesser team to the NBA championship. It's true. We can process that, I think. That's true, but I think there would be a lot of, well, if they didn't have to play, they didn't have to play

the Lakers, right? And they didn't, you know, and they didn't have to play the nets in the finals. Like, whatever. But I think that's when those come up. I think the Hawks are just, would not seem legitimate. That would just, the Hawks just should wear asterisk on their jersey

because if they get, if they end up winning the championship, that's what the whole season becomes. No offense to the Hawks. As a Mavericks fan, I am deeply jealous of that supporting cast. And I think the Bucks, like we've discussed, I mean, I think the Bucks winning

will probably feel a lot more normal and acceptable. The Bucks having won will feel more normal and acceptable six months from now. You know, midway through next season when they're like, well, these are the championship bucks we're talking about. We'll be like, yeah, of course they are. But right now, it will feel like they got a lot of lucky breaks and eeked by a lot of near eliminations to get to the end.

It is funny. Sports radio has the stages of grief. You know, there is bargaining. Right. I think we're in bargaining with the bucks right now and then acceptance will be in six months. But I just think all in all, cheering for Chris Paul and Devin Booker, after they've won is a very easy human thing to do.

And I think we'll all be there rooting for them. And yeah, it's a likable team. It's a complete team. Chris Paul is defies expectations nearly every season at this point. And, yeah, for some reason, to me, that feels the most legitimate. I've got a few more things to say. But David, let us do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.

send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received in the Department of Sports you were almost certainly not watching on Sunday David Czechoslovakia beat the Netherlands 2-0 to reach the quarterfinals

of the Euro Cup David Shoemaker and household were not watching the Euro Cup continue nor was I every time Czechoslovakia wins it was an overwork Twitter joke to write Checkmate

apparently this happens every single time. There is a national game. Thanks to Nick Eviston, JJ W, Noah and Luca for that one. The Australian journalist Freya Noble, David, brings this important story to our attention.

I'm quoting directly here. This morning's New South Wales COVID-19 press conference had it all. Buck naked sunbaters getting lost in the forest and chased by a deer and then fine for breaching restrictions. and a gate crasher claiming to be the creator of the earth.

So this was a press conference that began with an announcement that buck naked sunbaters, gotten lost in the forest and had been chased by a deer. It was an overwork Twitter joke or maybe just a good joke to write, stag yourself. Tag yourself, but stag yourself. Thanks to Freya for that one. By the way, Tom Fowles, another one of our correspondence, notes that, They had a press, so it's a press conference.

And they had somebody doing sign language of the press conference. And if you could just glance at our Twitter doc here, because I have posted photos of the woman who had to explain that people were sunbathing naked and then were startled according to this and then were chased by a deer. Just trying to get that thought across. Very funny. And finally, David, some heartrending news from Hollywood. Harrison Ford

has injured his shoulder while rehearsing a fight scene in the new Indiana Jones movie. What is what's wrong with this guy? I mean, I know he's old. I'm not, I mean, it's like, whatever, but he's like, he's like, Mr. Glass over here. Like, he can't,

he can't film a movie without ending up in the ICU. He certainly can't fly a plane without ending up in one. I mean, it's just like this guy, just like a dark cloud follows him around. Do you think we should blame Harrison Ford or do you think we should blame the who are still making Harrison Ford an action star instead of giving him like the Anthony Hopkins part. They have to get him insured before they do this kind of stuff.

Maybe it's the insurance adjusters that need to be taking to task here. Because this guy should not be, he should not be, you know, cracking a whip at any real human being, probably not cracking a whip in general. It was an overword Twitter joke or maybe just a good joke to write. It's not the years. It's the cartilage. Thanks to Brendan Fitzpatrick. If you reminded us that Indy 5 exists,

congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in the notebook dump, let us continue a little bit on the NBA playoffs. I do think this is funny because I think there's a really, really legitimate conversation to have about how different titles were won, what the circumstances are. I'm in favor of all that generally.

I also think, by the way, sports media has been leading us in that direction, not just talk radio, but all of sports media for a long time. Like we, one of the cool parts about the last 20 years, and if you want to date back to Bill James, maybe the last 40 years, is just saying like, hey, Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs. Will anybody hit 61 or 62? We now think about that in different ways.

We have analytics to do that. We have numbers to do that. We have ways of thinking about putting the past into context. So anyway, put all that aside. if you were an NBA player, how maddening must this conversation be? Like if you're Janus, or if you're Chris Paul,

and you hear one person writing or talking on the radio or writing a column about how this title is somehow different than a quote-unquote normal title, your reaction is like, dude, we just played the teams that we were assigned to play.

Oh my gosh, I totally, first of all, yes, entirely madding. And I totally forgot another huge, well, asterisk on this asterisk season. And it's that they're actively discussing rule changes for next season during the playoffs right now in not implicit, explicit acknowledgement that the rules that the system is broken. This is the Tray Young stop on a dime

and let the guy run into you thing. Yeah, or jump sideways or jump into somebody or whatever. I mean, they're saying we're going to change the rules next season because the rules that we have in place right now are not sufficient to adjudicate a basketball game. And also, it's not just that one. It's also this crazy out of bound stuff that we saw in, you know, that was in exquisite focus the other day. But like, you know, these rules don't work. But we're going to keep playing under those rules. And we've been playing under them all season. We'll keep playing. I mean, could you imagine if the NBA championship was decided on a super sketchy Trey Young foul? And by the way, more power to the guy for forgetting what he's gotten based on the rules that he's given.

But could you imagine if the Hawks went to the finals and won the NBA championship by Trey Young leaping at a 45 degree angle into his defender and like throwing up a three when he's two inches off the ground and can't possibly hit it and hitting all three free throws and then the next day they're like, by the way, we don't do that anymore. I mean, that would be the biggest asterisk season of all time. If it was the winning shot, yes, that would be the, that would be the biggest. But if you're Trey Young, you're playing by the rules. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. As they are written. And if you're Janus or Chris Paul, you're playing, you are playing the hand that you're dealt. Like, Janus cannot stop the playoffs and be like, you know what? We should probably go ahead and play the Sixers in this round because that would make our path to the title a little more legitimate. Or you know what? We should cast a magic spell that makes Kyrie Irving and James Harden healthy because if we didn't go through the nets who were just randomly assembled over the course of the last

couple of months, it's not a legitimate NBA championship. Sure. They just, there's nothing those guys can do. So if I'm them, if I can just put myself in their shoes, I would be so mad and perplexed by this whole conversation. Because it's like I said, it's not like they could do anything different at all. They are just, the schedule came out. This is who we play on Tuesday. say, that's all, that's all I can do. Yeah. And it can be on the one hand, I think, a totally legitimate sports media thing. And on the other hand, to an NBA player, the dumbest conversation in the history of mankind.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we don't even know. I mean, it's hard, it's hard to gauge, right? I mean, you can, people say, talk about teams playing up to the level of the competition as a knock a lot. But that's also, see, it also from, you know, a lifetime of watching sports seems to frequently be a real, a real thing, whether it's a psychological issue or coaching decision or whatever else. But we don't know what the books would be playing like if they had been further tested by their competition. Maybe they would have come out a better team from all that, right? I mean, it's just impossible to, you know, take the counter narrative and really judge whether or not it's legitimate based on that. Can I tell you the worst one of these that I've ever been through,

which you may remember? 2010 college football national championship flew from New York out here to Pasadena hundreds of dollars on tickets with my pal, Adrian. We get out there, University of Texas, our alma mater, not our favorite team. I always like to point this out, our actual alma mater versus the University of Alabama.

Here we go. Texas quarterback Colt McCoy gets hurt in the first quarter, it doesn't play the rest of the game. Game is relatively close, considering the circumstance, I think of the next Saban juggernaut in Alabama starts up and it was funny because I just remember getting text messages. First of all, I felt like I felt awful, just absolutely awful. And you know, it's almost like I don't want to look at my phone.

I don't want to look at my phone. I remember then immediately getting a text message from a friend saying, well, you know, this is going to be a legit. You may think this is illegitimate for Alabama, but this is going to be a legitimate title. Alabama couldn't control that your quarterback got hurt. And I'm like, you're doing this to me right now. We're having the meta conversation about how I must accept that this is a legitimate University of Alabama title like two minutes after the game is over. I don't think I replied to that text, but that that's the sports fan media thing.

Just immediately going to that step rather than like, hey, man, I'm really sorry, that sucked. He must be having a really bad night. No, no. They didn't want me to leave the Rose Bowl without thinking that I have to consider this to be a legitimate championship. Yeah. We need to get you to swear on a Bible

on the way out the door. Oh, that really sucked. Any other playoff notes, or should we do Strain Punt headline? No, I mean, I do just kind of feel like this exact moment that we're in right now, and we talked about it a little bit. It's just defined by so much uncertainty.

I was doing it massive. amount of yard work yesterday and ran out of basketball podcast to listen to because well when it's a week. That must have been a lot of yard work. Yeah, but there's just like there's no, we don't know enough. Like the draft is the draft lottery happened, but there's not enough to really say about it yet. So there's sort of limited bandwidth for that. And with all these injuries and stuff, I think people are still just kind of looked at. And we don't, like I said, we don't know about Kauai. Now there's conversations about why we don't know about Kauai, which is a really bizarre thing. Same thing with the Chris Ball thing that I mentioned earlier. There's a whole lot of conversations

about conversations. But, you know, and it is, it is weird, the Hawksdard. It is weird that the Western Conference Finals were being played without the two best players on the series until Chris Paul came back. But yeah, well, I'm sure we'll have more to talk about in the coming days. You know that I'm anti-ratings talk, and I just think that's not something that normal human beings as opposed to television executive should ever do. And yet? I do think it's totally worthwhile to be like, wow, this sucks. I'm missing a lot of my favorite NBA stars. or a lot of the people I love watching this time of year, like LeBron James and all that stuff,

they're not here. I do think that that is a good and normal human emotion if you feel that way. If you feel like, hey, I just like the bucks and the hawks. It's different. It's cool.

I'm going to roll with that. That's fine. And I do. I like Tray Young and all those guys. They're honest. They're all fun to watch. But missing your favorite stars at this time of year, just like you would miss great quarterbacks in the Super Bowl

or something like that. I'm okay with that. Sure. I don't think people should be shamed for that. To me, it's like, I'm pro Twitter shaming about ratings. You should be shamed if you use the word ESPN executives in a tweet about ratings, you should be banned from Twitter for life. But if you just say like, I don't know, this isn't doing it for me, just as an NBA fan as basketball fan, that's okay.

Yeah. That's okay. And in a lot of ways, I mean, LeBron has spoiled this, not just by being one of the greatest players of all time for us to watch, but also just by being such a kind of force of personality in the playoffs, right? And for so many years, the playoff narrative was set by its, like, LeBron's Cavs versus the Spurs and then versus the Warriors or the Heat versus the Mavitt whoever, you know, I mean, those, those were the, the storylines that really, that really landed for everybody. And now without him, I mean, listen, it would be much easier to tell the story if we were talking about the, the, the,

sons versus the nets at full strength or something like that, right? But it's, but in, when there's, like, not there there is no monolith left in the playoffs and uh and you can't i mean you can't retroactively kind of recast you know the bucks is that and so it's just sort of we don't have that sort of the sort of view that we normally have unless the bucks run off a bunch of titles unless to go back to that alabama i mean to go back to that alabama texas thing if alabama had just won that one when colt mccoy got hurt we might say eh and that was a weird that was a weird title but well Then Alabama became a juggernaut, and nobody cares about that. But just like the Spurs, what I just mentioned, their early title, their first title was not their most dominant title by a long shot.

The Patriots who were the greatest team in professional football. Yep. I mean, that was seen as fluky at the time. Yeah. And it all ends up mattering a lot for sure. It's time for David Shoemaker. Guess is the strained pun headline. Woo.

Monday's headline about a last second Clippers lost to Phoenix was Valley Oops. we also had a vote for Don't let the Sons throw down on me which is pretty good if you like Elton John lyrics That's so good Even if you don't

Today's headline comes from Dawson Fear Now It's from the New York Times David A collection of shaker objects Shaker objects will relocate to a new $18 million museum complex The Times reports

collection of shaker objects is relocated. What was the New York Times' strained pun headline? Shake. Move and shake or no, moving. Yeah, getting there. Shake, rattle and roll. You were close there for a second. What is the phrase?

Shimmy and shake. Twist and shake. I have no idea. No, relocating. Yep, there we go. Okay. moving shakers and movers and shakers oh there we go

moving moving the shakers are movers okay shakers are movers that's really good very simple but very effective he is david shoemaker i'm brian curtis production magic by erika cervantes we are back friday more lukewarm takes about the media see then david see you later man