The Press Box - Naomi Osaka Doesn’t Need to Talk

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down the news that Naomi Osaka has withdrawn from the French Open. They talk through the tournament's response to Osaka refusing to appear at press conferences, weigh in on the evolving coverage of athletes, and discuss how this type of situation has and could impact an athlete's relationship with the media. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The NBA season is heating up and Kevin O'Connor and Chris Vernon have got you covered on the mismatch. They discuss all the news, the trends, and transactions happening around the league. They also offer their on court analysis and occasionally get into heated debates. Check out the mismatch on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here along with Erica Servantes. We, David, need to start with the Naomi Osaka story, which has kind of been the biggest story in sports and the biggest story in media and maybe the biggest story of stories over the last 48 hours.

Let's set it up if you have not followed along with this. Naomi Osaka is one of the best tennis players in the world, 23 years old. She made $55 million last year, the highest earning female athlete in the world. She goes to the French Open last week and she announces before the tennis begins, I'm not going to be doing any interviews, any press during the tournament, which at the French Open effectively means after I play a match, I'm not going to hold a press conference and answer questions about the match I just played. That caused a lot of controversy.

The French Open officials, as soon as she skipped one of those press conferences, started making threats, which we can talk about in just a minute. Naomi Osaka wound up leaving the tournament, pulling out. She is not playing at all and walks away. Where do we start with this story, David? First of all, we should start by saying you wrote a fantastic piece about the subject on the ringer.com. We'll be referencing the piece and everyone listening should go check it out.

I think that you hit on in your piece, both directly and indirectly. So what I think is at the core of this, which is it sort of, it feels like the questions and the answers here are relatively straightforward and that you have to kind of work to really find the areas of great controversy or irritation or anything else. Now, the fact that, I mean, this shouldn't come as any great surprise.

And let me just take a step, side step to say what you write about in your piece, which is, should, as a general rule, should athletes be under some level of obligation to speak to the media post-game whenever, It's qualified yes. I think most people would agree on that. And should Naomi Osaka have been forced to do media at the French Open this year?

No. I mean, I think, you know, it's given her rationale, but just sort of in general, is this really a conversation we need to be having? No.

Now when, when, as we've discussed, as we've been over a billion times on this show, when common sense, you know, rubs up against an institution of any age or significant size, it doesn't always,

those two things don't always go really well together. Common sense in a tennis tournament. Yes, yeah. Inverable tennis tournament. The level of tradition that's built into these things in the worst possible way makes it difficult to have sort of level-headed conversations, but you said it created a controversy. And I don't know if it's worth invocating the stricent effect or whatever other

like sociological situation this might be, but like if if they had just said okay when she said I don't want to do media we wouldn't be having this conversation right I mean it would not have merited a segment on first take I wouldn't have married a segment on get up probably even though they have so much more time to fill like I just feel like it would have been like if anyone even noticed it would have been you know just a passing comment about it right what if they had even just kept a piece of paper on the desk of whoever runs a French open and said oh she skipped one press conference, that's $15,000 fine. Second press conference, $15,000,

third press conference, until she's eliminated from the tournament or wins a tournament. And at the end of the day, we just hand her a bill or subtract that from her winnings or whatever we do. Yeah. This is a woman who made $55 million last year. She admitted in her first tweet in this that she was going to be, she knew she was going to be fined. And that's it. And that would just, well, you've decided, okay, that's it. You're right.

It wouldn't have been a big deal. But here are the two things that made it a really big deal. And I think we should deal with the Osaka part of this story first before we get into kind of that larger issue of should athletes be compelled to speak. In her very first tweet about the subject last Wednesday, she referenced this idea that these post-match press conferences are not just strange and a little stilted. There is actually possibly a mental health aspect to him. She didn't directly connect that to herself. But I think if you read that, you could probably read that and say, hey, something is going. on here. When she left the tournament, she specifically joined those two things. She says she gets

quote, huge waves of anxiety when she's talking to reporters after matches. She also revealed that she has coped with depression since 2018. Okay. The French Open officials, when you hear the words mental health, isn't that the point? Whatever your media policy is, you just go, you know what? We're going to give you some space. We're going to back off. We're going to, we're to give you some space. Whatever our interest is here, whatever we're dealing with, we can deal with that at some other point down the road. We can have a conversation. We can figure it out. But surely that is the first priority when you hear those two words from an athlete that you are featuring in your tennis tournament. Yes. For one thing, I think that what you could have just said

there is an athlete who is your partner in this tennis tournament. But I'm sure that's not the way that the French Open officials see it. And you're right, that's absolutely the way that you, one, should respond, right? I mean, even if you were going to take the most draconian stance, and I'm sorry, that has a negative connotation, but even if, yeah, it was $15,000 or more,

like, oh, well, it's a percentage of the purse that we're taking, whatever, you can handle it behind the scenes, and I guarantee it's not going to set up, your worries, your concerns about precedent go out the window, because I guarantee all the other players in the tournament are going to be aware, you know, behind the scenes of how much money she was fine, right?

I mean, this isn't, it's not going to just, no one's going to be mistaken that she got some special treatment. Now, you don't have to turn it into a PR issue, which is at the core of this whole thing, the sort of, you know, the, the, the, the PR aspect and the way that it affects mental health. And I think that, that, I mean, you don't have to be, you don't have to do any mental gymnastics to imagine that if this were a death in the family or, hey, we can push it for, I mean, we don't need to get too, you know,

too controversial about this, but if it were a death in the family and it had been, you know, an established white male star who just lost his father or something, I don't think that you have to, the mental gymnastics aren't too difficult to see that, like, you know,

the officials would have taken, would have taken pity on the athlete in a different way, right? Like there are some, there are certainly exceptions to every rule that you have as a human being. And if you, and if there are any exceptions, Lord, this should have been one. I mean, it's just, it's just so obvious. Yeah. And the French Open officials didn't back off. They didn't give space.

What they did, David, was they threatened to kick Naomi Osaka out of the tournament. They also dangled this idea that she would be suspended from future Grand Slash, tournaments if she did not give the press conferences after the matches. As you're saying this, by the way, I just chiming in to say, as I was only superficially following this story at the beginning, this was the most shocking fact to get to when I kind of got into the weeds on it. And not really in the weeds. It's part of the whole narrative. But like, I could imagine this blowing up from a, just from the press releases we had seen, but the idea that they were threatening this sort of punishment over such a thing.

Like, well, it is, it is frankly just shocking, even if it's just a discussion. I completely agree. And when I went back over the clips of this story as I started to try to write this column yesterday, I was amazed that that wasn't the headline. You are threatening to kick. Now, maybe they saw that as an idle threat and that is as a way of, you know, trying to negotiate with her. But you were saying you're going to kick one of the biggest tennis stars in the world out of your tennis tournament.

that's an idea. We've been through this in the NFL. Marshawn Lynch of the Super Bowl six years ago. I remember I was there with Robert Mays and Bill Barnwell. I went to one of those press conferences. He was not cooperating, let us say, in the spirit of Super Bowl Media Week. There was no sense that Roger Goodell was going to say, you don't get to play in the Super Bowl if you don't talk to the reporters.

Well, it happened to a much lesser degree with Russell Westbrook in post-game interviews for a while. Kyrie Irving, you mentioned in your piece. I don't think that there was, I mean, I think if anything, the consensus has shifted in the aftermath to we as just a on, like an onlooking media, we're too hard on them, right? We, like, we made it, it, you almost, you make it into too much of a sport to even comment on it half the time. And, and you're right, we saw it with March on Lynch, it's, but it's never an issue of, of, like you said, of, of removing the ability for, for one to play the game. Exactly. You know, if somebody wants to, if somebody, I mean, make whatever rules you want, but if somebody chooses to play and win at professional tennis and never do a press conference. And so they implicitly agree to forfeit half of their career earnings or something.

I feel like that's a, that's a decision that like an adult human being can make and abide by. It's absolutely insane to think that your willingness to talk to the press is linked to your ability to take the court. or the field. And again, when the French Open made that threat, and they put it in writing, this was not sources say. There is a press release that you can link to, go to on the web.

That should have been the headline here. Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? Yeah, you're right. Kyrie Irving hasn't done media a couple times this year. Adam Silver wasn't like you can't play in the playoffs. That is so stupid. And I say this is somebody who is such an advocate for reporters being able to talk

to athletes and reporters. having the ability to go gather news and not be stopped by teams in their tracks are doing that. I hope I stand up for that whenever I see that happening. I would never even, I take probably one of the more radical approaches in terms of transparency and openness and opportunity for reporters and sports. I would never say that if you blow us off, you don't get to play. No, that is just completely, that's just so over the top and ridiculous.

Well, and despite the fact that, you know, future star athletes are getting media training at a younger and younger age. There's nobody in the world that would ever make the case that the success that Michael Jordan or LeBron James or whoever else or Serena Williams or, you know, name your star athlete that that success was even remotely based upon their media presence or their media skills. Now, people always say one goes with the other and they were bigger stars because of their media presence. You're saying their success on the court, their athletic success is not connected to their media. It's so irrational. I came in. It's so irrational. I came inform the sentence, right? I mean, it's like, like, nobody, nobody would, nobody would say this, right?

And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, there are a lot of people who, these instances and many others will say that, well, that's why you get paid the big bucks, right? I mean, like, like, it's really easy to take an anti-athlete stance whenever you want to, just by saying, like, hey, you know, if I was getting paid $15 million a year, you know, I would, I would get, I would talk to every, every reporter in the world, like, whatever, but it's like, no, when you, when you, when you, when you're implicitly connecting it to, to, you know, the off the field earnings and all the money you can make because of your celebrity, right? Now, you mean, whether or not you owe something to the sport, I guess is a more ephemeral question, but you don't need to be Muhammad Ali on the microphone

to be the heavyweight champion of the world. You know, it's just, it's, and it's irrational to even like try to connect those even, even tangentially. I know. And I feel, I feel like the incredulity in our voices is not because we disagree with this idea because this idea is not an idea that anybody else has as far as I can tell. I've never heard a reporter express this idea. Like the French Open officials are standing up for a kind of availability to the press that as far as I can tell, no tennis reporter is standing up for. Nobody thinks, well, you know what, if she doesn't talk to us, she shouldn't be able to play. I've never heard anybody say that.

No. Being yet, somehow they're doing this on behalf of A, the press and B, really their own content. And that's a super important thing to point out because those tiny distinctions always get lost in these conversations and these arguments, these disputes, whatever you want to say. What we're arguing about is a thing that nobody has ever said. And there are reporters who will get on Twitter and will complain loudly about their right to interview athletes and on and on and on.

Nobody is saying that they shouldn't literally nobody is saying you shouldn't be allowed to play your sport if you don't get in front of me. and answer my boring questions. Except the heads of four different international tennis federations. Those are the people who decided that this was the line in the sand. After she missed one press conference, that is where they went to. You know, they ratcheted this up to a ridiculous place. And I think, and again, that's why I wanted to talk about the Osaka part of it first,

because I think it involves two things that are pretty unique to the situation. Mental health, which we both agree is a moment where you should give athletes, and anybody else a very wide, a lot of space, you should be as accommodating as possibly, you should try to work things out, and B, that you are threat, that in this case, the French Open officials and other officials

are threatening to take her out of tennis if she doesn't talk to the media. Those seem pretty unique to this. Can we spend a little time on the venue that athletes like Osaka and let's say, LeBron James and other people, talk to the press now after games, which is a big interview room and a podium.

Once you get to the big levels of sports, it's not like a thing in the locker room where you're, you know, thrusting a recorder in somebody's face and there's a couple of reporters standing around like Tuesday night in January in Cleveland. There are huge crowds of media. And you have these very big stilted performances, David, that are not only in a large room, but they're also broadcast to television and the internet and everything else immediately when they happen. what do we think about these sort of interview settings um i mean we're also used to them that it's kind of hard to you know shake yourself into cognizance to really to really think about it but i think that one's reaction of them probably has a lot to do with their own sort of psyche um people experience anxieties and stage frights and whatever else in very different ways you know I mean, it's a very personal sort of reaction system.

And I think that I've definitely seen pictures of athletes on podium, athletes in front of throngs of reporters. By the way, can we put throng in the official press release? I mean, press box glossary of thing that is only used in one sense. Only in journalism, never in real life, a throng of reporters. I've seen athletes in front of throngs of reporters. You see those pictures from like the 80s or 90s, whatever, like Michael Jordan getting out of a limo or like we're getting off the team bus

and just the, or like the dream team with like nine trillion cameras around them and you're like, I don't, I couldn't make that walk. Like, I don't know how they get from the bus to the hotel. I mean, I would be paralyzed. Yeah, so sometimes you do, if you, if you zoom out, it can seem really kind of wild,

especially when, when you consider sort of the transition of, I mean, I wanted to date with my wife last night and we got halfway to the restaurant before I was just like, I'm sorry, I haven't like taken a breath in the left work mode yet. Like, I haven't, you know, I haven't, like, switched gears.

The idea of switching gears between, like, playing a basketball game or an athletic contest that will define your legacy and then going through the showers and emerging on the other side in front of, like, 200 reporters who were shouting questions at you. I mean, that's a huge transition. That's a huge, that's like, that would, that could give somebody a mental break, even if they were prepared for it, right? And it's, you know, it seems so commonplace. And in some sense it is.

Like I said, people have been doing this since their kids, some of these people and have been seeing it having on TV, having on TV their entire lives and it's been going on forever. But to like think that it's impossible that someone would be affected by that, negatively affected or intimately affected or whatever else. It's ridiculous. Of course. I mean, like, that's, if you had a coworker who said, I can't speak in front of these people, or, you know, I can't speak at this conference or whatever, you would, you would,

you would immediately understand and help them and like work with them to figure out a way to get them from out of having to do that. The idea that like our professional athletes should be immune to that because of their success or their their bank account or something is it's ridiculous. When you were talking about going out of dinner with your wife, I thought you were just going to say you guys get out of the car and there were like 10 photographers in the Chili's parking lot waiting to take pictures of you as you walked into dinner get some Southwest egg rolls. That would have been funny. Are you from the Masked Man show? that you? Yeah, no. That's...

The other thing about those press conferences, in addition to what you say absolutely, which is the weirdest thing in the world is you have, like, one of the greatest moments of your professional life or one of the worst moments of your professional life, and then you sit in front of a press conference to talk to people about it. We don't get to interview the losing presidential candidate, usually, like, seconds after they called race.

Dude, imagine if you had to go give an interview after your next, like, performance review, you know, then, like, Like, it's like, hey, what are you saying? What do you know that I don't? What if you go into a meeting where you're like, I know that I'm going to find out what my new salary is in this meeting. And then as you walk out the door for better or worse, someone's just like, Brian. Is just standing there? Yeah, exactly.

Well, yeah, Brian, welcome to the press box. Oh, no, no, you're not hosting this week. Oh, man. We got to break some news. Yeah, it was tough. You know, I'm not going to pretend I'm happy. I'm not going to pretend I'm happy. Just got to work harder.

That's all we can do. Work harder next year. Write better press columns. do a better podcast. And I'm going to let things take care of themselves, David. That's what I would say. No, it is totally weird, but this is what we have to do. Sports have gotten so big that the only way to do it is in a giant podium setting like that.

You know, that was funny because I saw one of the comments, somebody's like, can't we do this a better way, meaning more sensitively for the athletes? I said, this is the sensitive way. because before, at least in American sports, everybody was crowded around a locker and there were way too many reporters. So reporters barely could get your recording device in there. You couldn't ask a question and the athlete felt like they were going to get squashed in their locker, you know, right on top of their street clothes and their bottle of Gatorade.

Like that was that was bad. So then we put it in these podium settings and we also, and I think this is crucial to understanding this, made this into content that exists separately from the sport itself. It's not just a reaction to the sport. It is officially the postgame show. Yeah. It is the late night entertainment.

Oh, Scott Van Pelt here. Oh, let's, LeBron's on the microphone. Can we, can we take LeBron right here and go to LeBron? And all of a sudden, it's not just LeBron James. It's Dan Weiki of the LA Times on TV. Bill O'Ram of the Athletic. All those guys are going, oh, wait, now, I am part of this weird television program.

Yeah. That is happening. Now, I would, I would, I would, I would, uh, argue that the ability to ask a question that setting is better than the ability not to ask a question at all. It's a little bit like, I almost called it like the White House press conference. And I realized I'd use that analogy like eight times already in pieces. It's like the White House press conference. That is a kind of a ridiculous thing.

It's very formal. It's, it's on television. It's all, you know, it's so stilted and it, that it hurts. but that is better than not being able to ask the White House a question. You know, there is something about it that is useful from a reporting standpoint. It's also something that people complain about when it doesn't go off, right? I mean, like people are monitored every White House's number of press conferences and time since the last press conference and everything else.

So there is, so that's, that is a thing. But yeah, I mean, it's ridiculous, but you can definitely argue for its necessity. I don't think anybody would argue, well, I don't think that's what we're not here to argue against it. No, necessity, but, but as reporting, which you and I are interested in it, like, because we want the reporters, we like to be able to talk to the players and the coaches and find out what happened, or as I think the leagues and the French Open sees it, necessity as content and advertising. I was listening. There was like a sports radio show I listened to that was talking about, you know, what should we do about these interviews? I'm like, every

sports radio update segment, you know, that happens in the middle of the, at every 15 minutes, has sound from these press conferences. Yeah. Here's LeBron after they lost to the suns last night. Like everybody is just dipping their bucket into this content well every day. Everybody says, well, these interviews are terrible. You're using sound from it like crazy on again on everything. Sports Center NBA TV, sports radio, everything.

So again, it's like when we talk about the French, why is the French Open interested in this? they want journalists to cover the French Open? Yes. Do they want journalists to have an opportunity to talk to the players? Yes. But I think what they also want is they see that as kind of like the extra match. There's the match on the court and then there's this match. This is your bonus track, the Serena Williams press conference afterwards.

Sure. That is definitely true. And yeah, there is a hypothetical worst case scenario where man, if everybody refused to do it, then how is anyone going to even know the French Open's taking place, right? I mean, that must be the alarm that's going off in their head.

Because, I mean, maybe that's the question I asked the beginning of the segment, and maybe it's the pertinent one. I was like, if they hadn't come down on her, nobody would be talking about it right now, right? Nobody would, it would not be a news story that she stepped that she decided that she declined to media in and of itself.

But maybe that's the point. Maybe that's, maybe they realize that if people don't do media, then nobody actually, cares, they just don't cover it, right? And that's, and that's the deeper concern. I don't, I find that it's not irrational, but it's a little bit like, if we're at a point now where the only way you can conceive of promoting your legendary event is by recording repetitive, boring sound bites from the stars and, you know, bicycling them around all the different

sports networks, you might try thinking of some other ideas, too. I mean, it's just sort of such like, such, you know, just closure of the mind or, you know, conceptual, I mean, just the lack of conceptual thinking, but, but that's probably what it is, right? Let's leave it hanging, David, what Rosillo and Bill would call it greenie teas, while we 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. Elsewhere in the world of sports, David, the Portland Trailblazers Dame Lillard hit three-pointers to propel his team into overtime last night and double overtime.

And then his teammates completely threw away the game in double O.T. Lots of good jokes here, including from some of our friends. Damien wrote war and peace and his friends picked it up and they were like, hey, check this out and then tossed it in the fireplace. Dame painted the Sistine Chapel and his crew powerwashed it. And I like this one. Dames' teammates must love his music because they seem to want the most studio time for impossible.

Thanks to Aaron McDade for those. David, we're in the stage of the coronavirus where there's lots of good news out in the world. I read the little New York Times daily email today. I was talking about all the good news about the coronavirus. The weird side effect of that is that people are now angry because they

can't just do absolutely everything they did before the coronavirus. Right. They want to go from, hey, we're 60% back to we're 150% back. Take, for instance, this tweet from Naomi Wolf, the terrible, terrible sound of a three-year-old pleading on a plane about to take off for their parents to unmask them. I won't do it. I don't want it.

Daddy! It was an overword Twitter joke to note that this sounds like every kid when you ask them to do anything. especially on an airplane. Yes. Oh, that's the big one, right? Especially when other people are like looking right at you. Yeah. Thanks to the ringers, Katie Baker for that one. And David, just as we're getting ready to record this morning, former president, Donald Trump shut down his blog.

The blog only began on May 4th, but the blog will quote, not be returning, according to aide Jason Miller. A couple of very good jokes about this. The blog era is truly over. I thought my blog posting was erratic. Trump was mad. He didn't make the techno-radi top 100. And I like this one. Trump giving up on his blog after a few weeks

is just pandering to millennials. Thanks to Tim Curtis. If your substack outlasted Trump's blog, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. Okay, returning to Naomi Osaka, the French Open and press conferences generally. You're right.

It is insane to think that if you just canceled all these, people wouldn't watch it. So the question is, how did we get to this spot where athletes are compelled to show up after tennis matches after big NBA games? Well, sports writing has this weird cutout, right? That exists as far as I can tell in just about no other part of life. Like, we pay the salaries of United States senators, but they're not required to stop and talk to Manu Raju

in the hallways of the U.S. Capitol when he asked them a question. They can just keep walking. They're not going to get fined by the Senate parliamentarian if they don't take a question. That doesn't have an entertainment. You know, somebody was talking about, oh, well, they're junkets and things and, you know, actors do that. Yeah, but the actor's not going to be, you know, maybe the actor signs up when they do a movie. They're going to do a hit on Colbert and they're going to do this and that. I guess there's some kind of big parallel there.

but there's not nearly the access to the big stars that sports us. No, I mean, when we see, you know, once every couple of years, there'll be some celebrity who sort of says out loud that this is the part of the job they hate when they're on a show or doing an interview or something and it becomes a little new cycle in and of itself. But it's a different, it is definitely a different level of access, especially for those in the, I mean, if we, if you want to take it. the sort of disingenuous, this is why you make the big bucks argument, especially for the

celebrities in the highest tax brackets. They negotiate their press availability as part of the contract. And so they know what they actually literally know what they're signing up for. Yeah. I mean, it's so funny too, because I saw people on Twitter when this whole story came out that said, what's the reason for compelling athletes to do this? Like, forget all the fact that it's actually kind of in their collective bargaining agreements or it's in the rules of. of the tennis tournaments when they go to the tennis tournaments, you're going to do something? Why do we do this?

Like generally speaking, why do we compel this one person in society to talk to us more than we compelled Joe Biden to talk to us? And I go, I don't really know the answer to that. I don't. I don't know why LeBron has a special rule for him that, and that rule is made for no one else in American life or life anywhere. It's just,

it's very, very odd. Journalistically, it's happy because there's a level of, I don't know if accountability is exactly the right word, but there's certainly a level of availability to these big newsmaking celebrities that exist nowhere else. But like, why does that happen? Why at some moral level do we require that out of famous people,

famous athletes? I don't know. Do you have an answer for that? I feel like there's a really obvious answer that I'm probably missing, But to me, the easiest answer just seems to be that it was proven to be successful in terms of PR. I mean, like, when, when, you know, when the times were simpler and journalists were tasked with tagging along with athletes and writing about them, I mean, that was how people, that was how the sports grew and awareness of the sports grew. And as athletes, as athletes gained more, you know, an increasing amount of volition, you know,

within the sports, I think that it probably became, started to become mandatory, specifically because the athletes, because we were steering towards a world in which an athlete had the ability to say no, right? Had the power to say no. And so it becomes codified as a sort of preemptory measure. I mean, that's what I would guess. But there's probably a lot of other factors too. Yeah. And of course, that time and that availability has shrunk a ton. Over the decades. Athletes are less available now than they were, but they're still way more available than just about anybody else.

And listen, when athletes do have power, I mean, when they negotiate their collective bargaining agreements and agree, you know, they signed many contracts along the way. I mean, there is, there is volition still in the athletes' hands. But this sort of media availability, given that it's sort of a norm, it's a lot more palatable in the abstract, right? I mean, it's like nobody's, when you're signing the contract, it's a lot easier to say, yes to date to you know game night media availability when there's a dollar figure next to it or when it's a term of when it's part of the negotiation um then it is on a day to day to day basis and i think

that's a normal human thing to actually have a psychological or human reaction to having to do this in real time is different than the way you feel sort of you know if if if someone said we they want the press box to go do a round of interviews we'd say okay that doesn't mean i'd be hyped to do everyone you know i'd probably be i'd probably be tried to bail out of half of them as they went you know it's a normal reaction. Yeah. And the thing is you have to show up, but you don't have to be great. You don't have to, you don't have to give up anything if you don't want to. You know, an athlete is not required. You know, LeBron didn't have to come out after losing to the suns the other night and go before the press and go, I had the weirdest dream last night.

Can I tell you about it in some detail? Because I think it's symbolic to how my team played tonight. He's not going to say that. If he can't if he wants to, but he doesn't have to. So it's just actually standing there for X number of minutes or X number of questions. Sometimes you're going to be really forthcoming. Sometimes you're never going to be forthcoming. Some athletes are never forthcoming. But what they're requiring is for you to stand there. Journalistically, it's fantastic.

That seems obvious. But how many times have you heard people that don't have to go into locker rooms and talk to people bag on that? And by the way, including yours truly, look at that question they asked. this is so, you know, this is so weird, this seems so stilted. I don't think people like you and I have any idea of the amount of information that people get out of those interviews after every game when they're the beat writer whose job it is to bring information about those athletes to us. No, I saw a lot about that during the Osaka, I mean, during the beginning of this news cycle, right, that people were just like, I don't know, like, non-sports journalists, like, why would you ever be put in the position of having to respond to somebody? And yeah, I mean, it's just, it is something that the sports world is more accustomed to it. And it's, and it is weird.

But I don't think anyone's, again, no one's advocating that athletes should never have to speak to the media or, you know, never be put in a position of, of, of, you know, opening up. But, but it's, and this just feels like such an outlier of a case that to be treated, that for it to be treated like it threatens an institution. It's just so disingenuous. Or, I mean, and it really, and it misses the point so severely that it's like, why would you, like, it does, it does reframe the entire argument, right? I mean, it's really easy to say, it's really, I mean, this is a conversation that people can disagree on politely most of the time, but like, you know, the French Open officials just made it made it almost impossible to have because they're just being so ridiculous.

And in terms of endangering a tradition, whether we're talking about a soccer just generally, I've thought that this tradition would become outdated at any moment. I really did. In fact, I sent a note to Fennacy right at the beginning of the postseason when Kyrie Irving had just been fined for not talking to the media again. I think he got fined $35,000. And I said something like this. I said, I wonder if we're at the end of this,

that somebody like Kyrie Irving, now this is not going to be every player in the league, but somebody like Kyrie Irving is going to say, look, the fine I just got is one one thousandth of the salary I'm being paid by the nets this year. Never mind my endorsements. I don't want to talk to the media for my own reasons, whatever they are. So I'm going to pay all the fines and I'm just not going to do it. I'm not going to show up to the podium. Why, you know, if I can, it's like I can afford it. I can afford not. If I don't like this, I can take it out of my life and I can afford it. Here's the weird thing. That hasn't happened yet. Yeah. And maybe it will in a couple years,

but Kyrie Irving in the postseason is back to talking to the media after games. He was the other night. I mean, I think there's probably a practical aspect to which there's either a unwritten rule or just the potential of an unwritten rule where there's sort of like a repeater

tax situation, right? I mean, we're like, you know, the football team has to get under the basketball team to get under the tax. Every couple of years of the tax goes way up. The penalty they pay gets way. I, the more you do it, the idea is that you pay more and more until it would be an unpalatable sum of money and do you kind of play the game so that you don't get into you don't have to have that conversation then again this is all just made as pure

conjecture but i would assume that there'd be a little bit of a that'd be part of the decision-making process right because as soon as kairie or anybody else says i'm never doing it and brings a haliburton with one year's penalties in cash you know and just says like here you go world that's when people probably sit down and start making you know start codifying the rules even more strictly you know but again maybe so maybe so but what are they going to do just make well that's it go up then they're going to go full French open and say you can't

play in the NBA mm-hmm no and they can't say that so you're right they can't say that I agree though with what you said where it's easier to do it and just kind of coast your way through it sometimes I think then fight that fight mm-hmm you know if you're like I I really don't want to do this And if I don't, I'm going to have people slamming me and attacking me. And I'm going to have Adam Silver finding me. Even if that's a low level headache, that may be a bigger headache than me just going out and talking to the media offense and saying no comment or I are giving a really short answer. I don't want to talk about it.

Because if you do that, you've satisfied the requirement. You didn't have to go out and say anything. You just had to go out there and talk to them. Yeah. So, and I think that's part of it. And I think the other part you meant when you talk about unwritten rules, let me spend that a different way. I think it's sort of become a norm in a way, more than a rule. Like, is the NBA really going to threaten Kevin Durant for not coming out and talking to the media if he were to skip those stuff this week?

No. Kevin Durant doesn't need that. Kevin Durant doesn't need reporters at this way. It doesn't need anything. But everybody in the NBA has gotten into this rhythm over many, many years where it's like, okay, I play a game. I talk to the press. That it just kind of becomes this norm of a sense, okay, this is what I do. the game and I talk to the press and then after shoot around

and the press wants to talk to me, I talked to them too. Talk a couple times in training camp. And you just sort of start doing it. And the thing that's kind of causing players to come out is yes, the rules and yes, the threat of a fine or something like that, but also just this idea that this is how it works in sports.

And this is part of what I do. And I think that's powerful too. Just by tradition, if nothing else. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and there are going to be athletes that are eager to speak to the press at every opportunity. So it's not, that cuts both ways, I guess. But you're right.

I mean, it is a norm and, yeah, I mean, but it just doesn't feel like, I'm glad we had this talk. I just, I just like it, but it has to come. You never said that to me before. It does, no, it feels like we circle back around to Naomi Osaka, and it's just, like we started with, it's just so self-evident the situation, you know,

and to be, to be, I think it's almost, it speaks to a lot of just the landscape of the sports world we live in. And obviously tennis is a much different institution than basketball or football that we pay attention to on a kind of more daily basis. But just the level of reaction from the French Open, the sort of the style of reaction, the tenor of the reaction, in a world where the athletes have all the power or have an increasing amount of power. tennis again is not exactly the same as basketball or anything like that. It's just, I mean, it just feels like everything, I mean, like, like everything that's wrong with sports, you know, is just right there in front of you. To be, to take that stance, it just, you just seem like, just like, well, I mean, just seem like angry old men, you know, like it's not, it's, it's, it's, it's,

it would be laughable if it wasn't so potentially damaging to the athletes and to the sport itself. Is it time for David Schuemaker guesses the strain pun headline? Why sure? Let's stay on the theme of sports because Thursday's headline, David, about the Knicks tying their playoff series against the Hawks, was Garden of Even. Now, things have not gone so well for the Knicks since that Strain Pun headline. Ryan J. Lowe and Jose Bouquet and Cade Stone sent in the headline from the New York Post

after the Knicks lost games three and four at Atlanta, state farm arena. Okay. It was one game to one game after they played in the in Madison Square Garden. Then they went down to state farm arena and lost games three and four. Now the Hawks lead the series three to one. State Farm Arena. That is your friend here.

What was the New York Post strain pun headline? State of play. State of state of fair. Is it state? What if state farm? Is it farm or state farm? What am I looking? State Farm.

State Farm. What are those State Farm commercials? Ooh. What's a lovable character in those State Farm commercials? Which one is State Farm? Is that Chris Paul? That's Chris Paul, yeah. But not Chris Paul.

The other guy. Dang. I don't even know. Remember he's like standing next to Chris Paul in all those commercials. Sometimes he's in the house with Chris Paul. It's Jake from State Farm. Oh, yeah, Jake from State Farm. So the headline is.

fake take take uh i mean the next effort that was pathetic man that was they didn't even show up junk from state farm oh getting there uh j uh j j j j j j j j j j j jake from state farm bud j j j jo jo jo joe joke from state farm joke from state farm Oh, that took me way too long. And it was, it's pretty good. It's pretty good. I'm not going to just be mad at it. In like three years, if we're in the microfilm, we're going to be like, what was Jake from State Farm or joke from State Farm?

What's, what's that a pun on? I don't know if Jake from State Farm will quite go down like the, like the 80s legends, where's the beef lady? But we will see. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. We are back this Friday.

More lukewarm. takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.