The Press Box - NBA Buzzer-Beaters, Formula One Grid Walks, and Scooping the Supreme Court

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

Bryan and David discuss the jam-packed weekend in sports, and highlight Martin Brundle’s F1 grid walk interviews with celebrities such as David Beckham, Serena Williams, and not Patrick Mahomes. Then, they discuss calling NBA buzzer-beaters, ESPN’s choice in bumper music, and Turner Sports deciding on their no. 1 announcing team (6:17). Later, they weigh in on Politico’s Supreme Court scoop that disclosed information about overturning Roe vs. Wade (37:23). 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

This is Chris Vernon, and me and my buddy Kevin O'Connor, aka Kevin O Everything, host an NBA podcast called The Mismatch. They call it The Mismatch because I'm awesome and Kevin is a gigantic nerd. No, no, that's not why at all, Chris. They call it the Mismatch because I have a brain and you're a loudmouth bozo. Good grief. Anyway, listen to our amazing NBA podcast, The Mismatch. Or don't.

We really don't care. We're probably going to win a million awards either way. Chris, we do care. So don't say that. Please subscribe and listen to the mismatch only on Spotify. Did you really call me a bozo? David? Listener Simone E. Simone.

One of our favorite listeners, asked a question related to this weekend's Kentucky Derby. Okay. If Brian or David could name a racehorse, he asks, what would that name be and why? Dang. I feel like that you have to find... I feel like the traditional move is to go sentimental,

to dedicate it to someone else in some way, right? Like you name it after, like, you know, one of your wife's grandparents or, you know, something like that. Or you just go the, you know, job security route and name the horse like Pride of the Celtics or something like that, you know? but I don't know if I were going to go I mean you know I don't know people listening to this are even aware

but like when Brian and I lived together we jokingly until it was no longer a joke just referred to our apartment as Fort Awesome and I mean it was you know on the fourth or fifth floor there was a bit there was some like aesthetic reason for but mostly it was just it just sounded like so ridiculous we loved it I would probably go in that direction

I'd probably go in the Fort Awesome strain of horse names and a horse awesome or or like super horse like have it like techno horse

2000 that would be a good way just so it sounds very up to the moment or some of the kids were like retro yes horse awesome is a fantastic name for a for a racehorse because they're all like one degree off

from making any sense to the average person right you have to explain. Well, it was a good pun when it was an end joke between me and the trainers, but then we had to alter it for this. Yeah. I mean, that might work. It's an amazing race over the weekend. 80 to one long shot Rich Strike won the Kentucky Derby.

Mm-hmm. And a lot of people online were putting up the video. First of all, they had this fantastic video, which actually showed Rich Strikes path through the whole field all the way to the win at the end, which is a really just cool bit of overhead technology, over overhead view of the camera. But then a lot of people were doing the listen to this fantastic call by Larry Kalmus, who called the race for NBC. And this is one of those instances where I'm not casting any aspersions on the call on NBC.

I just don't know enough here. Like, I'm not sure I could tell you bad horse race call from good horse race call or even any of the gradations between, you know, Ven Scully, Kirk Gibson, Home Runner of the World Series or, you know, something else. I just don't know. And I feel it's okay to be like, that was great fun to watch. That was an amazing race.

I just don't have an immediate opinion. Sounds good to me. Right? But I don't have the knowledge here to just venture something. Basically in any sport outside of the big three, I mean, I think you probably can put hockey in this category. I mean,

I think three is the right number. If you just, if someone put out a tweet and they were like, listen to this, like, best, you know, what is one of the top five calls ever in the sport. I think I would just believe them. I mean, you kind of have to take it at face value. You don't know the sport. Well, I've been horse racing is a very particular thing. It's more

like, you know, auctioneering than it is like, you know, calling a sport, a sport in the way that you and I traditionally think about it. Yeah, very specific art. But I just know from all the Twitter opinions about announcers that I see day to day that a lot of people are really wrong. I'm like, you don't really think that, did you? I don't know. Anyway, I'm just not casting a spurgent. The distinction between best call ever and just like not a good call is vanishingly thin as far as I'm concerned when it comes at any sport that I don't watch. I also want to draw your attention to a sentence from Simone E. Simone's note to us,

I was the bugler in 2004 at the Oakland racetrack in Hot Springs, Arkansas. What? And it was really interesting. Yeah. Yes. I'm much more interested in the story about how, like, the part that would not be interesting to Simone Simone is presumably more interesting to the rest of us than like the day there at the track. I mean, maybe not. Maybe there was some crazy backstage goings on. You know, maybe there was some, I don't even know what it would be, some mobsters backstage. A lot of people, you know, illicitly shooting up horses. Like, I don't, I don't even know what the

intrigue would be. But I think becoming a bugler at a horse racing track is a journey that I'd be very interested in. How is that not already been assigned by the Oxford American? What was the horse racing show on HBO that got canceled because the horses died? Oh, luck. You remember that? I wonder there might have been. I wonder if there was a bugler storyline they had planned for that before I got shut down. Nice, colorful supporting character, the bugler at the track.

Coming up on today's show, audio and notes from a packed weekend in sports, from the Formula One grid walk to an NBA announcer, another NBA announcer, vexed by those meddling referees. And then in non-sports news, we'll talk about the monster politico scoop out of the Supreme Court. All that more on the press box, a part of the ringer, podcast network.

Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer Erica Servantes here. David, I don't know if you know this from reading sports Twitter, but the Miami Grand Prix was over the weekend. Mm-hmm. Did you have that sensation you have with soccer tweet? where you see a few and it takes you just a second to figure out what's happening. Yeah.

Yeah. And I have a lot of sympathy for those people because I was, you know, like the one dude tweeting wrestling, live tweeting wrestling shows in most people's timelines that I knew for a long time. But yeah, it was, there was a lot of racing tweets that I was not expecting to say the least. It really has entered the soccer zone in one respect. Don't want to overstate Formula One's popularity, blah, blah, blah, blah. But in the what is actually happening right now that I don't know about zone, that is Formula One right now.

Your friends are tweeting about it and you're not exactly sure what's going on. We've done Formula One content like three out of the last four episodes. I mean, we're basically a Formula One podcast at this point. I don't know if we can stand. Look out Kevin Clark. Yeah, I don't know if we can like take a step back from the Twitter timeline. and point, you know, I think that we're part of the timeline now. Big hit for people this weekend was the Formula One gridwalk.

This is carried out by Martin Brundle, former race car driver who's now a Sky Sports commentator, essentially the color analyst of the race. And since 1997, Martin Brundle has been leaving the announcer's booth before the race, going down where the actual cars are about to start from, with a microphone and an earpiece and doing what's called the gridwalk, which is kind of half-race preview, half-red carpet celebrity reporting.

I was texting with Kevin this morning. He said, imagine if at the Masters Golf Tournament all the celebrities in media were kibitzing on the first T minutes before the tournament started. And then Tiger showed up to T-OB. We were like, oh, we've got to get out of here.

We need to clear out to let this man play golf. And then further imagine David if CBS sent Nick Faldo down into that scrum of celebrities and told him to try to interview people. That's essentially what the grid walk is before a Formula One race. So in Miami, Brundle is running around with his microphone and headset. And he runs into Venus and Serena Williams. We're going to play some audio here. I want you to note especially how reluctant Martin Brundel is to carry out the task of trying to get a word from the William sisters before the race begins. Right.

I don't know. I don't know if I could stand the rejection, to be honest. I don't know if I can stand the rejection here, but I'll do this for you. Venus, Martin Brandel, Sky. How are you? Really good to see you two on the grid again. Are you cheering for Lewis? As DJ Khaled there saying hello to the Williams sisters.

Nice to see you. Serena, good to see you. So tell us, what do you think of this event here in Miami? Oh, we love having Lewis and all the drivers in Miami. So wishing them luck, it's the first time of many. Hey. Oh, what's the question? No, it doesn't really matter.

Just good to hear. Nice to talk to you, actually. But we'll want to back down. So what happened there? Lewis, of course, referring to Lewis Hamilton. But he was, Brunda was sitting there and he asked a question. Williams, Venus Williams gave an answer and then they just kind of walked together for several seconds. Venus was like, am I doing something wrong here? Did I? Is there another question you wanted me to ask? Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was uncomfortable. I liked how he was, was he assuming he would be rejected just because he didn't think he would be recognized to the degree that he's normally recognized at such walks?

Yeah, there's, there's video going around from last year where he tried to get Megan the stallion to offer a comment before the race. And there was definitely a, we have bodyguards here and who are you? Sky Sports commentator. The equivalent I think would be like, if you told Chris Collinsworth to do this, but before an NFL game in London, So you had British celebrities and then Chris Collinsworth was chasing them around the sidelines going, yeah. Well, even Chris Collinsworth. Yeah.

I mean, just honestly, it would be like Chris Collinsworth or Chris Collinsworth, I guess, a former professional athlete. So I guess there's some, I mean, it would be like, like, give, I mean, even if you give Jim Nance the job at like a Super Bowl, just interviewing celebrities as they walked in, I would say a solid number. Like 75% of the celebrities would be like, I don't know who this guy is, right? I mean, and it would just be kind of an awkward situation. although he's a pro. He could probably,

I mean, he could probably make do. Well, it's a little bit, remember when Eminem and Brent Musburger were brought together? Yeah. I mean,

that memorable meeting. It's like two different planes of celebrity. There's celebrity and there's sports announcer celebrity. Mm-hmm. And sometimes they cross over and sometimes not so much. Yeah, but the real story, though,

is this is just a signal or symbolic of the expansion of the sport, right? I mean, that you have this, the legend, you know, a legendary journalist or, or a well-known journalist who's just, or a commentator who's just not going to be recognized

by anyone who people actually want to hear talk or any... This is good news for Formula One. Yeah, exactly. We have big stars who are not necessarily familiar with the Sky Sports commentating team. Yeah. Brundle also saw David Beckham, who I bet did know exactly who Martin Brundle is,

yelled to get David Beckham's attention, got ignored, started taking this, you know, separate route around the grid there. Eventually cornered David Beckham and got his interview. Here's what that turned out to be. David, Martin Brandel, Sky. Can he have a quick word with you? Have we have a quick word? Of course.

Yeah, we need to just probably move out of the way. But you know sport in Miami well. You've got a football team here. You're hoping to build a new stadium. What do you reckon to all this? It's amazing. It's what Miami does best. You know, it's a sport in town, an entertainment town.

and I think today's incredible it's going to be amazing good who's your money on we'll see all right coach the anthem seems like a lot of work to get Miami's a great sports town

this is going to be a great race like the gold here is not what the celebrity is actually going to say it's Martin Brundle running around with a microphone because that's funny that's incredibly funny and nobody wants to answer

this is a very obviously I'm not a Formula One viewer if this exists another... Oh, don't explode any illusions here on the podcast, David. I'm not sure how unusual this setup is. I know they do this that there raises a lot, but I don't know if there's other sports where I should be familiar with it from,

but nobody wants to be interviewed when they're on their way to their seats, right? There's no greater moment of anxiety at a sporting arena than the walk between the front entrance in your seat. You're not sure if you should go to the bathroom on the way. You're not sure if you should be grabbing concessions then or get to your seats first and double back for concessions.

You don't, you know, if there's going to be some fool sitting in your seat when you get there and you have to have an awkward thing in front of your family, you know, you don't know. It's the whole thing is, you know, is just uncomfortable. You just want to sit down. You've been commuting presumably for a while. You want to get it, you want to take a load off. And then there's just some dude coming up. Of course, you're going to answer in one word answers, you know.

It's just like, unless, especially when it's a sort of, it's sort of, sort of, you want to, just freewheeling a question in some of these that are being dished up. Yeah, I'm not totally sure David Becker was trying to get to his seat so much as like you're going, I think the red carpet, it's not quite the red carpet because the red carpet is orderly. The celebrities come at intervals where here, it's like you're just wandering through a red carpet that's just a mess of celebrities going both ways. But I think you want, I think the celebrity, the gridwalk is a chance to be a celebrity.

Like, you're down there to be there. there's photographers taking your picture you're visiting with the drivers taking pictures with the cars that kind of thing so there is something there is something there but yes David Beckham probably wanted to grab some popcorn and find out where he was sitting for the race Brundle thought he had scored a really big

interview Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes however mid interview Brundle realizes ooh maybe this isn't exactly who I thought it was. Amazing to be a lot right in the middle of the competitors just before the race starts. Yeah, now you can see, they locked in.

It reminds me of myself. But the real focus. Okay, it's not Patrick. That's why he ignored me in the beginning. But what is your name, sir? Paulo, Bencaro. Right, okay. Well, I thought I was talking to somebody else.

So I'm sorry about that. Whatever. Whatever. That is soon to be NBA lottery pick, Palo Bencaro. My goodness. And no one is your piece? Gage, I did,

help them out with that? The message arrived mid-interview. Oh. That you were not interviewing Pat. He had been yelling, Patrick, Patrick. Yeah, I'm sure they were in the booth saying he's not doing this, right? This is not what I think it is.

Bankero was happy to turn around to give an interview. Mm-hmm. Which is very, very confusing. Wow. Oh, that's really uncomfortable. Thankfully, he, you know, gave us more to talk about than just that scene. Don't you think American sports should steal this concept? Sure.

Can we have Collinsworth, like, knocking on the doors of luxury suites? 20 minutes before the game starts trying to get a celebrity to come out and give a quick word. Why are you here? Are you looking forward to the football game that you have come to? They should just combine it with the ticket-taking process, right? like the VIP usher is you get down and you just like you show your ID or you show your tickets or whatever. But I think the most important thing, I mean, the most exciting thing that anybody cares about is what seats did you get, right? Both in real life but also celebrities. It's just like,

oh, oh, Mr. and Mrs. Beckham. What ticket? What seats did you get? Oh, row two, huh. Huh. I think that's one row behind Jay-Z. That's interesting. Oh, so we actually get the little gradations of celebrity. Yeah, we get to see them reacting to like, you know, their place and the hierarchy. I think that could be fun. Brundle tweeted after the race, there's a reason why I've never watched back an F1 gridwalk in a quarter century of doing them. You have no idea how much I dislike doing them,

but somehow those crazy moments have defined my professional career. Oh, well, that's the way it is. Thanks to R.J. Young for sending us that. David, the celebrity thing was really interesting for the Miami Grand Prix. Because I got to say, I'm sort of unmoved by a certain level of celebrity attending a sporting event.

Patrick Mahomes is cool. Patrick Mahomes is awesome, but Patrick Mahomes was also at the Mavs jazz game the other night in Dallas. So it may just be that Patrick Mahomes has some free time here in the office. He enjoys going to sporting events so much. He's just following around the sporting calendar.

Like anywhere, wherever the big game takes him, he's going to follow? Yeah. And the other one I saw was in one of the emails in my inbox this morning was that Dwayne Wade was at the race? Huh. I mean, can we, can we go ahead and say that Dwayne Wade has kind of entered the Rick Flair zone of showing up everywhere?

Yeah. When Rick Flair was like, wow, the nature boy's here. And then you realize the last three sporting events, the nature boy had been at everyone. Is it? Yeah. I mean, my only. But. Yeah.

I think the only point of interest is that you like chose that over the Kentucky Derby, right? Right. That's an interesting, that's an interesting choice. Michelle Obama and George Lucas. Now, when they were at the F1, now I'm in. That's interesting. That's different.

That's a different tier, a surprise appearance. We had another edition of who wants to be a Formula One analyst. All right. Let's do it. This time was Jeff Van Gundy, noted NBA analyst,

setting up a race promo on ABC the other day, listen to how Jeff Van Gundy weighs in on America's new pastime. Hey, Mike, I'm not a betting man, but if I was in that road course in Miami, I'm going Lewis Hamilton without question. Wow, I didn't know you were this into it. Oh, it's in my bones.

Way to go out on the limb. He's a star. He's like LeBron James of Formula One. So the joke Van Gundy is making is that I'm going to give the most obvious and generic F1 take possible. I like Lewis Hamilton, seven-time world champion. Tied for most championships ever. It's kind of like saying, how about, you know, LeBron James.

I think he's going to be really good this year. The only problem is that Lewis Hamilton's car is actually sucked this year, I know from consuming the ringers F1 content. Oh, so also like the LeBron James comparison, I guess. Yes. Like in April, Van Gogh, I think LeBron's going to win another title this year. Not so much. Thanks to Lee for that one.

Speaking of the NBA, Dave, a few notes from the playoffs over the weekend. I regret to report that the refs have screwed up another announcer's last second call. Oh, I didn't know that's where this was going to go. Okay, let's let's hear it. This is from Celtics Bucks game three. You know this, but if people don't, the situation was there were 4.6 seconds left in the game. The Bucks are up two points. the Celtics Marcus Smart is on the free throw line

and Smart only has one free throw left can't get two points with one free throw so he's going to try to miss the free throw on purpose Celtics get the rebound and tie the game it actually worked he missed the free throw the Celtics get the rebound they start playing volleyball right next to the basket

listen to how ESPN's Dave Pash called this sequence now remember if you do that you have to hit the rim and he does hit the rim. Smart. Got it, puts it up. No, Tim won't go. Williams another try. Horford. No. He tips it in, but it's afterwards. The game is over. Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. He's sitting courtside and Dave Pash with his own eyes sees that Al Horford's tip in that would have tied the game was too late. You heard what he said. The game is over. Yeah. Uh-oh, David. You're coming the referees to

review the play. Now, you cannot convince me that this does not absolutely screw with an announcer's mind. Oh, yeah. Because they know what they saw. But then they start to think, what if that man in the striped shirt looks into a little box and he finds a frame of video that shows that what I saw with my own eyes is actually wrong? So we go from the game is over to this. Listen to how Pash immediately starts hedging the outcome after calling the play.

It looked like the tip by Horford was after the buzzer sounded. That would have tied the game, but it appeared that that was after the buzzard, meaning Milwaukee wins game three. They're going to go to the monitor to make sure. Now listen to that. We've gone from the game is over to the conditional. It looked like the shot was late. It appeared the shot was late.

then we have to wait for 30 more seconds for the refs to come back and say, who, no, he was right. Shot was late. The game is open. That's just wild. It's hilarious to me. You think he's trying to be as,

as, like, judicious as possible, knowing that it might get, there's a sliver of a chance it might get overturned. He doesn't want to himself, sound at odds with, well, I guess reality at that point? Or is it, do you think that there's a degree to which he can't be, he doesn't want, he cannot be seen to be like trying to one up the referees? You know what I mean?

Like, do you think he would get in trouble if he was just like, well, no, I saw it in my own eyes? That call is incorrect. I think there have been enough pot shots at the refs over the last couple weeks to kind of suggest that you can get away with a little bit more, even though we know the networks don't love to do that as a matter, of course. I think it's the first thing you said. He's 99% sure, but there's this

1% sliver of doubt. Yeah. And so you're leaving yourself an out to say, well, what if it didn't? But of course, your whole job as a sports announcer is to see things faster than normal human beings can

see them. And then, even more miraculous, get the words out of your mouth before people like you and I even see what happened. Sure. That's the job. And they have taken away a fundamental part of the job because you do it. You do it as Dave Pash did perfectly. And then it's like, uh-oh, something else happening.

Plus, you just have to wait 30 seconds. So instead of the game is over, the bucks win, um, exciting and fairly controversial game three. you're sitting there going, we're going to wait 30 seconds, Hubey's going to do the replay, and then, okay, it's him. I'm not sure in the grand scheme of things

how much, how much just the ridiculous situation that these announcers are being put in should factor in to the rulemaking process. But it kind of feels like they should factor it in a little bit. I think they're expressing what we're thinking, right? Right. That everything is being held up in a very,

weird way. And again, I don't think there's, I don't think checking the last shot of the game just to be sure is the worst thing in the world. It seems like a fairly correctable moment in the game of all times. Games over, you can do it. But it does seem like the condition of the announcer is the condition of all of us where it's like we can no longer trust what we see on the court and have to wait to go into this weird, was it real or was it not real state that the, that the referees are putting us in. Yeah. It's not how it's With the whole

With the whole I'd say fewer replays generally speaking What But how would you call the end of the game How would you call the end of that game? I think Ian Eagle said on the pod the other day You just call it And you hope that when they replay that For the next 20 years

If it's a huge moment They just clip it Right where you call it Make no reference at all To the fact that it's about to be replayed Yeah But do you talk about it being reviewed in the process of the review? I would almost just call the game and move on.

And if it did get reversed, let that be a shock that, you know, interrupts the post-game. You'll never believe it. With a straight face, just like, wow, what a game. Bucks win, game three. Yeah. Have a chance to take a commanding lead in game four. And then if it doesn't, just don't have the cameras on the referees at all. It's a referees are reversing the decision.

Whoa! Would be more dramatic. Speaking of important subjects, can we talk about ESPN's bumper music? Oh, man. Here we go. Are you as weirded out by this as I am? Watching a playoff game, bumper music means the music they used to go to commercial.

And we hear such songs as taken it to the streets by the Doobie Brothers. I didn't know if you were talking about some theme music that I was trying to remember. Yeah, you're talking about how it's just like yacht rock every time we go to commercial. What the hell is that? I don't know. The boys are back in town was the other one I heard over the weekend. By the way, both of those songs came out in 1976, it turns out. Now, was that a really special year for someone in the ESPN production truck?

They're trying to recover on national television in front of all of us. Like, what? That's a good question. When you think of the NBA, do you think of the Doobie brothers? I don't, I mean, somebody's making this decision on purpose, right? They've test marketed this thing or they've used some sort of algorithm to determine this is what I have no idea. We've seen the thing on Sunday night football in other places where they'll play a snippet of song and it's a tribute. If a singer has recently passed away, if it's a Minnesota Vikings game, it'll be Prince, you know, something very city-specific.

This seems to be the opposite. This just seems to be like we're running the serious 70s station no matter what has just happened in the game. Maybe it was just so impossible to pick music that would be deemed a quote unquote appropriate based on so many different factors that they just outsource the whole thing. Maybe we're just going to find out that they were like,

yeah, we've started a new tradition where we just let Mike D. Antony pick the music for this season. How dare you insult Mike D. Anthony like that? No, it's just going to be like a, former coach every year, someone who's not involved in the playoffs but intimately involved in the NBA, you know, and just let them, just let them have their own, like, you know, XM radio station for the, for the, for the, for the, uh, for the month. If we're, if, if a former coach picked this, I'm guessing Don Nelson more than Mike D. Anthony, but okay.

The funny one was, uh, second quarter of the Maverick Sun's game. They're going to commercial and they play Mr. Big Stuff. Now, Mr. Big Stuff came out in 1971. So, so least it's not exactly the same year. But the two replays they run to break are Jay Crowder and Maxie Kleba laying up the ball. So we don't even get the little joke of Mr. Big Stuff, boom, replay of a slam dunk. We get Mr. Big Layup. I just like, what's happening here? It's really weird. And I'll tell you the weirdest part of it is the playoffs, and especially the playoffs this year. I've had a wonderful urgency about them. We've had so many big games, so many great games. And then you're going to break. And those songs, and you know from our high school days that

I had the dial over on K-LU-V, I was K-loving my oldies. I was not immune to that music. But those songs just destroy the urgency of the game. And I think you really, you do want a theme song. Like Turner is like, do-d-d-d-d-da-d-d-da-da. Like, we're. Yeah, here we go. Oh, yeah. Even if it's not exciting, the theme song makes it exciting. No, we need John Tesh back in our lives. It puts you in the moment.

It reminds you what you're doing there. All right, one more thing on the sports weekend. News came down from Turner's Sports last Tuesday, David, that Turner has picked their number one NBA announcing team, which functionally means this is the team that's going to announce the Western Conference Finals. Okay. ESPN has the finals and the Eastern Conference Finals,

So Mike Breen is number one. The second number one spot in pro basketball will go to the following. Kevin Harlan on play by play, Reggie Miller, and Stan Van Gundy. So we have a three-man booth. Your thoughts on Turner and their new number one team. I don't hate it. I mean, I'm not as averse to the three-man booth. as some people are.

You know, I think that it, yeah, a two-person booth at its best is probably a better option. But, you know,

Van Gundy's been working at three-man booth booth for a long time. And I think Reggie Miller's been weirdly good. I mean, I think that he's,

I think that he's sort of come on at this phase of his post-career career. He is wildly divisive, isn't he on Twitter? I know every announcer divisive on Twitter. Yeah, but I feel like...

But I feel like... Reggie is really either people are... And I don't know who people are even listening to him. It's the same as the Kentucky Derby thing. They're just like, I hate this guy or I love this guy or whatever, but he really feels... There's just like a national conversation. Well, NBA is just a weird thing. I mean, you know, Bill obviously talks about the announcers, NBA announcers a lot.

And I defer to him. He watches more games than me. And obviously with the volume up, a ton more games in me. But I think that, I don't know. I mean, the NBA obviously lends itself to a different sort of commentary. There's a little bit more of a, you have to be a little bit of a, have a little bit of like a comedy style to really be, to be a color commentator on T&T. You know, you got to have a sense of humor that they sometimes just will take you into in and out of like an hour of the game. And it has to be, and it's all pretty free flowing, you know, it's not all setups and stuff like that. And also like, it probably this is perception. But I feel like there have been a lot of NBA announcers that are sort of on the, the B tier, color commentators, I'm talking. talking about and a lot of, I mean, a lot of ex-players who just have really uneven, like, roller coaster rides of careers, you know? I mean, there's people that almost everybody

starts off bad, you know, and then people generally find a place. And it's sort of like we talk about with, in football, you know, where there comes a point where like you, like, you're, like, being fresh and being excited is really good. And then at some point, you're going to hit the, you know, the edge of the cliff where you're just not close enough to the game anymore. And you become something else. I feel like the arc is much shorter and much less predictable in the NBA. But I have been enjoying

in a vacuum, been really enjoying Reggie Miller's work. I want to go back and listen to him during a game. He doesn't listen every time, but really pay attention to what he says. Yeah. You almost have to watch a game the second time, because otherwise you're just consumed by the game. The Harlan part is really interesting to me. I think Kevin Harlan's really, really good.

He's 61. I can imagine, I haven't talked to him since this happened, but I can imagine what a cool thing this is to get at this point in your career. He is, as he said on the pod the other day, he got his first NBA play-by-play announced a gig when he was 21. It's crazy. 40 years ago, he gets to the top of the mountain to call the conference finals. That's fantastic.

that's really, really fantastic. So, I mean, I guess the question is, especially when you do the three-man booth, you're obviously trying to make, you're altering, you're altering the existing unit to, for the, for the big, for the big times. But where does this Levi and Eagle, though, right? Because he would have been the number one, I mean, he would have been the runner up for this job. And, I mean, you know, there's not a long tradition of double play-by-play person booths. But, and yet, he's, you know, the odd person out. in this. You would think he would be the runner out. No? I don't know that he was the runner up. I really don't. It might have been Brian Anderson who's also on Turner, but he should have been the runner up. If you tell me Kevin Harlan and I and Eagle are 1A, 1B in some order, I'm happy with that. Absolutely happy with that. Because they're, they almost are a really good counterparts for play by play. Eagle.

East Coast guy. Harlan Midwest guy. Eagle, very meta kind of humor, the puns, the way he thinks about comedy during a game. Harlan, much more populist, would you say? Yeah. A little bit of that popular style can still come out of nowhere with a joke, but they just function very different. They're very, very different.

Yeah. And somebody's preference to be. But to me, those are far in a way the two best guys there. And with Breen, the three best guys. best guys calling NBA basketball play by play. Yeah, agree. The end. And so if it was anything different, the one thing I took Salas in from Turner is they are deciding this year to year. It's not like we do in football where it's pretty much a permanent number one team until something happened. So next year, they're going to go back and say, well, let's decide who gets to do the

All-Star game and gets to do the conference finals. Is this going to be like the old football conversation where it's like if you don't have a start, if you have two starting quarterbacks, you don't have any starting quarterbacks? I think it's okay with announcing, right? I think we'll forget. Is it, are they leaving, open the option to just yank Harlan at halftime

and put I and Eagle in the game? You see him in the, you see him sitting in the stands oddly? I think we're going to give, I think we're going to give Harlan the full conference finals. But now I kind of want to, you know, let them trade off. I think that'd be good contrast to styles.

Like I said, I just want to make sure that's the case. David, let's 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 Pressbox pod where they are always, always gratefully received. Today's entry, David, comes from Brandon James Anderson. He directs us to this morning scoop from Adrian Woznarowski. According to Woja's sources, Denver Nugget star Nikola Yokic has been voted MVP for a seat. second consecutive season. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write.

Juell and Bede can still win MVP if Mike Pence does the right thing. Love that. You mused about a legitimate use of executive power. Congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, the notebook dump, David. Let us talk about the Supreme Court scoop. This was last Monday night.

It lit up the old text between Curtis and Shoemaker. Politico published a giant. and very unusual scoop. Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward reported that, quote, the Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by Politico. As Gerstein and Ward write, no draft decision in the modern history of the court

has been disclosed publicly while a case was still. pending. They said they got the draft opinion from, quote, a person familiar with the court's proceeding. How long do you think that particular moniker was workshopped inside Politico headquarters? Yeah. There's a lot of, yeah, a lot of odd parsing of words in this one throughout the media. What was your initial reaction to the journalism part of the story? Oh, man, this is a big question. Okay. One, I mean, obviously, a lot of people were pointing at the New York Times.

That was the first place that I looked, the first place I had a big reaction to, and we talked about it some. But that the story was immediately framed as a journalism story. You know, this is one of the most consequential political and social stories of our lifetimes. And it was being, and if you looked at New York Times. dot com, you would have thought it was a story about the ethics of a leak or the mechanics of a leak or, you know, something like, I mean, it was not, the subject was sort of secondary to, to the journalistic aspect to it. I mean, just front and center. I mean, so. And can I ask a question about that real quick? Yeah. Was that just because everyone was caught so flat-footed

in the moment by the story? that we're relying on Politico's scoop at this point. Yeah. Because you know, like most of the time when we have a big political scoop, it's something that let's say in six months, somebody says Donald Trump is going to run for president again in 2024, per my sources. Sure.

20 seconds later, another reporter says, I can confirm that Donald Trump is running for president, Maggie Haberman had it first. That's how it usually works. This was like, whoa, what? Yeah. And they have the 98-page draft opinion.

Mm-hmm. It was almost as if all of America's news organizations, in addition to shitting major bricks on Monday, and you know that was happening. Mm-hmm. We're just saying, what is this? And trying to get their minds around it. So they started thinking about, you know, they were,

and also, by the way, we're just aggregating a Politico story. Sure. And I looked at the New York Times website on my night. It was not confirmed by their own. by their own sources. So they're saying Politico says this, and we almost have to keep the distancing. Well, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of conversations that we had, and we've had it a million times about, you know, what a journalist's responsibility and when it comes to breaking news in the internet era, right? But I think it's totally fine just to have like a brief aggregation of the Politico story with Politico says. And then, you know, a note that we'll be updating this page or, you know, what I mean?

Because that's, you have to have the headline. and something that follows. But in the meantime, I think people will be slightly understanding. I mean, you do have to go through a lot of information to really write a comprehensive piece about it, but it doesn't need to be the piece about,

you know, about how the piece, how the sausage was made, right? I mean, for one thing, and we don't need to get two in the weeds, but, you know, there's a, a lot of people were passing around this Twitter thread by Jonathan Peters,

who's a University of Georgia law professor about all the things. times when there have been functionally been leaks from the Supreme Court dating back to like the founding of our nation. And you have to, reading that, you realize you have to slice it, slice the definition pretty thinly to, to say that this was, you know, a one-of, you know, one-of-one sort of situation. There was also, I mean, if you want to get into the journalism of it, there's also pretty compelling evidence that the Wall Street Journal editorial board also had a copy of this decision a week before it was leaked by Politico, right? I mean, they were, there was an op-ed for,

or there was a piece from the editors that, in retrospect, looks pretty knowing if they weren't actually in the loop on any of this, right? Talking about, I mean, actually addressing the, you know, the, the different, the factions and the writers of the, the writer, you know, whatever. I mean, they seem to know what was going on. And if you take it at face value that that happened, and I'm not saying it necessarily did, but, you know, you can look back and you can trace that back. to previous opeds and places like the journal and the National Review and stuff like that that seemed to have the same amount of foreknowledge of what might just happen as a way of sort of working the refs, you know, I mean, just like writing these things. So, you know, whether or not it was just a one-of-a-kind league, I don't think that

really matters particularly. But I do think that it's, you know, I think that the more important, I mean, the more interesting stories, not just, is that, is that a company, a, a, an institution like New York Times could be blinded to the sort of significance of it right off the bat because they're so sort of preoccupied with that piece of it. Of course, the other side of that coin is the sort of Fox News perspective, which is that they're entirely focused on

on pre-demonizing whatever presumed liberal it was that leaked this. Like basically just like warming up the shackles to like, you know, March whoever did it off to Gitmo. Like it's, it's, and obviously it's like they don't, you know, there have been a lot of guesses A lot of theorizing about who might have done this in either direction. And I think that, you know, for whatever it's worth,

I think the arguments of a conservative person doing it are pretty compelling, you know, at least as compelling as the idea of a liberal doing it. But I don't think that's really the calculus. I think for Fox, it's finding the angle about which to be outraged, you know, and sort of progressing from there. Or changing the politics, you know. And changing it away from being about politics. Is that what you mean?

Yeah. Well, like, the politics might be dicey here. Yeah. When we know this, it's not just Fox, it's elected Republicans. We don't want to talk about the politics of what this would do, because that might be bad for us, or at least uncertain for us. We want to talk about the evil media and the moles inside the Supreme Court who are leaking this decision. Yeah, I mean, it is an interesting conversation, and I could probably do a whole hour on competing theories, but I guess just the basic, the broad strokes or that, you know, a liberal person would have done it, be it a clerk or whoever else had access to it. person would have done it to

create the outrage that might lead to conservative justice changing their mind, you know, and going back on the idea, on their decision to help overturn Roe. The other side would be that these decisions, I mean, these, you know,

this wasn't a final alignment, right? These sort of like draft decisions are written. We don't know what the final decisions the judges would have made, the justice would have made, but have been. But what, but if you're a conservative,

you leak it to lock them in, right? It's like, it's one thing, if you're Neil Gorsuch to be part of, you know, to be worried about the outrage from liberals or just the masses in general that you were part of doing this. Now you risk being even more of a pariah to your own, well, constituencies not the right word. They're not elected, but you know what I mean, to the conservative side for being seen to switch sides, right? To be. We had this locked up. To be a, to be a suitor or whatever.

And then you went wobbly in the two months between the draft leaking and the, opinion actually being handed down. Yeah. And there's also a much more sort of baseline piece of why would a Republican or a conservative person leak it, which is to sort of like, you actually sort of blunt the outrage, right? Rather than there be a straight up, you know, march on Washington on the day the decision comes down. Now it's like we get to spread this out over four months, you know, this sort of in the

outrage. And then when it actually happens, it'll be less of a big deal. You know, that's a little bit of game theory that I'm not quite sure I buy into, I mean, whoever did it, it was obviously a very personal decision. I don't know if it was like a hero complex on either side or what, but there was, I mean, it is unusual enough that there had to be a lot of factors involved, right? But I do think that the one thing that nobody was really talking about on day one, that I think that's going to be, that's going to end up being probably the more active result of all of this.

I mean, we'll see. I guess it's wishful thinking on my part. But the thing that no one was expecting was that like all these Republican legislatures were going to immediately, like, preemptively pass. laws that are so far beyond the pale of any rational argument that the Supreme Court would have made in favor of striking down a row, right? I mean, like the performatively level-headed argument is, we'll leave it to the states to decide, and they will reflect the will of the people, and everything will be fine, right? I mean, that's what they would have at least pretended to argue.

And then all these, you know, Republican legislatures are trying to pass, like, no abortion under any circumstances, bills, so they'll have them on the books the moment that the Supreme Court verdict comes out. And it might actually, it wouldn't shock me if that, if that actually affected the way that the verdict actually came down. Because you can't say, you can't just do this little hand wave, like Roe versus Wade was, was decided incorrectly, but this is really not that big of a deal, you know, which is what, again, they would presumably be trying to put it to get across when everybody sees that

what's waiting is a catastrophe. So, I mean, it's, it's. it's a sad, sad state of affairs. And I really am, I struggle to see any positive way forward, even if that were to happen. My old boss and spiritual advisor Jack Schaefer, also of Politico, tackled the question of, so why isn't the Supreme Court covered like this more often? That's a good question. He says the court, has long occupied a sacred and mythic place in the national consciousness, a place that the court itself has cultivated. Although the justices are political appointees, the court pretends to

rise above politics. It conducts its work under a veil and depends on the press to fetishize the mysteries of the temple. All true. Schaefer continues, would Congress scream murder if one of its bills under consideration leaked to the press? Of course not. Its draft legislation gets aired all the time. dot, dot, dot. The court has long feared that if a nation knew how its decisions come together, if its members dared to wear human faces, if it appeared as anything but a sacred tribunal, its decisions would carry less weight. It's that easy to lose the mystique built up for centuries. The Politico piece reveals a court decision in process as a purely political document that aligns five conservatives against the court's liberals and presumably the chief justice.

That accurate portrayal might take decades for the court's myth makers, to erase. Well, I'm not sure that it's possible, regardless of how this comes down. I mean, I think there's a million different factors that go into it, but clearly the mythology of the Supreme Court has been taking his left and right for the past 15 years longer, I guess. Like a lot of other institutions in America, to be fair. But it's a bit, but it's been politicized, and I don't mean that. I don't, I don't, I'm not even taking a side when I say this, but, you know, the degree to which confirmation hearings have become political showpieces for politicians on both sides.

And, you know, I don't think it's a bad thing. I think I think Jack's right on the money. But I do think that if, like, everybody's vested interest or in maintaining this sort of mythical, you know, Mount Olympus stature of the Supreme Court, they could have, they've done a million, I mean, a million things to make that impossible or implausible. Once you make it, once you make anybody's confirmation

into a political situation, then it's sort of like, brings it down to the, to the mortal dirt, you know, and that's not, it's, it's, it's, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's just never, it can't be treated any, I mean, if, listen, you can either have, you can either have, you know, the smoke coming out of the chimney and God elects a new pope, or you can just, you know, just like have the ballots out there for everybody to see on national television, you know, you know, there's really not a lot of room in between and, and, and, and clearly the choice has been, I mean, made over and over again to, to, to show us. the ballots, you know? I mean, and that's to say nothing of the fact that how many stories and books have been written over the past couple of decades about the conservative project to get to this point, you know? I mean, it's, it's been, this has been part of our conversation for a long time. So it's not, it's, it's, it can't be, it can't be, regardless of the verdict, it can't be seen as some sort of, you know, otherworldly magical decision from, you know, the America's founders speaking from the grave.

One more item before we end here. Brett Anthony Collette, longtime listener to this podcast, asks an important question for Shoemaker and I. Can I get a ruling on how many colones can be used in a book title? Oh, Jesus Christ. You really want to get me more worked up after that last segment?

He points to a book from 2020. Oh, good. That was called The Office, colon. the untold story of the greatest sitcom of the 2000s, colon, an oral history. Oh my God. Yeah. The answer is one.

How many colon is the answer is one, and it's the one that separates the title from the subtitle. This is not complicated math, right? There are exceptions to the rule, but they will be exceptions that prove the rule, just like anything else. you can now listen

you can definitely work in an MDASH into the subtitle you know you can and there I guess I will make exceptions for

technically I mean for for first I guess if there are like copy editor decision colones that go in the end obviously anything

that's built into some weird syntax that works but no you can't have sub sub sub sub subtitles you can't just keep you can't do that and if you

and it's the same thing as when I used to do book covers and this is why I'm obviously persnickety about it. But if you can't figure out how to title your book with a title and a subtitle and only one colon, then you might not know what the book's about. And if you don't know what the book's about,

you might not shouldn't publish it. So it's a, you know, I understand how you get in these situations. This stuff happens all the time. There's 50 competing voices. You find, you go through, so what feels like a hundred heartbreaking meetings trying to get the title and the subtitle just right. And then your Barnes & Noble buyer comes in and they're just like, we're only going to take this if you can work X, Y, and Z into the subtitle. Because otherwise no one's going to buy it.

And then instead of actually like, you can't change the book at that point, so you just start tag, you just start gluing things on. You know, I mean, there's, there are rational reasons as to why this happens. But come on, man. Well, that's the original sin, isn't it? What comes after the first colon? Because we went from a world where you would have book with a cool title and maybe a subtitle to book with a cool title colon, headline rule of three. Something, something and the semicolon that changed the world.

Again, it always overstated. It's always written in exactly the same way. It always takes like a narrative. historical event and tries to make it the singular historical event, whether it's a book about a fish or whatever it is. Like, there's just, that's the original problem here. To me, you might as well take two or three columns after that, because I've already pissed off by the first colon. Yes. And you know why I'm really pissed off is because when people write about the book, they have to do the whole title every time. It's just called, no, the book is just called this.

Yes. This is a subtitle. This is just extra. And as you say, Especially for Barnes & Noble. The subtitle is now intrinsically linked to the part of the book. By the way, there is a third category in book publishing. It's called a reading line. If there are words on the cover that are separate from the subtitle, if you're just like, if you see a book. If you pick up a book and it's just like, it's just like, you know, whatever. The year of 1792.

Yeah. Or if it's just like the bestselling book from the writer of whatever or something that's even more that explains the book. you know if there's a title and a subtitle and then they just throw on another thing that's functionally like an ad sticker that's just like the ABCs of the office or something like that like there there can be a separate category called a reading line they can really be whatever you want and the only distinction is that doesn't show up in like a search you know when you're like trying to locate the book in the bookstore it's just a separate piece of copy um but yeah I mean it's I think I think that I mean listen I wish it was just a title do we do we need the subtitle? I guess for nonfiction, you often need the subtitle, yeah. But I'm suddenly pro reading line, because that reminds me of a movie poster, two best friends, one, you know, one world war. Right. Then you just, but it's just, it's a setup. Don't even get me started on the movie post. That's my, that's my biggest pet peeve and all of book publishing is that, like, people make fun of movie posters when it's just like, where they have weird clipped quotes that don't really reflect their review or that it's just like from the people that brought you the office. but really it's just like a dude who worked in catering at the office.

Book publishing needs to do more of that. That's as funny as that is in some TV and movie stuff. Book publishing is just too proud and fancy to do any of it. The guy who edited the Da Vinci Code 20 years ago, his next book was the biggest thing inside of publishing that we had seen in forever. The next book that editor had chosen. And when it came out, there were stacks to the ceiling

in every Barnes & Noble and nobody bought it because nobody knew it had anything to do with it. Da Vinci Code, right? How did you not put from the editor of the Da Vinci Code on the front of that book? You know, it's crazy the way book publishing works. Can you imagine what David and I are like at a bar? Are we not at a bar right now? It's time for David Shoemaker guesses a strain pun headline. All right. Thursday's headline about a school district that no longer gives failing grades was no F's given. Today's headline comes from listener, Nice guy, Eamon.

It's from the Irish Sun. Amazing story from Ukraine, David. Bono and the Edge, of course, from U2, played a surprise concert in a subway in Kiev, one of those subways that is functioning as a bomb shelter right now. So we've got Bono, we've got the Edge. During war in Ukraine, I'm going to ask you to think of U2 album titles. What was the Irish sun's strained pun headline? The Joshua Tree, Rattling, huh?

Is it a rattling hum one? Keep going. You get the list in front of you? No. Here, maybe I should. That's why I'm at Joshua Tree. This is obviously my, I'm stuck in my youth. Yeah, we're going to move forward in time here.

What was the first one? Oh, it's not Ark Tongue Baby. That would be a good one. Okay, let me look. More recent. Songs of Innocence, had a dismantle an atomic bomb. I'm reading now. All that you can't leave behind. Here we go. All that you, all that you, what in the world? What city are we in? All that you can't keve behind?

All that you can't keve behind. Oh my God. That's so. I'm also advised that the Irish mirror use the headline battle and hum. See, that's good. See, that, that, that I told, I, I will co-sign that one. We were spreading around the YouTube puns. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Production Magic by Erica Servantes. I'm coming up later in the week, David, with a surprise guest. Should we let people try to guess the surprise guest? Yes. Okay, here's the rules. DMs only. No Twitter replies. I only accept DMs.

Anybody guesses it. First person to guess it gets a book from the Alex Trebekat's date. Whoa. For me and David Schumann. That's big. Plus, David Arbeck Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.