The Press Box - NBA “New” Media, Beat Writers’ Fandom, and Steph Curry Sounds Off

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Bryan and David break down the era of the NBA’s “new” media that include media figures such as JJ Redick and Draymond Green (4:19). Later, they weigh in on beat writers displaying their fandom, Steph Curry "sounding off" for former teammate Juan Toscano-Anderson, and Brian Windhorst’s soliloquy on ‘First Take’ that left us speechless (29:29). 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

From the host that brought you to Coding Westworld. And Westworld, the recapables. Comes the Ringer Prestige TV podcast on Westworld. I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Danny Heifitz. And I'm David Shoemaker. Welcome to Westworld Season 4 in the Prestige TV podcast feed, where we're going to break down every episode of Westworld season four.

Every Monday, the day after the show comes out on the Prestige TV podcast feed. Wherever we get your podcast, but get them on Spotify. David, I was at Target the other day. Oh, of course you were. What did you find there? Well, I was in the book section of Target. Oh, it was a nice place to buy a book.

And I found a number of memoirs written by former Donald Trump officials. Oh, yeah, of course. And it struck me that this is an interesting exercise. Because on the one hand, if you were a former Donald Trump official, you want to get the Trump audience to buy your memoir, but you probably also, if you had any kind of moment of conscience, a moment where you said absolutely not, we will not do this, you want the liberal audience to buy your memoir.

One or the other, perhaps even both. You have to thread the needle there, yeah. Thread the needle. And I determined that this was the case because I looked at the title. of these memoirs, which were wonderfully vague or stoic in an attempt to attract the biggest possible audience. Would you like to hear the title of some former Trump administration official memoirs? Yes, please. Let's begin with Kelly Ann Conway. You all remember Kelly Ann Conway. Her memoir is titled, Here's the Deal.

Okay. That could be, that could go either way, right? Look, here's the deal. Here's the way things really were. Could serve either audience. Here's another one from Mark Esper. He was the former defense secretary under Donald Trump. A sacred oath.

A sacred oath. Kind of sounds like a Tom Clancy thriller from our childhood. It does. But I think my favorite, was from William P. Barr. You'll remember William P. Barr was the Attorney General. Oh, yeah. Under Donald Trump, had kind of a late in the game,

Liz Cheney-like turnaround during the whole election crisis of 2021. William P. Barr's memoir is titled, One Damn Thing After Another. Am I just imagining that there is no picking of sides in the titles of any of those memoirs? Yeah. Yeah, you know, if you're inclined to read the book as a Trump fan, I guess all those things just sort of get to the, it might draw you in. I don't know. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's tough.

We could have a whole other discussion about do you go with the posed photo for the cover of your administration memoir or do you go with the news photo that you got off Getty images? Oh my gosh, yeah. Because we got William Barr here giving a press conference and kind of pull. pointing his finger. But then we got the Kelly N. Conway obviously has taken a photo for the cover of her memoir. That strikes me as another. And Mark Esper, not even on the cover at all. Just a sacred oath.

Leave it to the reader to imagine what might be in there. Coming up on today's podcast, David, a handful of current and former NBA players have started putting out their own podcast. Challenge TV people informed what some of them call the new media. How will the new media challenge the old media? challenge, the old media. Plus, how should beat writers celebrate the championship of a team they're covering? Steph Curry sounds off and much more on the press box, a part of the Ringer, podcast network.

Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Schumacher, producer Erica Servantes here. David, I had Mark down here to talk to you about the NBA's new media, which was somewhat consecrated, I guess, when the Warriors, Draymond Green said to ESPN Scott Van Pelt, don't just lump me in with media, baby. It's the new media. Now, the first question about the NBA new media is, what is the NBA's new media? I'm glad that we're talking about this. I'm glad that you're going to answer this question.

When I heard you on Bill's podcast talking about this, the first couple of times I heard this, the framing of this conversation, I was so perplexed because I thought we already had new media. I thought you and I were part of a new media. We thought we were the new media. Then you look up one day and you're part of the old. media. God, it's just the circle of life.

I rely a little bit on a really good piece Sean Keely wrote last month for awful announcing, which I recommend everybody read because I agree with a lot of his conclusions there. The new media in the NBA consists of a group of NBA players and former players that includes

Draymond Green certainly, JJ Reddick, C.J. McCollum, after his turn as an analyst during the postseason on ESPN. If we want to Put Pat Beverly's analyst's performance art on this list, I guess we can. I've seen Richard Jefferson identifying with the new media movement of NBA. What these current and former athletes have said is, we have our own podcasts, our own self-created media outlets,

and we're going to use them as an alternative to the NBA media you're used to, by which they seem to mean, we are going to use them as an alternative to Stephen A. Smith. Yeah. Or people like Stephen A who are slinging opinions about NBA players on TV. Sure. NewBedia probably reached its Apex Mountain back in May. When JJ Reddick went after Mad Dog Russo on first take,

here was Reddick talking about Mad Dog's treatment of Draymond Green. A large segment of older fans who have followed the NBA for 60 years who are this is not a political scenario or a race situation who have followed wilt and grew up as a nick fan who loved Clyde and love weed yeah but i i disagree with you on that i don't think i don't i'm not saying it's a race situation i'm saying that this the fans you're talking about they talk about athletes that way like you just talked about an athlete i think there's a lot i think there's a lot the people on fox news talk about athletes that way i mean i'm fox news That's my issue.

I don't actually care about the fans that watched Bob Coozy play or watched Wilt play. I don't care. I appreciate that they've been NBA fans that long, but I don't appreciate the undertone. So, David, what do we make of new media? Oh, well, I think if you define it really, you know, like you just did, if you define it really sort of, you know, explicitly and narrowly, it's these, you know, current and former players who have a, who have their own brands and their own podcasts or whatever outlets, who are also doing work for institutional media like ESPN. But I think that the key thing is to sort of having your own podcast as just one,

you know, the primary example allows you to have a, or at least the appearance of a sort of unvarnished, unbiased voice, right? You're speaking from the heart. You're speaking, you know, you're not responsible to anybody else. And then when you go to, you know, ESPN, you go to, you go to get up to do your stick, you know, it's a continuation of what you're doing on your own, right? But I think, you know, the big thing is that it's a, it's a more, uh, you know, it's a more precise, it's a more on the ground view of the sport. Obviously, it's a different level, a different tier of insiderdom and knowledge and experience. And, you know, I think it's sort of not exactly a protest movement, but it is a sort of statement movement, right?

Like, we can do this as well as you can do this. Well, and it feels, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, go ahead. It feels like it's been building for a while. Mm-hmm. With, we saw the Players Tribune and I didn't interrupt. And now this feels like a very natural outgrowth of the player empowerment era. We have more say in where we play.

We have more say in who our teammates are. And now we have more of a say of how we're talked about on TV or in print and elsewhere. And I will say, at least in the group of people we mentioned, it's really nice to see the sports pundit class, especially the NBA pundit class. get some new faces. Oh, sure. Especially some people that are much closer to the sport, either playing right now or having just left the game like JJ Reddick, because we get into saying Charles Barkley can be wildly entertaining.

But at certain point, everything he says has this tinge of, I used to play and it was this way, and now you guys are playing and it is this way. And it is nice to have the more recent sort of way of playing the game represented in free agency and everything else represented in the way people talk about basketball. So that's cool.

Yeah. I'd also say that I'm sure for a lot of these guys, it's easy for us to say, just ignore what people on cable are saying about you. Just don't even, don't even respond at all. But that's easy to say when people are talking about you all the time on television. Well, they're talking about you all the time on television and those clips are being recycled onto Twitter and Instagram and everywhere else, right?

I mean, and this is, as I think that you guys talked about on Billis' podcast, this is the media that they're exposed to, right? I think we've had other ringer podcast talking about it too, but it's like when they're, if you're a basketball player and your friend or somebody says, oh my God, do you hear what they're saying about you? They're talking about Stephen A. Smith or Skip Bayliss or whoever, right?

it's a pretty narrow, I think, definition of media, although it's lumped in as this sort of broad brush as old media, but they're talking about, yeah, what people are saying about them on TV and specifically on these debate shows. And if you talk to beatwriters in the NBA, they will tell you that all the time, is that these guys, when they think of media,

they often think of, here's what people are saying about me on television. Whereas somebody by, like, hi, I'm covering you for the athletic. I'm not talking about you like that and would just like to talk to you about other things. Yeah. So maybe we can have a different kind of relationship

than you and that person on TV. Sure. I mean, there is a sort of, I don't know if this is a real chicken and the eggs or a thing, but there's also a big part of this, I think that the new media, you know, given that its roots are in podcasts, you talked about people like Richard Jefferson,

like JJ Reddick, regardless of what you think, about the merits, right, of the new versus old, new media is winning the access battle, right? And they have been for a long time, right? Like Richard Jefferson on his podcast, JJ Redick on his podcast, the list goes on, on, had a more impressive guest lineup in any given, you know, three-month span than ESPN has over the course of a year, right? In terms of, like, depth, especially.

And here's Luca. Here's all the big stars of the NBA. And to some extent, I mean, that's part of the platform issue, right? I mean, like, you know, Draymond's not going on T&T and bringing along with him a live one-hour interview or anything like that. But it is, but access is real. And it also, you know, it sort of draws a line. So like the most prominent voices on ESPN and Fox, you know, people like Stephen A. Smith aren't access journalists. or at least they aren't interviewers, right?

I mean, not by and large, they're opinion journalists. And there's a real distinction. You know, that's sort of, if ESPN's losing the access battle, well, they're making up for it by trying to turn it into an opinion battle, trying to turn it into a, you know, a hot take battle. And one could understand why you would want to take exception to that as the norm. Well, and that's a point that Keeley makes an awful announcing piece, which I think is so interesting about this because you're right. You have this whole thing over here, which is like, these are long textured conversations with NBA players about the game with the biggest

names in basketball. But then you have these point where we are going in and we are either on Twitter or actually sitting across from Stephen A going to confront him on first take, confront the TV opinionators. And I think that's an interesting decision to make if you're one of these former players or current players. Because on the one hand, you can just be like, hey, I'm, I'm Dremont and I'm going to record my podcast after a game, give you a longer press conference. I'm J.J. Redick. I'm going to do my interviews.

I'm not even acknowledged that that stuff exists out there. Because as soon to me as you start interacting with the TV people, you become a character in their universe, whether you want to or not. Mm-hmm. Or more of a character in their universe. and again, instead of pushing back on the way, this is the way you are talking about people in the NBA, and this is not, this is not cool, this is not what we want.

To me, you almost get drawn in there a little bit. And it makes it seem more important. I mean, I was thinking about this today, like if Stephen A or anybody, and again, I just keep singling him out, but anybody on TV, we're just talking about an NBA player in a particular way, we've seen this happen.

Is that influential? do people at home start thinking about an NBA player that way or do they just look at the show and go, well, this is just, you know, a talk entertainment show on television and he's got his thing about this particular player.

I mean, I don't really know that it's that influential in the way the public thinks about these guys. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think that's right. And I think that's sort of the point, right? I mean, again, I forgot which of our family of podcasts I was listening to.

I think it was when Van and Woz were on Bill's podcast. But one of them made the point that there's, you know, the players have a feeling. I'm pretty sure this was Van said it. The players have a feeling that when they, that when you see your name being brought up just for show over and over again, skip talking about LeBron or, you know, there's numerous examples. when it feels like that it's just you're a piece of this artificial construct that's just there to get ratings kind of truth be damned, right? It's easy to feel like you're being, that you're being used, right? I mean, your brand is being used, but also you as a person are being used.

And I think that's sort of the point, right? To what you were saying, it doesn't, having my own podcast might not change the public perception of me, but that's partly because the noise coming from the other side is drowning everything else out or sort of setting the terms of engagement. And I think that, again, new media versus old media is really misleading. But if you define it down to, you know, the battle to reclaim our identities in a certain way or the human, you know, or to reclaim our humanity, I mean, it's a really understandable argument. And, and, you know, maybe the quote unquote new media would be better suited to be more specific about that, you know, instead of make, instead of

of like I said before broad brushing it. But, you know, I get it. I get what they're doing. I get it too. I guess my question is in the era where an NBA player has big social media channels, a big following on Instagram, a large segment of people who are fans of theirs who will, as we've seen, come to their defense on Twitter at a moment's notice. Is the guy on cable really that powerful voice? I mean, are they really setting the terms of engagement as you put it and drowning everything else out? I don't know.

I honestly don't know the answer that. It might feel like that because that's just, again, like you said, that clip is the thing that's popping up in your timeline over and over again. That's the thing people are mentioning to you. But with your average sports film, those shows don't, their audiences aren't very big. Yeah, but we've talked about before how it's part of the machine. now, right? That, like, Stephen A. Smith says a thing that just becomes the subject of ESPN for the rest of the day.

And to some extent, those sort of, those whatever, those takes become unavoidable, both on terrestrial television and, you know, on the internet and everything else. I also think that, sure, I mean, they, the players might take them too personally. you might take such things or might internalize them more, I mean, to a outsized degree, but that's human nature. I mean, we would all do that,

you know? Yeah, imagine if they were a Reddit page that was all about all the people at the ringer. I mean, we would just completely tune that out, right? Nobody would read that shit. Everybody that's ever,

like, had a platform of significance on Twitter has, has very quickly come to the conclusion that, you know, when you look at your mentions, like one mean tweet, will drown out whatever uplift you got from the thousand nice tweets that came before it, right? I mean, that's just the way we work.

And, yeah, it's, it's, I, I don't think that, you know, the, I mean, let's just say this. The platform of Skip Bayless is, is, you know, to the nth degree more significant than one, you know, Twitter egg saying something mean about you. I mean, you're going to, you're, it's going to be meaningful. And, yeah, maybe. Maybe if you didn't react, maybe if you decided to no sell it or whatever, then it would go away. But at the same time, it's, I mean, it's kind of hard to make the case for that. I will gently push back on one thing, which is, and athletes are not unique in this.

But I think a lot of the time they say, look, I'm going to tell you the real story. You're going to hear it directly from me. And therefore, that is the real story. But we know when it's athletes or politicians or any public figure, what you hear directly from them does not necessarily mean it is the quote unquote real story. Even if they are 100% leveling with you, which we know human beings don't always do, we're not hearing the point of view of their teammates, of their coaches, of the opposing players on the floor.

And so I always, I always bristle a little bit. I saw Kareem Abdul-Jabbar do this when winning time came out, for this incredibly nuanced substack piece about, you know, journalists having the right. And at the end, he said, if you want the real story about the Lakers, watch the two docs from Magic Johnson and Jeannie Bus. Now, you're going to forgive me for saying,

I don't think that's going to be the real story of the Lakers is the one that Magic Johnson produce. No. Just because it's Magic Johnson. No. So real is an interesting word or truth or whatever that is. Okay. It's a point of view. To me, it's a really important point of view. Certainly an interesting one. I thought the Draymond thing was wildly

interesting during the finals. That was a really interesting experiment. But I think I always sort of put the brakes on a little bit when we're talking about what is the real story here versus what you're reading, hearing, seeing, etc. Yeah, but think about, I mean, you're right, but think about how much your

you know, memories, your feelings about sports the past is driven by memoirs as opposed to like, you know, academic histories. You know, I mean, certainly there are like, there are there are journalists there are there are books by journalists and by historians that are very significant but like you know uh there are definitely memoirs that stand out as like

the quintessential works of a period of time that the defining works that that are memoirs that are wholly subjective and there's a deeper there's just a different sort of truth involved in those you know I mean, the other thing besides the access battle, when you look at all these player podcasts that they're winning is they're winning the war of anecdotes, right? I mean, like all of your favorite stories about, about, you know, the Golden State Warriors probably from the past six months probably came from Draymond Green's secondhand account.

You know? I mean, it's not going to be the things that people get into scrum anymore. And that's, those are those are the stories that used to sort of like, I think have a bigger force in driving our narratives, driving our perception of players and teams and stuff like that. And now we get all that stuff from, you know, people just like,

and players offhandedly spilling dirt to JJ or whoever on a podcast. I do think there are limits to this. And the limit is that there aren't going to be that many, especially current athletes who really want to do this full time, who want to put the muscle into doing one of it. It's like, it's one thing that's like, I'm going to occasionally tweet.

it's another thing of like i'm going to really put out podcast video thing whatever it is regularly enough that it will become like something that can be used as a second screen yeah well that you know what's the old saying about writing a book it's like for every million people that say they're going to write a book only one starts and for every million people that start writing a book only one finishes or whatever i mean that it's working at the ringer i could reel off off the top of my head 10 or 12 names of professional athletes that we have been in discussions with for starting a podcast

that never came to fruition. And you can look down, not to ring or specific, but just look through the past five years of athlete podcasts, the ones that didn't last very long or didn't, you know, didn't, I mean, some of it's pretty straightforward.

So it was like, I ran through my contact list, I ran through the Rolodex and now, like, what are, yeah, I guess I'm going to take a two-year break or something. And some of them are more just, like what you're saying. It's like it takes a lot of sort of drive and constitution,

to do something that's going to pay you a fraction of what, you know, playing a couple of games of basketball will pay you. And you're right. I mean, it's the pieces of the new media that will stand the test of time are sort of impossible to predict, but presumably it's going to be a few, just a fraction of the whole. All right, David, time for the overwork 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. This week we considered tweets about USC and UCLA leaving for the Big Ten that were combined with Kevin Durant wanting to leave the Nets. A lot of those jokes out in the world. But this week's runaway winner, David,

any tweet parody Brian Winhorst soliloquy about the Utah Jazz? Can we hear just a small bit of Brian Winhorst freestyling about what the Utah Jazz were up to in NBA free agency. Defensive shooter to Brooklyn for our future first round draft pick. And so you're going, well, what do you care about Royce O'Meal?

Why does that matter? Why would the Jazz do that? Why would the Jazz, who have two stars on their roster, take a player who's one of their starters and best defensive players, and trade him in a salary dumping move? Why would they do that? To open up space to try to land Kevin? No.

Part of a three-team trade. You say, why did Quinn Snyder walk away from that shot? Okay. Plus the hand gestures, which have already been immortalized on Twitter. Did you get the feeling of like a mystery novel where it's the last chapter and the detective is solving the case out loud? but it's kind of an old school one, like Hercule Poirot. Yeah, and like the great Poirot tales,

you might have figured out the answer by the end, although, Christi, it's usually, you know, it's usually several degrees away from having, you know, you're not entirely there. There's always like 15 more moving parts, but a lot of those old mysteries, you figured it out, but if it's a well-written piece,

when the detective starts putting it together, you doubt everything that you doubt all your presumptions, right? As the as the breakdown unfolds, you're just like, is this so much bigger than I thought it was? Is this so much more mind-blowing than I thought it was? And then you have to like check hoops hype two days later to find out that like, no, he was just implying that the Butler did it. You know? But yeah, I mean, what a, what a performance.

What a performance. I mean, I don't. don't know what the, I know a lot of people made a lot of jokes comparing it to other things. I don't know what the president would possibly be, what the comparison would possibly be on ESPN. I mean, there's certainly like, you know, news talk people that could just take a nugget and just drag it out for 45 minutes and you're just like on the edge of your seat because about on some subject you hadn't thought about previously. But man, what a performance that was. And by the way, we need more.

that. I want more of my talk sports segments to end with just an open question and stunned silence. A friend Kirkke Beto points out that it really was the classic, I'm not reporting this

but. It was a drawn out version of those early Woj draft tweets where he had to say a thing besides, you know, the Hornets are picking lamello ball. You know, it'd have to be like the Hornets of you know, have

lasered in on. Yeah, have warmth in their heart for the for the lamello ball. Yeah, it was like, it was it was artistry in avoiding saying a thing that he felt her new to be true. And by the way, the best

one of the cool things about it was just people like, now like going back through the recent Windhorse archives about some of the other predictions he'd made offhandedly or sort of surreptitiously that bore, that turned out to be true, uh,

or correct, I guess. Um, yeah, there, to, to, to, to,

to have like a five minute spiel where you are not reporting, reporting, not reporting and having everybody on the edge of their seats is just, wow. I did not know that he had it in him. That is incredible stuff.

Riscilla pointed out, I think it was on Bill's pod that a very interesting feature this was, this was on first take. And somehow, Stephen A. Smith was not in on first take during NBA free agency, which you figure would not be the vacation week. And in fact, if you notice, he got hustled onto television when Kevin Durant announced that he wanted to be traded and he was wearing what looked like a flannel shirt.

Now we've got to get Stephen A out of the, he's in a cabin in the woods. We've got to get him out here. We've got to get him to talk about Kevin Durant. So Winhorse just had this He had all the room in the world He needed to just go with that And you point out like It had you doubting everything you think The other people on set did not know where it was going

Like you mean Kevin Durant's going to Utah? No Yes The few times with the other people They tried to answer the question You know as it's just like Why do you think they would do And there was a silence

And they would just be like Oh do you mean Kevin Durant's to you and like no no you know it was just sort of it kept circling it kept like the the circle got wider and wider i don't know it was it was just great tv two more quick ones for you david before we get out of here today um one is we like to talk about david win celebrities give an interview and the person who got the interview in them always said never says i talked to them they say that the celebrity opened up they come up with a word well this is listener eric uh sent an a headline from something called Canada News, which reads,

Steph Curry sounds off on former teammates signing with Lakers. He sounds off. Now, Steph Curry doesn't seem like someone who's going to sound off in the sense of being mad at a former teammate for signing elsewhere, especially a teammate that probably wasn't exactly welcomed back in Golden State. And it turns out the teammate was Free Agent Ford won. Toscano Anderson. And here was

Steph Curry sounding off. Always a champ and always doing it for Oakland. Good luck, my guy, Juan T. Sounding off. I absolutely love it. We also had a very funny moment from the AP this weekend.

The hot dog eating contest was yesterday. Always gets a good run on Twitter. This came across from the Twitter account AP Entertainment a couple of days ago. The AP has deleted a tweet about Nathan's hot dog eating contest. The video was deleted because it did not meet editorial standards. But as far as I could tell, and if a listener has the answer, please send it to me.

I could not tell what the video was and why it did not meet AP editorial standards. I read so many comment threads trying to figure out what the original was and was moment Duped by so many gag tweets, you know, that people were throwing in there. I have no idea either. But it's just like nobody, clearly nobody cared enough to notice it in real time. So the, but it just made the story so much bigger. Like, there is definitely going to be a piece about that tweet. There's going to be an oral history of the tweet that no one saw or look back at it or something

because people are hungry, no pun intended, to know what happened there. there's a whole history of AP deleted tweets this was the absolute best it came last year and this is the tweet it's from AP planner which helps news organizations plan their upcoming coverage AP planner quote tomorrow 20th anniversary of Nickelback releasing album

Silver Side Up you want to guess why that was deleted why it was also the 20th anniversary of 9-11 Oh my God. Yeah. So AP decided maybe we shouldn't be highlighting the 20th anniversary of the Nickelback album. Billy did the tweet.

One last one for you, David. Oh, it's so bad. The Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup last Sunday. And Mike Chambers, who covers the team for the Denver Post, tweeted a photo of himself with a cigar in his mouth, holding the Stanley Cup over his head. his head. He tweeted probably the most memorable experience of my career hashtag

Stanley Cup. What do we think about beat writers celebrating with the Stanley Cup after the team they're covering wins? I mean, I think my formal answer is just like as a wrestling writer, I'm totally into it. I think that's your victory lap.

You would be holding up the belt backstage if the wrestler you had been covering had won the title that night. You see no no issue with that at all. Well, yes, listen, I can see an issue with seeming to be biased to that degree, I guess, if you wanted to take exception to that, although I'm not sure that I would really,

I would really be upset if I saw a sports journalist doing that. If it's an issue of bias, okay. But if it's an issue of fandom, if someone was just like, hey, like, you know, David, get in the ring and grab the belt, we'll take pictures of you to send home. I'd be just like, yeah, heck yeah. I get to pretend I'm the champion.

I get to be part of the celebration. You only get to hoist the Stanley Cup when you're out there as part of the victory parade, right? Just take you as a lifelong hockey fan, wouldn't you want to see what that felt like? You hit on exactly the questions I wanted to ask you, which is, okay, are we mad at this guy for taking the picture of him holding the Stanley Cup, holding the Stanley Cup above his head, or are we mad at him tweeting out the picture of him holding the Stanley Cup? because there's probably a difference, right, between, hey, get over there and hold it up, me, take a picture,

and I send it to my buddies from college and my mom and my dad, versus posting it on Twitter and I am celebrating with the Stanley Cup. There is a difference. Again, I'm not sure that it really bothers me one way or the other. But, ooh, I mean, yeah, there's a distinction there. I mean, why not? I just people live on Twitter to such a degree that is there really a setting aside journalistic newsroom bylaws. To most human beings, is there a difference between like sending a photo to a group chat and putting it on Twitter?

I mean, most people use what social media is for and disseminate pictures of yourself and your kids and stuff. Here's the thing about this. I would not do this personally. Well, you don't like hockey that much. No, and I don't know what the equivalent would be. Like I'm holding up Kirk Herb Street Sports Emmy over my head. Yeah, we did it. I wouldn't do something like this.

But you know me, I always, I hate when somebody says, well, this is a really bad look. Because I'm always like, no, you're saying bad look, but it sounds like you're just avoiding saying whether it's bad or not. And in the case of this guy, surely what's important is whether his hockey coverage in the Denver Post is fair, smart. level-headed, appropriately skeptical, holds a team to account when they need to be held to account. And when I see a lot of national people dinging this tweet, I'm like, have you read this guy's coverage?

Yeah. Because it's one thing to say, hey, this guy did a bad job on the beat, and now this culminates with him holding up the Stanley Cup and celebrate. Oh, yeah. He was such a homer. He gave,

you know, he was, he was, you know, so in the bag for this team, that they're rewarding him by giving him this opportunity. he's basically state-run media. But that would be the argument.

Right. But I sort of doubt anybody, at least the people I saw, have read much of his coverage of any of his coverage. So then I get to thinking, well, we've kind of decided as a collectively as a sports media that it's okay to be a fan. But do we draw a line between it's okay for Bill to be a fan of the Celtics, I mean of times to be a fan of the Seahawks. But if you're the beat writer covering the team, that's where the line is drawn. and you don't get to be a fan if you're in that position, even if your journalism is fair, hard-headed, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, that is a really interesting question. I think to what we've seen time and time again is that being a beat writer kind of, you know, hammers the fan out of you, right? I mean, the more time that you spend on a certain team, on a certain beat, even on a certain subject more broadly, the less of a sort of traditional fan, or, you know, the less, it's harder to be just a homer

in the way you were before you started the job. But yeah, I mean, I think I wouldn't be, I wouldn't, I don't think I'd be like a gas if somebody decided to defiantly draw the line there. That is a place to draw the line, right? I mean, it's, it's a, it's pretty, you know, Bill can be a Celtics fan kind of covering sports in a national way in the same way that like, you know, you wouldn't be mad if like your, your nightly news anchor was a Celtics fan or something like that. But, um, a vocal of Celtics fan. But yeah, I mean, it's, it does seem a little bit arbitrary though. So what if you get, like if you're, if you're the beat writer for the avalanche or something like that and then you just get promoted, you know, then you get a new job where you're like covering national sports. You're like to reclaim your fandom at that point. You're allowed to like open up about being a fan of the team.

Like it's, you can have a big article. Brian Curtis comes clean. Brian Curtis opens up about Cowboys fandom that I was a fan all along or I just suppressed it. That's what's so arbitrary to me about this. Yeah. I think my knee-jerk reaction here is to say, I wouldn't do this.

And I don't think I would do something like this. I don't believe in that kind of stuff. But when I actually have to explain, and by the way, I believe Mike Chambers does not think of himself as a fan. I think he said, look, it was just a moment. We put it up. I held up the thing, whatever.

You can look at my journalist. I'm not imputing anything to him. But I'm just saying, when I have to explain why you shouldn't do that, I don't know that I have a great explanation, other than this bad look appearance appearance of impropriety thing, which to me is not much of an explanation for anything. I'm going to be honest.

I just find it hard to imagine that anybody, and I'll make this about you only because you're the one I'm talking to, I find it hard to imagine that if you were writing a piece about the Dallas Cowboys and they're marched to the Super Bowl next season and you find yourself in the locker room after the win, and Dak Prescott shakes up a bottle of champagne and hands it to you and says, take a, take a shot with it, Curtis, and just like, as there's spraying champagne on everybody,

I find it hard to imagine that you or any other human being would be just like, that would be inappropriate here. I'm just going to put this bottle of champagne on the ground. I actually don't think I would do that. And the reason I wouldn't do it is, yeah, I would be embarrassed, and I feel like it's not, I didn't win. It's like the reason I don't call teams we, it's not such a moral thing.

It's like, I'm just not a member of the Cowboys. I didn't do it. I'm excited when the Cowboys win. It's awesome, but it's not me. I didn't throw any touchdown passes. So I don't think I would do that. No. I think it would be tempting, but I don't think I would do that. All right, it's time for David Schubaker guesses the strain pun headline. All right, let's do it. Thursday's headline about Charlie Rose's ill-fated comeback attempt was, will the world accept this rose? Today's headline comes from peeky blenders. It's a tweet, but it's a great one, David. The Minnesota

Timberwolves made a big bet in trading multiple first round picks and five players to the Utah jazz for big man Rudy Gobert. Big swing. Big bet on Rudy Gobert. What was the athletic strain pun tweet? I definitely have this. Is it Go Bear or go home? I gave you too many heads, didn't I? Yeah. It was something about the big swing. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I got it. somebody on that Reddit page we never read, say, I'm convinced Shoemaker sees the headlines before he guesses him. David never sees the headlines. No.

David gets a few hints because this is really hard to guess. Yeah, yeah. I would actually be too ashamed of Brian doesn't give him to me at a time, and I would be too afraid of him like noticing if it looked like I might be typing something during one of these sessions. Well, even if I was like trying to remember a word in my server, I would be too embarrassed of him seeing that and thinking less of me and holding it inside. That's like Dak Prescott handing in the champagne.

Oh, I would take that champagne bottle in a second. He is David Chewmaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes coming later this week of the podcast. A very cool interview with Larry Merchant. I've been wanting to do a great sports writer series here on the press box. I kind of want to call it the back page. See, quote unquote, real news goes on the front page, but on a tabloid,

sports news goes on the back page. And Larry Merchett seemed like the best way to start it. He is known to a generation as a boxing commentator on HBO for going toe to toe to with Floyd Mayweather back in 2012. But before that, he was an absolutely fantastic sports columnist at the New York Post. And before that, at the Philadelphia Daily News, where he hired one of the greatest sports staffs of all time. So coming later this week, a conversation with Larry Merchant.