The Press Box - Ousting Scott Pruitt, the Return of the Soccer Trolls, and the NBA vs. the NFL | The Press Box (Ep. 493)

Episode Date: July 10, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker link up to analyze the media's role in the recent resignation of Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator (02:00), the return of World Cup criticism in America (21:00), and the popularity of the NBA compared with the NFL's (31:30). Hosted by: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Produced by: Jim Cunningham Brought to you by: The Ringer Podcast Network Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, last week Donald Trump defended his practice of randomly capitalizing certain words in his tweets, insisting that he doesn't quote only for emphasis, not because he thinks those words should actually be capitalized. What I want to know from you is, which words do you think we should randomly capitalize as a matter of our daily lives? Well, I did a little bit of work on this one. I sent a Slack DM. to the ringer copy chief, Craig Gaines, to see if there was anything that he,

any, if he had any opinions on the subject. And he said that his answer is that no extra words should be capitalized. He thinks we're in a perfect state right now and any changes make his head explode. That's not a correct quote from him. That's my point of view. I was going to say, he's the one who always takes it down a notch when I try to capitalize words like truth or literature. Those are good suggestions.

You know, I kind of like the early English style of just like capitalizing the subject of a sentence. You know, I think that that helps sort of direct the thought process. But I don't, I can't, there's not a lot of times where I desperately want to capitalize something that I don't get to. You know, I feel like, I feel like I can force most of them through. What about you? Well, we need, we definitely need more ringer stories where the narrator or the hero, is capitalized. I think that'd give it a little bit of an old world charm. But yeah, I guess the one that always gets me now is the word internet, which I don't think we're supposed to capitalize

anymore. But I'm old enough to remember, as they say, when we started out in journalism, when internet was a capital, was capitalized. Now it just seems very odd and old fashion, doesn't it? Speaking of being a writer and then odd and old fashion, what about this reporter? Do you ever refer to yourself in print? I never have it. I'm not going to start today. We are middling with the capital M. This is the press box and part of the

Ringer podcast network. The press box is the media podcast. We are not allowed to claim that Scott Pruitt was railroaded by the media. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer. Your Ringer syllabus this week, check out David Hill's piece on cockfighting and the Immigrations and

Customs Enforcement Agency. Just trust me on that one. Also, Alan Siegel's oral history of the movie, Stepbrothers, and all our coverage from Summer League and Las Vegas, starting with the BS podcast and trickling on down from there. But David, I've got three topics for you today. First, the media and its role in the ouster of said disgraced EPA chief, Scott Pruitt. Second, while the World Cup semis plays silently on TVs next to us, we'll talk about the

death and possible rebirth of the American soccer troll. And finally, the Twitter sports argument we're having right now for some reason, is the NBA really better than the NFL or is the NFL better than the NBA? Plus, of course, our overworked Twitter joke of the week. But first, David, when Scott Pruitt resigned the last Thursday, he, I know this is going to come as a shock to you as a someone who studies the Trump administration. He blamed the media. He blamed, quote, the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, said they're unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll all of us. But the quote that really stood out to me was Steve Bannon talking to the Washington Post.

He said, Pruitt was strategic in his deconstruction of the administrative state. state at the EPA. He was relatively unique in combining a deep understanding of the issues with the legal jobs to take action. The opposition party in media got a scalp, and it was a big one. So how should we think about the media's role in the ouster of Scott Pruitt? Wow. I mean, I think it's, you know, kudos to all of the reporters and other journalists who stayed on the Scott Pruitt trail for so long, kind of teasing out all. all of the seemingly never-ending list of problems emanating from his domain. It does sort of seem like, I mean, it wasn't like there was one big gotcha that got

him. And I have to think that, you know, even the most ardent Scott Pruitt investigator sort of just, you know, throw up their hands inside when he finally resigned because it didn't seem like, I mean, I guess it was a culmination of all of these little stories. that's the conventional wisdom now, but it almost, I mean, it didn't feel like a great success from a kind of sting journalism point of view for whatever reason, probably because he just held on for so long. I think that's what it was because he just said it wasn't one big gotcha, it was like 50 big gotchas, right? They would have any other cabinet secretary. This was a list, partial list

from Vanity Fair, lived in a lobbyist townhouse for 50 bucks a night, installed in a legal $43,000 phone booth in his office. By the way, credit for bringing back the phone booth, vanished part of American life, spent roughly $3,000 on fancy pens and journals and $1,500 on tactical pants. There's some quotes around tactical pants. Let a foreign agent, a longtime pal,

plan his $100,000 trip to Morocco, et cetera, et cetera, and it goes on from there. But I think you're right. It's the fact that he hung on for so long. We've talked about this with a lot about the Trump administration and a strange political time we find ourselves in. When the old power of the press to shame and people and to cause resignations doesn't work, it weirdly feels like the press isn't working, right? But in this case, it obviously is. And to, as you say, the Scott Pruitt true believers who say, well, the press railroaded this, the press got rid of this guy, they got a scalp.

Well, yeah, they did. That's a good thing, right? It's a good thing when corrupt officials are, you know, exposed and they leave and go away. Yeah, I mean, the level of corruption was just so mind-boggling that I think at some point a lot of the investigations stopped having the impact that they should have. And some of them are just so silly. I mean, mind-boggling in many different, in several different ways, but just like, I mean, the phone booth is almost as comical as it is. devious. Certainly the tactical pants and the, you know, I know that there's good, you know, important reasons why just random government cars shouldn't be using their, you know, their

sirens to buzz through traffic. But that, but it all just seems like such a odd comedy of errors. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's amazing that he hung on this long, going back to your initial point. And, and I think that, you know, it's, it's hard to imagine why exactly. at this moment, it was decided that it was time for him to leave. I mean, there's, you know, word came out. I mean, there was some intimation that Trump had tired of the endless stream of stories coming out of the EPA. It certainly, you know, couldn't have hurt that the deputy Andrew Wheeler was finally confirmed and just in place to, to take over where Pruitt left off. But I just, I just, it sort of just, it beggars belief, you know, I mean, part of me wonders if,

if there's some point where Trump or someone in the White House realized that Pruitt had just become symbolic of the entire administration in some way. The swamp of the swamp that has finally, that has come to the administration. I want to say finally, there was one note in the New York Times to that point of why now, which is that you remember the CNN report we learned about last week where Pruitt had apparently gone to Trump and said, here's the plan. if you fire Jeff Sessions, we can use this little known rule to make me temporarily the attorney general.

Right. And then I will come in and I will fire Robert Mueller and either and or muck up the Russia investigation. Yeah. But here's the kicker. I don't want to be attorney general for very long because I want to go back to Oklahoma and run for office. So you do that part.

And then I promise I'll be gone in like a couple of months and I'll go back to barely Trump. and this is where we get into the meta meta media angle of this. Trump heard those proposals, did not actually object necessarily to those proposals, but the fact that those proposals leaked to the media, according to the New York Times, made him angry. And that was the moment he decided to get rid of Pruitt.

Well, and if it's true, I mean, who knows if it is, but if that whole thing is true, then, yeah, the jig is up, right? I mean, you can't, that sort of, that becomes the reason, I mean, that plan itself becomes the reason for, you know, letting, letting him go. That's the thing about Pruitt is there wasn't just the kind of basic political scandals. One, as you said, some of the scandals were incredibly silly. And I'm really upset at myself that I forgot to add that he enlisted an aide to reach out to the chief executive of Chick-fil-A with the intent, as the New York Times puts it, of helping Mr. Pruitt's wife open a franchise of the restaurant. You know, truly, we have not had a good Chick-fil-A scandal in politics.

And it's been too long, really, in American politics. that there is a sort of weird, there's a sort of weird color to his scandals, which have kept the press and business over these many months. Like, Pruitt went to the Fourth of July party at the White House on Wednesday before his ouster. His ouster came, you know,

he of course resigned in official lingo, but actually, it turns out John Kelly called him and said, time to resign. That was the moment. So there's also this kind of just behind the scenes, haplessness and color, I think that have given this another dimension.

There was a part of this scandal that was interesting, which was upon his resignation, a couple of voices from the right came out in his defense. One was Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal opinion page who said, tweeted this, quote, lesson to other Trump officials from Pruitt resignation,

give the left slash media slash organized greens, meaning environmentalist, in a molehill and they will turn it into K2. Most of the accusations were overwrought, but the barrage was, overwhelming to which Stephen Hayes, who is the editor of the Weekly Standard, responded. The other lesson, be less corrupt. It's true. I mean, I made the point earlier. Some of that, so much of the

corruption was, it had like a comical aspect to it. But there was always, I mean, it seemed like for everything that you, that one might be willing to hand wave away, you know, the stuff about trying to help your wife find a job, you know, just in abstract, that's that, that, that, whether or not that goes against government, you know, government bylaws, that's a, that's a thing that people have encountered in their life, you know, making your assistants pick up your dry cleaning or your, you know, moisturizer. That's, that, that feels less corrupt and more like just being a bad boss, you know, but then there, but then like all of those, all of those seem to just go hand in hand with a more, you know, a more significant form of corruption, whether or not

he was like actually flexing his muscles as EPA chief to get his wife a job or, you know, firing the people that questioned his scheduling. I mean, the, the, you know, he kept the double books for his schedule so that he could, you know, not, so he could keep secret who we met with and then fired the person who questioned it. I mean, that kind of stuff is just, it's really, it's really crazy. And I think over, more than anything else, as much good as he did for the cause, uh, as it were. Um, and that certainly was his, was his, what, you know, his supporters and, and defenders kept saying, you know, he was doing good work for, um, you know, what the, the, the, conservative anti-environmentalist movement.

In a lot of ways, he did more work to subvert it because it just becomes so transparent now that it's an ideology that's sort of based in corruption, right? I mean, if you have to keep your schedule secret as EPA chief because the people that you meet with are going to be so objectionable, if you have to have your phone calls in a private soundproof booth, you know, if you have, it's just, I mean, that, that's, it's sort of, I can't imagine what the ideological defense of this is. Yeah, and let us not forget when we were talking about Kevin Williamson a few weeks ago on the pod, right? One of the great L.O.L. Kevin Williamson pieces in National Review was this piece about Scott Pruitt, right?

But his whole thing was at that point, he's, and I quote a few lines, he's serious about this rule of law stuff. He's the last thing, the left. And by the way, the left is capitalized. No to all ostentatious capitalism. fans. He's the last thing the left expects to see in a Trump appointee principle, right? So the whole thing was that by being so sort of ostentatiously pro industry, it was that he was, it's actually he's really principled, right? He's not, you know, he's not one of these guys who's coming into this cover of, oh, I just have different ideas. He's just, he's all in on this. And he will happily argue with you about why he's all in on this. He's not hiding anything. It's a turns out the rule of law stuff, quote unquote, got in the way.

And by the way, that leads us to one last point, which I thought was interesting. David Roberts of Vox had this long tweet threat over the weekend. And one thing he said that was interesting, he says, then he seized on Pruitt's scandals. And what you talk about, Andrew Wheeler, the deputy now coming in, who we all think is going to push a really similar policy, right? He says, consequently, the next EPA administrator is going to push the same terrible destructive policies without the process-based scandals and, quote, objective journalists will have absolutely nothing to say about it. They're not allowed to be anti-poison, right? Meaning one of the reasons Scott Pruitt got so served up to the Washington Press is he was,

he was scandal-ridden in a very obvious and bipartisan way, right? But those positions themselves were not scandalous in the world of nonpartisan journalism. So what happens with the next guy? Can journalists just, you know, and I'm not talking about people right from other Jones or something, but can people at the New York Times be like, oh, this is just really bad. Or do they have to be like, well, this guy just has different ideas about the environment. Yeah, and that's the way in which he's like I mentioned before.

And one of the ways that Pruitt is sort of a metaphor for the whole Trump administration. I mean, there's no end of the, there's endless conspiracy theories, you know, about Trump being able to just go out and do something really offensive when he's trying to distract from something that's, you know, more significant that his administration is doing, more significant, but less juicy. There were people were talking about that through the whole campaign that, that some of his wilder moments, you know, were deliberate. And who knows if you believe it, but that's certainly, I mean, there is a great function

to that to distract from, you know, the policy things that really matter. Before we get off this point, I do want to say, since this is a media podcast, I do want to point out that the depth of the corruption of the Scott Pruitt regime, you know, we'll miss you very much. But the people compiling these, the people compiling the lists. of these stories, I don't think, you know, in journalistic, in online articles and especially print articles, won't miss him at all because the list had gotten so long and unwieldy. I emailed you last week that, that it was, it got into the point where they'd actually

driven the New York Times to listicles. There was a New York Times headline that of 13 reasons Scott Pruitt lost his job as EPA chief. And you get, and just is, I mean, I'm sure listeners will appreciate the, the feeling that one gets when reading an article online where you get to a giant ad. The ringer is not exempt from these things. You get to a giant ad and mentally you're not sure if the piece is over yet or not. And you kind of, and you have to scroll and find out if you're in the comment section or if the piece is going to keep going. I was reading a piece, a good piece today on the Atlantic by David Graham that was, that, that just went, I mean, just basically just listing all of the, all of the issues that he's had. And it got at the point

where, like, there were three different ads where I, where I assume the piece might be over. And it just kept going. This is certainly, I mean, kudos to the journalists that help uncover all of these scandals. And, you know, congratulations to not have to keep compiling this stuff over and over again. Indeed. Scott Pruitt's greatest crime driving the New York Times to listicles. All right, David, it's time now 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. Let us stick with the disgraced Scott Pruitt. a late in the game

Pruitt Revelation, which we did not name, David, was that, quote, he, this is one summary of a Washington Post story,

he repeatedly asked his 25-year-old staffers to put hotel reservations on their personal credit cards rather than his and then refuse to pay them back. Do you remember Anna Delvey, the woman who was parading around New York hotels

asking people to cover her bills before landing in jail? It was a very overworked Twitter joke to tweet Anna Delvey called and she wants her grift back. Thanks to Matthew Zitland for that. Booky Cousin signing with the Warriors brought a bumper crop of overworked Twitter jokes. One was just where you just have a random person signing with the Warriors, right?

So the example here, breaking Joey Chestnut is expected to sign with Golden State Warriors. That's by a Brent Axe. The other big one was Cousins' contract. As we know in NBA Circles was a one-year, $5.3 million deal. It was an overworked Twitter joke to tweet, quote, the new contract brings cousins only one million shy of running a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco. That's via Matt Lawrence. This week's winners were provided by the Russia-Croatia match in the World Cup,

which David, I know you've been watching nonstop. When the Russians were winning games, it was an overworked Twitter joke to say something like, quote, it's going to be weird when Russia wins the World Cup, but at least a sports team will finally get an invite to the White House. then the Russians lost to Croatia on Saturday and someone tweeted excited to see if Croatia can do what Hillary Clinton couldn't

which is to beat the Russians that is to which every conservative pundit replied visit Wisconsin that's via Garrett Broad who found that by Matt Fuller and finally in the aforementioned Russia Croatia game which Croatia won on penalty kicks to advance to the semifinals there was yet more Trump Russia humor

Brian Boiler of Crooked Media tweets Hope the Croatian soccer players Don't have any embarrassing emails. New York Times writer Ken Vogel tweets Just couldn't hack those penalty gigs, huh Russia? But my favorite of the Russia-Trump Croatia World Cup genre comes from John Lovett

A Pod Save America, a friend of the Ringer podcast network. He tweets, A Croatian player throws up his arms in victory. A Russian player approaches slowly. The Russian player extends his hand as if offering a gift. Is that a videotape? A videotape of what?

The Croatian player picks it up and reads the label. His eyes widened. If you reference the alleged P-tape after Russia lost a Croatia in the World Cup, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Thanks to Mike Brew for that one. Our second topic, David, The death and now possible rebirth of the American Soccer Troll.

I saw a tweet today. This is hot off the Twitter press. Time to reset. the X days since a U.S. newspaper printed a terrible opinion piece on the World Cup counter. And it was thanks to this one. It was a piece in the Wall Street Journal op-ed page called I'm

Sick of World Cup fever in which the author Gerald Escanazi went through the usual gripes. Soccer's low scoring. It's anti-American. It's there's flopping. He also made fun of Americans for saying things like 1-0 to indicate scores. I wrote a piece this week about how

the American soccer troll has all but vanished this time. around. Were you struck by this phenomenon too that we're not seeing in addition as a kind of counterbalance to all the soccer fandom on Twitter, this crazy soccer trollery and anti-fandom?

Yeah, no, definitely. Definitely. I mean, it was sort of, you know, it was a popular mode in World Cups past. And obviously there haven't been that many World Cups that have been significant enough to garner the attention of, you know, the Ancultures

of the world. but yeah but definitely i mean i think that it's a little bit hard to see you know so clearly from where i sit because certainly the the the acceptance the general acceptance in the sports world of world cup soccer has you know cleared whatever last hurdles it needed to clear i mean there is there's no question that you know ESPN is going to cover it as much or more as any other sport, well, I mean, writes deals dependent, I guess, but, and you know, and every, every

website, every magazine, every sports outlet is, you know, is treating this like a giant, the giant thing that it is. But, so I'm not sure if the, if, at first I wasn't sure, I guess, if the, if the anti-voices had stopped or if they

just weren't being listened to, they just didn't have quite the same platform, but your piece, I thought, did a really good job of sort of showing that, you know, most, most anti-socer voices just aren't really wasting their breath anymore. Yeah. And I sort of think it's, I mean, the most obvious reason is that the U.S. men's national team didn't make the World Cup, right? Mm-hmm. Which is a sense, and there's this sort of sense that, you know, you have this, right?

That it's the soccer troll comes out to play when he hears the words, the soccer is the sport of the future in the United States, right? Or in the middle of this huge soccer boom. So when you don't have the men's team there, everybody just kind of shuts up. But I think there's a bigger thing, which is kind of when I was looking back at all the trollish articles of years past, which is this idea that soccer, the kind of writing people used to do about soccer where they'd kind of talk kind of about the socialist roots of soccer and they would take some shots at countries, those quote unquote funny countries that play the sport. that kind of sports writing, which I described as comic nativism, just doesn't really exist anymore. Sure. You know, I feel used to open SI or certainly your local newspaper. And you just kind of find that on a fairly semi-regular basis.

But it's just gone now. And, you know, it's like, it's funny. Sports writing has changed so much, I think, in the last couple of years, generally speaking. But that has been one of the biggest things that's changed is this idea that you just don't, you just, can't be that guy or gal in print anymore as a matter of course. Yeah, I mean, Snark certainly has has its own, you know,

separate corner on the internet now. There are places, there are websites that do that, you know, deliberately and consistently. And, uh, but I think that for the most part,

yeah, I mean, like local papers, uh, all the way up to, you know, major sports sites. Um,

I think that, you know, it is a, I think that you, there's more money or, you get more eyeballs by positivity for the most part unless you're unless like I said you're one of the sites

that that operates almost exclusively on the other side. I think you're right. I'm not even sure it was a snark thing so much as like specifically what was being snarked about right? You know because I think there's still a lot of snark out in the world but it's just one of those things that

you know what we were snarking about was just like basically ha ha look at those people from other countries. Which is true. it's so cool anymore. Well, I mean, and, and just, you know, demographically and, and, you know, do the state of the, the newspaper and journalism industry. I think there's just a lot less of those, you know, sports, sports generalists that, you know, the old, the old columnists from, from our childhood that would, that would, you know, grouse about whatever, the three point

line every Sunday or whatever, you know, I mean, that's, that's just not, that's just not quite the same, there's not as quite as many people doing that as there used to be, but you're right. I mean, it is a very, there is a, there's a piece of it that's very specific to soccer. And I think that you make the good point that without the U.S. men's national team there, it, it changes things because now the people that are watching, no one feels compelled to watch, I guess, because of the presence of, of, of the U.S. team. Although I think that in some ways, that just sort of streamlined the whole, the whole presentation, because it, you know, I, I'm assuming that the, that the ratings have been pretty good,

but at least from where I'm sitting, it just sort of, everybody's been happy, everybody's had just as much fun or nearly as much fun watching the World Cup without the impending inevitable heartbreak of the U.S. team, the U.S. team losing. And we didn't have to spend the first two weeks doing that. I'm sure that, you know, Fox would have rather

had the U.S. team there for ratings. But, but yeah, I mean, I guess, I guess if there's, I can understand, I can understand, why someone would at one point troll be upset about the about having to be feeling forced to watch soccer a sport that they don't care about

just because you know the US team is there but it's not you know it's not a it's just it's such a silly point I think that we I think that the the takeaway from your from your piece is that you know like thank God all of that's over right

I mean who like it's just an unnecessary level of trolling yeah and also just really weird I mean just imagine if I assigned you today to say David, please write a story about how this sport is really dumb. Just like pick a sport, right? This sport that's not hugely popular is just really stupid. Like you just write it about like how you find it boring about the people who,

the specific people who play it, about its fans, because that was a huge part of soccer trollery, right? Was going after soccer fans, American soccer fans. That's just a really weird exercise on a lot of levels. And there's just almost no way that story is, going to age well. I also think, and I noted this in the story, there's a sense that a couple of the biggest soccer trolls have become giant soccer fans now, which is really funny to me.

And it's sort of that we've talked about this in other, in other circumstances, but there's a sense, right? Like, hey, you're a sports writer. There's a big soccer game on television, as there is, as we record this podcast, by the way. And if you want all the clicks, you better pretend to be a soccer fan for a couple of hours, right? If you want to tweet about it, if you want to write about it, if you want to get it on that action, I think that's like this giant tractor beam that pulls

people towards this kind of stuff and away from those takes. Even the sports radio hosts who are not huge soccer fans are so engaging in soccer. And you see the same thing on Twitter, right? I mean, the people who are not, the people who will still take a shot every, you know, once or twice a game about how football, American

or basketball is a better sport. and here's why soccer's not as good. They're still engaging in real time with the game. I think there's that necessity with the way that sports writers cover sports now, that it really is that, you know, it's a 20 hour a day job. And yeah, you have to engage. Yeah, and this kind of whole event culture on Twitter where there's so few things now that bringing us together that all of America watches at the same time,

that if you are a website, a news website of any kind, you just dogpile whatever is. getting it has a pulse right absolutely whether that's a TV show whether it's the Oscars or whatever and like the World Cup reaches a certain level and the ratings on Fox would not been absolutely spectacular but it obviously is something that not only not only captures the attention of fans but captures the attention of a lot of kinds of people that live on sports Twitter right and live on your sports website uh and live in Brooklyn specifically yeah and monopolize and monopolize the time of the news cycle when nothing else is going on you know what I mean it's

It really has, it has an outsized voice. Obviously, if the World Cup was going up against the NBA playoffs or something, it would be, it wouldn't have quite the platform that it does. But, but it's, you know, it's, it's certainly got a loud voice and, you know, for people who are on Twitter, it's, it's making a lot of noise. I was fascinated by this story in the Wall Street Journal today because the author, Gerald Escanazi, who was a long time sports writer at the New York Times and a very nice guy, wrote this, what is, you know, a very standard,

dismissive of soccer piece. But he had a line in there where he said, I wrote a book about soccer. So I went back and looked this up. It's from the early 80s, and it's called a Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Soccer. So he has actually traveled the opposite journey. He was not the guy who hated soccer who decided to love it.

I actually have more respect for this journey. He was the guy who wrote an entire book about soccer, was pledged enough to it to write a book called the Thinking Man's Guide. And now is writing the story about like, what's the big deal about this whole World Cup kind of thing? I find that totally perplexing, but I find it weirdly more honorable than the other thing of like, ah,

well, everybody likes it so I might as well too. Yeah, that is a very strange journey. Usually the, I mean, the earliest adopters to soccer fandom or the loudest voices that I know, at least in my personal life,

you know, if you could, if you planted your flag early enough, then you, then you, uh, that's something to be proud of right now. That's,

that's pretty incredible. Yeah, it's like I, I was interested enough in soccer that I wrote a whole book about it and at the end of the day I found it wanting. I guess that's a journey that some people are on. Let's talk about our final

time, which is also interesting. Another strange sports thing bubbling up on Twitter this week. I dated, I think, to Boogie Cousins signing with the Warriors, which was the moment when we all realized that everybody plays for the Golden State Warriors now, right? But I think there's, I think

it has, it's one of those sports arguments that was just inevitable. because all of the action was all NBA, right? The NBA is the League of the Future. Speaking of Sports of the Future, the NBA is the Woke League, right? It's the politically astute league. It's the League of LeBron talking about police violence.

And then all it took was Boogie Cousin signing that you had a few people pop up on Twitter. Teddy Bruske was one. I saw Seth Wickersham had a tweet about this. That was like, oh, but wait a second. We all know. we all know how the NBA finals are going to end next year. So is the NBA really better than the NFL or is it better than the NFL on these particular things?

And wouldn't if the NFL with these kinds of things were happening in the NFL, wouldn't that be a huge scandal? And I was like, here it is. I thought we were going to have to wait until the next labor disagreement for this to happen. But it actually came a little bit early. Yeah. I mean, I don't think. Boogie Cousins signing there was a great Twitter moment, right?

I mean, first of all, I think, I think it must be said that of all, you know, what sets this apart from, you know, Kevin Durant signing last year and, you know, LeBron James making his various moves, there have been surprises, but this was a sort of like elemental surprise, you know? I mean, it came just really out of nowhere.

There was like a tweet with like, I think there was some vague, like, you know, It's about to, there's about to, something's about to happen, tweet. And then this thing that no one could have predicted, you know, happened. And it does, you know, in some ways tilt the balance of the NBA. But I think a lot of people were reacting more out of shock than anything else. And a lot of that segue directly into the NBA is broken. I'm not a fan anymore.

How can, you know, how can people keep watching this crap? Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of that. I just think that the, you know, percentage-wise, the level of the warrior's inevitability did not change dramatically because of this signing, because of the signing of a, you know, malcontent coming off of an Achilles injury, you know? I mean, I don't, I'm not sure. And even if you were at his peak, they only have that many minutes to go around. I think that, I guess it's just more symbolic of, of, you know, some of the problems with, with what, the way that this, the NBA salary cap and free agent movement is set up. Yeah, if it's even a problem, right? I mean, that's the, that's the debate.

Well, I don't know that it's, I don't think it's, I mean, I think that, yeah, I think, I think you're right. That is the debate. I mean, we, Kevin O'Connor wrote a piece of the ringer that, that went back over the, you know, I mean, it was a good piece that talked about how the, the, the, the failure to smooth the salary cap when they raised the percentage of profits from the, from the, you know, on the player side led to some really crazy signings over the past. a couple summers, but directly led to Kevin Durant signing with the, being able to sign with

the Warriors, the Warriors being able to clear the space to sign him. But, and that's true. And certainly, you know, I mean, Michelle Roberts, the NBA Players Association president, does not, you know, does not think that the lack of smoothing, you know, was problematic. But, you know, it just every time I would see those articles, it's like, here is the, you know, here is the one thing that the players association, the failure of the players association that led to the moment that we are right now. I mean, it's sort of like,

you know, is anybody going to write about how, is someone going to have the balls to write the piece that like letting Tom Chambers enter free agency for the first time, however many decades ago is that was the original sin of the current problem with the NBA? I mean, no, we're all pro player movement.

It's just because like a powerful team signed a player that you kind of wanted your team to sign doesn't mean that the system's broken. Yeah. And I think we're all. pro player movement, but I think there's still just under the surface, this enormous discomfort with players kind of calling their shots

and deciding to play together. We talked about this when we were talking about LeBron last week, but I just still think people are just still rewiring their brains from the old system where GMs essentially, where there was free agency, but GMs and team owners were still

the drivers of movement and the league, right? You know, agreeing to willing to play player negotiation to this point in the NBA we're getting where players are more and more determining their own destiny, especially superstar players, right, and saying, oh, come play with us, you know, come play over here. LeBron James making, you know, deciding to go to L.A. and make that a thing. I just, I think people aren't comfortable with that yet. I really do. I'm comfortable with it, but I just, I think it's very hard for people because I think it's, you know,

basically changes around a lot of sports history. Here's a place where that's not happening. The NFL. Yeah. Right? This is, it's not because one. player Willie wouldn't make that much of a difference, but it's also just like, you know, we see with the NFL, like, you know, with franchise tags and things like that that are,

you know, basically inhibiting movement of the top superstars. And then we have the NBA where it's like the best basketball player in the world keeps changing teams just because he wants to. And now he was on his fourth different tour with the franchise. I don't know if I can prove it, but I just feel that's right under the surface. The people just haven't gotten comfortable with this new world yet. Well, I mean, I think that's true. I mean, sort of like a sidebar to that is that we have sports narratives that we prefer.

We all, you know, I mean, obviously there's the very basic, you know, underdog stories and, you know, tales of redemption and everything else. But, you know, if you nail down what's really specific to what Boogie Cousins did, in some ways that should be like the least objectionable version of what happened. I mean, he was a divisive player in a lot of ways, but like if he had signed a max deal with the Atlanta Hawks and just sort of, you know, because of the amount of money he was making, he made it impossible for them to really put anybody around him. And because of his style of play, he just, they can never get out of the first or second round of the playoffs. Like, that's not a preferable situation. I don't think any of these people, anybody complaining about him signing with Golden State would have preferred that state of affairs particularly. And at the same. On the court, you mean, but maybe.

from a salary perspective they would have because he was just getting as much as he could. Sure, but like, you know, there are, I think that people would have, with a different team and a different player, I mean, it's specifically what happened would have been much less objectionable, you know, if,

if LeBron James had said, I all my life have wanted to play for the Lakers and because of that, I'm going to sign a minimum contract so they have the ability to put a great team around me, people would have thought he was, you know, the second coming. You know, if, if people are, like,

people in Oklahoma City think Carmelo Anthony is like the worst person in the world for signing it for opting into the last year of his contract that's you know that they had agreed to take on but you know if he were if he had said I'm going to quit and come back for the minimum or come back for you know the exception they might have thought that was a you know just an incredible commitment to team you know to the team concept

and a desire to be a part of something bigger but yeah I mean certainly there this is a different thing with bogey signing with the Warriors. You know, you can, you, you, your mind more quickly goes to,

you know, narrative concepts like front running or like, you know, whatever, like the unbeatable, the unbeatable just got more unbeatable, you know, I mean,

these are, I can understand why people aren't into it. But there is the sort of, and this kind of goes the previous thing we were talking about, that like, it's easy to hate and, and, you know,

proceed with the sort of confirmation bias of angry chat rooms that, that, and believe that just because, you don't like the feel of something that there is like a, that there is a specific legal or structural or procedural issue as to why it's wrong. I mean, it's okay just to not like something. You know, it's okay to be like, yeah, that signing just doesn't, you know, I'm not, that makes me like the Warriors less or something. It doesn't mean that you got to burn everything down just because you're not, you know, because something kind of hit you the wrong way.

Yeah. I mean, it's funny though, but I think, I think in a way, the upside of that is that people are connecting these issues to things like labor, right? And, you know, just basic first principles of the kind of stuff that sports writers should be thinking about. So you're right, it does make everything into this just giant catastrophe. But at the same time, they're probably thinking about this stuff a little harder than maybe they were at another, you know, time and place. I do think if I, if I have any, you know, a moment where I want to join team counterintuitive

in this, I just think the NBA deserves lots of criticism. You know, I just like when I said the labor thing, I just thought you have a certain way right now that most people think about are a lot of NBA fans, I should say, think about Adam Silver, right? As soon as Adam Silver is the guy saying, I want the players to get less money, which is every, which is the history of every single, you know, contractual negotiation in the history of pro sports, right? He's going to look worse. And it's going to highlight things about Adam Silver and about the NBA that look less enlightened and ought to be highlighted. highlight. That should happen. Criticism of the NBA should happen or skepticism about the NBA. And I do think there's a sense, you know, in sports writer to them at large right now that everybody's so excited about the league because it is exciting and it is fun and it does,

and it does, you know, permit a certain level of social activism and things like that. It's different. It's certainly a different field in the NFL in a lot of ways. But that this is, you know, it's, it deserves criticism. and no one should hold back on that, you know, even if you get shouted down on Twitter a couple of times. That's okay, right? It should, you should, that should be part of the dialogue. I agree that that's true. But at the same time, and this isn't, I'm not trying to qualify what you just said.

I think the league definitely deserves criticism and they should get it. And I think that the problem is that it's muted so many other times. I just feel like this is, I understand why people are up in arms about this. I can't say that enough times. but this is, I feel like, the wrong moment. You know, I mean, like, Boogie did not get, was not getting offered the contract he thought he deserved. You know, he was, he went to the free, he went into the summer probably having dreams of $180 million or whatever, you know, I mean, there's some giant long-term deal. And when that didn't start trickling in, I mean, that, when that didn't come in immediately, he was left sort of saying, well, do I want to take a $10 million contract with a mediocre team and, and let them have the rights to the second year?

Or do I want to just like walk into the best situation form? me and make all that money that I thought I was going to get next summer. I mean, and he wouldn't even be going to the, sure, he's going to a stack team, a team that now has five All-Stars, but he wouldn't be going there if they hadn't, you know, run their team the right way and put this whole thing together. And, you know, three of their starters, these All-Star starters are guys that they drafted. I just think that, you know, you're right. The league deserves, when the league deserves criticism, they should be criticized.

It's just sort of amazing to me that of all the players in the league that Boogie Cousins is sort of this just like reverse workers' rights icon you know I don't know it's just it's just sort of beautiful and weird I mean just because he's such a weird player it it it fits but it's it's

a yeah it's a bizarre state of affairs for a lot of reasons also by the way lurking just below the surface in this is the football writer the NFL writer versus the NBA writer the NFL writer whose life is the anthem and head injuries and Roger Goodell right and crazy, awful NFL owners.

And the NBA writer's life who is living in the Garden of Eden that is NBA Twitter, where we love all NBA journalism, right? And we're interested in the players and they're cool and we want to learn from them and we like them. I just feel like, I'm generalizing extremely broadly here, but I feel that the person in the NFL world looks at the person in NBA, world and it's like, I am just working in a totally different milieu than you are. Like, why do you, why are you working over there and getting all these kind of different,

you know, breaks and this, in this sort of benefits of this different world that I'm not, you know, like NFL, NFL writing from afar doesn't look fun. NBA writing from afar looks fun, you know? Yes. And I just think, somehow that's tied up in all this. I absolutely believe that. yeah no i think it's it's definitely true i mean and it's and and you know this is their opportunity to sort of glorify the system that the NFL has in place even when you know the other times that

you know if if if if NFL if the NFL salary structure ever comes up on this podcast again uh i think it's safe to assume yeah i think it's safe to assume that it'll be that will be being critical of it right i mean to be able to just you know automatically automatically hang on to a player because the you know for an indefinite amount of time because the owner of the front office decides they can't do without them you know that's a pretty that's a pretty amazing amazing state affairs of affairs just to when you say it out loud you know um and and you know it's funny too someone i think for some reason i feel like it was teddy bruskey was on tv complaining about the marcus cousins about like at least with the NFL like anybody can every you know no one

predicted that the Eagles would win the Super Bowl and that's what's so great about the NFL. And someone I think quickly pointed out that he had picked the, he had picked the Patriots to win the Super Bowl like every year for the past six years on ESPN or something. So it's like there's, there's inevitability in every sport just because it doesn't come true all the time doesn't really change that. And the, you know, the season hasn't started yet. So it's sort of, it's sort of, you know, it's ridiculous to call the Warriors inevitable now. What if we capitalize the free agent every time we talked about the NFL salary structure or the NBA I like it. Yeah, I think

that's perfect. Kind of bring in the magic of those Trump tweets. All right, that's the press box for this week. He is David Chewmaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Back next week for more hot takes on the media. I'll see you later, David. See you later, man.