The Press Box - Peter Schrager on the NFL Draft, Auditioning for 'Dream Job,' and Calling in to WFAN. Plus, the LA Times' Dan Woike on Covering the Doomed Lakers.

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

In advance of the 2022 NFL draft, Bryan is joined by Peter Schrager to break down his career in sports media, his transition to television, the NFL draft coverage, and media draft cliches (1:38). Later, Dan Woike joins to discuss reporting on this season’s Los Angeles Lakers, from Russell Westbrook joining the team to the post-game interactions between reporters and athletes (44:02). Host: Bryan Curtis Guests: Peter Schrager and Dan Woike Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are certain moments and words that shaped a new era in pro wrestling. Austin 316 says I just whipped your ass. Brett screwed breath. Die, Rocky, die. Introducing the book of wrestling, 25 catchphrases that explain the attitude era. Tune in as we relive one of the most exciting, intense, and over-the-top times in WWE, with new interviews with the voices that made the promos, calls, and catchphrases into history. Listen now.

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica Servantes. We are going to talk to Los Angeles Lakers beat writer Dan Wojke about what it was like to cover a doomed basketball team in just one second. But first, we are two weeks away from the NFL draft. And as draft experts like to say, our next guest always has good pad level. He is Peter Schrager of the NFL Network's Good Morning Football of Fox Sports. of the Bill Simmons podcast where he is always ready to give us his signature catchphrase.

Today, I wanted to ask Schrager about doing a studio show, when the whole idea of TV seems to be changing before our eyes. I wanted to ask you about the weird and wacky and increasingly overwhelming way the NFL draft is covered now. And I wanted to trace Schrager's TV career back to those nights 20 years ago when he was calling into New York's WFAN radio from his parents' basement. Should I do his catchphrase? Why not? Let's go. Here's Peter Schrager.

All right, Peter, let's start with a little day in the life of a morning TV host. Your show Good Morning Football goes on the air at 7 a.m. What time do you wake up? Yeah, the alarm goes off at 4.45 a.m. Eastern. And I know Bill and the Prestige TV Pod folks had a good laugh at the show, the morning show. But if there's one thing they got right on that show, it is that alarm clock. It never, It's never like, oh, okay, great, let's go start the day. It's always awful at that hour, like always. And it knocks you up out of bed and I'll quickly wash my face, be quiet. I live in a Brooklyn apartment with my wife who likes to sleep past 445 a.m.

And our five-year-old son. So kind of it's the door and then get to the studio in Lower Manhattan around 5.30 a.m. And then we are in a production meeting and in a hair and makeup by 6 a.m. So like it's right out of bed. and we go. And it's, like I said, it never gets comfortable at that hour. Let's just say that. Do you have a method of looking unnaturally excited that early in the morning? Yeah, two giant, trinthesized iced coffees from Starbucks. That's what works. That's where we started every morning. And I genuinely like it. I know it sounds corny or cliche, but like,

if you were to tell me 10 years ago, like, what would be your ideal job? I'd say, oh, I'd host a television show about football and I get to do that. So it doesn't take much for me. The grind of it is when you're in June and July and our show is still on the air. And it's like, which backup tight end do you think is going to make a splash this year? And like, we're at that topic because we've already exhausted every Cowboys and Packers topic over the last three months. How much of Good Morning Football's rundown was in place when you went to bed last night for today? Yeah.

The A-block's were in place. So an email comes from our great producers. In this case, his name is Chris Schwartz. and he sends it out to the hosts and the other producers and says, hey, in the A block, which for the listener is the first block of each hour. So it's usually 10 minutes long. He's like, we're going to start with the Jaguars. Trevor Lawrence spoke.

We've got great sound from him. Is Aidan Hutchinson, sure thing, number one overall pick. And then we all email back our responses. But what we do is we BCC, C, the other hosts, they're not included. We take them off. So you like BCC it. So there's still an element of surprise from what Kyle Brand, going to say across the table or what Mike Robinson's going to say to the right of me.

And then we have those A blocks. And then over the course of the next few hours and overnight, things trickle in. And by the morning, we're pretty much dialed in. And if there's breaking news, we've ripped the rundown apart. And those are our favorite shows where we can totally start and get fresh perspectives without it being submitted via email the night before. Now, on the subject of Hutchinson, you went first on that topic today, right at the top of the show.

How much of that do you write out? How much is in your head? So I'll email back and say, hey, give me good Hutchinson footage, and then that means like B-roll and just footage of him. But then it's in my head, I've already done the work where I've been talking about Aiden Hutchinson with GMs for the last month. So I know what I'm going to say on Aidan Hutchinson. And what I'm going to say is this. It's, you know, in this particular case, very solid player, but let's not compare him to Nick or Joey Bosa yet because what we want to do is look at a white guy who wears number 97 from the Big Ten and say, oh, he's a Bosa brother. but he's not. He's actually more comparable to like a Trey Hendrickson, which is not the same

level of player as Bosa. So I ask for Bosa footage. I ask for Trey Henderson footage, but I don't script it all out. I know I've got to get from this video clip to this video clip and finish my thought. And then I kind of serve it up. And then I know Kyle Brandt's going to hit a home run wherever I go with it. And he's going to take the other side, which he did in this case. So you get room to maneuver. But at some point, you've got to say the word Bosa as a trigger word for that video to roll. And you've got to say the word Hendrickson for that to role, but otherwise you got room to maneuver to kind of say what you want to say. And a lot of times, and in our ear is a producer named Mark Gorillo, and he was with MLB

network for years. He's fantastic. He's in our ear. He'll come into me and Kyle and Mike Robinson's here beforehand and say, hey, I've got your footage. Tell me what's your key word or whatever it is that I'll start rolling it. So Mike Robinson's take was I would take Ikea Kuanu, who's the offensive tackle out of NC State if I'm the Jaguars and protect him. So he actually will say like, all right, let me see some icky footage. And then the producers know like, boom, go. So it is a very delicate dance. It's like a ballet, but there's a whole other thing going on based on what has been

discussed beforehand. And it's just making sure that the video matches up with the content that we're saying. And these are longish soliloquies in TV terms. Are you watching a clock to see that you're not going too long? Yes. So this is great, Brian. No one ever asked these questions. But you see some of these Skip Bayliss or Shannon Sharp or even Stephen A. Smith monologue

and you're like, wow, they've been talking for eight minutes straight. And it's, that's what their show is. In our case, we've got four different mouths to feed. And for it to be a conversation, we need to leave a little wiggle room where I can jump K or I can jump Kyle and I can push back on Mike if he says something. And I'm like, wait a second, let's, let's hit that again. You'd like to think your opening thing in an A block, probably good two minutes. What do you got?

Your best two minutes on what your take is so that you divvy it up four ways. It's eight minutes. Then you got two minutes of a little wiggle room to have a 10 minute block to start the show and come out strong. Let me ask you a little bit about your early years. When was the first time you said, I want to be in the sports media business? The first time I said it was my senior year of college. And that seems a little late maybe for a lot of folks who work in the college paper and all that stuff. I didn't know what I wanted to do professionally. I wrote for the school paper, which oddly enough, we've had a bunch of different, I went to Emory University and like my years,

a bunch of different NFL writers. Ben Volan at the Boston Globe was my year NFL writer for the covers of Patriots for years. Lindsay Jones writes for the athletic. She was a year old. She was my editor at Emory. So we had this cool little like sports department that we all did, but I didn't know if I was going to do it professionally where it kind of became a possibility. And I don't think I've told this story in many places. There was a show called ESPN Dream Job that I'm sure you remember. It was at the height of American Idol. And it was basically, a reality show competition to find the next sports center anchor, which, and I particularly want to be. I just loved writing about sports. So I lined up at the ESPN Sports Zone in Atlanta in a hundred

degree heat wearing a t-shirt that says, I heart Tom Clemente, who was one of their hockey analysts at the time. And I was like, I'm going to make an impression on these guys, waited for about an hour, got in, and they straight up were like, all right, what makes you the next great sports center anchor. I'm like, oh, I don't want to work on sports center. I have no interest in being a sports center anchor as much as I respect the work they do. I just want to write for your website. I want to be the next Ralph Wiley. I want to be the next Bill Simmons. And this is like what page two is like at its like, it's Xena. And Al Jaffe, who was running a lot of the talent for ESPN at the time, pulled me aside and he's like, here's Howie Schwab, who's our lead researcher.

I feel like you two would be kindred spirits. You both are encyclopedias. And Howie, to his great credit was like, here are the people you need to know on the dot com side, open some doors. And then it really became a possibility that like, okay, wow, I actually have a potential pathway to writing about sports, whether in real life on the internet or on a blog, whatever it is, like it actually could happen professionally. That's incredible because this is like a reality show, as you say, and you turned it into a job fair. Like, no, I don't want that job, but I actually want that job. Yeah.

And I made it to the next round. And in that next round, it was at like the buckhead, like four seasons. I was in a room with like, I think it was Stuart Scott and Kevin Frazier and they were the ones grading us. And I was like so starstruck because like I was that guy, Brian, that and I think a lot of guys, my years in my generation like the fight, like I would wake up at, I would go to sleep watching Craig Kilbourne, you know, at 2 a.m. do his highlights. And then I would wake up and then it would air all day in the morning.

So like sports center seemed like that wasn't even realistic for me. Like I wasn't a new house guy. I wasn't a Northwestern guy. I didn't have any TV experience. So I was just like, I want to get my foot in the door. And if I have people from ESPN, which seemed like such a Hail Mary that I could actually meet with from the talent department, well, then I'm going to do what I think I do best. And at the time, it was sports writing. And I sent them my clips.

And, you know, I told Stuart Scott and Kevin Frazier, like, you guys are heroes of mine. But like, to even consider myself like in that same caliber with those guys was impossible at the time. Now, did you come to the audition with a catchphrase? yeah no i had no buya i had no uh i had no what was what was larry beals aloha means goodbye oh i mean you got to get a little raspyer though aloha means goodbye do you know i mean i love loved loved loved everything about it and like i work with isan now and he's cool and and it's just like i still pinch myself and i'm like oh my god that's that's rich isan like who i grew up like being like this guy made it from statin island to to sports center how did he do that like it's

incredible. So fortunately enough for me, my path, like, and it happened. Just the timing was right. Page three, which is now like defunct and not even a thing, was a burgeoning site for ESPN.com. And it was not the Bill Simmons and Ralph Wiley and Hunter S. Thompson page that I was on. It was this like cross of pop culture and sports. And it would be like my big project at like when I, when I first like pitched it to them was, hey, I'm going to be. be like this younger voice right out of college. And my references aren't going to be, you know, karate kid or Vision Quest or Simmons got like my big take was I have Mighty Ducks references who are 10 years later. Like, this is what I'm going to offer. And they assigned me to like a freelance project.

And it was when at bat music became really popular. And I remember Derek Bell came out to Big Pimpin by Jay Z when he was on the Mets in those years. And my goal was to find out how these players pick that music, who compiles the music and how it all gets done. And, you know, Stacey Pressman was her name. She was the editor. And the two of us, we got, like, on the phones. And I compiled a list of all 30 major league baseball teams and every single player is at bat music.

And we put it out. We rolled it out. And it was like pretty cool at the time. But my ESPN days were pretty short-lived. There weren't many projects after that. And then fortunately enough, Fox Sports.com was launching in a big way. And they'd seen some of my clips. And they were awesome enough to reach out to me.

And we kind of got the ball roll. I heard on another interview that you were a regular caller to WFAN overnight's during this period. Yeah, sick pup, like Joe Binoino, overnight's Inberto's Clam House, if you know, you know, like that. This was what I would do. I'd listen to, you know, I'd play Madden or I'd watch, you know, sports and whatever it was. And I wasn't stoned. I wasn't like one of these like total brain dead guys. Like I was sitting there, I love sports.

So I would just listen to WIFAN. every night, like into the overnights. And then I started calling. And Adam Shine used to do the overnights. And I would call Adam Shine. And I always loved like the callers that you knew. Like Jerome from Manhattan was like a regular caller. And you knew you were going to smile from him.

They were all these different, obviously, Doris from Rigo Park. If you're an FAM listener, you remember her. But I would call Shine. And like, Shine was like young at the time where it was like so young that I couldn't imagine he was doing WFN. He was in his 20s. And I'd be like, I want to throw him off pace. So I would not ask, what are the Yankees doing with their middle relief?

I'd ask Adam Shine, like, do you like the show ER? Is the show ER good? Like, what do you think of the show? ER? And we'd get into, like, weird topics. And again, a lot of this impetus of this was, you know, early 2000s blogging. Simmons had such an impact on every sports writer of my generation in that, hey, maybe it doesn't have to just be box scores and game stories.

Maybe you can put a little that pop culture stuff in. So I was a regular caller. And they're like the few times I got into Mike and the Mad Dog, I mean, still of this day, those are like, you know, major moments because every single person in my hometown of Freehold, New Jersey, he heard it and was like, holy shit, you spoke to Chris Russo directly. Like, how cool was that, you know? Speaking of great voices, Adam Shine. Oh, my God. Shine on sports. My guy, Peter Schreger, like just fantastic. Shine is a product of, of New City, New York.

And he is as New York as you get, but also as grace. a guy as you can be and has always been really good to me. But I listened to him when he was probably 25 years old on the overnight at WFIN and I just would call in. So you mentioned Fox Sports.com. What did you do there at the outset? All right. So there's a little something in between that and also simultaneously. I was freelance writing for Fox Sports.com. And I had a column called the Wednesday buffet where it was all my stupid thoughts as a mid-20 year old sports writer slash really not a writer, more just a sports fan, like not credential to any of the major, you know, events, but writing my thoughts on the NFL and my thoughts on broadcast. But I also had a day job. I needed to make ends

meet. I was living at home with my parents after graduating, you know, five beta capa honors, all this stuff from a good school. I'm living in my parents' house. I'm like, I got to make ends meet. So I worked for a hospital in New York City and would help work on their press releases for them. And during the day, I would sneak, you know, around on my laptop. and I would write this column, or at night, I would say until two in the morning, listening to WFN, but writing this column for Fox. And I eventually would do other PR jobs while I was also freelance writing until about a few years into it, Fox Sports.com.

And the guys were like, Tom Seeley was his name and a great video guy named Jed Pearson. They were like, let's bring you on full time. You've got a good voice and you've got a following. And it took till then for me to finally move out of my parents' house. But I was very fortunate. You could say I was privileged that I had the ability to live with my folk. and save money so that I could eventually pursue this dream. For sure.

Now, I feel a lot of people get to the ESPN.com, Fox Sports.com stage, and then that's where they kind of are. Are you looking to keep going at that point? What's your plan? A relentless, relentless hustler and a relentless, relentless pursuer of, like, relationships. So as I'm writing for these sites, I'm trying to build every contact I can in the NFL. And by that, I mean, I would pay my own way to go to the comments. Combine and I would just introduce myself to every assistant offensive line coach,

or I would introduce myself to the 25-year-old tight ends coach who was working for the Washington Redskins at the time because he looked young and he had a job and his name was Sean McVeigh. And it was kind of cool that this guy had a job at that level at 25. So I was constantly trying to build into like, where is this going? Because I can write my thoughts on the Giants Eagles game or I can kind of become a player in this world as well. simultaneously, in addition to that, a lot of people in the broadcast industry were really good to me. You had Ian Eagle on last week.

Ian Eagle would read my stuff and would give me comments and would constantly keep an ongoing dialogue. Jim Nance, of all people, I had to send him a blind email. I'm like, I'm from New Jersey. You're from New Jersey. You know, a huge fan. If you ever want to get a cup of coffee in New York, I would love to do it. And he wrote back and was like, let's get a cup of coffee. And Jim Nance was really good to me.

Like, these are the small things that like would keep you going and say, okay, well, there's people who actually think I've got a voice. and they think I'm getting better as a writer. And the big break for me was inside the NFL for Showtime. James Brown, Chris Collinsworth, Phil Sims were the hosts, and they needed an editorial contributor, a guy that could come down to Mount Laurel, where they filmed that NFL films and kind of just give some thoughts or give some insight.

And they were not only great to put me on that staff, but then they threw me on air a few times, and I would offer updates and reports. And this is at the onset of Twitter. I'd be like, wow, Peter's in his 20s. Why don't you give us like what the millennials are thinking? And here was my take. And that sort of opened the doors for me on television.

But the big one career was Victor Cruz, who just had this monster year in 2011. I wrote a freelance article for GQ.com on him. And we sat in, this is during the season. And we sat in Jersey and we hashed it out. And I wrote like literally, Brian, like a 200 word, 250 word little snippet for GQ.com, not even GQ the magazine, GQ.com. And I'm sure whoever it was, the editor of the time, Devin Gordon, whoever it was, was like, great, one run with this.

This is cool. He got Victor Cruz. Good. We put it together. And then Victor Cruz goes on to have this crazy season, goes to the Super Bowl, does the salsa dance, and becomes the biggest hero in the New York market as far as football goes. And he gets a giant book deal. And they immediately line up all the best beatwriters, all the best memoirs.

our writers and Victor Cruz, who was 25 at the time, said, what about the guy who I sat down with for GQ? Like, would he be willing to do it? And I got a call, blind call from his book agent. And it was like, we can't pay that much. But this is going to help make your career in a literary way and also open up a lot of doors in New York would you want to? And I was like, yeah, so I wrote a treatment of sorts of like, here's how I would envision it. And Victor Cruz chose me to write his his his his his his autobiography with him and it went to new york times bestseller and away we go and like i'll never forget those two moments kind of happening simultaneously inside the NFL and victor cruz who had nothing to do with me taking a risk on a young writer just because he

didn't mind hanging out with me thought it was pretty cool so fox starts its cable channel fs one in 2013 what kind of stuff do they let you do great question so all the while i'm writing for fox sports dot com and I'm chomping at the bit and I'm doing videos for them. They start FS1 and at the time the gentleman's name is Jacob Olman is at the sports Emmys and Jacob, if you follow sports media and all, he's an executive at Fox, but he's a huge wrestling fan, a huge grateful dead fan, like a cool guy to follow on Twitter also and Jacob's just always been a big champion of mine and he says, hey, like, let me get you in front of some of the FS1 right now. I was not going to be Jay and Dan or Carissa or Andy Rodick or Gary Payton.

or Regis or Regis for that matter. But what Jacob helped do with the help of like John Ensign at the time, the guys at FS1, Jamie Horowitz, Charlie Dixon, they were like, all right, let's throw you on as like an NFL reporter slash insider. You can do your thing from here's what you're hearing. And I hit it off with Jay and Dan. They put me on their podcast and they would have me on Fox Sports Live all the time. And it would go great.

I actually went on Crowd Goes Wild, which was the Regis show. And I hit it off of Katie Nolan, who I thought was supremely talented. and Jason Gay, who wrote for the journal. And it was like, all right, and I started meeting people because I was based in New York, Fox is in L.A. Then they started flying me in every so often to stay for a week and just do all their shows, which had very low viewership numbers, but were like incredibly important for me to get reps on TV, which was basically batting practice.

There was no one watching, but it was as if it was ESPN. The producers were A-LIS quality, the talent was A-LIS quality, and it was like, here are my reps. And then the next season, I got to be a lot of. got the call up to sidelines. And then it was like, all right, cool. Now I'm on the sidelines at an NFL game, and I'm writing on Fox Sports.com. And I can also get into facilities and do the production meetings, which only opened doors more.

So one thing led to another, but it doesn't happen without, you know, executives and producers and people willing to take a risk on me and put me in front of camera. What was the hardest thing to learn about being on TV? Brevity, as you can tell from this podcast, I'm sure. Like, sometimes less is more. And I still learn that. But, you know, especially when you're doing a sideline report in an NFL game, no one wants to hear from the sideline reporter.

And especially if you're reporting on something that you might have been told or read about on Thursday and it's third and 10. And, you know, the game is in a crucial juncture. We don't want to hear about what the guy did for his charity foundation earlier this week and, you know, or his aunt's story and her background and whatever it is. So it's just learning when to pick your spots and then, hey, sometimes less is more. You mentioned two minutes on Good Morning Football. What's the average length of a sideline report?

Yeah, I think a good sideline report is in between the snaps. And that's usually, I'd say, 15 to 20 seconds. And you got to hope that the play-by-play guy tosses to you or gal tosses to you that fast. I think Aaron's really good at Aaron Andrews, where it's like you get what's going on in the game. Aaron's not big on the story about, hey, actually, you might have seen this on Twitter, but let me rehash what you saw on Twitter. like it's here's the player, here's the injury, in and out, and let's go. And I think if you can do that, the viewer, you're not going to get, though. What a, what a worthless report you're going to

get. Okay, that adds to the broadcast. And I remember my first season doing sidelines. It was a Ravens Lions game. And Terrell Suggs grabbed all the defensive linemen on the sideline. And again, I say this with complete humility that I was getting, you know, very few Ravens games at that time. It was a lot of Lions games. So again, reps, 3% of the country, rotating. play-by-play and color guys. I probably worked with all of them at some point on their way up the chart. And I reported that like Terrell Slugs just, you know, tore his defensive lineman a new, a new, a new you know what, like just ripped into him. And I come on screen in real time and I'm like, Terrell Sluggs just absolutely obliterated his line, his defensive lineman and is spitting at them and is yelling at them and his terror.

And it became a good story. And I was like, all right, that's it. What you see on the sidelines is far more important than maybe the. backstory that every diehard of the lions and ravens know is going into the game anyway. What's the worst question you ever asked a coach right before a half-time or after a game? Oh, where do we start? Because a lot of times these coaches want nothing to do with you. I remember Tampa Bay hosting the Saints on a late Sunday game. And at the end of the first half, the Saints kicker, it was either Garrett Hartley or Will Lutz, whoever it was, Mrs. a Chippy.

and supposed to jog with the coach into the sidelines and like ask him a question and it's off camera. And I asked, you know, Sean Payton, I'm like, what do you make of that missed kick? And let's just say what he said in response did not make it to air. And I'm like, what did I want from that question? Like, what is the report going to be? Sean Payton was mildly disappointed with Will Lutz missing a 33 yard field goal. But like those are the types of questions. And I know you guys are so good at breaking down like the podium questions, but also like the celebration.

question question when you and David get into it. And it's like, is the sky the limit for this team coach? Like, I love those. And you've got to be very conscious of trying to get a substantial answer. But the list of them are long because it's in real time and the coach wants nothing to do with you as you're running into the locker room, especially if they're losing. My personal favor was always, what does it say about this team? What's it say about this team? This thing just happened.

Yeah. Yeah. How about the Simmons classic, but also what I'm like, do you guys? do you guys believe that nobody believes in you? And it's like, you just leave it out there. Yeah, yeah, nobody believes. That's it. No one believes in you. It's hard. It's not easy. I think it's a real skill to like ask a poignant question. And I think I said Aaron, but like, I know Pam's good at it. And also like Tracy Wolfson's like good at it. Like you get something out of those reporters. And there's a skill to it. You can't just plop anybody down there and say, all right, good. Here we go.

Home run, you know. 2016, the NFL network starts good morning football. Michael David. was executive producer, men and blazers, watch what happens live. What kind of show did he want to do? All right. So the story there in a very brief window, there was a guy named Jordan Levin, who was kind of running content for the NFL network, and he didn't have an NFL background, and he didn't have necessarily a sports TV background where he was raised in a truck in Bristol or was on the, you know, on the control panel for years out in Fox, came in with fresh eyes. And he and Brian Rolap and Mark Quinzel, who were part of the NFL, they basically outsourced a morning show in New York to

Michael Davies, who his whole thing is, let's be asymmetrical. Let's flip it on its side. Let's give someone something that they've never seen before on TV. And they, like, let's ironically call it good morning football, because what a dumb show name that is. Good morning football. It doesn't make sense. There's no comma involved. It doesn't even make sense. Like, just good morning football. And I met Davies because he was the executive producer and the creator of Crowgo's Wild, which was on TV for about three months, I think. And I would come on and we jelled and we hit it off. And he always was like, I'm going to end up doing a project with you at some point.

Just keep on doing what you're doing. It'll click. So three years later, 2016, he's looking to put a crew together. I had never met Kay Adams, who would be the host before we went on air. Nate Burleson, I only knew from interviewing him in his locker room. And then Kyle Brandt, I knew because he used to book me as a guest on Jim Rome. and we all agree to do the show and we had one rehearsal and they threw us on air. And I think the asymmetrical part of it was that it wasn't so scripted and it wasn't

these polished TV folks. It was we were going to grow together. And gosh, it was the smartest decision I ever made because it totally changed my career. And your cast again is the information guy as the reporter on that for some. Cast is the information guy. But with the thing of like, but let's show a little personality because you're also like my deal was always been like I'm a schmoozer. I've got good relationships around the league.

And our first, you know, like season, it was, all right, we're going to, our goal is to make some lesser known players into stars, you know, like, let's get that guy and let's bring them on the show or let's make the GM's characters. And here, Jason Light from the Buccaneers, he's a pretty cool guy. Or here, we're going to have on the equipment guy from the Rams because he's funky and has a cool mustache. You know, like that was the stuff we were doing. and this show really gave me a runway of like, hey, three hours, five days a week. You can't just be doing transactions on TV and looking at your phone. You've got to have a personality too. And it's literally like the perfect job for what I always wanted to do.

Now, are you contractually obligated to wear jeans and sneakers and have the coffee cup balancing on the table in front of you when you do the show? Yeah. It literally was like in the mockups. Like we're the cool young hip show where there won't be shirt and tie. And Sunday you'll watch Fox and CBS and ESPN and even the NFL network and they're all booted and suited. But this is like just your friends from the neighborhood and you're all sitting around a coffee table and you're just like I think there is something to it. And if you look at some of the other shows on these networks now, you don't see as much shirt and tie. You see some, you know, T-shirts and jeans and blazers and sneakers.

And, you know, I think that's Davies in a nutshell. Michael Davies is like a brilliant duty. Right now he's running jeopardy. And he took it from the Mike Richards thing. And his day to day is, he's the point person to run Jeopardy. And he's built Jeopardy already back up where they're having as high ratings as ever. And it's like, it's not a shock to me because Davies is like this British, like brilliant TV mind where he sees things like that. So I was just happy to be a part of his world even for the launch of the show.

And here we are five years later. I'm still doing it. I think it was Morning Joe where I first saw the half zip on TV. And it really, yeah, and it really solved a problem, right? Because on the one hand, as you say, we have the guys in the big double-breasted suits looking like Nathan Detroit and guys and dolls. And then we had the kind of trying too hard leather jacket guy with the goatee who was like, I'm young, I'm young. And it kind of split the difference really nicely, didn't it? The half-zip. It's the half-zip sweater. It can be worn by anybody. There's several brands that sell them if you want to go to your local J-Crew or your Banana Republic.

Like it's on sale. You could be on TV talking about anything as long as you have the half-zip in this day and age. But in all seriousness, it was like, we had like a wardrobe stylist sit with us and be like, Nate, you're going to wear, you know, your own feel like for what your person like. Kyle, like you tell us what you like. And that was pretty empowering because for years on television, especially sports television, it was like, you're going to go to the same, you know, suit guy that's been doing the suits for NFL network for 30 years. And they're going to tailor you up. You get two suits for free. You can buy the rest. And then, you know, there you go. That's your outfit.

And this one was like, oh, you like wearing new balance sneakers. All right, go for it. For a show like that, how much is you being smart about football and how much is being good at television, do you think? I'd say it's 70% the former and then 30% the latter, but there's another layer to it. It's also being like clever. Like the Nate Burleson piece to this that we didn't know when we got there. So like Kay is the host.

Kyle is the voice of the fan is how they kind of cast at Kyle Brand. And Kyle has this reservoir of pop culture knowledge. that is like never ending where just like you guys where you could talk about you know anything and it could be you know here's why uh you know the teenage meeting into turtles like here's why you know raphael compares to whatever it is i'm making up a stupid analogy but like i can do that too and then we get out there and burleson is referencing like old episodes of family matters and burleson is like oh wait you guys you guys also like the uh honey i shrunk the kids trilogy let me tell you about my thoughts And like, Nate, we just thought Nate was like this cool ex-player, but he had this knowledge of every Nintendo game ever made, every NBA player who has ever played.

Every, like, pop culture, weird thing, like Billy Ripkin's baseball card. Like, Nate knew it all. And we're like, oh, my God, we've got this table now where we all kind of speak the same language, but we also have this next level where the viewer at home is like, we've never seen that before on a football show where they're referencing the Nintendo game paper boy. Like, that's pretty cool. And we take a lot of pride in that, like, we do have that nostalgia, but also like this. quick hitting thing where like we could throw out a reference and we hope you get it and if you don't get it you can google it and figure it out want to ask you about covering the NFL draft which you guys have been doing for the last several weeks and months and i say this is someone peter who was calling an

800 number back in 1993 to order mil kipers royal blue draft guide yep i am astounded by the growth in draft coverage especially over the last five to 10 years why did that happen it's nuts it's nuts. It's amazing because I think there's so much speculation and there's so much intrigue. And with the NFL, unlike the NBA, all 32 fan bases believe they can win the Super Bowl next season if they get the right guys in the draft. So the Bengals draft Jamar Chase, fifth overall. And they draft a couple other players later on in the draft. They get the kicker McPherson in the fourth. And you put that together. And holy shit, they're in the Super Bowl. Like the NFL, the parody. is so big. I believe one of the reasons the draft is so popular is that every fan, whether they

believe it or not, thinks there's a chance that they're one or two pieces away and that this is the year. We're going to get that guy in the draft. The other part of it is the unpredictability of it where the crazy stuff does happen. Like Laramie Tunzel does happen. That situation will happen. The Vikings will forget to submit their pick. The clock will run out. And, you know, whereas 99% of the draft pundits last year, me, including. had good info saying that Mac Jones was going third to the 49ers, they'll submit the card and Trey Lance will get it. So even the experts, and I put myself in that category of someone who does this a lot like, we're wrong. So I think the NFL draft has become an industry within

itself. We're having on guys on our show like this week, the PFF guys have been coming out. Like there was a guy yesterday, Trevor Sycambe who's based in North Carolina and like has built his own thing. Like, and people online, because Twitter is such a, you know, a breeding ground for new talent. Like they might have their own fan base and they might have their own hits and misses. And they could be doing it for years on Twitter and have a real draft voice. Matt Miller just got hired by ESPN. He had a website at NFL draft scout and was like, excellent.

And ESPN is like, great, this guy's good. I think there's a great market of young talent who has focused their, you know, their expertise in football or their desire to be in football media on solely the draft. And I think that's pretty cool. And I think it's not going to stop anytime soon. I still don't know if there's a draft specific podcast that is like taken off. But I think there's a market for even that. The young person part of it is really key here.

Because if I wanted to get into NFL media right now and I was 22 or 20 or 18, I think that's what I do. I just start crushing tape to and be like, I don't need credentials to do this. My opinions are likely to be just about as good as your opinions. and my mock drafts are likely to be just about as good as yours. And I'm in. Here I am. I'll do a podcast and here we go. It's interesting because what I was able to have the luxury of doing, being credentialed

and going to the senior bowl, Brian, in Mobile, Alabama for a decade and meeting Kevin O'Connell when he's a low-ranking assistant with Washington or meeting Sean McVeigh or having beers with LaFloor when he's with Atlanta. I got to build relationships where I come at this mock draft stuff and say, I don't, I'm not a scout. I'm not a GM. mock draft, my thoughts, this is from what I'm hearing from sources around the league. But there is such a market of young men and women who are like, here's my thoughts. I've watched the same tape that the GM, now I have access to it.

I've seen the same Malik Willis tape because it's available that the GM of the Panthers has. And here's my take. And here's my vision. And here's who I compare him to. You know, Bill and the NFL ringer show, they hired Benjamin Solac. I've been reading his stuff for years. And I didn't know who he was. he could have been 50, could have been 40.

I think Ben might be like 23 for all I know, but he's really good at what he does. And he's got a great, close to 20 than 50. Let's just put it back. Yeah, but he's got a great youthful energy. And it's like, he's really good. And I think now with YouTube and with podcasts and with, you know, Twitter, there's not this barrier of entry that there might have been when I was standing outside with 100 degree heat just to get a couple of clips of mine from the Emery Wheel to a talent producer at ESPN.

I'm really interested in the discourse around Kvon, Tibido, defensive end from Oregon. You mentioned this on the show today. It reminds me a little bit of when Cam Newton said in 2011, I want to be an icon. And everybody went, I don't know if a football player is supposed to say that. What do you make of his comments and then the reaction to his comments? Yeah, and for the listeners, real quick, the dossier is he's had things that are not taught. And one of the things was there's nothing a coach can teach me. I know it all. In so many words, that's what he said. He also said when he was explaining why he chose

Oregon over Alabama, I don't really care to be a world champion. I want to be a part of a winning organization that in the corporate world and Nike provides that for me, like stuff that, you know, diehard football fans that makes your stomach sick. And if you're a football evaluator, a lot of times you're a longtime scout and it's supposed to all be about the team, the team, the team, and not about the individual. Kavon's very proud of himself. He said that, you know, I think that's ridiculous that he wouldn't be the first pick overall, called it ridiculous. And I come out to it and I say, I speak to teams. I like, if he was the quarterback, that might rub you wrong.

You know, Josh Rosen got knocked in the draft process a few years ago because of some of the things he would say in these meetings or they're like, who does this kid think he is? And, you know, Cam Newton was this super charismatic, but also would said that thing to Peter King where he's like, I want to be an entertainer and that rubs people wrong, but there's a quarterbacks. If you're a defensive end and you want to be the guy who's proud of yourself and boyst Some teams can actually use that type of energy. And I've done the work on Kvon Tibido.

He's really well liked by teammates. His coach out there in Oregon speaks the world of him. And he's been the number one middle school, high school, and college recruit his entire life. Like he's not going to suddenly become a different, he's been told he's the greatest ever. So if he starts saying that stuff, it's how he feels. All that said, you know, some of these teams in the top five, they're trying to build cultures and workplace environments where it's all about we, not me.

he might not be their cup of tea. I don't, the one I don't get is I'm better at football than the other guys in the top five. Why would that be a problem for anybody? I know. And it goes back to, I remember Eli got in trouble a few years back where in trouble. But the media killed him because he was like, Eli Manning said he believed he was an elite quarterback. This is after I think he'd won at least, you know, one Super Bowl. People were like, Eli's not elite.

Like, what do you want him to say? If he says the alternative, if Kavon Tibido comes out and is like, you know what, Aiden Hutchinson's better than me. Trayvon Walker is better than me, but I think I'll make a nice career for myself. We'd kill them for that comment. So there's really a no right answer there. The only thing you really can say is I believe I am the very best and hopefully another team believes it as well. We got a test driver this last year when Trevor Lawrence did that profile with Sports

Illustrated and essentially said something other than every single poor of my being is devoted to football. Everybody went, uh-oh, uh-oh, are we sure about Trevor Lawrence? So anyway, there's no great answer here. Can we do a few draft cliches before you go? Oh, yes. Hips swivel, one of my favorites. I guess leverage point is one that's new.

We get a lot of leverage point. That's a big one. It's good. Pad level. Pad level is huge. Catch radius. Everyone loves catch radius. Do people really know what pad level is?

No one knows what pad level is. I worked on broadcast with Chris Spielman, who's now with the Detroit Lions in an executive role. And Chris would always talk about pad level. I was his sideline reporter for three years. He said it every game, pad level. I had no idea what he was talking about. So, I mean, I don't know what pad level.

Never has explained. And I'm sure someone listening to be like, Peter Schragher doesn't even know what pad level is. No, I don't. I don't know what pad level is. All those things are good. But then you get the stuff off the field, which is always like, you know,

and it's real. And it's just like, you know, coach's son. And that's black players, white players, like coach's son. And it's like, there's nothing else to it. It's just like, he's a coach's son. And you're like, all right, but like, keep going. Like, no, no, he's a coach's son.

Like, oh, great. I guess that, sure. There's a lot. I mean, cool. But all that stuff gets, gets fed to you. But, you know, it's your job to kind of sift through it and not fall into the cliches. And especially when I'm communicating it on TV, try not to just be every draft blog that just, you know, copy and paste what they're saying.

I think my favorite is no NFL draft expert will say, Liberty's Malik Willis is the best quarterback in the draft. They will say is the best quarterback in this draft. Yes. Why do we need to say this draft? In this draft, not the draft. I'm not talking about 2023. I'm not talking about 2021.

Kyle Brandt and I always joke about. And it's like, we call it the tepid take. And it's like, hey, Matt Corral arguably might be the first quarterback taken in this draft. Like it's just you couch it with like arguably might be, could be possibly. and then it's a take, but it's couched with so many different words before it that it's not the hottest of takes. Here is my hack,

if you want a draft expert to give you a good grade, excuse me, on draft day, draft a player from a position that your team is already good at. Oh, yeah. So if the Cowboys go take the linebacker to Kobe Dean, people back, oh my God, Cowboys linebackers just got even better.

Yep. And it doesn't matter that there are three other huge holes on the team. No. They love the double down draft. They love it because it shows that you're confident in what you got, but you're not settling. You're going to get even more. They love it.

And during the draft, and I guess I could plug it here, I'm going to be working for the NFL network during the draft. It's such a rapid fire event that like you're giving quick rapid fire analysis and you're checking your text and you're obviously aware of the picks maybe a second before they come out. And it's like you got to get your ducks in a row. You got to make sure that they can't all just be apics. And that's where it comes hard where you're on air and you're criticizing a pick because that's what lives forever. And that's what also makes you an enemy amongst the players and many of the people on Twitter. But like when I hear that, like when the Raiders took Cleland Farrell fourth overall and it was actually tricky because it was an ex-colleg of ours, Mike Mayok. I remember, you know, Daniel Jeremiah, who was respectful for it.

It was like, well, that's an interesting pick. And I'm like, okay, that's a way to handle it. Like, that's a way to handle it. It's not, he's not killing him, but we know that that might not, every board might not have had Cleland Farrell above Devin White. So that's, that's how you handle. It's an interesting pick. So the players do remember it if you kill them on track.

And you're spoiling their moment. I remember when Jay Billis, like went nuts when Josh Smith was drafted a couple years back of the NBA. That's dating me. But like, I don't think it's a good pick. And like, Josh Smith knew. Like it sucks. That's their moment.

And forever, that's some Yahoo on TV to them, you know, ruining the moment by making it about them, you know. Somewhere, Treve Albert's. remembers that Mel Kuiper got really mad when the cults drafted him instead of. They had Trent Dilfer and Marshall Falk. Who was it was Dilfer. They wanted Dilfer. Dilfer.

That was it. That was it. Peter Schrager. Thanks for coming on the press box. I also have all of those Mel Kiper books, Brian. I appreciate you bringing me on. Okay, here we go. Yeah.

Next time, we're going through it page by page. Go through them all. Folks, I didn't bring on our next guest to stick another fork in the Los Angeles Lakers. Because after the Lakers finished 16 games under 500 missed the playoffs, the sports media is all out of forks. But a couple of months ago, I ran into the Los Angeles Times Lakers beatwriter Dan Wojke. All you had to do was look at Wojke

and see that he was in the middle of an unusual professional experience. The Lakers' stars were hurt. The Lakers coach was this close to being fired, and some of the post-game interactions between athletes and reporters were, shall we say, a tad stilted. So when I saw Wojke, I thought, Hmm, what's it like to be an NBA beatwriter when the team you're covering is doomed? Here's Dan Woyke.

All right, Dan, what's the biggest difference between covering a winning team and covering this year's Lakers? I think when... That's a really good question, right? Because I think there is sort of a repetition sometimes in winning. And what made this Lakers team so interesting was that there was such a repetition in losing and kind of trying to come up with new modifiers for the losing. Like, I think if I audited my stories from this year, I think I would have used the phrase like either rock bottom or new low.

Like, I felt like I was using it, like, weekly. And that's what was different with this team. I've always told people, right? Like, there's basically three types of teams, and you don't want to cover the middle type, right? Like, you either want to cover a team that's good because people tend to care about good teams. You know, there's various levels of that.

You do want to cover bad teams. Bad teams can be really fun a lot of times, right? Like, especially if expectations are low, you get great stories. Usually access is pretty good. You know, it can be a, it can be kind of a fun, especially if it gets to like the fun bad. I covered a very fun bad Ole Miss football team very early in my career in which like at Orgeron and insisted a football player did not have a toe injury. but said football player came in and did media in sandals so we could see said toe injury

like things like that where it gets like fun bad but you don't want to cover a boring team like mediocre is terrible and this year's Lakers team was like almost by definition for most of the season mediocre. It got very bad at the end but was a team that was never more than three games over 500 even when it was going goodish

and so I think even in that mediocrity though What made this team different was just like, I think, the weight of expectations and watching a team slowly crumble under them. It was a really interesting psychological exercise, I thought. So you mentioned coming up with different words. You sit down to write your gamer every night. And by the way, I noticed those gamers were migrating off the front of the LA Times Sports page just kind of inside a little bit as the season went along. Was that hard? Yeah, was that hard to sit down and write?

Well, the hard part was, the hardest part was like trying to stay intellectually honest, but at the same time, like, you know, this was a team that always held on to like slivers of hope because it had LeBron James and Anthony Davis, right? Like it had, you know, pardon the, like, pardon the idiom, but like, you know, good aces up their sleeves. Like this was like, if it all came together, a team with the Brown James and Anthony Davis should be really good. And so there was always like this underlying like current of hope around them, even when it was really bad. It was sort of like, you know, if we just get these guys back, you know, we peak at the right time, it'll be all right. And like the goalpost kept getting moved, right? At first it was like, it's okay if we have to go on the road in the first round of the playoffs. And then it became like, it's okay if we're the sixth seat.

Like, we'll be all right. We'll figure it out. And then pretty soon it was like, well, if we have to host a playing game again, you know, we can do that. And then the next thing, you know, you're covering a playoff race, but then you have to take a step back and be like, no, this isn't a playoff race. This is the 10th best record in the West that we're doing. dealing with. And it's like, you know, you hear you, but you would hear them always preach this hope and they would give you these little slivers and they would tease you just a little bit. And it was hard to try to figure out what was hope and what was delusion. And that was like a really big challenge this season, especially when you're writing game stories. Like, was this game where they played well an anomaly or was this game when they played well a sign of what this team could be if it all comes together. And it was a tightrope really for, I would say like a month and a half. And then and then after the or break when they just lost all the time, it became a lot easier to know that it wasn't going to happen. I imagine those post-gamers are interesting too, because like are the guys saying,

hey, you know, there is still hope because that's what you're supposed to say after a game, or do they actually believe there is a sliver of a chance they'll get in the playoffs somehow? It was hard. I mean, I think Frank Vogel believed there was a chance. I think Anthony Davis for sure believe there was a chance. I'm not as sure that LeBron did. I think he's a little bit more pragmatic, a little more realistic in those ways. Like, I mean, we heard him say things like, we're not on the Bucks level or the clippers are better than us. Like, I mean, these things are in arguably true. But like when you would just hear them in the context of the post game, it wasn't the same sort of like, you know, we've only played 20 games together. As soon as we get on

the court, we're going to figure this out, right? Like, so it was kind of interesting navigating that and trying to figure out, you know, because no one's ever going to sit up there, right, and be like, our season's over, it's doomed. The guy sitting next to me who says we've got a chance in the playoffs is a lunatic. No one will ever say that out loud. So you have to try to find, A, if people are going to say it behind the scenes, which turns out some were. You know, but like there was, I still think, like, a genuine belief that if, you know, if they got to the final week of the season and they were in playoff position, like sort of like

what we're going to see, I think, with the Brooklyn Nets. Just like you get your guys and you've got better players at the top than virtually everybody will play. You got a shot. Now, the Brooklyn Nats, the difference to the Brooklyn Nets of Lakers, the Brooklyn Nets have way better basketball players. There's just more of them. And that was sort of the other kind of wild part about covering this Lakers team was that it was, in one breath, you're talking about all-time greats, like Dwight Howard, Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook. like these guys are all going to be in the Hall of Fame. And then, but like the players that actually like mattered on this team were guys like

whenian Gabriel and Stanley Johnson and Austin Reeves and you, the league monk. And like, and that was kind of a wild part of the season too, which was like in one breath you're talking about NBA like luminaries, right? It was like a walking like the NBA lane commercial that they did at the start of the season. It's like all the guys that were in the commercial are on the team. But like the real people in the neighborhood. who do care about are the guys like Austin Reeves.

It was a wild season. With hindsight, everybody will say that the original sin of the season was trading for Russell Westbrook last July. What was the vibe like around the team when that trade actually went down? So I was in Tokyo when that happened at the Olympics. And I remember my co-worker, Brad Turner was back in L.A., kind of talking to people. And I remember getting text messages when I, I'm trying to think if it was when I woke up in the morning.

I think it happened overnight because if I remember correctly, that was the same day the Dodgers traded for Max Scherzer. And so it was like a very big day at the L.A. Times, you know, in terms of these two new giant superstars come into town that have changed everything. And I remember talking to people and sending some tax and talking to a couple people around Team USA. And the vibe was sort of, we don't know if it makes the Lakers better, but we do know it makes them weirder. And that piqued my interest. you know like I was into that I was excited to see weird basketball like I'm very pro weirdness I want to see strange I want to see um that my my colleagues on the beat would tease me endlessly this year when I I kept calling Russell Westbrook interesting and they they found

that to be an absurd way of viewing him but I mean I think it's interesting I think it's interesting that this guy is going to be in the hall of fame but people watch him play basketball they're not sure if he's good or not. Like that is a like a very interesting dichotomy. Like you can't really describe what he does well because what he does well sometimes can be so displeasing to watch. It was, but I think there was

a lot of healthy skepticism from basketball people, but a lot of that went away quickly because LeBron James has solved every one of these problems that's ever pending in his career. He's figured it out with Dwayne Wade. He figured it out with Chris Bosch. He figured it out with Kyrie Irving. Like, he'll be able to figure it out with Russ too. And he wasn't.

Or he didn't, I should say. And watching that kind of play out over the course of the year was, it was exhausting. You and Brad Turner reported that James had this really sort of obvious body language. Oh, yeah. Westbrook wouldn't play well. You guys could see that yourselves during games? For sure. Yeah.

I mean, I think it was just, I mean, you could see pretty early on. you could really see frustration with LeBron, I think. And then as the season went on and he started playing better on offense and sort of was putting up these historic numbers, you know, for a player his age, that like it wasn't resulting in wins and that sort of, you know, the word I've used is volume of what Russell Westbrook's mistakes, but I don't mean volume in terms of like a measurement. I mean in terms of like spinal tap like this amp goes to 11 volume.

Okay. Right? Like, because Russell would say, Russell would say things like, I'm allowed to miss shots, I'm allowed to turn the ball over. Like, everybody else gets to do these things. Why shouldn't I? Right? This was a defense mechanism he would use with us. And like the, you know, sure, he's right. Like, LeBron James was a shot.

LeBron James is a pretty high turnover player. And like all those things are true. But it's sort of, you know, the noise of the mistakes. It's that you would watch Russell, you know, dribble down and shoot a really bad jump shot. And it felt like other teams would score 90% of the time. I don't think there is an advanced statistic for shot off the side of the backboard to fast break point on the other side. But if it was, I think the Lakers would be like really low in that metric this year. It felt like every time the stuff, and part it was like you would see these guys, you know, sort of deflate when these things would happen, I think, because it wasn't just the mistake in a vacuum. It just sort of represented the challenges of the whole thing.

and here it was unfolding so ugly in front of everybody. It was, I think it was harder, I think it was harder than LeBron expected to sort of play through those errors. Back in March, you had an interaction with Westbrook postgame, and I know these always get yanked out of context. I want to play it and then just tell us what this was like for you as a reporter. This is, Woyke and Westbrook, March, post game. A lot of times with your misses, like when, you know, their bad misses,

They get a lot of attention and stuff. How are you able to not process like, you know, the miss before the end of the game, right? Like that shot is kind of high off the backboard. Like, how do you not let that stuff affect your confidence? I got 23,000 points. How about that? It's a good answer. So the funny thing about this, Brian, too, was like, this was the only game I covered this year on Zoom

because it was in Toronto and none of us wanted to cross the border. potentially get caught with COVID in a PCR test in Canada for two weeks. And so we were on Zoom. A group of us had kind of gathered in a hotel in Washington, D.C., the reporters. None of the reporters went. We were all in D.C. And we kind of were like huddled in this like conference room that we, I don't want to say illegally took hold of, but like they kind of gave it to us without charging us.

And the next day they were using it for a P.F. Chang's like hiring event. And yeah, so there's like all of this paper. working there we're watching a basketball game. And post-case, so the way that game ends is, like, right at the end of regulation, like Russell Westbrook tries to take the game-winning shot and he misses it horrendously, off the side of the backboard type of a situation, like, as bad of a miss as it can look. Well, somehow the Lakers get another chance, and Russell Westbrook makes the shot this time. So what I was trying to get out with him was sort of like, you know, and he had been in a miserable

slump all year. This is, you know, not that long after the Sacramento Kings are playing foreigners cold as ice. every time he shoots the ball in a game. Stuff like that has been happening all season. I basically wanted to just sort of see where it's like he was and he's just like, he's like, I've been doing it my whole career. Like 23,000 points.

He's just, like, what do you say? Like, yes, that is factually correct. It was a good answer. It was succinct. It was to the point. It wasn't the only sort of weird Westbrookian press exchange that was had this year. There were a lot of them.

We got to see some of his quirks. Like if a question came his way that he didn't like, he would oftentimes sort of fire back the semantics. It would be like, well, who wrote it? Who said it? He would ask sort of these questions, well, what do you mean by that? Like, that was his way of sort of turning the tables on reporters. But as sort of you saw as the year went on, people got more comfortable with that.

There were other reporters that had, you know, who kind of shot back in a way that doesn't really happen in that press conference setting. It was more of a locker room thing, to be honest. And I think as the year went on, you know, when we're still not in locker rooms. It was, people got more comfortable in that setting and got more comfortable kind of treating it not like a TV show and treating it more like an actual one-on-one interaction with a player. As you go through the season like this, do things get more stilted between you guys and the players? That's a good question.

I think there was a point in time in the season where actually like when it was clear that like this was going to be either ugly or just downright terrible that like, you saw people relax a little bit, like, weirdly. Like, we, I remember after they lost to Portland, we had a, this was a bad, they lost to Portland right after the trade deadline. No Damien Lillard, C.G. McCollum had just been traded. I mean, these are like a bunch of guys that are on the fringes of the NBA that lost to everybody on the Lakers played, like, you know, and the team was in total disarray. And we're, after the game, like, I think we had a, we talked to LeBron about when,

when the last time he flew coach was. Like, this was like, like after, like we're, we're hanging out in a hallway, you know, kind of,

we've done our media for the night and stuff like that. And we were just having sort of this, it was a question that we had sort of asked each other because as we're sort of commiserating about our travel and stuff like, when do you think like the last time LeBron James, like was,

you know, on a commercial airline. Not coach. I'm sorry, just commercial period. Okay. And it was like, it was like when he was like 18.

Like, it's been a, like maybe some international flights he'd said. But like he's talking to us and the next thing, you know, he talks about how like he can't go to Target and how it drives his wife crazy because his wife wants him to go to Target. But it was like a very like interesting sort of conversation about fame

with the most famous NBA player. And I think part of it had to do with the fact that he knew his team wasn't very good. So it was kind of like he was just a little more relaxed, a little more comfortable. And then like there were a lot of those really positive sort of like sidebar interactions throughout the season. especially late. Now, as the team sort of slid in the last month, like, for people who don't know,

like their schedule was terrible in March. Like, I think the longest any of us were home was like four days in a row. It was like very much a road heavy. Everybody's on the road. When you travel out in the NBA, people tend to get sick. So everybody's got like, it's a group of people with the sniffles that are losing basketball and who, you know, haven't been home and like are here. hearing from their wives about their kids, like being upset and stuff like that.

Maybe I'm projecting a little. But it was, I think there was a little bit of frustration at that point a little bit more. But really, like, I think there was sort of like a comfort in, you know, like they knew they weren't going to win a title. And so you would have these really relaxed sometimes interactions. Like the night, I thought this was hilarious. I loved Carmelo Anthony. I never covered Carmelo Anthony before. You would always hear from people that he's like one of the best stars in the NBA when it comes to media and stuff.

And my one year of it was awesome. Bill Orum had a great line at the end of the season where he's like, he's like the fact that COVID robbed us of a year of Carmelo Anthony in the locker room, no one will care about it. But it's like we felt slighted that we couldn't just talk to him about things like, you know, one of the Lakers video guys was rewatching Sopranos and Carmelo talking to him about the Sopranos from like 15 years ago. It was just always really funny. So they had just been eliminated from the playoffs in Phoenix,

and Carmelo sits down, and he's wearing, like, a teal windbreaker and an orange bucket hat. And he looks like he's dressed like he's playing for the Miami Dolphins. And we had mentioned, like, I said something. I made some sort of passing reference like, oh, like, is Dan Marino dressing you or something like that? And he sat down. He's like, no, it's Ray Finkel, which is like, you know,

if he's going to make Ace Ventura references, you know, 30 years after the movie, after they just been eliminated from the playoffs. But I think that kind of, so yeah, there was disappointment, but it was coded, I think, in an awareness that this probably wasn't going to end the way they wanted it to. Now, you mentioned ORAM. Back in January, he and Sam Amick have this big story that the Lakers almost fired the coach, Frank Vogel.

And in fact, his job status after that was game to game. So now the whole beat is on coach firing watch. How does that change your life? Well, the first thing you do is you pre-write a story, right? Like you pre-write a newser. So we had a Frank Vogel, this gets fired, newser, like, ready to go. I think we wrote it two or three different times throughout the season. It was always kind of a thing there.

And so that happens. And so, yeah, you start hitting sources and stuff like that. And it was kind of funny because I was able to sort of get the reactionary sort of scoop to all of this, which was we have no present plans to fire. Frank Vogel, which is not the most It's not no. It's not, yeah, like if my wife told me I've got no present plans to leave you,

like the other way, I'd be like, so you're saying it's on the table, though, too. Yeah. But yeah, no, it was definitely like a thing where you, there was, I would say, a two weeks span where you would go to the, you'd go to the game at night and you had to be prepared for if it went really badly, but maybe that's the night that this happens.

You know, there was never really any definitive sort of like he's safe, he's not. And then you sort of got to a point where it was like, well, they're far enough along in the season. Like, it's probably not going to happen anymore. But it definitely, in that sort of, I would say, like, two or three weeks, ban, it was, you had to be very nimble in terms of just even in planning news and stuff like that, right? Like, there were features I wanted to write about Frank Vogel that got shelved because of just sort of the nature of the season, because of the nature of his job status. like one thing I really wanted to write this year was sort of in like Frank Vogel is a very nice man, a very down-to-earth guy, like sort of a neighborly quality to him. And I, you know, at one point during the season, I'd realized it had been like two plus years since she had coached a game in a suit because nobody wears suits anymore.

And at the notion of like, what does Frank Vogel's suit closet look like? Like, what does he do with it? Has he cleaned it out? I wanted to write about Frank Vogel in suits. And this was an idea. Everybody was on board with. And then the team lost like eight games in a row. And it became like this total fight.

And it was like, you know, okay. Like, so that story goes away. And it just like we never really, we never really got to, we never really got to talk about a suit collection the way that I wanted to this year. But yeah, it just puts everything sort of on edge and you just have to be really nimble and you have to be prepared for, you know, the fact that you're going to go there and maybe something's going to happen.

But I will say covering LeBron also sort of puts you in that situation too, because of all the players in the NBA, he's probably one of two or three who can start an entire news cycle with the postgame press conference too, right? So if you go, you know, you might have your game story. You might have your next day feature plan. But if LeBron is there post game and says something about Kremev Abdul-Jabbar or something like that, now you're off to the races again. Speaking of Vogel and tell me if I have a.

have my timing right here. Sunday's game against Denver's last game of the season. And during the game, Adrian Wojnarowski reports that Vogel is going to be fired. At the horn. At the horn. So now you guys get to be the ones to deliver the news essentially or ask Vogel about it immediately post-game. What is that like? Yeah, it was not pleasant. So, you know, at this point, the season's over.

we all know that Frank Logel will lose his job at some point here, right? Like the writing is on the wall or reporting has been, you know, whatever. None of this is a surprise. But as we are sitting there, so the Lakers have this like crazy comeback overtime game against Denver. All of these players on the back end of their bench are playing guys that were on their G-League team are having the bet. Like, you know, Austin Reeves, the aforementioned Austin Reeves, undrafted rookie has a triple double that puts them in categories with Oscar Roberts and Jerry Reston. Blake Griffin in terms of rookies who have ever done this, right? Malik Monk scores 40 points.

Mack McClawn, who was famous for being like this white dude Dunker who ended up at Georgetown from Texas, I believe, you know, is on the Lakers Gile team. Ends the game with like this crazy two-hand reverse right at the buzzer. And it's like this really, I tweeted, best win of the season. Like it was like this really like they've got vibes. Brian, it was their first winning streak since January 7th. Okay? And like, like I hit send on that tweet and then I get the woe's notification and we're just like, whoa.

And it wasn't just that like that it wasn't just that part. It was the wording of the tweet and the way the news was reported, which was like that he'll be informed of this Monday. Well, like, so my first text or to Lakers sources to say like, we're about to inform him now. Like, help us get through it. Yeah. Yeah, like help us get through this. And the Lakers went really radio silent on it. You know, Frank, we weren't the first people to tell Frank about the tweet, obviously.

By the time he makes his way off the court into the locker and he has spoken to, you know, communications, people within the team and stuff like that who've made it aware. But it was something like, so I was the reporter who asked. I caught some criticism from people for being maybe a little callous about it. But to me, it felt like just a really direct, it felt silly talking to him about a game. that just happened when this this bomb had you know pardon the use of it but like this huge piece of news that just unfolded in this really unconventional way that had a lot of people really angry and like really upset you know and upset upset for how frank was being treated upset for the way

the organization was handling it you know there was a great line in bill's story that i had heard to and was potentially somewhere like demarcus cousin says something along the like damn they didn't even let him make it to the plane as he's like walking out of Because we're all in this hallway and we're seeing Denver players walk by. We're seeing Lakers players walk by and coaches and stuff like that. And everybody just kind of had the same sort of shock look on their face. Like, this isn't how this happens normally. And that, it was a really bizarre position.

And, you know, I guess kudos to Frank Vogel for smiling his way through it. He had a great quote, which was like, you know, I think it was something along as like, I haven't heard shit or they haven't told me shit or something like that, which was a money quote and it was, you know, but at the same time, like he also then, he didn't double down or anything like, I want to celebrate this game. He didn't take a lot of questions. It was a very short press conference. Yeah, it was really bizarre.

I've never seen anything like that in journalism necessarily where, like, you know, certainly in football, it's happened before where, you know, a coach loses a game and he gets fired the next day or maybe later in the after. But between the final horn and the press. conference seemed like, I can't remember that ever happening. Did you guys draw straws about who would get to ask him? We discussed it, and there were a couple of us who had sort of volunteered for it, I guess. We knew, and again, the rhythm of this was going to be weird because, you know,

the rights holder of Spectrum Sports and here in Los Angeles, like Mike Trudell, their reporter, always asked the first two questions. And, you know, that wasn't going to be what he was going to ask. So it was sort of like I ended up being closest to the microphone afterwards and was like, all right, let's do it. You know, and didn't feel like it wasn't a fun question to ask somebody that, you know, especially like the weird thing about head coach is too and, you know, is that it is over the course of you. Like that is the guy you speak to most in press conferences.

You have the most interactions with the head coach of the team you're covering. You talk to them pregame every game. Talk to them post game every game. They always speak in practices. There's no like in and out, right? So that is the person you have probably the most sort of depth of a, at least a formalized working relationship with. And so, and it can be antagonistic.

And at times it really was this year. But I think, though, to be in that position wasn't very fun. It wasn't fun to tell somebody that they were, you know, functionally just fired via tweet. Let's end here, Dan. A feature of covering a bad team is the end of season, what went wrong autopsy piece. Yeah.

You and your colleague, Brad Turner, published on Friday. When do you start gathering acorns for that piece? December. I think. I would say. Pre-Christmas, maybe. Wow. This year was obvious pretty quickly that it was like some version of this

was going to have to happen. You know, I mean, this isn't in the story, but I was talking about it last night as, you know, maybe one of the other best moments of the year was the Lakers go to Dallas and they win on a last second shot, like December 16th or something like that. Austin Reeves again hits it. And then the next day, the whole team gets COVID.

The broadcasters, like this huge COVID outbreak happens on this team. It made its way into the press room and stuff like that. And it like totally changed. Like the next thing you know, you're watching a Christmas Day game and there's like three of the regulars on the Lakers are playing. The day after the COVID outbreak, I'm sorry. Anthony Davis got hurt for the first time majorly in the season. and two. So it was just sort of like around that time you had kind of the sense that like,

all right, like this isn't going to be their year. So, you know, start ticking off boxes in your mind as to like, what are some of the things we've noticed? What are some of the cracks? Where are some of the issues? And what was unique about this team in some ways is like sometimes like these things are a mystery. And I don't think like in our story like there was much much mystery to what went wrong. Like the problems were pretty pronounced. on November 1st, just like they were on April 1st. Like it was a through line of, you know, disappointment. And because they were things like fit and age and like they were always these things.

The challenge for us was to find like the right anecdotes, the right sources, the right kind of things to kind of undercut just sort of, you know, like, you know, hearing from an opposing player, like usually opposing players are generally speaking, like fairly. fairly respective of everybody else in the league because they know how hard it is. But just hearing from a player saying like, what happened? They stink. That was a great quote. Yeah. You know, it's sort of like one of those things. You're like, well, yeah, like that'll be in that story when we get the chance to write.

We'll have that up there pretty. When do people start loosening up and telling you stuff for a story like that? Like when is the season so doomed that the information on that kind of stuff starts flowing more freely? This year I would say, I mean, I'm fortunate in my sort of journey into covering this team where like I kind of did it backwards in some ways where I'd covered the clippers for a long stretch. And then I covered the league as a whole for three years before moving back onto the Lakers specifically. So I was able to have sources, you know, from different teams and people around the league that I had written features about or had covered at some point that I was touching base with throughout the season. And, you know, and those people will speak, like, generally speaking, like, pretty freely about, like, what was going on with the Lakers because there was just so much, they're always on TV. They're always on the talk shows.

Like, you know, it's not like a team you can hide from in the way, say, like, what's going on with the Miami Heat might be a little bit more of a mystery to the sort of NBA public. Internally, though, I really think, like, early, like, like, right after the Ulster break, when the team, like, came out, they lost, like, four or five games. right away. And it became clear that like this wasn't a playoff race anymore. This was a play in race. That to me was sort of when the doors opened a little bit more and people were a little more willing to kind of be like, why did this happen? But I will say though, too, Brian, it was a question they were all asking themselves the entire season. It was like, it was the through line of the season is like, why did this go wrong? Or how did this, how could this possibly happen? And so people were pretty willing to kind of share theories behind the scenes because it was

what they were trying to figure out all year you guys were on parallel tracks answering the same absolutely absolutely yeah it was it was really unique in that way um that we were all trying to you know i remember i had one point i think lebron had said something to us like after our post game was like he's like damn you guys always has the same question we're like well they're always the same problems you know and it was just sort of like i it was hard it was hard it was hard to be creative in that sense, but yeah. Dan Wojke, he has no present plans to take a vacation. Thanks for coming on the press box.

Thanks, Brian. All right, it's time for the second weekly edition. David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about what happened to Rory McElroy in this decade was the Rory 20s. Today's headline comes from listeners Jake Tuber and No Lemonade. It's from the Washington Post, David.

Really fun piece by Friend of the Pod, Travis M. Andrews. We heard that Bruce Willis will no longer be acting because he has aphasia. Andrews writes in the Washington Post about a man who looks exactly like Bruce Willis. I mean exactly. It has been Willis's stand-in for 13 movies. Wow. I want you to think of famous Bruce Willis catchphrases as you ponder this question. What was the Washington Post strained pun headline?

The piece is just about, it's the profile of the double. Yes. Body double or whatever. Double. Remember, Bruce Willis catchphrases. I can only think of yippie kai, motherfucker. Okay, okay. Is that it?

Well, but now you got to do the pun part. Yippie Kaya. This is so strange, so glorious. Looker. Mr. Yippie Kayae. Looks just like Bruce Willis. I could have sworn it was Bruce Willis.

It's Bruce Willis's doppelganger? Yippie Kaye Yippleganger. Yippie Koehapelganger. What I tell you? He is David Chewbaker at Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. David and I back Monday.

or lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. That might be the best one ever.