The Press Box - Remembering Bill Walton, Saving the Washington Post, and the Latest on the NBA Rights Scramble

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

Hello, media consumers! We lost a basketball and media legend this week, the one and only Bill Walton. Bryan and David kick off the show by reading some of his quotes and discussing how he was ahead of his time (0:20). Then, they get into the current reported plan to save The Washington Post, which includes subscription tiers and additional content for superfans (10:43). Later, in the Notebook Dump, they talk about how the NBA playoff pregame shows have added a member to the panel (32:10), the Mavericks’ “commanding” lead in the Western Conference finals (40:02), and the latest on NBA media rights and how Turner could have maintained the rights without a bidding war (42:37). Bryan closes the show with a fun story from the movies (47:29). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join me Danny Kelly along with Danny Hyfitz and Craig Horlebeck every week on the Ringer fantasy football show as we prepare for the 2024 fantasy football season. We'll cover all the biggest news and topics across the league as well as whatever weird topics our listeners email us about. That's the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify. David? Yes. We lost an amazing person yesterday. Bill Walton died at 71. And I don't know about you, but I found myself walking around, quoting him as an announcer yesterday saying,

throw it down, big man, throw it down. How do we begin to describe the essence of Bill Walton? Oh, man. I mean, I think for the purposes of this podcast, there's some interesting, like, threads to pull on. in our lifetime he I mean I'm sure there were other examples in football my youth that I wasn't paying attention to

but to my mind he was the first widely hated color commentator obviously more love than hated he had a great job you know a high profile job for a long time but he was like the announcer that I remember like adults complaining about

you know which I think was part of the shit I mean obviously it was part of the schick It was all very deliberate. It got people talking about him. But he was a really gifted commentator. And I think on the incredibly short list of, you know, legendary players who are also legendary broadcasters,

you know, that's not necessary. I mean, there's a lot of legendary players who are legendary thinkers. That doesn't necessarily mean you're good at talking about the games, certainly not calling the game in real time. But, yeah, I just remember, I mean, there's been a lot of talk about the glory days of the NBA lately, you know, that being the NBA of our youth, round ball rock and all that. But he's such a fixture for me and my basketball memory. The sort of irreverence, which I think a lot of people didn't get, you know, they took him a little bit too seriously. but it was it was it was you think about lines it was it was the the the freedom to go out there and

just say terrible shot you know when somebody took a bad shot and not just me you know and not the more conventional just like you know unwise look by who you know so and so you know like whatever he was it was it was it was a reverence it was passion it was character um you know it was he was he was he was he was he was just a larger-than-life personality, which, you know, sounds a little cliche, but it really applies to him. Called five NBA finals for two different networks, four of them on NBC before he goes over to ESPN ABC. And you're so right, it feels now in retrospect like it was a little before its time. Because Bill Walton, the one I remember most vividly was 2002 when he was paired with Steve Snapper Jones,

himself a former player and longtime announcer with Marv Albert. And it was a dreadful finals where the Lakers swept the nets. But for the entire series, they were arguing with each other during the game. And not like that playful bickering

that Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson did for a long time. It got pretty raw in there. I remember Steve Jones was complaining about Shaquille O'Neal not being able shoot free throws, which was a very 2002 thing for an announcer to do. And then Shaq goes up to the free throw line during the finals and hits one. And Bill Walton on the broadcast just says, I believe that's called face.

It's like, that kind of is face. I'm not sure this is the best forum to mess with Steve Jones about this. And he had, you know, we've talked about him like over the last 24 hours, I think. much as like he was this glowing orb of basketball love and a deadhead and all these really cool things. It's all true. But as an announcer, he had a contrarian streak about him. He had a heel streak about him. Oh, yeah. And that's when I say like where I say is like almost ahead of its time. There's a little bit of a trippy 60s version of debate TV in Bill Walt where he wanted to call the game. He could certainly do that and analyze the action from him,

but he also wanted to just mess with you a little bit. Yeah. Screw with your expectations of what an announcer should be doing. Yes. And I don't know about you, but like the highest compliment I think I could pay him is that he's almost too interesting to be a conventional announcer. Yeah. He's too big a person to be contained in a job like that,

at least when it came to the NBA finals. and high leverage network games. Because later on in his career, what do we see? He goes on to do like Pac-12 basketball. Yeah. And he's dressed like Uncle Sam and it's like he's just being Bill Walton.

Mm-hmm. And the full bill could really come out. I think if this were, if he were a modern, well, I mean, obviously not a modern player, but if he were coming of age as an announcer now,

he would be the alternate telecast guy, right? He would be the, he'd be like, oh, here's the NBA finals, but do you want to watch the, you want to watch the Bill Walton stream of the NBA finals?

Tune into ESPN3 or whatever. And he could just be there, just sort of doing his thing. I think, I mean, he's, contrarian is correct. And I haven't watched a lot of the coverage. I don't actually know what his point of view is. My guess is that he probably thought that by turning up the volume a little bit, by challenging your expectations, he was one of the only color guys

that actually made viewers think, right? That actually challenged them to to think about what they were watching in a certain way. And if that was the purpose, if that was the idea, I think he was really successful. Looks like there was an actual alt-cast

at one point called Throw It Down with Bill Walton. The NBA was way ahead of us there. I seem to remember him showing up but a college football alternate teleguess, too. Maybe that's where he was dressed like Uncle Sam. But he was definitely dabbling in that. And you're right. Like, I think, I think if you read stuff, if you read books about the old NBA and read

about Bill Walden, I think that was just his personality. Yeah. Challenging people like that. Not, not, he was not a conventional guy in any means. He's cool, of course, because anybody who is a link to the past is a fun guy to be around. And Walton was not only a link to like 60s counterculture. He was a link to John Wooden's UCLA program. Yeah.

Which were the opposite of 60s counterculture. He had a foot in both worlds. We had him here on the press box three years ago to do a podcast about David Halberstam's fine NBA book, The Breaks of the game, which is partly about Bill Walton. And I remember calling ESPN, being like, okay, I'd love to have him. And it took several weeks to get that all lined up. Finally, the day of arrives. Get on a Zoom and Bill Walton's there. And he did the old guy thing of like,

tell me a little bit about who you are and what you want out of this. So I talked to him before it started. And then he said something like, okay, let's do this and see how we get along. I was like, okay, great. That is fine. and I asked my first question in that podcast, which was, how'd you first meet David Halberstein? And if you remember, his answer was more than 40 minutes long.

That is a real stat, 40 minutes long. And we'll post this on the press box Twitter account. But there are a couple times when you can hear me starting to come in because I believe he turned his camera off and I didn't totally know when he was stopping. and you're just trying to read him. But I would start to ask question number two and then back off because Bill Walton was not done. And it was this unbelievable 40-minute answered. Somebody tweeted out and got a few tweets that were like,

wow, Brian Curtis did an amazing job of getting out of the way and just letting Bill Walton talk. That's very nice, but I'm not sure I was making much of a choice. In that instance, I was not going to step in front of Bill Walton and take a charge. Bill Walton was going. I mean, Bill Walton was going. It was fascinating.

It was like, okay. Here we go. And I just remember looking at the Google doctoring that and be like, okay, well, we've gone through this page of questions that he's answered without me asking. Yeah, he wasn't just talking about nothing. He was a, he was running the interview. Like, he, he answered all the questions that you would have had prepped. And 15 questions I never thought to ask. that were about other journalists he knew and other things about David Halberstam.

So great. And it was just unbelievable. And it was Bill Walton. It was not a conventional Q&A. It was not, okay, here you go. What you got next? I've given you a tidy minute and a half answer. It was like, we're going to go.

And off we went. RIP Bill Walton. All right, David, coming up on the press box, the Washington Post has a plan to save the paper. is it enough? We're going to have some notes on the NBA playoffs, including a rights update. That's right, another rights update. And the question of, do we have too many pregame announcers? Plus, Brian's got a story about going to the movies. That's me, Brian. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer. Podcast Network.

Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker and producer Brian Waters here. David Will Lewis is the newish publisher and CEO of the Washington Post. And he's got a plan to fix the Washington Post. This is always where we say the Washington Post has great reporters. Many of them have been on this podcast. Some of them listen to this podcast and send me notes. The Washington Post publishes many great pieces. But it has been a sneaky bad economic story over the last year

and change. I'll give you some data. Max Taney, who was on the pod the other day, writes this. In a meeting with staff, Will Lewis noted that the paper lost $77 million over the past year and saw a 50% drop off in audience since 2020. Now, this is the paper's own publisher and CEO. This is the public stat here. We've lost 50% of our audience in the last four years.

That's not good. Dylan Byers at Puck says it may be even worse than that. Buyers writes, I've previously reported that the company had 139 million monthly visitors four years ago and less than 60 million by the end of last year. And it's not an engaged audience either. Fewer than one in five read more than a single article per month, according to my sources, while fewer than one in 500 actually converted to a paying subscription. This ain't good.

No. So there's a plan. When I hear the plan? Yeah, tell me about this plan. Because you know what? I mean, I think that even in the dire journalism landscape in which we currently, if you ask me, I would probably tell you that just sort of a vision, like a passable vision and steady-handed management would be workable for an institution like the Washington Post.

Now, obviously, there's a matter of how much money you're spending versus how much you're making in. There's choices that have to be made. Sure. But for the real big legacy operations, the Times opposed to Wall Street Journal, if your objective is not some just ridiculous concept of growth, it seems like you should be able to just sort of keep chugging forward. This is a, just a slap in the face of that sort of thing. And again, from purely an economic standpoint,

and Byers gets at this when he writes about it, is that the Post just feels a little boxed in, even if it made the top legacy tier of newspapers. New York Times is the newspaper of newspapers. Yeah. We'll grant that at this point. Wall Street Journal, there's your economics news. Yeah.

Now, the box that the Post should fit in, at least when it comes to people giving their credit cards over, is where the politics newspaper. Exactly. But what happens? The Politico boys walked out the door and built a different business, which just sold for a ton of money. People walked out of Politico and built Axios, taking away even more of the audience. Then you have all these small subscription political shops.

So all of a sudden, the Post has politics. And again, to underline this one more time, has excellent political coverage. But there's other stuff out there that's free. Yeah. So are you going to cough up your credit card? Yeah, I was going to say this has nothing of social media. I think that it's pretty easy to feel like you've dealt with enough politics in the day and television too without having to engage with a, you know, like serious reporting. Absolutely.

So here's some of the parts of the new plan from Dylan Byers over at Puck. For core audiences, the Post will introduce three additional subscription tiers. one tier David is called plus offering with additional additional content offered for super fans of the post another tier is called pro which is comparable to Politico pro and Axios pro which have made a lot of money for those shops at least for Politico and then there's a membership tier which buyers writes as access to exclusive events and forums think the Wall Street

Journal's CEO counsel. Yeah. For non-core audiences, he continues, such as the younger news consumers who engage with post content on social media, the post will also introduce a pay-as-you-go option to access single articles or work from a specific author. And he says, that's not just about charging you a buck for a story. It's about getting your email address and your credit card so that hopefully down the line you will subscribe to the Washington Post. Now this all feels pretty familiar, does it not, from the Save the Newspaper File of Ideas? Yeah. Maybe more comprehensive than some, but yes.

The pay as you go is definitely a great idea. And I don't know about you, but I often, when I'm looking around for stuff, find an article, especially at a smaller local newspaper. And I'm like, I would like to read that. I would pay you, I will pay you $1, which I bet you would like to have local newspaper to read this. one story, but you want to sell me a subscription and so I'm out. Yep. So pay as you go is definitely a great idea. The problem with pay as you go, and I think the sort of like structural, institutional problem

with pay as you go, because other people, I've tried this on a large scale before, is that when you're in that moment of trying to read an article on the, well, I'm not even going to malign any town by putting them in that category, but you know, small town daily news is that it's not like you would you would happily give them a dollar and pay as you go is a step in the right direction but it's also just the inconvenience of registering for say this for pay as you go right like if you like how badly does the average reader want to read that article they might they might want it just badly enough to scan their thumb on their iPhone but do they have to sign up for pay as you go I mean that's why the the large scale ones actually had a path for

it seemed like a path forward but none of those went through it's They almost have to, I mean, if you can pay through iTunes, then maybe that'll work. But I think, I think by and large, that'll be a difficult sell. But we'll see, maybe so. The other tiers plus, I mean, that's something we've seen publications like slight due. There's probably money to be found there because any publication that has super fans probably has a tier of people that if you say, hey, we've got Pressbox Plus, there is some extra content that you're missing unless you sign up for Press Box Plus.

Yeah. By the way, that does not actually exist. We're still trying to get to YouTube, much less a pay tier here for the press box. But if you want to send Brian a dollar, no. People will pay us not to be on YouTube, I think. That may be our new money-making venture. Who were the super fans of the Washington Post? I under if the super fans were, as you're reading this to me, I'm thinking, why are they calling it?

Why are they addressing super fans instead of pros? And then the next category is clearly that. But who are the readers who are like, I mean, local longtime subscribers? Like, I just love it so much. Even Slate, I thought Slate Plus would seem like a little bit of a boondogle at the time. I'm sure it's worked out really well for him. But the core of that is like the people who live with the podcast personalities, you know, for whom those people are their best friends. and then the writers, everything spilt kind of grows out from there. There has to be a sort of personal connection. I would think. Maybe I'm wrong.

We can find those people at the post. Certainly, like people that I would believe readers feel they have a very specific connection to. A lot of the names come into my mind. Tom Boswell, Gene Weingarten have moved on, which is a bad sign. But there's certainly people there from the editorial page and elsewhere, who I think people, connect with. Sure. In some way.

And I also think there's still a Washington audience, even though local papers aren't really local papers in the same way anymore. There's a local Washington audience. I love the Washington. But this is my newspaper. Yeah. I connect with this in some way. The pro tier makes tons of sense.

If you can have these, you know, again, subscription information services, it's a little late because you're competing with Politico and others who have now, mastered that art punch bowl. Yeah. That we're going to give you whatever micro scoop happens in Congress, you're going to have it right away. It's going to be tough to get on that crowd, but probably worth it. And then a hundred percent worth it. I mean, it may be too late, but that can't be that can't be your MO, right? I mean, you have to just try to go and grab that because theoretically, you should be able to do that better than everyone else. Totally. And then membership, events, forums, et cetera, et cetera.

Sounds a little bit like the plus tier to me, but okay, I still, whenever I read these articles about the post, it comes back to this definitional question of what is the post going forward? We know there's lots of great stuff there, great writers, great expertise about various things. But if we all agree that the 1995 newspaper model doesn't work anymore, I was this the New York Times, which is selling you wordle and recipes and everything else. If that model doesn't work anymore, then you have to define yourself somehow. You have to be this defined thing,

again, for the act of people handing over their credit cards to you and saying, I want this. You also, to go back to your point about having the relationship, there has to be some kind of personal relationship with the people that write for the paper or podcast for the paper that is different than just here is my money, give me some news. All the successful publications you and I've seen in 2024 all have some element of that, whether it's through a newsletter, through a podcast, through multiple things like that. There's some way where they feel like this is a part of my life that is different than just me running a credit card and getting to access this news buffet.

what's that going to be for the Washington Post? It's certainly creatable. It's certainly definable. But I wonder if the paper and the people that run the paper more specifically have figured that out yet. Yeah. I mean, that is the sort of central question. You either have to, I mean, I guess you could, you can figure that out on the fly. Most great successes in that category are sort of accident.

to some extent, but they should really have an idea. Did you read about the Washington Post-A-Lito Scoop story? Yeah, what was the deal with that? They sat on this scoop for two years? More like three, but yeah. Did they realize it was a scoop? Like, we used Scoop so offhandedly. Like, they knew that it was news, yes?

So that's the exact question that vexed the Post Newsroom when this happened. but allegedly not Marty Barron, according to reporting at Semaphore, who didn't know anything about the story. So here's the post new write-up of this story. This all happens. The post got a tip about the Alito flag, and a reporter, Robert Barnes, who covered the Supreme Court, went to the Alito's house on January 20th, 2021. That's a big day, David, because it was the day of Joe Biden's inauguration. Here's the write-up. Robert Barnes, the reporter, encountered the couple, that meaning the Alito's coming out of the house. Martha and Alito was visibly upset by his presence, demanding that he, quote, get off my property. As he described the information he was seeking

about the flag, she yelled, it's an international sign of distress. Alito intervened and directed his wife into a car parked in their driveway where they had been headed on their way out of the neighborhood. The justice denied the flag was hung upside down as a political protest, saying it stemmed from a neighborhood dispute and indicating that his wife had raised it. Martha Annalito, we continue here, then got out of the car and shouted in apparent reference to the neighbors, asked them what they did.

Dot, dot, dot. After getting back in the car, she exited again and then brought out from their residence a novelty flag. And let's pause for a moment to just chuckle at the word novelty, to you, one of the great strange words of our time. A novelty flag, David, the type that would typically decorate a garden, she hoisted up the flagpole, there is that better she yelled. So that all happened.

That was all recorded by the reporter. He comes back to post-HQ. And according to semaphore, or at least emails post-HQ, and according to semifor, they don't think it's a piece because they think it's. not about Samuel Alito, Supreme Court Justice, but just about his wife. Right.

Now, given that I just read you four incredibly colorful paragraphs from the lawn of the Alito residents, it sure feels like just that alone is a story in the hands of another publication.

Like, if that had happened with a Daily Beast reporter, that would have been on the site 15 seconds later. Yeah. I mean, it may be just about his wife, and that may be where you draw the line, but that story that you told certainly doesn't give you enough information to deduce that, right?

I mean, it's, it is, it is, it is 100% a story worth reporting out, reporting on and reporting out, right? I mean, you, you have to figure that out. It's, it's a very newspaper thing, isn't it, to look at something like that that's just wildly entertaining on its face, you and I, sitting here smiling as we read that and say, well, is this a story? Yeah. And apparently they were like, okay, let's do a story about the neighborhood dispute,

if it truly is a neighborhood dispute. Let's do a story and figure that out. And apparently that just never got done for whatever reason. I mean, Ben Smith in his semaphore piece about this Washington Post story says, look, the whole Supreme Court coverage, the idea of how we cover the court really changed after the Dobbs ruling got leaked. Yeah. Then we've had all the stories about Clarence Thomas and Jenny Thomas and reporters started

looking at those justices very differently. Yeah. So that happens today. That's going in the newspaper. And we probably don't even have to come up with, oh, this is a colorful story about a neighborhood dispute. Like, no, we're just going to run this. Yeah.

Justice's home flew a flag. Here's what happened when our reporter showed up. Here's a statement from the justice. and you're probably getting to first or second base right there. Yeah. And then you can always report more from there. But what a strange,

strange thing to come out after we've read these stories in the New York Times about the flag. Like, just so weird. Here's some more context. It always smelled a little fishy to me that nobody was aware of this, right?

That like someone, I think initially said, well, the neighbors were too scared. to tip anybody off. They might have been scared for a different reason. But it seems like if you live next to the Alito's, you might, you know, mention that to somebody.

And you're in a flag-based dispute with the Alitos. Exactly, yeah. I mean, you're right. The way we've covered, we covered the Supreme Court has certainly changed. The way that we talk about the Supreme Court has changed. the, you know, out of boundenness of Supreme Court significant others has definitely changed to some extent in the, in the modern war, in the past several years. And a lot of stuff has gone into that. I mean, it would definitely be fair game now. it is sort of always

it's always a little bit mind-boggling I mean this there is an element of like Supreme Court just like you and me to this thing too right like even Supreme Court justice is getting the lawn disputes with their neighbors or like whatever it is but there's also just the Supreme Court justes like end up doing stupid political things you know, hang silly flags like you see when you're driving down the street just like anyone

else because you would hope that they would have such a solemn reverence for their job that they wouldn't do that. But that's not the way that the vast majority of people operate. You know, I don't, I would be devastated if I ever stopped working at the ringer, but I certainly don't make every decision in my life, you know, pointed towards upholding the whatever, the image and standards of the ringer when I'm not on the clock. That just comes naturally to you in some ways. Yeah, it's true. The Supreme Court is entirely different.

The expectations should be much higher. But it's just mind-boggling. That would even cross his mind, cross one's mind to be put in that position. You know, even take the most craven or if you take the most slanted point of view of this whole thing, right? that the elitos are, you know, just sympathetic to the farthest right reaches of the conservative wing of American politics. And they're, I mean, even if you, even if you believe every bit of that, you have, they have, I mean, you would, you would assume that they would think, well, but so we got to keep a low profile because the day job is the most central part of this entire plan.

Right? The day job. Right. I mean, if there, if this guy is just like, if there really is just like a huge political bent that undermines this whole thing. Like what a flag in your yard versus the amount of power that you wield on the Supreme Court, it pales in comparison. Like, why even bother? Versus my job for life. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean. Where I get to make, where I get to hand down rulings that will, you know, affect the course of American history. But I guess you want to stand on your neighborhood too, you know. I mean, if you... Everybody's got neighbors and disputes, apparently with neighbors. Just you saying the word day job made me laugh so much. Like there was a side hustle that Samuel Alito had.

But then there was like, I got to protect the day job too. Yeah. Yeah. Got to watch my time. Make sure I'm making sure I'm not cheating the job. All right, David. Coming up in 30 seconds, the latest on the latest on the end. NBA right scramble.

But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Senior nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. I'm not sure how up you are on the career of MLB umpire Angel Hernandez. I read some tweets about him. You know those NBA refs Bill is always making fun of? That is Angel Hernandez, but for MLB. He retired this weekend, David, and it was a very overworked Twitter joke to write.

Finally, Angel Hernandez has made the right call. We will also accept, I hope he spent some time outside where he can be reunited with many of his called strikes. Nice. Thanks to Chad Orzel, Chris Dahl, Matt Hudson, David Wilson, and Shy J. D. Doug. If you enjoyed saying, you're out of here. Congrats. You made the overword Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, let's talk about the NBA, David. Do we want to do playoff fun or do we want to do rights fun first up?

Let's do playoff fun first. Let's do playoff fun. First thing I would like to address is our boss, Bill's complaint about how the pregame shows have each. added a member to the desk for the conference finals round. So if we look over at T&T, we find Draymond Green sitting in the middle of the panel on inside the NBA. For some reason, the new member always has to sit in the middle of the panel. Yeah.

And if we look over to ESPN, we find Chris Paul sitting in the middle of the panel. What do you think of the new member of the pregame teams? I agree with Bill in principle. I think panel expansion is something we have to constantly battle against, right? Yes. It's like we must be vigilant. We got to watch our waistline when it comes to the panel girth. But the, but I will say I will say this in the defensive, well, I have different defenses for both shows.

One, Draymond Green is a much more seamless fit that I think you would probably assume. Obviously, he's been on the show a number of times in the playoffs prior to the finals and has done this bit. I mean, his work that has done stuff with them before. I don't mind the idea of bringing in a player, especially because, you know, all the players that are up there are, it's been a while since they played the game. And Draymond is, you know, freely brings in nuance that only. a current or recent player we could bring. And also they have a lot of time. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, you know,

they have a lot of room to expand and expound and expand upon things on that show. Especially T&T, yeah. That's what I mean, specifically on T&T. And so, and so, you know, I have less issue with it. I'm still more perplexed as to where Shaq's, like, that Shaq is just, like, not around or sometimes just like doing like Tony Syracusa bits throughout the arena. when he is there and I'm not it's it's all very strange uh I know Shaq I said this before on the

show I know Shaq has a million businesses that he has to keep a flow but you think that like the NBA playoffs are the ones you just black out on your calendar like I can't do stuff then but anyway conference final seems like a big deal yeah you were going to be available for anything this is the last round the TNT's going to do yeah the ESPN one actually I don't mind Chris Paul at all when I saw him up there I sort of flam I had like a visceral reaction to his presence for this very reason. Chris Ball is good. That panel especially needs a player.

Someone who has that sort of like intimate knowledge with what's going on. And they need someone who who, you know, won't, it doesn't sit there in reverence of Stephen A. Smith. Yes. I think he's been kind of, I think he's been kind of great on the show.

But, you know, they have much less time to work with. I get it. But it's not like I'm like dying to hear what Bob Myers says. And now I don't get to hear it and I'm upset. You know, and I think that Chris Paul is much better at this job than I think I would have expected him to be. That show just needs shock paddles. So it needs anything is.

Here's the one thing I don't like about Chris Paul is when you add a player like that, then you're doing the pregame and the conversation sort of has to be about Chris Paul. Yes. I agree with that. They start asking him questions about his career. And you're like, Chris Paul's a great player. I don't care about him right now.

This isn't, somebody asked him a question about like playing well on the clutch, which was a really wild thing to ask Chris Paul in terms of like the playoffs. Like, okay. But like I don't like it when it becomes about him. I'm like, no,

we're talking about two other teams right now. If you want to tell us like what it's like to play against Jason Tatum, then that's awesome. or Tyrese Halliburton like that's interesting and relevant if it's going to be about your career I'm probably all good with this. Let me ask you a question about Draymond if Rudy Gobert played for our Dallas Mavericks and he was on there just trolling a Dallas Maverick after every game would we still be pro Draymond on the pre and post game show? I don't know I would like to say I would like to think I wouldn't be too offended by it but

Who knows? I mean, I can understand why people would take that in a more personal way. I mean, Draymond is is sort of inscrutable, you know? I mean, you don't. Wait, what? Well, it's like you, do you really feel like you have a handle on how much of his public persona podcasting and broadcasting is schick and how much is just Draymond, like the real person? I don't, I feel like I don't know. I feel like if I knew, if I felt more confident that it was stick-based, I would feel I would be more okay with it. I'm more offended by certain comments, but I would be okay with it. But I think that's the whole thing with Raymond. How much of the on-court stuff is like a show? How much, how many times is he getting ejected because he's just bored or

because he just can't, he really can't control his emotions? I don't know. It's a, I don't know. I mean, from where I'm sitting, making fun of Gobert is just, it's good content. So, you know, go for it. I got no arguments. So we're watching the conference final. and are you as amused as I am when watching the conference finals that you then see a commercial for the NBA finals? Yes. And it's that one on repeat with Jimmy Kimmel and Mike Breen and a bunch of other people. Yeah. So we're advertising the finals during the conference finals.

There may be an NBA fan who's like, guys, I'm here for the conference finals, but after, After that, I'm tapping out. Yeah. I have no interest in this additional round. Pacers or Timberwolves fans who are just like, all right, that's it for me this year. They're like, wait a second. This looks kind of interesting. I'm sure that all gets sold with the NBA rights.

You know, they're giving the NBA time. And it's a very slickly produced commercial. We get to hear Breen say bang. But it's just funny to see that over and over again. It is. It's also a little bit more normal. I mean, it's certainly more standard now. in the streaming era than it would have been prior because everybody is familiar with the,

you know, watching your whatever sling or Hulu or whatever thing you watch over the top bottom when they just sort of run out commercials and start just running self-promotional commercials, you know, or it's just like, what is this commercial for? This is a commercial for subscribing to Hulu. I'm subscribed to Hulu. This is so strange. But yeah, it is, it is particularly weird in the NBA. Remember that one they were running a few years ago between free throws? They would shoot the first free throw and there'd be a commercial for the NBA playoffs. No. Like a generalized posies.

It was like, you got me. I'm here. I was just watching that first free throw. Thank you for sneaking this ad in here. So the Mavericks won game two on Friday night over the T. Wolves. Yeah. Aware. They took a wait for it, commanding.

A commanding lead. I'll allow it. Yeah. Now, you got to finish this phrase for me because I'm a little confused here. Is it a commanding two games to none lead or a commanding two games to nothing lead? Right. Two games to none feels right. Isn't that a really weird phrase?

But now that you've asked me, yes. I don't know. And of course, after the Mavs, one game two, the scene shifted to Dallas. Yeah. because that's what we say when we change venues during the postseason. The scene shifts to a different city. This is tangential, but I know that it's statistically basically impossible for the Timberwolves to come back from a 30 hole and win. And we talk about this in every playoffs a million times.

Why are you jinxing this on our media podcast? I'm arguing against it. Okay. And I don't mind at all. Players are talking heads of any sort saying, there's no way they're coming back from this. I just don't see it. But I hate it when the players are talking heads

rely on the statistical history to say that they're never coming back from this. Do you know what I mean? Does this distinction make any sense? It does. None of these statistics are really are meaningful in any way, right? It's like, it's the old, like,

first team to 100 always wins thing. Like, that rule worked when like the average top score was 103, right? Yes, the first team to 100 is by far more likely to hit 103 than the other team. But it's the, the, the, it's impossible to come back. Well, it's not impossible. I mean, what if like, you know, what if this were the Jordan era bulls and Jordan and Pippin Rodman sat out three games the first three games and they lost those three and then they came back. We'd say, well, it's statistically impossible for you guys to win. No, it's not. They went four games in a row any time. It's just a matter of, it's unlikely

because now, because we've seen, because the track record exists, right? It's unlikely because we've seen who's going to be good in this series. And also winning four games in a row is on its own kind of difficult. But, come on. And producer Brian Waters mentions

the 04 Red Sox. And you know what happened? If somebody came back from 03, it'd be like, this is amazing. It's never happened before an NBA history. Because you just reminded us so many times of the stat. Yeah. You set it up and now we're overcorrecting when it actually happens.

Let's do some right stuff before we move on. So when last we left, the soap opera of NBA media rights, David, ESPN, NBC, Amazon, in, allegedly, Turner out, allegedly, or at least hypothetically, before they actually get signed.

The pista right now is still the meanest thing you can think to say about Warner Brothers Discovery Chief David Zazlob. Go for it, folks. It is absolutely the piece to write right now if you're a media writer. There were two details that I thought were really interesting. One comes from Alex Sherman of CNBC who does a fantastic job. He notes that when it comes to these matching rights that Turner allegedly has, since Turner is the incumbent rights holder, they can go and say,

oh, you made an offer, we get to match that. And you and I were talking last Monday about can you even match it if you're a cable company and they're a network? Well, now, Sherman says they may be trying to match not the NBC deal, which is their deal, but the Amazon deal. Would they have the rights to match either? Or was that the content of that more closer to what they had before? I think the answer is big emoji shrugged to that.

And it's up to a court ultimately. to figure that out or the parties to hash that out. But they would probably, they are contending, again, according to Sherman's reporting, or at least potentially contending, that they can match the Amazon deal also. Now, that's the lesser of all the packages. ESPN's is the so-called A, NBC's is the B, Amazon's is the C. Winter Brothers Discovery does have Max. So they can stream games, also potentially put games,

on cable. I just thought that was a really interesting wrinkle here. Sherman also says they may just be doing this as leverage, right? Because there's nothing that says the NBA could have four packages. They don't have to have just one. There's a point at which it probably just gets confusing for viewers, but they could still say you lost, but we're going to create a many package of games for you so that you keep the NBA on T&T. That could still happen. Yeah, that, I mean, Listen, the vast majority of stuff that we read about this now is lately has been about the inside the NBA team, right? Totally. That's maybe a way to keep them intact.

But this is a play. This is where that gets really interesting, right? It's just like, oh, big loss for the basketball world. If the NBA inside the NBA team doesn't get to call games anymore, oh, wait, will they go to Amazon? Whatever. All that conversation goes out the window. But what happens if T&T has like 12 games? I think the answer would be we keep the inside.

the NBA and then inside the NBA is also somewhere else. Yeah, I guess you can go to a streaming platform or something. Yeah, it's not direct. But then it's like how interested is Turner in competition then? But are you really going to pay Charles Barkley full freight to do 12 games? Probably not. They'd figure something out. Second detail, David, comes from Lucas Shaw Bloomberg, who people know from Matt

Bellany's podcast and should also know from all of his written work. You remember that Warner Brothers Discovery slash Turner also had an exclusive negotiating window at the beginning of this process. Because again, they're the incumbent rights holder. So we get some time to sit there with Adam Silver and try to make a deal before anybody else can get in. ESPN came out of their exclusive window with a deal, at least in principle. Well, he says that during the framework of a deal, I believe.

The frame. Thank you for bringing us back to the proper terminology here. Shaw reports the NBA entered talks with Warner Brothers asking for $2.3 billion a year. Zazlov topped out around $2.1 billion. The league got up from the table and walked right into the arms of Comcast and Amazon. So we talk about this big money on the table here. Was it really a difference of $200 million? They couldn't get for, if they had just said, okay, 2.3 it is.

They would have had the framework of a deal coming out of that exclusive period. but they didn't. And then NBC's like, you know what? We're ready to go 2526. Ooh, price just went up. Yeah. NBA already was going to make a great deal and nearly triple its rights fees at 2.3.

They just wouldn't go there. Again, David Zazlov. You're welcome to write anything you want right now. You will get all the love on Twitter for talking about how he bungled this negotiation. I've got a movie story for you, David. All right. I don't know if you saw the box offers that returns for Memorial Day weekend. No, I did not.

According to CNN, overall revenue for the four days plummeted to an estimated $128.3 million, a 29-year low and down nearly 37% from last year. Dang. According to Comscore. Now, there's reasons for this. There's no Marvel movie outright yet now. Furiosa got great reviews but doesn't have super broad popularity

like a lot of superhero movies or blockbuster movies. But that's not what we do in a occasion like this. We take a bit of data and try to make it prove whatever we already thought was true about going to the movie. So allow me.

I took my daughter Stella age eight to see if over the weekend. I would say it was not bad. it was sort of intriguing. You know this is about imaginary friends. Yeah.

Doing spoilers here. That's what if stands for imaginary friends. I couldn't quite decide if it was like a movie about grief or if it was just a pure Pixar style fantasy or something in between. But definitely, definitely very watchable. She had a fantastic time. Except David,

we went to the chain theater nearby here in L.A. and there were 28 minutes of commercials and trailers before the movie started. What? 28 minutes. Remember when like this when the big trailer and commercial things kind of started? What were you like just out of college? I don't even remember how old we were where it became a thing. But that was like that that was just the talking point.

The untrue but like, you know, in arguable. No one was willing to argue about a like note. It was just like, God, there's 30 minutes of trailers before every movie now. Or when you're running late to a movie, it's like, don't worry, there'll be 30 minutes of trailers. Yeah, exactly. Come for yourself. You never meant 30 minutes. It turns out there's now 30 minutes, at least in my experience.

And the ads, dude, were for stuff like verbo and booking.com. Oh, yeah. That Tina Fey had we've seen 9,000 times since the Super Bowl. I'm just saying they're turning to my 8-year-old daughter being like, does this make any sense to you? this booking app, three different soft drinks, and then we saw the trailers. And I'm like,

okay, there's a lot of great things about going to the movies now. The theaters are nicer than they have ever been in my lifetime. Seats are more comfortable. They're kind of empty in a lot of cases. So you have like a very fun movie going experience

if you don't go on opening night. But we live in a world where we've been told to get it again, you don't have to watch commercials anymore. you don't have to watch ads but if you go to the movies and you pay for the privilege going to the movie and seeing it in the best place to see a movie because I love going to the theater see a movie you're going to have 30 minutes of ads you can't turn off but that's exactly why because of the moderate because of the world that we live in right now

you can't say they that people verbo is going to pay lots of money to put their commercial there because they know you can't turn it off that's the only time that's the only ad they run that you can't skip through when we were growing up that was you would go to the movies even like Like when we were in high school, you go to the movies and they'd have the pre-roll, the stuff that came on before the movie trailers would be like congratulations to the local high school band. You know, like people would pay like 15 bucks to get a thing on there because we go a bunch of commercials all the time. That's worthless real estate, you know? But now, now it's like that's the most valuable real estate in the world.

That's why the Super Bowl commercials are so valuable because no one's changing the channel. Yeah. And the theater's got to do it, right? Because they're trying to make money. Yeah. Like they need to make money, which by the way also explains all the amazing movie merch that didn't exist before that you can now buy at the popcorn counter. Oh, wow. I don't know if I've seen that.

It's not just the Dune popcorn bucket anymore. They have merch for everything. They had if merch, they had Garfield. Any movie you wanted, you could buy toys or a decorative popcorn bucket. Got a decorative popcorn bucket or two at my house. But I kind of feel like if every movie, it's, experiences a trip to the toy store. That might actually affect whether or not I go to the... I think we have a little bit of an issue. You know, whenever there's a story about something

that happens in the stands at a sporting event. And it becomes really clear that sports writers have not bought a ticket to a sporting event in 30 years and have no idea what happens in the stands during game. I think we might be there with movie writers and movie talkers, not ours here at the ringer because we know they get out. But other movie critics and talkers who have just don't buy tickets to movies anymore. They go to screenings where they walk in and the movie begins. Yeah. 30 minutes of trailers and ads.

I want to watch movies and theaters, folks. I really, really, really do. I don't know if I have 30 minutes in me. I really don't. Let me give you the counterpoint, David. So that was Saturday, Sunday here in Los Angeles. It's the 30th anniversary of Pulp Fiction. Nice.

Quentin Tarantino's own New Beverly Theater is showing it. on his personal 35 millimeter print. So I go with Alan Siegel, Brian Raftery, sorted others. We show up. They got there early. They got us tickets. We're watching this thing that looks like 1994.

And we're sitting kind of at the back of the theater at the new Bev. So it's almost like you're watching this ancient television very far away without any of that false crispness that movies have now. They came on before and they're like, if anybody uses cell phones, if anybody talks, it doesn't work here. You don't get to do that here. This is where we love movies. This is where everybody here wants to watch the movie. And the trailers before it were a couple of hand-selected trailers.

And then there was a three Stooges short, which I don't need any excuse to watch the Stooges, but turned out to be the short that Eric Stoltz, excuse me, was watching in the movie when Vincent Vega brings me. Mia Wallace over to his house. And we got the adrenaline. That's great. So on brand. And I came out of there. I was like, I want to go back to the movies.

This was fantastic. What a wonderful night. And it didn't have all that much to do with the difference between Pulp Fiction and if there was a substantial gulf between those two pictures. But it was fantastic. I loved it. Great night at the movies. That's me extrapolating from my own.

experience to explain some of the box office this weekend. All right, only in journalism, David. This comes to us from Jake H. Parrott. Jake H. Parrot? Jake H. Parrot. He brings us the word, excuse me, febrile. Jake H. Parrot sounds like a plush animal that your daughter can buy at the concession stand of the movie theater. No, no.

No, that's a valued listener of the press box, sir. All right. Febrile. February? I had to look up febrile. Having or showing the symptoms of a fever. Febrile. Wow.

That had eluded me. All right. Now time for a feature that alludes no one. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses a strain pun headline. Yeah. Thursday's headline about a new documentary about a Chiefs fan turned bank robber who dresses as a wolf. What a mouthful that was,

was wolf in chief's clothing. Today's headline, David, comes to us from Joey Bean, Khan and Matthew Felling, two valued listeners of this podcast. It's from the New Yorker. Oh, those funny people at the New Yorker. It's a story by Anthony Lane,

and it's about a new app called Blinkley. Are you familiar with Blinkist? No. Award winning learning app featuring text and audio explainers of key ideas from nonfiction. What do you mean? Your knowledge in just 15 minutes.

Factual or they're from like not like journalism? They are from well, I don't have a lot. I don't have a lot there for you. But you can understand. It says understand key ideas in 15 minutes. Okay, cool. It's like reading the Wikipedia page except audio or something. and give Anthony Lane Blinkist.

Who doesn't want to read a piece about that? Yeah. That's fun. I'm going to spot you the word abridged. Abridged. What was the New Yorker strained? What would you just say? Is it a bridge too far?

All right. We're done. We're done. Folks. Give me too much help. I don't think a bridge to Terribithia. I would have made much sense. He is David Schuemaker.

I'm Brian Curtis. Projection by Brian Waters. Guest host this week, David. It's a big one. and Mallory Rubin's going to be on the podcast. Cannot wait to talk to her. Shoemaker and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, Ryan.