The Press Box - Ron DeSantis’s False Start, Game 7 Audio, and NBA Take Whiplash

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

Bryan and David start the pod talking about why discussing the NBA Finals TV ratings doesn’t matter (00:39). Then, they discuss Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign launch on Twitter, its technical difficulties, and why the approach backfired on him (05:42). Then, they’re back with another segment of NBA2Day to discuss some of the best sound bites from Game 7, TNT’s cutting to commercial break during a pivotal foul review in Game 6, and LeBron’s retirement comments (26:48). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's Ariel Hawani, and I wanted to let you know that each and every week, I'm part of a great program called The Ringer MMA Show. I hosted alongside two absolutely brilliant minds. Their names, Chuck Mindenhall and Pizzie Carroll, and every Thursday, a new episode drops where we preview the weekend in mixed martial arts and react to all the biggest news. Plus, after every UFC pay-per-view, we give you a post-fight show. So this is what you have to do. Just follow the Ringer M-M-M-A show on your Spotify app,

So you don't miss an episode. We'll talk to you then. We've got our NBA finals matchup. Miami Heat versus the Denver Nuggets starts Thursday. And can I tell you how gratified I am that everybody has joined me on the NBA Finals TV ratings Don't Matter Corner? Yeah, I saw some of this going on on Twitter last night. Why don't you explain? This is all of NBA Twitter as far as I can tell right now.

My old hobby horse. This is Caitlin Cooper, who does the pod basketball, she wrote. Not everyone knows this, but the two teams that advance to the finals aren't actually competing for the Larry O'Brien trophy. If at the end of the series, they've proven to be compelling, they will both hang banners displaying the Nielsen ratings. That's the kind of edge I've been looking for for years here, baby. You know, where they sign like a major piece of legislation and they have the ceremony in the Rosegard and they invite? the graying senator with the cane who was fighting for this back in the 70s to be in the photo? That's me right now.

Yeah. I'll wavering at the crowd. Hunched over. I was fighting the good fight. We did it, David. The ratings don't matter. It doesn't... Denver Nuggets.

Great. So it's not Lakers versus Celtics. Who cares? I think it's sort of the point, right? I mean, isn't this sort of the point of competitive sports that, you know, It's not a popularity contest. What if we want to see a compelling basketball series? Oh, that's interesting.

And we were less interested in what some Nielsen point that we don't understand what it means anyway. We were less interested in what that is going to be. How is it a compelling basketball series, though, without just numerous video packages highlighting the, you know, the intertwined century-long history of the teams? I will say one thing, which is that I'm not sure people have come around at my point of view, which is that you shouldn't root for ratings points. You shouldn't root for insurance ads. ESPN is not cutting you and me a dividend check if the rating is a certain number. I think it's come around to this point because it got mixed up in Nuggets discourse.

That whole Mike Malone thing about, hey, nobody's paying attention to us. And this idea, well, the media hasn't covered us. They've been so worried, even after game four, we swept the Lakers. It was all about LeBron's retirement. It was all about that. The A block and the B block and the C block were all abroad, and they finally got around talking about the Nuggets. It's almost like people are reacting to that.

Yeah. So you think Mike Malone is the big champion here? He might be. Yeah. Wow. I mean, he's got a lot to compete with. Part of the problem with all the ratings discourse is that it was not a discourse until it sort of became fodder for the constant data point mill that is, you know,

sports in the age of social media, right? You need something, you need just a fact to throw out every 30 minutes or your Twitter account might die. We got a 20.1. Yeah. What does that mean? How much money does that worth? there is one person who is going to be affected, David, by the ratings of the NBA finals.

That is former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. Richard Deich reminds me that she scheduled her CNN Town Hall, her big moment to introduce herself to America, opposite game two of the finals, next Sunday night. In fact, it starts at the same time. So Nikki Haley can be worried. about NBA ratings.

Yeah. It's one person. This reminds me of my childhood where I feel like anytime there's something quote-unquote important on, they never bothered preempting the shows that we were watching. You know, they would preempt the important show, the other so-called important shows. But you're just like,

what do you mean? There's a, you know, what do you mean? There's a rocket launch. Punky Brewster is still on TV. Alfa is running it at scheduled time. I'm not affected at all.

Coming up on today's podcast, Ron DeSantis wanted to be online, so he launched his presidential campaign on Twitter. What could go wrong? We've got NBA TV notes, plus the father of all the old guys who still got it. All that and more on the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network.

Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis David Shoemaker, producer Eduardo Ocampo here. Let's do this week in 20, or last week in 2024, because there was one big story, David. Ron DeSantis finally launched his presidential campaign. He did

it as a political story wrapped inside a media story, which is our favorite delicacy here on the press box. Oh, there's nothing better. It wasn't really, like, he didn't wrap it inside a media story. I guess there was a media angle, there was a media

you know, appertief. There was a side of media that he probably wanted to gosh on a little bit, but the media story was not really deliberate. Well, it was at least the B story, wasn't it, that he was

making an end run around the what did he call it, the regime media, the MSM, I'm not going to do it on cable news. I'm not going to even do it on Fox News. Right. I'm going to go to Twitter to do it with my pal,

Elon Musk. I mean, normally these things happen with somebody standing in front of a state house or in front of their childhood home or some kind of historic site so you get the big backdrop. This was

audio only on Wednesday night. With Elon Musk, this, David, is what technology sounds like. Sorry about that. We've got so many people here that I think we are we are kind of melting the servers.

we are melting the servers we've all been there I hopped on and you know how when you get on Twitter spaces it has all the avatars of the other people in the same room that you're in oh yeah

my screen was showing me that I was in a room with Megan Kelly Caitlin Jenner Nate Silver and the University of Texas website Horns Illustrated what a club

amazing and I only want to subscribe to one of their newsletters I'll let you guess which one so the technical difficulties you just heard lasted for an excruciating 25 minutes

Megan Kelly Dave Silver and I just sitting there Horns Illustrated just waiting 25 minutes for this event to actually begin you could hear people on a hot mic saying this keeps crashing. As semaphore noted,

Musk was forced to end the live audio stream and transferred over to his co-host page at one point. Wow. Which is kind of a problem if DeSantis is running as I'm the competent Trump. Yeah. I'm the Trump who's not just bluster. I got things done in that Florida legislative session

that just ended. Mm-hmm. But now I can't get the Twitter audio to work. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know Trump, it was a very Trumpy thing in the, to specifically say, I hire all the best people. But that's sort of implicitly also part of every presidential campaign, right? I will surround myself with the people who will make this a successful presidency.

And even on the Twitter end, even the Elon Musk thing for the campaign to not, for the DeSantis campaign to not be able to suss out of any of these problems in advance or not be interested enough to even ask the right questions. is sort of damning in its own right. It feels like the one place he could really hit Trump and be effective is to say, you hired all these people that you're now blaming for undermining the administration. And what does that say about you? You hired them all and then turned on them publicly.

Yeah. For various reasons. So you're right. And he could be like, well, but you got into league with Elon Musk to do this and it just didn't work. By the way,

since we're a media podcast, this is also pretty hilarious for Elon Musk. Yes. He had a big moment, a big coup to get Ronda Santos to come to your platform to announce his candidacy, and then your platform didn't work. Well, it's a sort of double-edged sword, right?

Because Elon Musk is such a sort of cult of personality. I mean, Ronda Sanchez was there because of Elon Musk, right? And we can circle back around to that. But, yeah, I mean, we wouldn't probably be having this conversation if it weren't for the man Elon Musk but everything that he's doing in terms of just running the company of Twitter

has been a total disaster and this is just I mean of all of the things to not get wrong you would think this would be the one right you would think by the way they got crushed by Joe Biden who and I'm assuming this is his team

not actual Joe Biden put up a link to a fundraising page and just said, this link works. They're getting crushed by team Biden. Time to reevaluate your priorities. So we all sat there

for 25 minutes. And then Elon and company finally got the thing working and DeSantis got to do his thing. I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American combat. And let me tell you something.

In terms of the speech he gave, it sounded like that. Like rookie podcaster who you want to tell you know, you can slow down you don't have to get all of this in in the first minute and a half. Well, you might have to if the room's going to crash again. I guess so.

Our pal Chris Sullenrop was saying this felt really like internet campaigning circa 2000. Yeah. When I want to be like Bill Clinton's sent an email. That was a big deal. Yeah. But if you listen to it, it really, to me,

sounded a little bit like the FDR fireside chat. All of us sitting around the radio, except that Ronda Santis was not a talented communicator. I mean, the audio sounded like I was listening to the radio with my grandpa as a kid. And also video is available to him in the year 2023. There's no need for an audio-only fireside chat. That's what was so weird.

And again, on Wednesday night, I'm sitting there listening. I'm like, am I missing something? Did we not have a Zoom call here that we can see Ron DeSantis sitting in front of his bookshelves so we can see Malcolm Gladwell and all the other books behind him? If there's anything that we've figured out as a nation, as a world, over the past, you know, five years, it's video conferencing. You're pretty sure that somebody can pull this off, you know? No, no, we're back to the fireside chat era of presidential politicking.

So DeSantis did his speech and then he had a Q&A with Elon Musk and a tech guy named David Sacks. This was by far the weirdest part of the entire event. Because not surprisingly, what Elon wanted to talk about was Twitter. Why are you doing this on Twitter? it about our platform that made you want to announce here? Which is fine if you're Elon Musk

but probably not especially interesting if you're Ron DeSantis running for president and trying to get people to vote for you. Then they got into some media criticism. They started talking about an article in the Atlantic that they did not like

that was all about the launch. Dude, this is the cruelest thing I can say. it sounded like a press box segment. We're bagging on an article in the Atlantic. Yeah. If we're going to go all in on one article, at least we do it with, you know,

conviction and good humor. Yeah. Even we don't go micro that frequently. Well, it's funny because this is the difference, dude, between I want to be online. Like, I want to make my campaign launch different and special. and maybe have people actually choosing to be in this room

rather than just passively seeing video on Twitter or watching Fox, right, and having like the clips of it. I want something different. But then, of course, inevitably, because it's Elon Musk, because it's Twitter, because it's Republican politics in 2023, it's not just being online, it's being online

where we are way in the weeds about those nefarious journalists. Yes. I mean, listen, I'm not here to defend the gravity or significance of the press box podcast. But this is the difference between, it's not really like the press box. This is like the difference between when you like meet somebody out in the world, in the wild, and you tell them what you do. And they say, oh, I have a press box. I have a podcast. Right. Or it's like, oh, I was thinking of starting a podcast. Me and my friend, we have such good conversations. We should have a podcast. Now, that may or may not have been the inception of this podcast, and, you know, this podcast may or may not be successful in literally anyone's eyes. However, we've been doing this long enough to see people, to hear people say that, and you can bring the notes almost without any further information, right?

Just like, maybe think about what you're going to say. Maybe plan this out just a little bit. Maybe don't go, maybe don't spend the first 15 minutes on the Atlantic article that you, we're chatting about offline, you know? Yeah, make that the third segment. And if you run out of time and go, don't get to it, that's fine. Exactly. That's us with our messenger segment today.

You know, right? We don't mind not get to it. That's okay. The messenger. The messenger segment is our, is our Matt Damon segment, right? I mean, we're just, we're never going to get there, but it'll always be, oh, well, we can keep our fingers crossed. Remember we had one of these Joe Biden's digital divide?

Oh, yeah. I remember Joe Biden, Digital Divide. I don't even remember what that was about, but I remember we plugged it, Matt Damon style a couple of times, never actually did it. I want you to circle back to a point you made just a second ago. Ron DeSantis was on Twitter because of Elon Musk.

You're saying the draw to him was the particular way that Elon has politicized Twitter, has tried to make Twitter into this non-regime media mainstream media mainstream. media space for people like him that just coincidentally are all sort of Republican conservative types. Yeah, I mean, I think that courting the sort of muskite wing of potential voters is a good idea. And I understand the logic of sort of painting yourself in those colors I think to the extent that that was the goal

there was a failure there too that's a little bit of a separate issue but I do feel like this is a real this is struck me as just an incredibly bad sign for the DeSantis campaign that all of the questions that we've had

not doing mainstream media even you know being exclusively on Fox News news, all the things that were kind of easily, they were often pointed at as sort of like new ideas and new ways to campaign all look in the aftermath of the Twitter debacle, look just like he's just running an incredibly small campaign. And I don't just mean like the number of staffers. I just mean, it just feels very, it just feels very small.

It feels very undercooked. It feels just very simple and not simple in a, you know, I mean, going to get in my pickup truck and drive across the country sort of way. There's no symbolism to the simplicity. Um, it just seemed like, even if the Twitter thing had gone off without a hitch, it's a, it's a lousy idea, you know? It's sort of like, we talk about the publishing world, you know, it's like when you're publishing a book, you can sell first serial rights, right? You were publishing a history of a new history of whatever, of the internet. Man, a great, it would be great if like the New York Times Magazine wanted to publish a chapter from it, right? You sell them

for a cereal. But if someone comes along first, they're like, hey, we want to publish this in like, you know, the Topeka Gazette, you can be like, all right, let's talk about second cereal. You know, like, To be a Gazette will wait. To be a Gazette will be there whenever you're ready to publish something else, right? That's sort of where Twitter is. You could have had a massive Twitter post-announcement party and done all of this stuff without sort of like formally handing over your reputation and all of you and all of your clout

to Twitter.com and Elon Musk. You know, like, it just, it doesn't feel like they should have had the bargaining power to get this exclusive. As Bill would say, who says no if the dissanist campaign comes to Elon and says, we're offering you the

post party. Yeah. We're offering you the post game show. We're going to do the big announcement in front of the State House and then I'm going to walk to my office, push the button on Zoom, and you get the next thing. And then, dude, if it had crashed, you're so right. Nobody cares. The media isn't writing that you crashed your campaign launch crash story.

I guess I was trying to think of the counterfactual here. He could have gone on Fox News and done this. Although just going on a TV show and announcing it always seems a little bit lacking to me, too, depending on the platform. If he holds a big press conference, it's not like everybody's going to run it live necessarily. So I guess there is some sort of bigger question, but I think that the thought experiment has to be,

how do we make this as big as possible? And not how do we make this one novel thing that a handful of, you know, online memesters will really get excited about. How about we give people some visuals, too? So when they report the DeSantis campaign, and they actually have this picture of 50,000 people standing out there and cheering. Yeah.

Which they could have gotten in two minutes in Florida. Or a picture of you, the candidate, who the vast majority of America has never seen doing a thing. Waving, speaking. Yeah. I'm glad you brought up Fox because this is a middle finger to Fox News. And Fox knows it's a middle finger to Fox News. Their website had a headline that said, want to actually see and hear Ron DeSantis? Tune into Fox News, where he was doing an interview later that night,

the postgame show we just talked about, with Trey Gowdy, fill in host in Fox's new lineup. Very, very interesting, that whole thing. In terms of how many people actually listen to Ron DeSantis, New York Times says it was 300,000 concurrent listeners on Twitter. By a day later, 3.4 million people had tuned in. The New York Times notes that a 2016 face-upes, Facebook live event featuring two BuzzFeed employees placing rubber bands around a watermelon until it exploded drew more than 800,000 concurrent viewers.

So exploding watermelon was more than Ron DeSantis campaign announcement. Also, a 2017 live stream of a pregnant giraffe on YouTube brought in 5 million viewers a day. Ron DeSantis finished slightly behind the exploding watermelon and the pregnant giraffe. one interesting bit of strategy here, David. What Ron DeSantis wants and what any of the non-Trump candidates want is a one-on-one matchup with a former president. That's how they're going to win the nomination.

One-on-one matchup, I convince you somehow that I'm a better idea than one more dose of Donald Trump. But DeSantis' recent weakness, polling-wise, has actually encouraged more people to get into the race. thus potentially preventing that one-on-one matchup that DeSantis wants.

In fact, David, there are current or soon-to-be Republican presidential candidates you may not have heard of. I know I hadn't until reading a bunch of articles this weekend. Do you know who Doug Bergam is? No. He is the current governor of North Dakota, who according to the Wall Street, Street Journal is poised, only in journalism word, to enter the presidential nomination race planning a June 7th event. He has the very generic political bio of wealthy former software entrepreneur.

Oh, that Doug Bergam, yeah. Sold his company to Microsoft for more than a billion dollars 20 years ago. So Doug Bergam's about to get in. Did you know that former. Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson is currently running for president? Yeah, I was

dimly aware of that. He announced last month. He also did the This Link Works tweet during all the DeSantis glitches. When last I checked

it got 172 retweets. Asa Hutchinson running for president. Did you know that Larry Elder the talk show is running for president? man

last scene running the recall election against Gavin Newsom he is running for president again there may be some people running for president that you are not aware of

no that's totally true and it's still a sort of it's I guess it's just damning to try to think through it right is Larry Elder a legitimate candidate

well probably not but is he in the Republican field, it's sort of hard to tell. Will this be great fun when the Republicans have that first debate in August? Yes, it will. Yes, it absolutely will. Watch this space. Coming up at 30 seconds, the best audio from Game 7 of the Celtics Heat series,

including Ernie Johnson on Succession and a coach who really didn't want to do an interview. 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. Send your nominees to at the Press Box Pod where they are always, always gratefully received. Couple runners up this week.

First comes to us from the 76ers coaching change. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. The Sixers went from a doc to a nurse. That is, Doc Rivers to Nick Nurse. Thanks to J.E. Skeets for sending that one along. We were challenged, David.

challenged by Twitter to mention the jokes last night about the shot they showed on TNT of Bill during the Celtics game. A lot of people doing side by sides

of Bill and Kendall Roy at the end of the last episode of Succession staring under the ocean. I saw a couple of those. Consider your challenge accepted. I mentioned it. But this week's runaway winner, any jokes about that glitchy

Ron DeSantis' Twitter launch? Here are a few of them. Twitter Spaces has exploded just minutes after takeoff. Let's remember his rocket did the same thing. This didn't happen to Gojo's subscribers in India. I'll tell you that much. And finally, this one. Back in the television era, you had to wait several hours for the late-night shows

for your televised presidential launch to become the butt of jokes. In the Twitter era, the Twitter glitches ruining your Twitter Spaces launch are roasted immediately in a thousand tweets. and if that roasting seemed eerily similar in nature, congrats, you made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, let's do my favorite segment, the NBA today. Last night we had game seven of Heat Celtics. You want to start with a little bit of audio from that presentation?

Yes, please. All right, in the pregame, Ernie Johnson, the great Ernie Johnson, mentioned that he had not yet watched the season finale of Succession. Here's what E.J. is excited to see. I want to find out what happened to Logan and Kendall and Shibb and Roman. Ernie, I got some bad news about Logan. Particularly if you wanted to find out what happened to him in the last episode. I need to rewind just a smidge.

It was a fascinating game, David, because in the first offensive possession of the entire game, Jason Tatum twists his ankle. Now, our heart should go out in such a moment to, first of all, Jason Tatum, second of all his teammates,

third of all, probably Celtics fans. But let's spare a moment to think about announcers in a game like this. Yeah. Where you were thrown this massive curveball.

And I realize it was not a Brock Purdy-sized curveball where you're like, wow, this game is effectively over. Because Jason Tatum played, he played, okay at times.

Woo. But talk about recalibrating everything you had in the can. Let's just go to the sideline and watch the play-by-play watch all the announced team just throw their index cards up in the air and just disgust. Bill was talking about this on his pod today,

the one he did with his dad, but that crowd seemed so live when that game started. The announcers made so many references to it, including in the pregame show. I think Kenny Smith said, like, I never miss playing in the NBA, but just being inside this arena, this is one of those times when I miss this, when I miss being here. And then to have Jason Tatum lying on the floor grabbing his ankle 20 odd seconds into the game. Yeah. Holy moly. They had Pedro Martinez on the pregame. All the takes are loaded up for

the Red Sox are back. This is incredible. Back from down. 3-0. Last Celtics possession of the first half. Things are not going great. Celtics are trailing the heat. Stan Van Gundy of Turner gave us an old chestnut of basketball announcing. They'd love to get it under 10 here at the half, Reg. They'd love to get it under 10 here at the half.

How many times when a team is trailing big, have you heard an announcer say that? many, many times. Like our whole lives basically, right? Yeah. Ten is the magic number. We're trailing by a lot, but if we just get it to ten, then mentally, we will go in the locker room at halftime and feel we have a chance to win this game. Yeah.

Here was the catch here. Stan Van Gundy said that. The Celtics had the ball and they were trailing by 11. So to get it under 10, Stan Van Gundy was saying that, yes, they wanted to score a basket on that possession. It's sort of an Occam's Razor thing, right? I mean, there's probably something a little bit more direct on their minds at that point. One typically wants to score.

Yeah. When one has the ball. We have a new winner of the Greg Popovich. I don't care about your sideline interviews award. This goes to Joe Missoula, the extremely embattled head coach of the Boston Celtics. Listen to this exchange with TNT's Ali LaForge. How much has your leader, Jason Tatum, been affected by the ankle injury, and have you overcome it? Just got to play through it.

History on the line. Attempting to do something no other NBA team has done before. How do you bring out the best in this team in this most important quarter? Yeah, we want to choice. Thank you, folks. I just want to note that was not Ali LaForest's fault. That was the beginning of the fourth quarter. Celtics were down 10.

Jason Tatum's hurt. Things are not looking great. Maybe we should just bag the coach interview in that instance at the beginning of the quarter. Yeah. Or ask him what he's excited about the succession finale, one of the two. I think I saw one of these and maybe it was in the final game of the Warriors Lakers Lakers series that Steve Kerr did. Steve Kerr, who's a great quote.

Steve Kerr, who seems to be one of the most media-freyers, friendly coaches we have in professional sports. And he had to do that interview. And even Steve Kerr was just like, man, I don't want to do this right now. I have to give you the shortest answers possible because I just have to coach this game. It's a tough position.

So the game was basically over in the fourth quarter, basically over in the third quarter. But the Celtics left their starters in. Finally, Joe Missoula takes them out with 2.13 left in the game. Here is Kevin Harlan, the play-by-play announcer over TNT, pronouncing the last rights. Here comes Mike Nussala. He's in the game for the Celtics.

Brown is out and done. And Boston is done. Finished that sound like a newscaster announcing some very grave news? We regret to interrupt this game of basketball to let you know that this game of basketball is over. It's very Walter Cronkite. Yeah. And Kevin Harlan's voice allows him to pull that off.

So good. In a very authoritative way. I thought Harlan was really good during the Easter conference finals. I still think the best call of the playoffs full stop was Harlan saying Jimmy freaking Butler, especially now that the heat won. So great. I mean, and dude, if game six had gone slightly differently, if those free throws that Jimmy Butler hit at the end

had helped the heat steal a very, very strange game there, that would have all been the ultimate Jimmy freaking Butler moment. Last night was pretty good as it was. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, that would have been great. It would have been great. I mean, at this point, that Butler is still going.

I mean, Butler's playing like the second coming of Michael Jordan. It's one of the most incredible things. It'd be impossible to put into words. I'm failing at it right now. Jimmy Freakin' Butler is why is the only thing to do. We talked about Harlan being a jazz riffer in the testatory theory of play-by-play announcers. Yeah. And that's the thing about the jazz riffer is when you allow your mind and allow yourself to go to a place that a different announcer wouldn't go to, sometimes you just hit on it.

Sometimes the words just match perfectly. Jimmy freaking boat. Love that call. Let's go back to Game 6, which I just mentioned. This is one of those moments in sports that was not just a great moment, great game. It was a gobsmacking moment. I can't believe I just saw that. Two lead changes in the last three seconds of the game.

Oh, yeah. So it'll just somehow get two shots off in three seconds, including that Derek White put back. Unfortunately, David, this is not going to be on Turner's Emmy Reel when they go for next year's sports Emmys because I believe we just had one round of that. If you remember, Jimmy Butler got fouled in the active shooting by Al Horford.

Yeah. With what turned out to be three seconds left after the refs, look, there's one question here. Is he going to get two shots and get a chance to tie the game? Or is he going to get three shots and have the chance to take the lead? Turner shows two camera angles. They don't get a clear shot of his feet. And then, oh, speaking of Brian Curtis hobby horses,

they go to commercial. They go to commercial without telling us the key piece of information about what we're going to see when we get back. Yeah. Folks, I hate to sound like Phil Mushnick and Bob Reismet just banging on in the tabloids, but that's bad producing in a huge moment. Yeah. You don't have to know anything about any of the business to know.

You just got to give us the right info. Yeah. And you got to stay here until you figure this out. Yep. Right? Sports broadcasting, a game six of the Eastern Conference finals should not include a greenie tease. Coming up. We'll tell you where Jimmy Bow is going to shoot three shots or two shots.

Tell us right now. Yeah. I mean, the greenie tease has a certain amount of effectiveness. because it's so deliberate, right? This just seemed, I mean, it wasn't a tease. It was the absence of information. It was a sort of maybe a metaphorical greeny tease, but it didn't have any of the gumption of a real one.

So bad. And it's so funny because Jimmy Butler's sitting there on the floor after he gets fouled holding up three fingers. It's a signal to the truck. Let us know. You and I were talking before we came on about LeBron James. post game. So Lakers got swept by the nuggets.

LeBron goes to the podium and he starts musing aloud about retirement. What did you make of that as a media moment? Well, first of all, I thought it was really interesting. The sort of TikTok of how LeBron came to say that was immediately as much a part of the story as anything LeBron said. Because at least in the corners of the internet that I frequent all the podcasts everything was just like now who asked that question wait was it the first time he was asked about the future no no he waited till the end of the press

conference and then there was the then there was the sidel the post press conference sidle with davidman yep and i mean and and that was its own story um sort of the the the deliberateness slash veracity of whatever lebron had to say uh was was i guess the story but the the TikTok the journalistic TikTok became the sort of story in its place

right? The stand-in story. I thought it was also interesting that just like literally nobody has I mean literally nobody thinks he's not going to play

next year nobody thinks there's anything to this. No. Certainly there might be this could be a man in his feelings

in the moment you know it could be a leverage tactic as a lot of people suggested whatever but that we have to sort of enter

everybody agreed that there wasn't any kind of truth there. So I guess in lieu of entertaining the reality of it or the, you know, the, whether or not he meant it, we just sort of had to figure out what he was getting at. And then that led us to the TikTok. But it was, it was a very interesting cycle. And it was a lot of people were sort of, you know, rightly questioning whether or not he

should have been sort of, sort of, you know, stealing the oxygen in the room from the, from the nuggets. I don't, I don't think that. asking that question out loud really does anything to help the nuggets, right? I mean, you could just be talking about the nuggets too, but it all, I don't know, it's just a sort of perfect story where LeBron got everybody's attention, even if those people were saying, look, LeBron's just trying to get our attention. It's amazing to the extent to which LeBron is the nation's coordinating producer, or at least sports television's coordinating producer. Yeah. Because as soon as you saw that, and you're right, the follow-up sidel with McMinnam, and you're like, oh, my God.

God, this is a story right now. This is going to crowd out like all those Denver Nuggets fans are reminding us the Nuggets. Yeah. Because it's like, it's like if LeBron says something, that's the A block the next day on all the chat shows and national sports radio shows. If Jerry Jones says something or there's just anything Cowboys, that's the A block tomorrow. They are the people who can determine it with one comment. I think also totally, you know, an aside, but there was, I think both on Bill's podcast and I think Zach Lowe's podcast, there were conversations about the documentary crew that has been following LeBron around. Yes.

Where, you know, he's making his own last dance or whatever it wants and just has an NBA film's documentary crew just constantly around him, which is very interesting in so many ways, but just strictly from the media standpoint, I mean, one thing that we know to be true, undeniality. true about documentaries is that no one is actually truly themselves with the camera on them. And everybody everybody putting a microphone in front of LeBron James has seen the last dance probably numerous times. How much does that affect, I wonder, the way that journalists do their business, knowing that you are on camera and potentially a part of a future documentary while you are trying to do your business? That is so fascinating.

so you're in your mind mapping out the episodes of LeBron's Last Dance and when you stand up at the press conference you're like is this the story beat here am I going to be the one

on this documentary asking this question? Yeah. That then gets us to episode seven or whatever this is. I'm not to say, obviously not trying to imply that anybody's trying to get into a movie

or whatever. I'm not even implying anybody's like, you know, ironing their shirt before they go out to, before they go to work because they might be cut on film. But it's just, but people are generally, not generally, people are never fully themselves when there's a camera pointed at them. You know, you're doing, you're doing a bit. You're doing a version of yourself. Yes. And as you say, we know the story beats here before this documentary even airs. I'd also say the same thing about LeBron, though. Well, we know it about LeBron. You're selling a documentary. Aren't you in your mind being like, you know,

what would make this really interesting? Well, no, that's why I thought about this, because, but I think everybody would sort of take it for granted that LeBron in doing, in answering the questions about its future, is doing a bit, right? I mean, he is a producer. He is performing, whether it's for the documentary team or if the documentary team weren't there,

he would be doing a thing for the media cameras, right? I mean, there is a purpose behind what he's doing. even if that purpose is a decision to really be myself and let it all hang out for once, right? I mean, that's a decision that you're making. But usually the people who are asking the questions are not part of the show in the sense that they're on camera

and they're potentially, you know, a figure in a documentary. So it's sort of, I mean, in some ways, LeBron's just sort of turned the tables by welcoming them into the production. Is the reward here for the sports writers that they get to go on the documentary is the talking head and talk in the present tense

about things that happened a few months ago. I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. So I stand up and ask LeBron James a question. A couple more things before we go here, David. Have you been following the saga of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton? Only like third hand, second hand, I guess. You know, just like strange texts from my family and friends in Texas. Yeah, back in our homes.

state got impeached by the Texas house on Saturday. He's going to be facing trial in the state Senate. Listener, Rob Pollard tweeted this at us, has Ken Paxton had the longest period from initial serious allegation, but which seemed for years to be going nowhere. In fact, his position just seemed more secure as time went on to finally and subtly becoming embattled.

I think he's right. I always thought that Ken Paxton had this kind of steady state of embattlement. Because this has been going on for years and years and years, these allegations. But he really did have a quick uptick and embattlement when he was suddenly and somewhat surprisingly, I think timing-wise, at least impeached. One more department for you. Let's go for it. 80-year-old Martin Scorsese unveiled his movie Killers of the Flower Moon, based, of course, on the David Grand book at Khan. Alfonso Quaron

calls this an amazing masterpiece. Early reviews are good. Have we once again come back to a Martin Scorsese the old guy still got it moment? Did he not have it? Didn't this bit get invented though for the Irishman? Oh yeah, I think so. Isn't this when we started this whole thing?

Yeah. That was four years ago. Mm-hmm. So that was evidence that Martin Scorsese still got. it and then four years went by and now we have more evidence that the old guy has still got it is he still still have it or is it just more like the old guy has not in fact lost it but that's what that's why this is such a powerful story right because we're like we love martin scorcese we would love one last great movie from the old master oh yeah and so when you get it even if it's a

a half-star movie and let's, you know, I don't want to re-litigate the Irishman here, but, oh my God, the old guy still got it. This is it. He's got it. But then sometimes it surprises you because then the next thing is also really good. Mm-hmm. So you almost old guys still got it too soon.

There were many more masterpieces left in the drawer. Yeah. Well, I mean, look at LeBron. He's the old guy in his sport, and he might have three, four, years just so got it left in it. He still got it in terms of programming first take. Let me tell you. That's true. Yeah, he definitely got that. Have you read Killers of the Flower Moon, by the way? I read some of it. Oh, it's so good. I read some of it. It's so good.

You know what? Let's have that discussion when the movie comes out. All right. I've got some heterodox views. All right. Even as a big fan of David Grant. Speaking of an old guy who always still has it, it's time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's pun about Congress's doomed negotiations on the debt ceiling was default in our stars. Turned out it's not so doomed. We did not have default in our stars.

Today's headline comes from Vincent Orleg, J.D. and Ben Wolfson. It's from Puck. As you know, David, there has been a ton of criticism of CNN's Trumptown Hall. It got even worse. Puck reports when legendary CNN reporter and anchor Christian Amonpour added to the criticism during a speech in New York. I think that's enough. What was Puck's strained pun headline?

Is it something about pouring on pouring? You're right there. When it rains, it amon pours? When it rains, it amonpours. Yeah. Pretty solid. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Production Magic by Eduardo Ocampo. I'm back later this week. Maybe some basketball, I think. And then on Monday, the Curtis Shoemaker version of the press box returns with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.