The Press Box - The Draymond Green Doc and the Future of “New Media” With Wosny Lambre

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Bryan is joined by Wos to break down Draymond Green’s short doc, in which he addresses the recent altercation between himself and teammate Jordan Poole, before weighing in on player-driven media and its effect on the fan base. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Wosny Lambre Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mac Jones is ripped. Matt Patricia's calling plays. The Celtics are title favorites. And The Ringer has a new Boston show. I'm Brian Barrett, host of Off the Pike, the show covering all things Boston sports. I'll have shows multiple times a week covering your favorite teams and with your favorite ringer and local guests. Plus, maybe Bill will stop by to rant about the socks.

Follow off the pike with me, Brian Barrett, now on Spotify. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box Final Edition. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica Servantes. Today's guest is the ringer's very own Wozney Lambray, aka Big Was. Was, welcome to the press box. Thank you.

Thank you for having me, Brian. I was expecting you to say my name like, Wazni? Like how you do, David, but I guess I was. No, no, no. We can redo this. Wasney? Love that.

We got to talk about the Draymond Green documentary. Yeah. And the future of quote unquote new media. Oh, God. Never has the phrase quote unquote been more applicable. Yeah. For those just coming to this, two weeks ago, Draymond Green punched his teammate Jordan Poole

at a Golden State Warriors practice. Green held a big press conference. And then before the Warriors' opening night game against the Lakers on Tuesday, T&T ran a mini-documentary, produced in part by Green himself in which Green talked about punching his teammate. Sort of. So let's start there, Was.

What did you make of the documentary? It was a waste of everybody's time, right? Five minutes of this guy saying nothing about anything. And, you know, if Seinfeld was the show about nothing, this was the documentary about nothing. Like, we don't learn how Jermont feels. We don't learn how he wants to carry himself going forward, how he wants to deal with the situation, remedy the situation. We don't learn anything. He doesn't say anything about it, but he, you know, they do the whole sort of mini-doc because there's an understanding that this is a huge story that this guy's involved in.

And because Draymond Green has made himself into a media figure, if you are person, involved in a huge media story. Like, you know, he's self-conscious enough to know that I have to address it, but the way that he went about addressing it was to not say or do anything at all, which is, it's just curious. You wonder what the thinking is as to why he would feel the need to do that, that way. I think part of it is, and this goes to the whole new media question, is you stop thinking like a player and a teammate,

and you start thinking like a producer. Because you are also a producer. Yeah. And as a producer of the Draymond Green television show or podcast or whatever you're doing, you're like, this is when I want to hear from you. Not when you beat the Kings by 10 points in February. That's okay. But when I want to hear from you is right now,

when you are the center of attention, when you're in the middle of this huge story. So I guess. that's part of what it is when you become a producer. You can't just be like, you know what? I'm not talking to the media today. You know what? I've said everything I have to say about this.

You have to go out there, even if, as you point out, you don't wind up saying much. Yeah. And here's the thing about Jemond Green as media member. There have been times where he's decided to be candid. I think people who are familiar with his work will remember how he unloaded on Kendrick Perkins for having bad things to say about him. And, you know, he said pretty much the worst things you can say about a black man, period. He essentially called him an Uncle Tom and a coon on his podcast.

So, like, J. Maureen is not somebody who's afraid to say stuff when giving the chance on his media platforms, right? So the idea that he would come out and do this, I think it speaks to a couple of things. One, as I mentioned on our podcast group chat, I think he understands that he can't come out and apologize. Being apologetic is not a thing that public people do anymore. And I honestly attribute it to Donald Trump where he set the example and was just like, don't apologize. Double down, as a matter of fact. Don't look back. Because when you yourself put it on the record that you did something messed up, then your critics and your haters, so to speak,

will just literally point at your own words about yourself and bury you with them. And I think Draymond Green intuitively understands, like, I can't come out and say this was one of the worst things that could possibly be done by a teammate, and I deserve all the ridicule I'm getting for it. So he knows he can't come out and apologize because of that fact, but he still wants to play the content game. And so that's what he does. And I think it speaks to a larger problem with quote-unquote new media

player-driven media is, I think players understand that people want to know about them and want to hear what they have to say, but they don't understand what it is people want to know about them or what it is people want to hear them speak about. And that's where the disconnect happens, where if you've ever been in locker rooms enough and you spend enough time around players, they don't. Most of them don't truly understand the role of the media. A lot of players look at the media's like, you need us for your job and your content.

And a lot of them feel like the media works for them, right? Like, you guys are our pawns essentially because you're so dependent of us. Your jobs are a function of our existence. And a lot of them have this sense, but they don't really know how it works, how the media goes out and promotes the game or explains the game or whatever, whatever it is that the media is tasked to do

in and around the given sport. So I think their lack of understanding of how media works and how it functions is why we get this disjointed athlete media. It's like, I could do this. I could talk about myself in a way that people find compelling. And, you know, they fail at it over and over again. What was so interesting about this one was it felt like it was from the sports documentary toolkit. We start with that

big beauty shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. And it's like, this is every episode of Hard Knocks I've ever seen. Except in Hard Knocks, Leav Schreiber would do this little pun where he'd go, forecast in the Warriors locker room, foggy, or something like that. They would at least marry the beauty shot to what we're going to talk about

today. And also, you got to love this, the disembodied voices of people on first take that are the soundtrack of all these documentaries, I think Tom Brady's washed up. You'll never win another Super Bowl. I think so and so. Like, there's got to be one PA at every one of these production houses at Omaha or whatever that is like, just watch first take. Get me the disembodied voices. And that we will string these together. But the funny part about this is usually the disembodied voices are held up for ridicule. In the Dremont mini doc, they all sounded really reasonable. You're like, yeah, what he did was really bad. And it's going to be very tough for that team to overcome. So I love this. The doc is, you know, it's taking cues from all of the, all of different sorts of media that are

related to this documentary. And then my favorite part is the Dremont Green mega close up, where it's it's like dark, like everything else is dark and, you know, the spotlight is like literally on the guy's face. And it's this close up and like, as a viewer, you think he's about to say something profound. Like, recently I watched Carmichael, the comedian, he did this special called Rothaniel, essentially where he comes out of the closet, right? He tells the world that he's a gay man, which is this like, you know, this like deep, true. that he's opening himself up. He's like naked to the world, right?

This like, he's so vulnerable in this moment. And it's shot in that way, Rothanio. Everybody who's listening to this should go watch it. I think it's an excellent piece of art. And Draymond Green is shot in a similar way in his little mini dog, except he's not delivering some, you know, vulnerable message and opening himself up to the world. If anything, he's, like, pretty defiant.

And again, saying nothing and being, like, really arrogant, it's so bizarre that anybody would think that this was good, that this is a good piece of media that the public is going to love. They're going to eat this up. It just speaks to a sort of out-of-touchness and a tone-defness that a lot of this athlete-driven media has. So if we get the extreme close-up,

we as a viewers have the right to demand that we are going to get a certain level of I think so I think that's reasonable and what we got here was this was the damning quote everybody cited he says I was told the world has been able to see one of your worst moments look at all the upside you have now I mean that's certainly one way to spin it that this is rock bottom and it can only go up from there. But I mean, some people might say this was my worst moment. I want to explain to people why I'm better than this.

This is not indicative of my character. This is where I failed. This is how I'm going to do better. This is why I, you know, maybe try to explain where you were when you perform this heinous act. Like, none of it. It's just none of it. It's just platitudes and I think I don't want to cycle

analyze these dudes, Brian, but I think a lot of this comes from a place where athletes feel the need to want to come off as evolved as I'm not a dumb jock. I'm not like Kevin Durant starts the boardroom because there's this narrative of broke athlete wasting his money, spending frivolously, you know, essentially being stupid with his money and his riches and the fortunes that he's gotten, which by the way, like a part of that narrative is this idea that athletes are bestowed this money, not that they earn it, that they go out and earn it, that they're fortunate, that they're lucky to get this money. And so a lot of this athlete-driven stuff is counter to that narrative.

It's like, no, no, no, I'm a venture capitalist. You understand? Like, I'm Elon Musk. I'm like, I'm a genius at money. It's not just that I'm not going to waste and squander my riches. I'm going to triple it. I'm going to quadruple it. I'm a arch-capitalist, right?

And so that's what a lot of the messaging is. It's counter-programming to what they think are negative dialogues that happen, negative narratives that happen around athletes. And so Draymond's trying to say, identify the feeling, process the feeling. This, the fit, it's like, bro, this is sport. bro, this is not what the people come to you for. The people do not care if you are an involved person or not. I think the people in your life should, you know, your family, your colleagues, the people

that you deal with on a day-to-day basis, yeah, they care about what type of person you are. Maybe you're the type of person who don't punch somebody in the face at work. Yeah, those folks might care about this. The fans, the people who are consuming your work, bro. They don't give a damn about this. you know, psycho babble that you going through, it's just, again, it's so out of touch. I want to circle back to something you talked about on group chat.

How do you think these new media ventures on TV and elsewhere have changed the way fancy athletes? I think a lot of it is problematic, honestly, in the sense that I don't know why these athletes would want to self-style themselves as venture capitalist. There's nothing less relatable than rich guy who buys stuff and makes money off of it. That's not relatable. And you got to contrast it with Alan Iverson, right, who is literally a cultural figure who in his prime was speaking to damn near every single neighborhood, every single black neighborhood in America. and then by proxy, the burbs, right,

where white kids are getting cornrows and doing all kinds of crazy stuff because of Alan Iverson. But like, this guy was speaking to, and he had an every man quality to him, and that's why he achieved this cult hero status. Like, this guy was like, no, I'm speaking to directly to a normal black person,

every single one of you. You know, all of my troubles, all of my successes, like the adversities I've overcome. I'm speaking directly to a normal everyday person. Who in the hell is James Hardin speaking to when he dresses like some dude straight out of, you know, Vogue magazine? Like there's no audience for that.

There's no constituency for that. And that's why I think it's problematic that these dudes are filling themselves up, people are filling their heads with this idea. Like, no, this is the imaging you should be putting out there because it doesn't speak to anybody, bro. Like, I get it. You don't want people to think you're some idiot, jock, dumbass.

No, we don't want people to think that. But, like, bro, like, at a certain point, don't you want people to think that they have something in common with you? You know what I'm saying? Like, none of this speaks to that, you know? And God bless LeBron, you know, full disclosure to the audience. I've worked for uninterrupted before. I got nothing but love and respect for all of the people who work there.

And I think they've done a pretty good job at some of this stuff. But I do think even LeBron, at his worst, has gotten bogged down in this hyper manicured messaging. I don't think people respond to that kind of stuff. I think people want to feel like you're a human being and they do want to connect with you. That's so interesting because the roots of new media, again, that's the term for a lot of these productions. is the image you're getting of me through the old media is not a true image. It's reduced. I'm being treated like a character on a television show.

You're not seeing all the sides of me. You're not seeing me as a fully realized human being. So I'm going to create something that's going to help you see that. But what you're saying is that in a lot of these productions, that does not come through as a fully realized, at least as a relatable person. Me ask you, Brian, in your life, have you found that people around you

who love sports have been moved by these things? Like, I don't meet people in my life who want to talk to me about sports, like whenever they find out what I do for a living, they're not talking about athlete-driven media. Nobody comes up to me and says, yo, did you hear what LeBron said on the shop? That's not a thing that people are connecting with.

I'm sure people watch it because at the end of the day, these are still celebrities. These are still famous people. And our culture is still obsessed with fame and celebrity. And so they're going to earn a certain amount of attention no matter what. But the idea that this stuff is connecting and it's landing on a deeper level, I have a hard time believing that. And by the way, like, we used to be good at athlete propaganda, right? Like, people ask me all the time if I grew up a Nick fan being a New York City neighbor, I was like, no, I was obsessed with Jordan.

And guess what? It's because I was being propagandized by Gatorade, Nike, Haynes, the NBA itself. All of these people were just explaining to me why I need to love Mike, why Mike relates to us, why Mike is the guy. And yeah, like, we used to do great propaganda. And I'm not saying, like, that I'm above. being affected by propaganda because I think when it's tastefully done, it can work. I just think this stuff is ham-handed.

And it's kind of, it's so influenced by their own vanity. It's obvious. It doesn't take some deep media thinker like you and I, Brian, to see through it. I think normal people see through the artifice of all it is. I can't remember. It was very, or Mahoney on group chat. It was talking about all the shots of Draymond hugging his daughter that were interspersed. Yeah.

Into the documentary, which had a certain, like, video at a political convention feel. Like, here is me interacting with my children. You can't say something bad about the kids. Yeah. It's like, yeah, okay, you like your own kid. You're nice to your own kid, Jermann. I don't know that a lot of people will be moved by the fact that you care about your own child. There's a certain glossiness that creeps in.

I mean, and I don't know. I hope for your case you have. not seeing the Joe Montana documentary on Peacock. I watched it. I watched most of it. I stopped watching it up until he got to Kansas City because I didn't want to be depressed. That was, that was really awkward to me. That was an awkward piece of filmmaking.

It was awkward because Joe Montana was score settling with the 49ers and Bill Walsh. and the idea that he was mistreated, it was a celebration of Montana's greatness. And it's just like, in case you forgot, before Brady and Manning and all these other cats, there was me, okay? Which would have been fine, but there was a tinge of FU to it

that I guess I'd never associated with Joe Montana. I've always associated Joe cool. I always brought into that image of the coolest, slickest white boy in football, right? Like, there was, yeah, it was prickly that I wasn't expecting that from the Joe Montana doc. But, but like, I enjoyed interacting with his greatness once again for sure. Yeah, he would also do this thing.

Whenever he gave a quote or a little sound bite to the doc, he would just start uncomfortably laughing at the end of every soundbite and it would just trail off with him going, which just put me on edge for some reason. I don't know why that was the. And that's the funny thing, right? Because a lot of people watch the last dance when we were all inside at the beginning of the pandemic. And we're like, oh, this is pretty great. Or a lot of this is pretty great.

I had a lot of issues with it because I felt like I would watch Jordan complain about Pippin getting surgery and be like, well, that was selfish. Meanwhile, I'm leaving my team for two years to play minor league baseball, which is not a selfish act at all. And I would be like, wait, that doesn't really track. But I think one thing that's interesting about a lot of these productions is where people draw all their own individual line as viewers. So the thing about the last dance that I suspect people liked

is that Mike showed you some his fangs. Mike showed you the dark side of things. And I think people are drawn to that. That's what's missing from everything else. That like Mike is like, yes, like yes. I was truly great, but there were moments where I was a horrible person to punch Steve Kerr in the face. And I thought, I took that, and Mike was like,

but that to me was part of the process of becoming the greatest winner this sport has ever freaking seen, right? Outside of Bill Russell, of course. But I think that's what people responded to, the fangs, honestly. I think if Mike would have just done, you know, oh, we worked so hard to win six championships, I don't think this would have resonated as much and generated as much chatter and interest

if Mike didn't let people see some of the other stuff. I think it's important that people... And that's what I mean with the Draymond. It's like, there's a way to spin this like, yo, I'm just this really hyper-competitive guy, and sometimes that gets the best of me. And it manifests itself in ugly ways. But usually 98% of the time,

it's in service of my... team, it's in service of winning. I think people would have been able to be like, it's hard to argue with the results of that, right? It's hard to argue with that logic. Instead, we don't, we don't get that. We don't get an explanation. Mike was like, no, this ugly stuff comes with the greatness.

You can't separate this. And to, you know, to be Michael at Six Rings, greatest winner of all time. Before that, you still got to be Michael, that punches Steve Kerr in the face of practice, that belittles, you know, Scott Burrell in front of his teammates that, you know,

says the meanest, most belittling things about Jerry Kraus. Like, he explains that those two things are in marriage with one another in a way that, again, a lot of this athlete-driven stuff just doesn't. So you have to be willing as an athlete to cop to that part of your personality or else have people come onto the dock and talk about that part of your personality?

Yeah, nobody's coming to. see Mr. Rogers, we don't come to sports for that. And that was the thing, because I'm not going to lie, I can't speak out of both sides of my mouth, right? Meaning there was a certain level of pearl clutching on Twitter. And let's face it, Brian, the most hyper-liberal segment of the NBA audience exists on Twitter, right? Like, not the NBA's audience at large.

the most hyper-liberal section of the audience, and I'm not saying this as some arch-conservative, I'm not. I'm just saying the most hyper-liberal segment of the audience exists on Twitter. And there's this, heavens, no, this couldn't happen at my job, at my accounting firm. I'm like, bro, like, first of all, at your job, I would think that nobody boxes you out, doesn't over the back, puts his, sweaty armpit on your forehead when you guys are at the coffee machine. That don't happen at your job.

Like, your job doesn't involve physical contact all day every single day. Like, your job is not like that one. And stop comparing the NBA to your job. And second, I think part of what we like about sports is that it's not like our jobs. It's not like our lives. It is its own thing in a separate space. And yes, I did roll my eyes at some of the pearl clutching that went on with dream. I'm like, yeah, he did a messed up thing.

His team is going to discipline him in a way that they think is necessary. And life is going to go on, right? And nobody's saying what he did was right or excusable. It's not going to be excused. He's going to be punished for it. But the way that people dealt with it online, I'm just like, guys, like, grow up, like understand that the NBA is different from our lives, you know? So these things are not going away, new media productions, whether in the form of movies,

documentaries, podcasts like the one Draymond himself does. What does a good or interesting one look like? I mean, to me, it's KG talking to the All of Smoke guys and explaining his journey from South Carolina to Chicago to, you know, to the NBA and him explaining the details of that journey in a way that the interviewees can understand. They can understand ABCD Camp, what it means to go there, what it's like to be there.

They can understand draft night. They can understand your first year in the league. They can understand the first time Shaq gives you an elbow to your chest. To me, that's the best version of this media is when those guys, or interacting with each other, and they can bring a clarity to their experiences that you or I could not while talking to KG.

To me, that's the best version of it. And KG explaining his rivalry with LeBron while he was on the Celtics and all of that stuff. To me, that's the best version of it, them offering nuance and insights that we just don't have. them offering insights into their lives as athletes. Even me as somebody who is proximate to it, especially here in L.A.

Where I see these guys out enough because of my own social circles. And like, I'm not an athlete. My life is not mirrored by the... There's nothing in common with them, right? Where I might see, just for an example, to let the listeners know, I might be at a spot, a hot spot here in L.A.

And you might see an NBA player on the pecking order of, I don't even know, like, who's it like a mid-level star quarterback in the NFL? Like Marcus Marriota. Okay. But Marcus Marriota level NBA player is out. This guy, not only does he have four, five, six of the most beautiful women in his section, there's like another 15 adjacent that are dying to get in there. This is for the Marcus Marriota of the NBA.

This does not mirror you or ours' lives in any way, shape, or form. They're just weird things about their lives, right? That you and me can't understand. I use the women part of it because that's something that everybody understands that athletes have access to women in a way that a dentist, just doesn't, right? To me, the best media is explaining the nuances of that experience. It's them explaining their experience in our world and how unique it is. The worst of it is is Draymond Green's five-minute documentary of nothingness. Last one for you, Was,

we're doing a journalism slash media movie countdown here at the press box. Do you have a favorite media movie you'd like to nominate? Yeah, for me, it's spotlight. And it's because I grew up a Catholic boy myself, went to Catholic school from grades 1 through 12. And so watching them sort of unpack the way power and influence works within the Catholic Church, sort of demystifying it in a way that I never understood

as just a participant in the community, that to me, that's a movie that will always stick with me because I can remember when all of this stuff started happening, meaning the abuses of young children started being exposed in the media, not when it was happening, but when it got exposed, I was like, holy moly, like what? This could happen in the Catholic church. I remember being just dumbfounded by the fact.

I remember older people in my family coming up to me and being like, did Father Andy ever touch you? And I was like, oh, no, I think I would have told y'all if that happened. But, like, yeah, like, this was sort of a meteoric event in my life when this stuff got exposed. And so to watch it in the movie and them. sort of unravel that whole thing. That's always going to be an experience that stays with me. You can catch Woz everywhere on the Ringer podcast network.

Wozney! Thanks for coming on the press pod. My man, Brian, thanks for having me on, bro. All right, it's time for the second weekly edition of David Shoemaker guests the Strain Pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about how dinosaurs survived the cold was Jurassic Perka. Today's headline comes from Joseph Cranny.

It's from the York Sunday News. The York Sunday News. Like York, England or like York, Pennsylvania? Yeah, we're going York, Pennsylvania here, your corner of the world. All right. I'll give you the subhead here. Battling Climate Change at a Pennsylvania winery.

Okay? Pull quote says, I've never seen that kind of rain before, but it's happening more regularly. So a winery versus climate change. What was the York Sunday News's strain pun headline? This isn't going to be like a water into wine joke, is it? It's not.

The rain is a little bit of a global warming. Red herring. Climate change. Vineyard. We make the wine with a press. grapes. Why don't we start there? What if we do a little flip-o on that?

The wrath of grapes? The wrath of grapes. The wrath of grapes. The wrath of grapes. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Serafantis back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media.

See you then, David. See you later, Brian.