The Press Box - 'The Press Box': Scooping the Scoop (Ep. 414)

Episode Date: January 9, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss what Michael Wolff—author of the new book 'Fire and Fury'— was doing in the White House (04:30), how ESPN’s big story about the Patriots was scooped before it came out (20:00), and the oddest feud in sportswriting: Rick Carlisle vs. ESPN vs. LaVar Ball (32:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The NFL playoffs are heating up, and the Ringer podcast network has you covered for all your pro football needs. We're turning out NFL content six days a week during the playoffs, so you'll definitely want to tune in. We kick off our coverage on Sunday nights right after the games with rapid reactions from former NFL GM Michael Lombardi and Tate Frazier on GM Street, available only on the Ringer NFL show podcast feed. And then on Mondays, we've got guest the lines with Cousin Sal on the Bill Simmons podcast, my all-time favorite pod. On the Ringer NFL show, you can hear Robert Mays, Kevin Clark, and David. Danny Kelly react to the previous weekend's games every Tuesday. On Wednesdays, GM Street is back to give a midweek look at what transpired and what

to expect in the next round. And then Kevin, Robert and Danny are back at it on Thursdays with a deep dive at the upcoming week's slate of games. And we wrap up the week with Mike Lombardi and Tate Frazier, returning for GM Street's Friday focused on the Ringer NFL show feed. So subscribe to the Ringer NFL show and the Bill Simmons podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Art 19, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcast. David, we're going to talk about Michael Wolf's new book about Donald Trump.

But if we let Wolf root around in our lives, what's the most embarrassing thing he would find? My gosh. You'll excuse me as I'm sprinting for the door at the mere thought of it. I think it's fair to say that if you take an intrepid reporter or even one like Michael Wolf and and put him on a sofa in my living room for the better part of a few months. He might come up with something to talk about. Isn't it true that like 99% of what he'd come up with would be like professional sniping, like you talking about other people in the media?

Right? And me, for that matter? I would actually be really interested for him to talk to my fiance and just find out which of my co-workers she thinks I hate because the actual answer is no, but just on the basis of the conversations that we've had with no external information. I bet it would be a pretty interesting conversation. And the amazing thing is that's what Fire and Fury is, right? It's Steve Bandon versus Juvanka, right?

Or the oldest one of the book, which is people say on flattering things about their boss, only in this case their boss happens to be the president of the United States. Exactly. I mean, it really speaks to this universal condition. I feel it's sort of just like a mega version of what Wolf would find with us. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, we'll get into this more later. But it's just like, you know, you could imagine if that wolf story came out about you,

the advice that everybody would be giving you is, come on, man. It'll all be over tomorrow or in a couple of days. Just let it lie. There's nothing here. And one would hope that you'd be, that you would take that advice. But the human condition makes it really difficult. Yes, we would all be Donald Trump, if confronted by such a story. This is the press box on the Rigger Podcast Network.

The Press Box is the media podcast where you are not allowed to use the phrase, kill all your darlings. We are Brian Curtis and David Chewaker of the Rigger. David in sunny Hollywood and Brian in sunny Melbourne, Australia. How are you, David? It's actually raining today of all days. This is the first time. This is, I think, the first time in Ringer podcast history. It's actually raining outside. I just did the kind of standard BS open, you know, sunny California. But more importantly, how is Australia? It's been fantastic so far. I love it. It's so, it's like parallel version of the U.S., you know.

Uh-huh. So there's not really, to the point of, you know, not only obviously do, does everyone speak the same language and are kind of interested in some of the similar things, but I have to walk two blocks from my house to go to a 7-Eleven. Oh, wow. So, you know, I'm not sure there's really a lot of, a lot of cultural exploration on that, but I'm having a great time. On today's spot, David, three stories.

first, what was Michael Wolfe, father of the new book, Fire and Fury, doing in the White House? Then we'll talk about how ESPN's big story about the Patriots was scooped before it even came out. And finally, the oddest feud in sports writing, Rick Kyle versus ESPN versus LeVar Ball. Hmm, that'll be fun.

But topic number one, David, let's call it the Wolf of Pennsylvania Avenue. Michael Wolf published a book, Fire and Fury, full of amazing stories about the Trump administration. And Trump, for his part, skillfully ignored the book, thus depriving it of much-needed oxygen. Just kidding. He attacked the book, proving its thesis and turning it into a bestseller. David, you're sort of a veteran of book

publishing. What were your first impressions about the rollout of fire and fury? I mean, do I need to say up front that Henry Holt, the publisher of this book is a previous employer of mine? I don't know that it matters at all. Let's see, this is a pretty new development over there. Yeah, I mean, you know, you said that Trump's reaction sort of prove the thesis of the book, almost just like the existence of the book proves the thesis of the book that he was able to sit there on a couch, apparently like undisturbed for days and weeks and months at a time, just sort of like proves the very basic thesis, which is like it was an absolute madhouse and nobody knew what they were doing.

It's funny because, you know, there's been a lot of talk about why they would give this much access to him. And of course, everything Trump does is turned up to 11 from every other previous administration. But I sort of think, in a way, it reminds me of really the kind of revelatory books about every administration. I mean, I remember after 2008, Obama sat down for just about every writer who came into the White House and did an interview. George W. did one with Robert Draper when he was just one reelection. He was feeling proud of himself. Clinton's team did it with Bob Woodward. And I think that sort of through line here is that whenever an administration thinks they're winning to use a very Trumpian word, they say, come on in.

you know come talk we we want to talk to you right we want to beat our chest and tell you how great we're doing and wolf perhaps smartly realizing that with trump that would last like five minutes before everything caved in on his head was right there was it came in right at the right time yeah i'm trying to remember i feel like i've mentioned this this anecdote before but i think it was i think it was mark lebevich in the times magazine or something that had this story about when he was when he was writing about trump that or he was he was interviewing hope hicks and she just wanted walked him into like the presidential dining room where he was watching TV

and like the best anecdote of the story came out of this really unnecessary spur of the moment interaction. There just seems to it, I don't know if that speaks to a specific sort of overconfidence that you were alluding to, but I definitely think there's some of that. You know, there's definitely,

you know, there's been a lot of stories about Trump even, you know, from before his time in politics where you get this and where you get the feeling that like he thinks that if he can buddy up to you, then that's, then you're necessarily going to do his bidding or do something positive for him. And, you know, I think that that can be said of this entire publication process of this book. I think what's really interesting to me is that, you know, there's going to be a lot of talk about sources,

and they'll be talking about sources in every segment of this show. And there's a lot of, you know, kind of nitpicking that's going on with the book and about the way it was written and everything else. But I think what's really become so poignant about this book is that it's, sort of, I mean, a lot of people have said that it confirms, it's, it confirms things we already know. It's not even confirming suspicions, but it sort of sets the terms for conversation, uh, in a way that it, I felt like, it seems like, like the people who were trying to report on, on, on the Trump presidency, in some sense were like almost too inside. It was like too much, uh, they were too consumed by it to really tell the story in a narrative way.

for a sort of more general audience. And you've seen this sort of like exhale on cable news, because now they're able to frame the story. It's sort of like a reset button on telling the story of the Trump presidency. And is that just because it's all in the same place and that Maggie Haberman and all the people from the New York Times were kind of doing it piecemeal?

I mean, because everything that the New York Times has made you think the same thing about Trump, right? Like, you know, so many details in there. It's not like they're so inside that they're not missing, that they're missing the story, that Trump is strange and sort of out of control and not, you know, the guy for the job to be president of United States. But is it just that we're all putting it all under one roof now? Yeah. I mean, you know, there was a time not too long ago where we'd wait for this book to come out a couple of years after the presidency had ended, right?

I mean, but now being reported on a book form in real time in this sort of, you know, semi-definitive way, is part of life. I think that, yeah, having it in one place and also the legitimacy that comes with the bound book format. You know, the fact that, I mean, it's not, it's not, it's not in any kind of logical way more reputable than newspaper journalism.

But just to be able to hold up that book on TV or to be able to cite this book in print, I think for, you know, a lot of people, it makes it seem more legit. Yeah, it's the person. power of old media, right? It's kind of the last, the last stand of, you know, we're talking, what I say books are dying or newspapers are dying, whatever, but then you put something in hardbacked form and all of a sudden everybody's like, oh, this is a big deal, right, as opposed to

that newspaper story that came and went a couple of days ago. Sure. And the president hasn't spent the past year attacking, you know, the old guard of book publishing. So, you know, there's certainly a little bit more stability in it in that sense. Can we also just say that, well, and you and I are both big fans of books that this is great fodder for cable news. It's great for helping us understand perhaps the Trump administration, but nobody is going to vote for or against Donald Trump because of this book. Yeah, I think that's totally true. I mean, like I said, I think that the most powerful thing, if you're, if you're not a Trump supporter, I think the most powerful thing it does is sort of give you, you know, a framework for the, you know, the attack ads are going to run next cycle.

and gives, you know, maybe the, you know, questionally large swath of undecided voters, you know, a little bit more background or something and as all these stories are just constantly just pouring out of this administration. What do you think about Michael Wolf, Michael Wolf, the figure in this story? I mean, some of the best writing that has been done

about his book and about this incident have all been, you know, have dealt equally with both the book and, and the revelations of the book, but also the author. Boy, that's an interesting question. A couple of thoughts. One is that, you know, when I first started reading Michael Wolfe, which I guess is at the beginning of my career,

because he's been around forever, I always just assumed at the beginning that he was British, both because of the way he wrote and the kind of figure he cut, and also the mistakes that he made, like a cheerful carelessness of some of his writing. You know, the big wood here, right, was he has Rupert Burdock, I think in the book and went in a, the column, alternately calling Trump a fucking idiot and a fucking moron, which there's not a lot of, you know, necessarily those things don't mean different things, but you should probably get that right.

That's like a big deal. So there's that. And, you know, this is a very, you know, people have pointed out with factual mistakes, things like the fact that, you know, Trump didn't know who John Boehner was, things like that. Like there are, there are so many kind of wolfian facts. The other, though, is that he is, if you go back and read his old media columns in New York, he'd often have a very thin read of information, but he'd be very good at just kind of riffing on that and walking around it and carrying around in his backpack and kind of hitting the bull's eye with a couple of sentences about whatever he was talking about.

That's kind of his, to me, his gift. He's a good writer's sentences, but he also kind of just hits the nub of. things pretty well. And I think if you read the reviews and some of the pieces like David Remnick's in the New Yorker this week, you know, there are a lot of people who probably, I think you'd fair to say, don't trust Michael Wolfe. But because they, he's hit, he's hit it in terms of Trump's unworthiness, they're sort of happy to use the book to their own end. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah, it does. I mean, there's, I mean, I guess the flip side of that would be because he is confirming things that

that reporters are repeatedly saying they either have written already or that they know to be true but haven't, you know, it hasn't made it into a piece yet. I think that there's, I think a lot of the people who are uneasy with him, a lot of the journalists who are uneasy with Michael Wolfe's process

have reason to believe that what he writes is true even outside of the, you know, outside of the context of the book. But yeah, I mean, it is pretty, I just think, thought, you know, Donald Trump is, his, maybe his greatest lesson to all of us is that, you know, you are the product that you're trying to sell. And, uh, you know, that's the biggest thing. And I think

that it's, that it's, uh, it's just sort of ironic that Michael Wolf has, maybe unintentionally become a lot of, become half of the product of this whole thing too. I mean, if the, uh, you know, Michael Wolf's name is in the headlines, you know, in the L.A. Times and, you know, Jack Schaefer wrote the piece that titled Trump Got Wulfed. What was, there were a couple of L.A. Times pieces. Paul Thornton said it takes a rogue-like wolf to write about Trump. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty impressive that he's put himself, or he's become the center of the story, but that we're still talking about the, you know, the contents of the book.

Yeah, that's the dream for him, right? It's funny because when you write a media column, you are kind of by your very nature, you know, elevating other people in the media, right? And one of Michael Wolf's great tricks throughout the years is to make himself be as big a character as the people that he's writing about. He doesn't take second place.

And so when I see him, yeah, leading all the newscasts, not just the facts about Trump, but Michael Wolf himself. I'm like, this is his dream. This has always been his dream. And he's achieved it in kind of New York media circles with the Rupert Murdoch book that he wrote last. And this is kind of him achieving it on a totally different level. One of the pieces, I'm blanking on which one now,

just referred to him offhandedly as an inveterate panelist, which I think is like the most damning thing you could possibly say about somebody. You know, a couple of weird little, like, you know, minor notes before we move on. one, I think that, you know, if there's anything in my background on book publishing that has given me any pause in this, it's that I know, and I know that the people at Henry Holt, I mean, from experience, did their jobs. Like, they did their due diligence. They did all the fact checking and copy editing and legal reads and everything else that they could have done. And that's

actually become a little bit of the story, too. I think in Virginia Heffernan's piece in the LA Times, I mean, it seems pretty clear that they, that Henry Holt informed her of the links that they went and wanted to make sure that was clear. I think that the only thing, I mean, I think the only thing to give pause, you know, to the average consumer of this media is that a lot of times with legal reads, they don't tell you you can't say something.

They just tell you the way that you're allowed to say something. And then when that gets conveyed by a different person into a television news segment, then maybe it sounds a little bit more certain than it was written on the page. You know, those are the sort of things that, those are the sort of, like, danger, you know, traps that we walk into

when a book becomes, you know, news in this sort of way. But the other thing I wanted to mention, and I think that this is weirdly just like, maybe this is just the way the news cycle is damned to work in 2018. But there have been numerous news stories about Trump that have come out since this book has become a big thing, and they all just sort of get subsumed under the same umbrella where I'm watching a thing and I'm saying like,

oh, I didn't realize Michael Wolf had this scoop and then I realize it's not a Michael Wolf scoop at all, you know, or, yeah, I mean, or things from his things from his book just sort of seem like they're part of the ether now and they're not really part of the, I mean, they're not, you know, they're like, they're, you know, conventional wisdom as opposed to a scoop. I don't know, it all just sort of blurs together so much that, that, I think that's probably a success of the book, but, you know, I'm sure they're, I'm sure that the publishers aren't terribly happy about that sort of stuff either. Yeah, that's funny. But to me, that's Michael Wolfe's dream even more, right?

That he's getting credit for scoops he didn't even have, you know? Like, now I'm getting credit because that's what happens, right? Before we thought Maggie Haberman had basically broken everything there was to break by the Trump administration. And now we think Michael Wolf did. You know, yes, that's kind of a changing of the guard. Michael Wolf can take credit for executive time and everything else that'll ever come out about the Trump administration.

David, it's time for our favorite feature, the overworked Twitter joke of the week, where we pick a nominee who proves that even though American culture has shattered into a million pieces, we can still all come together to make the same jokes on Twitter. Got a lot of great nominees this week. By the way, thank you to all press box listeners who've been flooding our inboxes and our Twitter mentions for three weeks. But I think there was a winner, David, and it involves Donald J. Trump. You'll remember his tweet where he said he would be announcing the, and this is all caps,

the most dishonest and corrupt media awards of the year. I believe that actually got pushed back. The fakeies, as Stephen Colbert called them, remember that? Yes. Were you as struck as I was by the number of journalists who nominated themselves? It kind of became a point of pride, right? Including saying, going with the phrase, it's an honor just to be nominated. Yeah, I think that that was a wonderful joke that was.

is definitely overworked. Although, you know, if, although I, I kind of, like, now I'm kind of regretting not getting out there

ahead of this. I'm sure there's no way I'd ever be nominated, but, I don't know. If I were Brian Curtis, I might want to have that joke already out there

in the world before, before any potential, any potential Trump mentions come out my way. Yeah, but it's just so funny to me. It's like all these people who are doing fantastic work

from either the New York Times part of the new, journalistic spectrum or the lefty part of the spectrum, all going, no, no, me, me, you know, it's all encased in a joke, but it's really like, me, me, no, I'm writing their great anti-Trump stuff. Pick me, pick me, everybody. Exactly. All right, David, before we move on to ESPN and the Patriots, I want to tell you something, January means three things, cold weather, the NFL playoffs, and the Bachelor.

The Ringer podcast network has responded by spinning off Juliet Litman's Bachelor Party podcast into its own feed every Monday night right after the show ends on ABC. we post Juliet's breakdown in the latest episode. Juliet's guests include former bachelors like Ben Higgins, former contestants like Ashley I, the ringers Roger Sherman, and super fans like the sports gal. It's the most amazing and dramatic podcast journey you'll ever have.

Tell the bachelor super fan in your life to subscribe to Bachelor Party on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Art 19, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, topic number two, David. Last week, ESPN, Seth Wickersham, published a big piece, on tension and even discord between the Patriots Iron Triangle of Bob Kraft, Bill Belichick, and Tom Brady. But hours before that, Bruce Allen, who ran the Boston Sports Media Watch blog and still tweets a ton of media stuff, scooped the scoop.

Before anyone outside of ESPN knew the piece existed, he tweeted, source, ESPN-ready, new hit piece on Bill Belichick, Tom Brady, and Robert Kraft, set to publish tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. He then tweeted the article claims, The Rift is so severe. many Patriots feel this is the last year together for the trio. This is the second time we've actually seen this happen recently before the Washington Post big campaign killing piece on Roy Moore, Breitbart published an article called Bezos's Washington Post plans to hit Roy Moore on allegations of inappropriate relations with teenagers.

You notice the language hit is the same in both. What did you make of what I like to call scooping the scoop? Wow. Well, I mean, there was actually some pushback to the scooping of the scoop, right? Didn't some people say that they had previously scooped the scoop? Hadn't ESPN been discussing this on the air or something? I think it's pretty amazing. I think that framing it, the Bruce Allen tweet framing it as a hit piece, I don't know if that was a deliberate commentary or just to sort of, you know, Mr. but, you know, it's a weird symptom of the world we live in now. I mean, you know, you and I talk semi-regularly about stories that we know are coming out from the New York Times and the not too distant future or, you know, that sort of thing. This is part of the world. I guess, you know, in some sense, scooping a scoop in the sports media world is, you know,

it's safer than doing it in the scale of like national politics or current events or something like that. But it is, it's just, it's a really, it's really interesting because you can't help but wonder about the politics of scooping a scoop. Yeah. I mean, it's something as you mentioned that I think now we all, all journalists talk to themselves and saying, hey, did you hear the Times is working on a big Harvey Weinstein piece or on a Louis CK piece, right? And everybody seems to know it. Yeah. But there's also this kind of politeness about. not going to Twitter with that until it becomes so inevitable or, you know, I think variety and some of the trade magazines have kind of written about those stories being in the works

maybe at the last second, but not in a way to kind of undercut them. I mean, what amazes me about this is that all of basically journalism is conducted under Marquess of Queensberry Rules, if I'm saying that correctly, which is if you know that I'm working on a big story, you don't cut my knees out by airing that fact, but you're not doing that. out of anything other than just professional courtesy, right? Yeah. Which something like Breitbart, of course, doesn't have. And, you know, when I think about this, it's like,

the fact that ESPN's about to come out with this story is news, right? I mean, there's no question that Bruce Allen's readers would want to know that. You know, we may not love that idea. You and I may not go to Twitter and do the same thing, but there's no question that it's news. Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, I think the professional courtesy extends a little bit longer. longer than just like undercutting, a little bit further than just, you know, whatever principle of undercutting you were talking about. I mean, there's also, you know, at the time that Bruce

Allen was scooping the scoop, presumably this piece was deep into fact check, you know, and we, we were talking about the process of fact checking and legal reads and copy editing in the last segment, you know, that takes some, that takes some time. And I'm sure part of that professional courtesy amongst, you know, at least old media journalists is that you know that, you know, You don't want to find yourself in a position of not getting a good fact check for the sake of rushing out a big story. Yeah. I mean, what he had and part of which he tweeted out were some like talking points that had been circulated around ESPN that were sort of said like here. Here's what Seth Wickersham has, right?

Here are the things we can talk about on the air tomorrow. So the story was at a pretty advanced stage and it came out in fact a couple of hours after after Bruce started tweeting about it. It's funny. I was trying to play the kind of like counterfactual game with this. So let's say Breitbart was going around Boston working on a scandalous story about Elizabeth Warren, right? Mm-hmm. Would we mind if the Washington Post's Eric Wimple pre-reported on Breitbart coming out with this story? Huh.

I mean, yeah, no, I don't think so. But I think that, you know, the Battle for Clicks goes in a lot of different directions at one time. I mean, I'm not sure that Bruce Allen scoping the scoop was a net negative for the story. I mean, I don't think that ESPN would be circulating these talking points amongst their staffs unless they wanted them to start leaking out or, you know, to kind of see the market for this story's appearance. You know, who knows how they felt about Bruce Allen's tweet. But I think that that sort of scooping the scoop is different than what you might see from Breitbart or, you know, from your counterfactual of Eric Wemple where, I mean, actively what you're doing, is making sure that your piece comes up in the Google search when people are trying to read the other story.

Yes, and of course, when you haven't actually read the piece, you make all kinds of mistakes like Barstool's first tweet about it was that the piece was about who deserves the most credit, the power struggle between who deserves the most credit between Brady-Bello-Chickencraft, which, of course, was not actually what the piece was about. There's a great parallel to our last segment, because, you know, I was just listening to Bill Simmons,

our boss Bill Simmons podcast where he was talking to his dad about this story. And there have been a lot of other people talking about it. But it's funny to hear people and Bill's dad is a great example. But we've both heard these things in real life too. It's funny to hear people from outside of the journalism world question the sourcing of a story. And, you know, I don't think this ESPN piece, my guess is the sourcing was probably pretty tight. If only because my experience in journalism and working for ESPN, the first, fact that they let the story come out with no with with with with with with with with with

attributed names on the page probably means that it that the had it down pat. Although that seems maybe counterintuitive to maybe I'm just you know talking out of my ass. But it's funny. It's just the, the point is that it's just funny to hear people question the sourcing in the same way that that they, you know, kind of question Michael Wolfe. They're just saying, you know, well, Steve Bannon's the only one on the record for some of these, you know, for some of these things.

And it seems like there's a litany of voices. I don't know. Maybe the feeling that there's a litany of voices is a great journalistic trick that I don't have down pat myself. No, so I think you make a great point. So two things about this. One, and when I connect Alan and Breitbart, I'm only connecting them in the sense that there's all this information now about journalism kind of sloshing around out there. That was previously the kinds of things that people talked about at bars and now can find its way onto Twitter or the web or onto a site like Breitbart, right? I mean, I also go back and think of Matt Drudge writing about how Newsweek was sitting on this story about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, right?

That was an early kind of version of that. But the second thing is what you're talking about, which is that readers have either are so hip to how journalism works now or think they're so hip to how journalism works. That whatever a story comes out like this, you hear all this stuff, you hear about the sourcing, right? You also heard about, hmm, I wonder why ESPN published this now when the Patriots don't have any media availability for a couple of days. You know, is if that was if ESPN is required to publish the story right before the paths have a media availability. You know, I'm like that's like that's important. That's important at all. Or, you know, there's all kinds of.

And then, you know, what happens, of course, is when a piece like this comes out, especially a piece that happens to be about Boston sports, it just unleashes all this just amazing. insane kind of stuff about, you know, ESPN and their motives and all that kind of stuff with part of much of which emanates from the barstool universe. But yeah, you know, it is funny to me to hear people's motives. And I found I did find the kind of thing about anonymous sourcing funny. One, I think Mike Florio mentioned it on his blog. Mike Florio is, Mike Florio is against anonymous sources in the NFL. Really? Oh, that's interesting. Also, you know, Mike Florio, of all people, should realize that stories this big are going to come out anonymously in the NFL. That's just how this thing works, man.

You know, that is how this works. And it's like, I think with Seth, you know, when you point out that he didn't have necessarily people on the record, I think it's just he is, he is operating at a level at a Michael Wolfiean level in the NFL where stuff like that is not going to be on the record. It's just not. Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, I think that, I think that, you know, it's funny because you and I would be having conversations about this, you know, at the bar, whether it were now or five years ago or ten years ago. And now we're sort of, you know, nominally in the place of, you know, defending the old guard for whatever reason. I mean, not that either of us have a problem with this sort of discussion being had in the public sphere. But it is just, it's a weird and different world.

and it also sort of just works to obscure the point, right? I mean, it's like you were saying about, you know, or we think we were both saying about the Michael Wolf book that, you know, sometimes the real message gets lost behind this, you know, just miasma of TV interviews and all this other news coming out. You know, Barstool might have gotten, initially gotten the crux of the Patriot story wrong.

I don't even know that, I mean, I don't even know that anybody really knows what that story was about, even the people that read it. You know, I mean, that's not a knock on the story, but the conversation, it's like you read, it's like people are reading. And I saw this happen in real time on, on ringer Twitter. I mean, a ringer, ringer slack. You kind of read the story so that you have the credentials to then have a conversation about

it in some more meta way after the fact, you know? I mean, it's like the actual consuming, the actual consuming of journalism is just eating vegetables at this point. It's the secondary conversations that are much more interesting. Yeah. can I tweet about it or what quick blog reaction that, as you say, gets high up in the Google mentions can I then generate after the story? To your point, too, about us defending the old guard, I'm not even sure we are. But as a good example, I think this conversation, you and I

actually had sitting at a bar the other day, I found out through totally normal means about a profile that Wright Thompson is working on, like Wright told a non-journalist friend of mine who then told me, right was aware that this friend of mine was a friend of mine it got back to be i guess i could go to twitter with that you know but i at some level of my being i just don't care that much you know right like people would be interested in that um rights competitors would be interested in that people who are interested in you know all i you know the particular sport he was writing about would be interested in that i just i guess i just don't really

care it doesn't matter that much and again this is not this is not this is not the Patriot story. This is not Roy Moore. But I'm just like, eh, whatever. I don't know. Maybe just like, maybe in the same way that Bruce Allen probably helped, like I said,

seed the ground for this South Wickersham piece. Maybe you getting on, I mean, listen, right, need somebody on Twitter hyping up his work, because he's not there to do it for himself anymore. Topic number three, David. ESPN reporter Jeff Goodman scored with a network called an exclusive interview with Lovar Ball. I can't imagine any interview with any human being on planet Earth being less exclusive than an interview with Lovar Ball.

But okay. Ball told him of Lakers coach Luke Walton, quote, Luke doesn't have any control of the team no more. They don't want to play for him. Nobody wants to play for him. He's too young. He ain't connecting with them anymore. But the guy who came off the top rope was Maverick's coach Rick Carlisle, also president of the NBA Coaches Association. I view the recent ESP article, ESPN article, as a disgrace.

What did you make of this whole deal? I think that there are, I have so many questions, so many questions. I mean, listen, a lot of people to ring her office have been discussing this today. I am indebted to their brilliance and inevitably influenced by their various points of view. You're cribbing from Slack, in other words. Oh, yeah, man, cribbing from Slack is what makes everybody a good writer in 2018. but, you know, I mean, I think that it's interesting. I think that there's a lot of things that have been said.

A lot of the things that came out of Rick Carlisle, almost everything that came out of Rick Carlisle's mouth, and I love Rick Carlisle as a Dallas Mavericks Homer. He's a wonderful human being and can do no wrong. I think that this is another example of where, like, you know, the takes have very little relevance if they have any grounding in reality at all. And I include Rick Carlisleau's commentary and the takes, department.

I think on a very basic level, and there's nothing to really talk about here, but the meta-conversation to me that's interesting is when you read a story like Seth Wickershams that we were just talking about, how far away is his primary source from, like, how much distance is there from that source to Lovar Ball, you know, as a source?

Because you always have to sort of investigate the biases of the people who's, you know, who are the sources for your big stories. And I think that the, the, the objection that Carl, hopefully with the objection at the core of Carlisle's argument, it was, you know, not entirely clear. But the objection that I can sympathize with most is ESPN has sent a, you know, reporter basically to follow the ball family around the world in their various globetrotting basketball playing endeavors. And then, and then they report.

the stuff that LeVar Ball says as a news story in and of itself without, you know, how many, I mean, he could, you could call to your editor at ESPN and get 5,000 Laker sources on the phone in five minutes. You know, they're not actually interested in reporting the story out. They're interested in reporting on LeVar as news in and of himself. And I think that, you know, I don't, I'm not, there's nothing wrong with that. But I think that there is a distinction between that and news. and, you know, I think as a media, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as the media broadly defined, we're so trying to figure out what that distinction is. Yeah. And boy, doesn't lavar ball sort of, he's the guy where, for whom this question is the hardest probably to answer at the moment.

Sure. Um, I, I, I sympathize, I guess, with the idea of then going back to the Lakers and finding out if players actually don't want to play for Luke Waltner, or if he's actually lost the time. team. I kind of think, though, even if we stipulate that LeVar's opinions are pretty trolly and self-interested and false, I kind of do think they're news on their own, you know? It doesn't really bother me to see them printed and given some weight, if not maximum weight. I mean, I just think if Tom Brady's dad was saying the same stuff about Bill of Belichick, I think that'd be news, right? He's Lonzo's dad. Like what I mean, what's weird about this is it's just so unprecedented, you know? But I don't know how it's not, I don't know how it's not news, I guess.

Yeah. Again, there's a point where you're just giving this due to megaphone, right? Sure. There's a Trumpy aspect of this where you're just giving this due to megaphone. You're printing everything he says, you're sucking up those clicks and you're done. But I don't know. I kind of think, I kind of think it's worthwhile to think about. Yeah, I know. I think that, I mean, we should have some sort of sound drop for whenever the Trump parallel occurs in one of these more centrally sports conversations.

But no, but the Trump thing's really real. When he talks about the size of his nuclear button in a tweet, you know, the Washington Post and New York Times are not investigating the like the actual comparative size of these red buttons, even if they have them. You know, I mean, actually, there have been articles like that around, but that's not necessarily in the first. reactive story. And I think that it's similar to Lava R ball. I think that, you know, there's probably been a lot of, there's probably been a lot of introspection in the political media world as to how much of, you know, Trump's rise they were, you know, various news organizations were responsible for from the way that they covered him.

And I'm sure that it's even more poignant, if not as life and death, when ESPN, you know, has this sort of reaction happens to ESPN covering LeVar Ball because they very much created him. You know, he would have found an outlet if it weren't ESPN, but it wouldn't have been the same megaphone. And, you know, first of all, just in talking, just in having this conversation, having any conversation about the Ball family,

I just want to give LeVar credit because if nothing else, he's forced us to all refer to him and his sons by their first names, which used to be such a level. of sports familiarity, you know, the level of fandom you had to acquire to feel good about calling Michael Jordan Michael, you know? I mean, that was just like such a, that, that meant that he, like, you had to have at least like 30 posters on your wall to refer to him in that person, that sort of personal way. But, um, but yeah, I just think that it's a really tough call, you know, and I think that Rick Harlow probably had, as he was flying off the top rope, elbow first,

I think that in his heart, he probably had some good points, you know, he probably, he and every coach in the league, you know, probably get, probably see some unfairness in the fact that, like, they're not allowed to decline to talk to ESPN reporters because of their financial partnership between ESPN and the NBA. But, you know, the reporters are allowed to sort of, as they would see it, freelance like this. But it's still so crazy. I'll give Carlisle the benefit of the doubt because he was, he was mostly just acting as like, you know, a New York Union rep here, you know, just like making as much noise as he could to try to just like give cover to the, to the other coaches in the league.

And by the way, I'll stop talking, but credit to Luke Walton for handling this in the best way humanly possible, which is like one of the best jokes in the history, like the best coach jokes in modern memory when he just straight up told a reporter that he pulled Lanzo from a game

because his dad was mouthing off and then just laughed. Yeah, his dad was talking shit, so I told him out of earlier. I think you make a very good point when you say we're jumping off what the actual story. is to what the story we'd rather talk about is, right?

The story we'd all rather talk about that is a big issue is, what do we do about LaVar Ball, journalistically? What do we do about this guy? The points Rick Carlisle actually made was the one about he's saying ESPN has a deal with the NBA, so they should back up coaches. Those are his words. No, they shouldn't, obviously. You know, that's just, I'm sorry, man.

That's just, that's not how it works. And by the way, you're required to be, you're required to talk to them because they're paying you like a billion dollars to talk to them. So that's why you have to talk to him for two minutes after the quarter's over or whatever, right? You just get over that. The other thing he did, the other thing I think about his point that doesn't really work with me is he's saying, you know, essentially that are we just going to hand over the microphone to blow hard loud mouse, as he calls LeVar, you know, are we going to print stories that he says don't have any merit or any validity, quote unquote? I think if he went to Rick Carlisle and asked him for his

definition of where he draw the line and what stories are have merit or validity, it would be totally different than any journalists on earth, right? It would probably begin and end with the officially sanctioned things that Carlisle and his players say at press availability. Sure. Coaches have a really circumscribed idea of what should be news. Oh, absolutely. So it's not just something like Lavar Ball, which is a, you know, tough, as you say, thorny journalistic problem. It's just basically.

anything. So I wouldn't put too much stock in him, you know, telling us what's news and what's not news because I doubt he has a very good idea of what it is. I guess what interests me is like is how the story would have been different, would have been covered differently if, if the, if Lavaar's statement had been discernibly true or not true, you know, like if he was just like, yeah, Luke Walden only has four guys playing defense or like, you know, Luke, Luke Walton has forbidden as players to talk about using zone defense in practice or something like something that you I guess you could look at the tape and prove would it still be would the story be lavar ball said this thing and look how wrong he is or would they just like wait for him to say something that was

just more controversial because it can't be proven you know what i mean yeah yeah it's the provable part is the kind of meta story right which is how do you how do you coach a team and what's going to happen to a team if LeBar Ball is just putting you on blast every day. Right. Is that going to work? You know, the moment he makes a comment like this, there is a totally worthwhile meta story of how is this going to work day after day after week after week after year after year, which I don't understand.

And by the way, the related question to that is, when do LeVar Ball's comments cease to be news? Is this just what our next 10 years look like? Yeah, no, it's a really good question. I mean, the question that a bunch of people at work have, you know, brought up today, I think Jason Concepcion said it repeatedly is, you know, where are Magic Johnson and Rob Polinka during it in all this mess? Why is it up to Rick Carlisle to be saying anything at all?

You know, I mean, it seems like a really bizarre, the lines of communication are all are all mushed up. But, you know, part of me wants to believe the conspiracy theory that the Lakers and the Ball family are all in on this together and they're trying to just, you know, drive the media and, you know, stay out ahead of it and, you know, push it. exactly where they want to, where they want, it just sort of, it's the most, you know, it's, it's the most sort of Machiavellian view of Donald Trump, you know? I mean, it's that like, he knows exactly what he's doing. He's, he's directing the conversation. And part of me wants to buy into that,

but then you just have, like you said, Rick Carlisle just runs in and just sort of disabuses you of every, of every part of that conspiracy theory because he's, he's just so outraged over such a seemingly insignificant moment. I was also struck by how much of this story reads like those stories you read about the perils of youth sports parents. One of Walton's comments was, our job as coaches is to coach our teams and not be concerned about parents. I mean, I know, I know Lavares like, you know, the youth sports dad that everybody dreads, but it's just amazing that this has become a reality in the NBA. It's like, oh, no, if I don't do something, that guy's dad is going to start yelling.

Oh man. Just imagine if we had that at the ringer office too. I mean, like, first of all, we both get lots of feedback from our mothers, and we've commented on that on the podcast before. That's a wonderful part of both of our existences. But I would just love, I would just love to see Sean Finnessy just come into a meeting shaking his head and just be, it just say like, like, did just, you know, I just got off the phone with like Paolo's mom for the third time this week,

and this is just getting really out of hand. I have to start having my mom write Sean directly. Yeah. You know, Brian really needed a couple extra days to work on that piece. How dare you? How dare you demand that he turned that in on time? He needed a couple extra days to play around with that lead. Oh, my gosh.

So puts up a whole new. I'm actually kind of excited about this. This is great. The entire ringer staff has just tuned Bill Simmons out, according to David Shuemaker's mother. Well, see, when you put it that way, it just says it does sound so completely absurd. Maybe I'm on the Rick Carlisle side now. Good.

I'm glad I brought you around. You really have. That just sounds so absolutely ridiculous. Yeah, it's also funny to be, by the way, one more thing before we go on this. There is also in here, let's play the whatever sound effect we've decided for the Trump parallel. But it's also a little bit of the Michael Wolf thing. Even if you don't like Rick Carlisle or as a reporter, you know, your job is to be suspicious of Richard. somebody like Rick Carlisle, you're supporting him in this because you don't like LeVar Ball, right?

So in the way you're using Michael Wolf to attack Trump, you're using Rick Carlisle to attack LeVar. Does that make sense? It's kind of a double bank shot, journalistically. I see a little bit of that happening here, too. I mean, yeah, I don't, I think that there's probably, you know, you can criticize ESPN, as Rick Carlout did for covering LeVar Ball the airtime. I think it's pretty safe to say that, you know, the overwhelming number of reporters at ESPN would be really excited to never have to cover LeVar Ball or anybody like him ever again,

as long as it didn't affect their year in bonuses for page views. I mean, and I think that the only people that are that, I mean, obviously there are people that take a sort of great guilty pleasure in the existence of a LeVar type figure. But like I said, outside of people who are like getting paid by clicks, I think that double bank shot you're talking about is a shot that most journalists would be excited to make. All right. we will now swear to talk about Lafarball on every future edition of this podcast. Just get his name in the title.

All right, David, that brings us the edition of the press box to a close. We will be back next week with another international podcast about media. Can you believe that, David? Did you ever think you'd be saying those words? No, this is a really special moment for both of us. Forever in our hearts. See you next week, David. See you, man.

Have a great week and all straight.