The Press Box - Trump’s Iran Head Fakes, a CBS News Defection, and Tales From the Lakers Locker Room With Howard Beck

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

Bryan and David are here to discuss another busy news week. They start with another departure at CBS News, a New York Times piece about Judy Blume (5:56), and Stephen A. Smith on Sean Hannity’s podcast (18:09). They wrap up by discussing Trump’s changing message on the war in Iran (26:01). Then in the Notebook Dump, Bryan is joined by The Ringer’s Howard Beck in another edition of Tales From the Locker Room. Howard tells stories about covering Shaq and Kobe(45:42), getting U2 tickets from Rick Fox (1:19:24), and much more. Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David ShoemakerGuest: Howard BeckProducers: Bruce Baldwin and Isaiah Blakely Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David? Yes. Three quick stories to get us going here on the old press box. Story number one, Scott McFarlane has left CBS News. He was the justice correspondent over there. He writes in a note to his now former colleagues, This is my decision and I appreciate the bosses at CBS for understanding it. For the next phase of my career,

I look forward to some independence and finding new spaces to share my work in line with my personal goals. Now, if you ever watch Scott McFarlane over on CBS, he was a very old school, just the facts, kind of correspondent. Yeah. I don't know if the name John McQuethy rings bells to any of our younger listeners, but he was very much working in that network correspondent palette of old. Yeah. Well, January 6th of this year was the fifth anniversary of the siege on the Capitol. And you remember, that was the low point, or one of the low points, of the Tony DeCopal era. Yeah.

They ran a 16-second report that was on the one hand, people ransacked the place where our lawmakers do their business. On the other hand, and there actually was and on the other hand. well I remember that day because McFarlane tweeted out a much longer much higher calorie interview that he had done with the BBC and in that interview he laid out all the facts about January 6th he talked about how this is a very much a present story

it's not a piece of history it's being litigated relitigated it is animating Donald Trump and the MAGA movement in many ways now this guy is not Jim Acosta. Very far from it. But you could tell or intuit in that moment that something had violated his just the facts ethos. Yeah.

That by airing that report and not something more substantial, something longer, something that took the actual facts of Jan 6 into account, it had pissed him off in some way. Or maybe pissed off as a wrong word, but it had just, it had rubbed him the wrong way, journalist. I hope it pissed him off. Everybody should be pissed off in those situations, you know? It's just so crazy to me. Like, I almost understand Donald Trump's point of view more than I understand some of the other

apologists because, like, you don't, like, I guarantee that whoever made that judgment call at CBS News, whatever group of people signed off on that at CBS News, I guarantee that on January 6th, they were freaking the fuck out, just like the rest of us. And it's not a situation where you can come around to, you should come around to a different point of view. You know, everybody talks about the Mitch McConnell's of the world that were just like really hard on Trump in the aftermath and then just sort of welcomed them back into the fold or, or, you know, got back on bin to knee in front of him.

But at least politics has like a rationale. Like it might be an absolutely evil one, but you can, but there's some sort of thought process there for the people that just like changed, that decided January 6 wasn't a big deal because it suited their politics or personal politics. Just like, I can't imagine. I can't imagine being that depraved. Is it, I was terrified in the moment and then years later, five years later, this weird notion of journalistic balance so that we don't piss off the current president. kicked in? Well, I'm sure it's not pissing. I mean, it's 100% not pissing off the current president. But even to give it the most, I think,

favorable reading, you would have to assume that, like, they were freaked out in the moment, and then they were so subsumed by their, by whatever echo chamber that they're in online, that they, like,

retroactively convinced themselves that not to believe their own lying eyes. Right? Like, you, you, when all you hear is that like, no, it's actually a good thing, eventually that seeps in, but that's like how you could be so dishonest to yourself. I mean, literally, like straightforwardly dishonest to your own reaction to it. It's just crazy.

But I do have to say, I mean, I think we should all acknowledge that it's a bold move by Scott McFarland because in an era of increasing idyllis, strategification of news organizations and, more importantly, consolidation of the major news organizations. If CBS does indeed inquire, CBS News does eventually just like swallow CNN, leaving any job, aside from all the millions of stories we've done about people losing their jobs in journalism because of just downsizing, consolidation is going to put an even tougher spin on it, right? There's going to be half as many jobs available to you. And Barry Weiss will be overseeing even more of them.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. The person you're like straightforwardly objecting to or pissing off or whatever else. So, yeah, I mean, personal values, whatever the line is where they use, it's incredibly brave by him to do this. And it's a real, you know, obviously a real moral decision. Happy Trail, Scott McFarlane. Story number two, David, did you read the New York Times piece about Judy Bloom? I did. Love Judy Blum. Where does she rank in the Shoemaker read to your kids' power rankings?

I don't think I've read. No, that's not true. I think my wife has read a Judy Blume or two to our youngest. Judy Blum was never, obviously, my jam growing up. I guess that's not true. I read a number of Judy Blum books growing up, but I didn't like. She was your jam. She was everybody's jam. I'm just saying I never, I don't think ever had a phase where I was just like, A, we're at the bookstore. I was like, can I find another Judy Blum? Like, she was just sort of part of the fabric of our childhoods. you know she was never like like my like i was never like part of the fan club like or you know i never had like a judy bloom era um but yeah she's i mean just absolutely great just an effortless an effortless seemingly effortless uh um writer um and a lot of ways judy bloom was like

a very modern of the current era writer in a certain way i mean she was she made she made she made it seem easy. It was very conversational, very straightforward, very unaffected, but just like, it was art. You know, I mean, it was really, really, really, it was like the first time I read,

whatever, like Dave Eggers. And I was like, oh, you're allowed to write like that? Like, that's writing too, you know? And, yeah, that was just sort of her, that it was her style. She's, I mean, just very, very good. And just, and obviously, when you have the sort of impact that she has,

you know, it's really significant. And when you can leave that sort of mark on the world of children's or young adult literature without pandering, I mean, there's, there's a very short list of like Hall of Fame writers who did not pander, you know? It's like her and doll, role doll, and, you know, you can pick some of the genre writers who are obviously very invested in their form or whatever. but it's not a long list. Very real. And now that children's literature, at least my children's literature, has moved toward the Raina Telggemeyer graphic novel,

you see her influence in that. Yeah. You really see the roadmap she laid down with, just to name a couple of books here, Tales of a Fourth grade, nothing, super fudge. Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret, Blubber. otherwise known as Sheila the Great, which has gotten a lot of run in my house.

Well, there is a new biography of Judy Bloom out today by Mark Oppenheimer. According to Elizabeth Egan's piece in The Times, Oppenheimer got Judy Blum's permission. Or should I say, he was able to secure her cooperation with this biography, because it's not an authorized biography. Yeah. She consented to interviews. Her current husband consented to interviews. she helped him contact lots of people from the publishing world to inform this book, which is really, you know, a big deal if you're a biographer.

Sure. And then Oppenheimer writes in the book, after I wrote a draft of this biography, I sent it to Judy. And after several months, she returned it with hundreds of comments in the margins. She also attached a separate memo 40 pages long, offering suggestions, disagreements, and assorted thoughts covering every era discussed in the draft. So that happened. Oppenheimer, of course, took all that in a consideration as he revised the book. And then he and Judy Bloom, according to Egan's piece, have barely talked since.

And Bloom is not doing any publicity for the book. Or really even commenting on the book if this New York Times piece is any indication. A couple of thoughts here for you. Okay. For somebody like me, this is perfect marketing. because you're telling me in favor of the book yes you're telling me

you got everything you were able to interview her able to talk to the subject get real insight from the subject of your biography but then she's not you're not sitting there doing the today show two shot with the two of you

that actually makes me want to read the book more it's like the Atlanta's more set documentary that bill and everybody made right for HBO what's in that book that they don't want you to know yeah or at least you know know, they're uncomfortable enough that they're not, you know, going out on the, on the road with you to sell it. Yeah. I mean, it's also, again, so speaking of bold,

brave moves. I mean, it's a brave move by Judy Bloom to like, presumably to ignore the call from the New York Times, ignore the call from the numerous calls from like NPR that'll be coming down the pike, you know, like whatever, because it's that without the book would be your sort of myth-making, you know, your Hall of Fame case-making exercise, right? It's like, oh, God, they want to talk to me? Like, okay, let's do it. She's 88 years old. Yeah. She's in the Hall of Fame zone. I wonder if they're still on, like, are you there? God, as me, Margaret, was on school reading lists. I mean, a lot of them were, but that was, it was a mandatory book to some extent. I mean, some, I wonder if any of those are still

on that sort of level. I think when the movie came out, she, had a nice, she had another renaissance. Yeah. I mean, I, I know the fudge stuff is definitely in the reading, on the reading list. Love super fudge, yeah. Yeah, but anyway, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a perfect setup if you're the author, although I'm sure it's anxiety inducing, you know, like, like, Judy, Bloom doesn't like my book about Judy Blume. I mean, Judy Blum is also a subject that like, you're not going to write this isn't like writing about about uh you know some just like you know like mark twain i mean he's not alive anymore or the true writing about truman capote you know we just

recently read a couple of books about him to do the to do the to do the in cold blood episode judy bloom is the sort of person you wouldn't write about unless you love judy bloom it feels like you know unless you had a real investment in that extra that that sort of historicizing that her her her whole life and more importantly her books. So it must be like sort of heartbreaking. Even if you consider yourself a true journalist, you know, warts and all sort of recorder of the facts, it's got to be heartbreaking that she's like out on it.

But, you know, this is, that's the way it goes. I mean, usually even if you were determined to share with her the book, you know, I would say, I mean, your journalistic ethics may vary, but I'd say you wouldn't share it with her until like it's sort of already been greenlit by the publisher, right? You send her a galley or you send her

the first design pages before the galley's printed something like that. And so there's probably not a lot of time to maybe you make the marginal notes, but you don't, how can you address a 40-page memo? But it's also interesting that Judy Bloom, for whatever reason, thought that there was a 40-page memo

worth of things wrong with the book when you must know as a writer that the outside perspective is going to be different and it's probably in a lot of ways going to be more honest than whatever you have to say. I don't know. It's a very interesting thing. What do you think?

Well, I look at this and I think it's a pretty perfect journalistic relationship. You got the interviews with Judy Bloom. Yeah. That 40-page memo sounds invaluable to me. Yeah. you wrote something and here's her coming in. Of course, you're free to ignore her comments and clarifications. It says in the piece that she corrected some errors, which you're happy to have corrected,

so they don't get into a published book. But you get this 40, you know, you get these 40 pages and then at that point you part. And but for the part of your brain that's kind of sad that you're not friends with Judy Bloom after you've written an unauthorized biographer free of her. I don't know, man. I don't mean this as a sub-tweet of anybody because this doesn't, you know, offend my journalistic sensibilities. But we live in this world where I think people assume that anybody you're writing about

or covering is just your ally in a way. They've looked at photos of podcasts. You're doing them a service. It's like it's like the, you know, documentaries where the subject is the executive producer. Exactly. It's a classic podcast photo where you have your arm around the person you're interviewing. And it's just like all these people are allies rather than people who actually, have different roles here.

Judy Blum's role is that she is the subject of this book. She can cooperate or not. She chose to cooperate. Mark Oppenheimer is the writer of this book. And he's going to write the book he wants to write. And if that doesn't, you know, end with a picture of them on the Today Show locking arms, okay. You know, that's kind of how it's supposed to work.

From the publishing world, and I realize more and more how separate, you know, how distant I am from my time working. publishing but you have to but like journalistic integrity whatever by for whatever you think about it is nothing compared to the publicity hit you would get from being on the today show with the with the subject of your book the arm around you photo will sell 30,000 copies that day judy blessing the book yes I mean and just being like the today's show is not going to want doesn't care about you being on the show unless judy bloom is on the show unless judy bloom is on the show. You know, I'm not saying specifically them, but probably, you know, specifically them.

I think here, my mind goes into some fairly dark places because, and I think I said this on the Masked Man Show, my other podcast last week, but I just wrote a book about Hulk Hogan. And as I said before the camera, before the microphones turned on, I turned in, I think, the final draft at 3 o'clock this morning. And Hogan, it's not a biogic, it's not a straight biography. and Hogan's obviously not alive to have a comment on it. And, you know, there's a lot of different things. But I do spend an inordinate amount of time. And the same was true.

And I was like working on the Vince McMahon documentary and like I've worked on other documentary projects, spend an in anordinate amount of time worrying that I missed the point. And it's when something, when you're writing a book, doing a documentary, when you're doing something that will be one of one. It's not like the one of the 50 columns I will file this year or like whatever. that you could even delete from the internet. Okay, like whatever.

You're really worried about getting it right in this sort of very specific, but hard to pin down ways. I mean, hard to know if you've done it right. So when I hear this story, part of me is wonder, wonders like, what if I wrote a book?

And somebody sent me a 40 page letter and the correct answer was in that 40 page letter. You know, you've already written the book. You're not going to rewrite the book. You know? But like,

Like that's what's terrifying is not that like, not the even the integrity part of it, but like, what if she was right? What if Judy Blume was right? Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I mean, I think that you're right. It's probably going to serve the book, at least in like a, I mean, second to being on the today's show with your subject, having this sort of pre-pub write up in the New York Times is kind of all you want from a PR point of view.

as you said, it threads a needle perfectly for you, so probably good for the book. All right, story number three, two people who were not afraid of giving the world a two shot. Sean Hannity and Stephen A. Smith.

Stephen A was on Hannity's new podcast. Do you want to guess the title of that podcast? Who's talking now with Sean Hannity? No, um, it's very generic. Sean Hannity. I mean, is it like the Hannity show or something like that?

Or the Sean Hannity podcast generic? Or it's like, or it's like, what's up with Sean Hannity generic? The latter. It's called Hang Out with Sean Hannity. Oh, my gosh. And I'm going to need to have you look at the photo of the set right now, which is in our Google Doc. Yeah. Because somebody was texting me about this the other day.

This is the ultimate generic podcast set. and I'm sitting in front of a black curtain here at Ringer headquarters today so I can make fun of it without having to do a lot of full disclosure. I have done an inordinate amount of work helping, helping, like securing the rights to photos to decorate podcast sets in the past couple of weeks. So I'm right in tune with that. I mean, you see our various Ringer shows like just suddenly have elaborate sets. It's amazing the work that our team does. But yes. Where's ours, by the way, how is that coming along?

I think you have to. I think you have to, what we'd have to do is basically like, you would have to say, I'm coming into the office every week to do this and also David's moving to L.A. So we're going to do it in person. And then we would be lying. I'm in. But like, but you could go sit in the studio every week and they might build you one. Because people don't know this.

I'm actually sitting in a garden shed out back of your headquarters right now. That's where we tape the press box every week. Forgive the lawnmower noise. Remember there's a period in time where like the only aesthetic for podcasts was Bill Simmons? Yes. Like when he was doing his ESPN podcast and when the Grantland days when he got to studios space and everything, it was like that was the reference point for every single podcast. You could say I wanted to look nothing like that, but it was all, but that was like the only one. That was like the Waco design team where every kitchen all of a sudden looked like their kitchens.

Every podcast looked like Bill said. Yes, the fixer upper of podcast studios. This is a very, it's a lot of a lot of varnished wood. Uh-huh. Also some exposed brick. Some exposed brick. An American flag hanging a kilter off-kilter akimbo at an angle in the background. That's how he's a Republican, the American flag and the eagle.

Yes. And some neon. There's always neon sign. Um. Also like a pool table and a dartboard. Oh, way in the background. Yeah, it's too head on. I couldn't even see that.

A traffic light, which was a new one to me. is that an ashtray on the coffee table in front of them? I'm so glad you said that because I was going to ask you about that. Not only an ashtray, but a giant ashtray. Is that for cigars? That's what I would imagine. Oh, right, right, right. Like Bill Maher or whatever.

Like, they're doing cigars the whole way through. This thing really does look like a very plausible Sean Hannity man cave. In addition to being a generic podcast set, perhaps those are the same thing. And as a rich man, like it's just kind of improbably big to be a man cave. for what I think of as a man cave, but I guess he can afford a big one. What I love about this, too, is Sean Hannity dressed down for the podcast,

and that's him in a button-down shirt. Yeah. That's like how I dress down for a podcast. He's just hanging out, Brian. This is hang out with Sean Hannity. I think I own the end table that's next to Stephen A. Smith in this picture. I think that's a home goods purchase

or something along those lines. Yeah, it's quite a podcast set up. It's really, really great. The news, such as it, that came out of hangout with Sean Hannity was this. Hannity told Stephen A. Smith, 2028's coming pretty quick. I think it's all bullshit.

I don't think you're running. Am I right? To which Stephen A replied, I don't think I'm running either because I got to give up my money. I ain't giving up my money, Sean. Sean, I ain't giving up my money. I can tell you right now, let me put the presidential aspirations to bed. If I have to give up my money, it's not happening.

Now, just a couple of weeks ago, Bob Costa was running down the street over at CBS flogging this exclusive. That Stephen A was still teasing a possible presidential run. But now we're back to let me put the presidential aspirations to bed because I don't want to give up my huge salary at ESPN and serious. Anyway, thank you. That's what we always said all along, right? Of course, we did say that all along. But just why did we have to pretend every step of the way that this was a new and important.

tease of the Stephen A presidential campaign. Also, why Sean Hannity having him on his, on, hang out with Sean Hannity if it's all bullshit. He's a good guest. He has him on his show. TVA's a good guest, right? Yeah, he's a good, he's a good guest. But I guess they, I guess the bigger answer is that you want an answer to that question

on tape, you know, that's a. Which everybody's got an answers to it. This is like the first, actually, I'm just not running. I'm not giving up the money. We all know that, right? isn't the right answer that like Donald Trump is proving that you don't need to give up your money to be president? It really has, hasn't it? You could make tons more money or at least your company's good while you're in the office. Yeah, I'm going to start my, yeah, but my, my, my, uh, my podcast is going to be publicized by the official potis social media accounts every week.

Oh boy. All right. Could you imagine if like, if every morning when on, on first take, it's like, exactly. the same except Stephen A. Smith, who is, you know, who comes to the show remotely almost every day anyway, is in the White House. Just like sitting in the Oval Office while the rest of the team is just sitting there at ESPN headquarters. I didn't want to give up the time slot. Yeah. It was important to me that we maintain first take as it is. Instead of like Trump and Twitter or I guess true social. Now, I remember the whole first term it was like to find out anything from this president. We each have to watch Twitter 24 hours a day. His version of that is just like, Like whatever, however he leads first take every day. Yeah, we still got Dan Orlovsky here, by the way, Swagoo, Kimberly Martin. They're all here. But first, a few words about Iran.

All right, coming up on the press box, David, a few words about Iran because Donald Trump said one thing yesterday and then after the markets closed, he said another. How do you cover the war's unreliable narrator? And how much should we be talking about the war versus talking about everything else? plus another edition of Tales from the Locker Room, this time with Howard Beck. I talked to him about his years covering Kobe, Shaq, Phil Jackson, many of whom seem to hate each other. What was it like being in that locker room?

All that much more on the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers, it's Brian Curtis. It's David Shoemaker. It is producers, Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. David, the war in Iran, is in its 10th day, and Donald Trump is still answering him. his phone.

In an interview yesterday with CBS News's Waysia Zhang, he said, I think the war is very complete, pretty much. They have no Navy, no communications, they've got no Air Force. Zhang writes on Twitter, he added that the U.S. is, quote, very far ahead of its initial

four to five week estimated time frame. Well, as soon as those comments went online, stock market went up. Oil prices went down. That was 3.16 p.m. Eastern. And then about two hours later, after the markets had closed, Trump held a press conference. And he said this. Thank you. Mr. President, you've said the war is, quote, very complete.

But your defense secretary says this is just the beginning. So which is it? And how long should Americans be prepared? Well, I think you could say both. The beginning. It's the beginning of building a new country. but they certainly, they have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no anti-aircraft equipment. It's all been blown up.

They have no radar. They have no telecommunications. And they have no leadership. It's all gone. So, you know, you could look at that statement. We could call it a tremendous success right now, as we leave here, I could call it, or we could go further. And we're going to go further. First of all, I don't want to press Rajaj Zhang here.

I mean, that was a fine interview, but the four to five week timeline was, I believe Donald Trump's initial timeline that was not backed by any of the other people that are working in and around him in this conflict. It was just sort of like an arbitrary number he threw out, and of course he's being more and more arbitrary now. I mean, all of the sort of ticks of Donald Trump's personality

that we sort of joke about are just so coming to the four in this situation. And it's obvious more than that. ever that anything he says is just like his hopes, his very in the moment opinion, like dream scenario or whatever, and it's sort of terrifying. Or maybe the thing he just thinks he needs to say in the moment, right?

Yeah. Oil prices are out of the markets. Goosing this stock market must be part of the calculus or wouldn't shock me at all if that was part of one. Yeah, it's a, I mean, when he will get into this, But, you know, when he was asked the question about whether or not the missile that killed the school children in Iran was a U.S. missile. He was like, well, I just don't know enough.

That was his, like, second, you know, response to the subject. And that was one of the most shocking things that's ever come out of his mouth, right? That he's just like, instead of making up some bullshit, it was like, you know what? I'm saying stuff because I don't know stuff. You know? And like, that's just such a, just a terrifying situation. This is a miniature version of the big problem with covering Trump, which is the president said something. In any other, from any other mouth, this is news.

We don't know if this is news because. We don't know if it's true. Well, yeah, I mean, other presidents have lied. But in this case, there's an element of it that it's news if he says it and it's wrong. right or but like we don't know if there's if if it's just some shit that he's saying or if it's the actual or if it's just so stance of the of the administration yeah if it's just like so partial that it's not it's not without you know tons of contexts and you know hey what about this what about that that it makes any sense at all I mean again with Trump it's always interesting to think about

how much he is playing the press on purpose and how much he's just you know operating on instinct But this idea that he answers his phone, he clearly gives these very, very short interviews. Every single one of these reporters rushes to Twitter to tweet out thing that Donald Trump said about the war because there was no justification for the war in advance. And there has been no coherent sense of when the war would end. Well, there's no public case made for the war, right? That's when those things would be leveled in front of the American people, right? It's when you go to Congress, when you, you know, address the nation. That's when those sorts of facts would normally be, would normally be worked out.

And there's been none of that. So we're just sort of left in the lurch here. And you have to depend on whatever Trump says. And then following that, his, you know, the other people that work for the, the Defense Department and the White House answering questions in the media or in Senate hearing, Congress. hearings or whatever, there's no real information out there. And just the facts on the ground are sort of puzzling too, because it's like they've got no Navy, okay, they've got no Air Force, okay, but somehow they're still launching missiles. Like, where are we right now that like the greatest to intelligent services in the world that can't figure all this stuff out? You know,

we're still using apparently very outdated targets because we're shooting, we're destroying schools, you know, like it's just, it's, it's so unsettling. It's so unsettling to think about. And we're, you know, there's already stories about us, the United States are running out of missiles and shit. You know, like, it's just, it's, I don't even know where to go. I don't think reporters do either. And you understand the temptation.

I can call the president of the United States and he will answer his phone. And he will answer my questions. I mean, the back and forth is incredible. the first part is it's terrifying that Donald Trump answers his phone. Then the second one is it's great that the president answers his phone. You know, you're just like, we can get him on the record whenever. And the third is just like, no, but it's terrible for journalism that he's answering his phone because he's not telling anything resembling the truth.

And this started hours after the war began when he answered a call from the Washington Post, Natalie Allison and has continued now for 10 days. And again, as you point out, we don't know lots of important facts like why we attacked Iran in the first place or what conditions would have to be met for us to stop attacking Iran. So reporters keep calling and they keep rushing to Twitter and saying, well, here's this thing he told me. Yeah. What was it? Trump said the other day, unconditional surrender.

There will be no deal with Iran except all caps, unconditional surrender. That was a true social post. Well, then the question was raised. What does unconditional surrender mean? Do you see the 60 Minutes interview that Pete Hegson did with Major Garrett? Yeah. That Major Garrett did a terrific job of just asking good, simple questions.

I haven't talked about Major Garrett in a while. Miss Major Garrett. We haven't talked about it. I saw him in a box at the Rose Bowl. That was my last encounter with Major Garrett. Here's Pete Hexeth on the question of what surrender means. Those objectives. President said recently there will be no deal with Iran

except unconditional surrender. What does that look like? Unconditional surrender? How will you know it's real? It means we're fighting to win. It means we set the terms. We'll know when they're not capable of fighting. There'll be a point where they'll have no choice but to do that.

Whether they know it or not, they will be combat ineffective. They will surrender. Typically, the understanding of a surrender is person to person. Is that what would be required in a matter like this? Well, there's a lot of different ways. Whether they want to admit it or not, whether their pride lets them say it out loud or not, it's President Trump who will set the terms of that. They might not even say it out loud.

They'll just think they're surrendering. I know what you guys are thinking. I don't mean to get too litigious about this, but isn't not saying it a condition? You would think, you would think somebody would have to say, I surrender in order to surrender. Yeah. Yeah. It's a sort of say uncle rule, right? It's just like, you know, you can be like, stop, stop, stop. And you're like, you know, you didn't say uncle. Like you wouldn't assume that that's part of the unconditional surrender. You mentioned the strike on the Iranian elementary school, which killed 175 people, including a number of children. children. The New York Times concluded in two different investigations that it was likely a United

States strike that was likely a United States Tomahawk missile. Here's the New York Times as Sean McCreech asking Trump about this in the press conference yesterday. President, you just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war, but you're the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked, standing over your shoulder on your plane on Saturday. Why are you the only person saying this? Because I just don't know enough about it. I think it's something that I was told is under investigation.

But tomahawks are used by others, as you know. Numerous other nations have tomahawks. They buy them from us. But I will certainly, whatever the report shows, I'm willing to live with that report. The New York Times notes, the U.S. military is the only force involved in the conflict that uses Tomahawk missiles.

Good job by Sean McCreech there. Incredible job. That's exactly how you ask a question, right? You don't wind up. There's a lot of winding up to try to butter Trump up in some of these situations. It was a little bit halting, like a little bit not television newsman his delivery, you know what I mean? And so there was a sort of, I think that weirdly opened Trump up to just, or disarmed him a little bit. And it's pretty incredible.

I mean, it was just, it was absolutely pitch perfect. You know, it's like right when you think the question's ending, he's, he just sort of like digs a couple more times. Like he just like really like gets all the facts in there. Really, really well done. And the, and I mentioned that response earlier, but one of the most interesting parts of it is like you really in real time

expected Trump to say that was something I was told. But he says that was something I was told we were investigating. Like that's just like real honesty from Trump. So however we got there, pretty, I mean, just really impressive work. McCreish is an interesting guy.

He comes from the Maureen Dowd coaching tree. Oh, really? One of the many, many, many editorial assistants that she's had who've gone off to big jobs in journalism at the Times and elsewhere. He was a media writer at New York Magazine, same chair that Charlotte Klein's now in. And then he went back to the Times. And I remember at first he was writing these kind of sceners, sketches, you might say, that were very doubting. But he's got another gear, too. Could work by him.

also notable about that press conference Trump kept using the word excursion to describe the war. We're on this excursion. People have been citing, you know, the old John Hay comment about the Spanish-American war, a splendid little war. I actually think Trump means incursion,

and he's just saying the wrong word. But that's just my guess. Yes, I mean, I think he's obviously very, he's deliberately avoiding the term war, having been the only person that, like, publicly put that like attach that term to what to whatever this incursion is that we're doing right now right i mean it's the the the question of whether or not it's a war is meaningful in legal term you know legally in terms of your obligation in the country which he's just an utter failure

at in so many ways but it does seem like he's they workshopped incursion and he's probably saying it wrong excursion is is i mean excursion is is meaningful and you know it's obvious it's obvious, it seems that Trump thought that this was going to be another Venezuela, that it would be a, you know, a quick for a, you know, this one obviously a lot more military involved. Thank you for using foray, by the way, instead of excursion. Go ahead. That would, that would resolve itself fairly quickly. Um, and it's just not the case. It's crazy, man. I mean, who would have expected that if you blow up, if you blow up the leader, but you leave his, you know, but there, there will be still mad about that as if he's some despot.

Like there's obviously an huge infrastructure there and a lot of citizens there who are who are not against the regime, you know? And now we got a guy in charge. His dad was just killed. His wife and family were just killed. He was more jingoistic

than his father was. And what? The Department of War is just shrugging its shoulders confused about the whole thing. Like it's sort of, it's nuts. It's nuts. One wonder as if how much of this was

misinformation coming from Netanyahu's side and getting into Trump's ears and whether or not we've seen a couple of instances where Trump sort of just reverse his course and gets pissed off when he realizes something like that has happened. I wonder. I wonder about that. But anyway, we were alerted by Russ and Dodd before we came on the air today that Fox News quoted some experts saying that the new leader of Iran is quote his father on steroids. media piss test for you. There's got to be a limit to the media piss test when it just ceases to make

literal sense. His father on steroids. A couple other quick things here on Iran. We had some more strange new respect for the run-up to the Iraq war. This is Chris Coons, who was being quoted in a New York Times story by Carl Hulse. I have to say that for all the other

limitations of President Bush's leadership at the beginning and throughout the Iraq war, He respected the Constitution. He made the case to the American people in the world and we had a vote. Once again, I understand you're upset at Donald Trump for ignoring Congress and the American people. But do we need to do a glow up of the way that George W. Bush sold the country. Lied to the world and the country. Oh, my goodness.

You know what else? What happened this week was I think it was Bill Maher that had the sort of post-justification for the Iraq War. he's like, what a lot of people aren't saying is that 20 years on, Iraq's doing pretty good. Okay. It's just like, well, is it still worth it? Like it took 20 years, 20 years, even if that's true. No, just craziness. I also keep seeing this word in coverage of the war.

I don't think it's only in journalism word so much is just the wrong word. but people keep talking about the possible off-ramp for the United States and for Israel? Yeah. When did off-ramp become the mandatory term to talk about ending a war? Yeah, there's a category of like, especially in journalism words that we need to have

or like the journalism words of the week because there comes a time, I mean, you hear off-ramp in sports media in sports journalism too, um, alongside ramping up and ramping down. there's a lot of ramps these days. But yeah, it's a, it is a very of the moment phrase that I don't really know, or term that I don't know when that really happened.

Can we just scrub it from the newspaper permanently? Well, I mean, it's a very modern thing because, you know, when you talk about the Iraq War, when you talk about like military exercises of presidencies past, the notion of starting so that you can get out was not a thing, right? that's the whole philosophy of like that you break it you bought it in this you know uh m o in the middle east you know it's like you're not looking for an off ramp because you're like morally on like unqualified to you started a war you finish a war you know i mean there could be an off ramp in terms of like a bad actor admitting they were wrong you know but like it's but in terms of like

we're going to bomb just enough till we can slip away in the middle of the night and then let this thing resolve itself. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a very, it's just a very modern thought process. It just feels like the wrong word. Just so, it feels so casual, like the, the thing that is going to get us out of Iran is the thing that I use to leave the highway to get a sausage McMuffin. Yeah. Those shouldn't be the same word.

Yes. Off ramp. You're right. It does. It is, it is, it is, because it's not like saying an exit strategy. which seems a little bit more official. It's just like to formally say that like Trump is looking for the for the looking to put on his blinker.

Yeah. Get over to the right lane. The American. Yes. This is a people are dying. Yes. The Trump administration is looking for the the slip and slide that will skate them out of this conflict in the Middle East.

Yeah. I was reading a piece the other day. They're just using vibes a couple of different times. And I'm just like if it's isn't of the moment where just feel free to take it out of your story. I literally deleted the word vibes from my manuscript last night. It's just going to look ridiculous. Yeah. And it looks ridiculous now.

All right. Coming up in 30 seconds, Tales from the Lakers locker room with the man who asked Kobe Bryant for a cell number. First, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag. It was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time senior nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. David, today we have double winners. first up this story

Ohio State President Ted Carter has resigned following an quote-unquote inappropriate relationship the school announces it was an overword Twitter joke to write I hope they're calling it

the inappropriate relationship and secondly TMZ had a report David Dallas Cowboys superstar Dak Prescott and his fiance Sarah Jane Ramos are not getting married the two have broken up one month before their wedding.

On their on their shared bachelor, bachelor, bachelor's at party. Yeah, that was really weird. I didn't want to read too much, but I did get that detail. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Dak Prescott is really never getting a ring.

Thanks to alert listener Peter Schrager for that one. If you thought nothing that happened on the first day of NFL free agency, changed that fact. Congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right. In the notebook dump, we have a new feature here at the press box called Tales from the Locker Room.

Edition number one was Logan Murdoch talking about the Warriors. Today we're doing the Lakers Edition. Let's bring on Logan's Real On's teammate. He's a ringer writer. He's our friend who hasn't been on this podcast for way, way too long. He is Howard Beck. Howard, welcome back to the press box. Brian, thank you.

Good to be back. It's been a while. It's been a while. It's been a lot of news. So we've been a little busy over here at press box industries, but it's great to see your smiling face. Before we get to story time, you covered the Lakers for the LA Daily News from 1997 to 2004.

You were 30-ish years old when you got that job? Pretty close. Yeah, I was 29 when I began, so now people can do the math and realize how ancient I am. This is your first big, big, big, big, big job? Yeah. in fact prior to the Laker beat, craziest left turn in history to land on that kind of beat. I had been covering local government for the previous like five years, first in a small town in Davis, California, where I had gone to college and then in Ventura County, north of L.A.

And yeah, we don't need to get into the weeds about how I jumped from like City Hall to Shaq and Kobe. But that's a thing that happened. So Kobe's rookie year is 1996. You get there a year later. How did you get to know Kobe Bryant and establish a journalistic relationship with him? So he's, I think, 18, 19, by the time I meet him, 19, I think. Yeah, so I had 10 years on him.

And the thing was, I thought he was the one I could relate to the most in some ways. There were other guys who were a little older than me, other guys. but something about Kobe, there was an instant connection. I went to training camp for the LA Daily News. My first, you know, Laker thing that I covered was training camp in 1997. They were in Palm Desert out near Palm Springs. And so this really kind of relaxed environment, right? This is a time before social media, largely before the Internet, like the Internet existed, but not the way we think of it now.

And so it was pretty calm. There's just a handful of beatwriters and the team out in Palm Desert. And he was just really easy to talk to. He was really approachable, very open, really warm, and wanted to talk, wanted to have conversations, wanted to just kind of shoot the shit. And considering he was on a team that was mostly of grown men, and listen, like, I'm, I had a good 10 years on him, but for whatever reason, I felt like the gap felt smaller than that. And I found it easier to relate to him than to say Shaq, because Shaq was just such a big personality.

and it took me a little longer with some guys. But Kobe was one of the first I really was able to connect with, along with guys like Rick Fox and Derek Fisher, role players who were like super smart and were just great at engaging with the media in general. So those guys were easier. But as stars go, and Kobe was kind of on the cusp of stardom when I got there, surprisingly easy to connect with.

Was Kobe the kind of guy who was reading the newspaper and was aware of what you were writing today? Yeah. You learn early on that no matter how many guys, and Robert Ory liked to say it all the time, I don't know reading any of this stuff, you guys, right? And Robert was probably being honest. But the thing is that you realize in this job is,

they don't have to have literally read it. Somebody told them. Their agent told them, their brother told them, their mom, somebody. Somebody told them, especially if it was something that was controversial or harsh. As a beat writer in those days, though, like we were more news reporters than we were, you know, columnists or something, right? Like there was still a bit of a church state distinction in newspapers then that I think has

kind of largely fallen away in our industry widely, maybe not at newspapers, but broadly. We are all now both reporter and pundit and analyst and everything else. And I'm not sure it's the greatest thing for us overall. But back then, working for the LAD daily news and later when I was covering the NBA in the Knicks for the New York Times. I was strictly covering the news. Now, there might be some analysis in there and some observation in there. And sure, there's always what the choices you make of what to put in and whatnot to, the way you phrase something. And as sports writers, we always have a little bit more latitude than they have on the news side of the newsroom.

But I didn't have to worry most of the time about like, oh, I've written something, like, it's not like I was going to have written something that was like really mean or critical. But yeah, there's a little bit of editorializing along the way sometimes in sports writing. And they definitely all knew. And Kobe was very much aware of what was being written, whether by me or, you know, the reporters at the LA Times, Orange County Register, he, he was locked in. You mentioned Shaquille O'Neal. By 1997, he's one of the most famous athletes in America, known for his coinages when reporters are sitting around him. And that's, you know, young Brian would get the sports center clip where he was calling himself the big Aristotle or whatever name he'd

giving himself that day. Given somebody that was that big by the time he met you, how do you get to know him? How do you get an end with Shaq's that, you know, he's giving you good stuff and knows who you are? He was really personable, like very warm, right? He is the epitome of the gentle giant and the big teddy bear, right? And Shaq was always man of the people, right? Like there's, I think it was my buddy Mike Wise when he was writing for the New York Times had done a big story and where like Shaq is like driving down the street and his big ass whatever car he had, you know, and rolls down the window and like winking at people or shouting out to them, whatever.

Like he just, he, he liked to interact with the public. He liked, you know, just being the big life of the party that he is in all, in all aspects, whether he's playing basketball, the way he's at the club, whether he's just out shopping,

whatever. So I didn't have, it was easy to connect with him in the sense of like he was easy to, Hello, I'm Howard Beck. I'm now covering you for the LA Daily News. I think he, you know, got to know my name pretty quickly. I was somebody who like, I'm annoying. I ask a lot of questions. And I was not, I was a little shy at the beginning, like a little, you know, intimidated coming into this beat fresh, having never covered the NBA before. But I got my footing pretty quickly. And I was somebody who was, I was going to ask questions.

Like, I didn't not want to ride the coattails of anybody else. And that's part of the beat dynamics, too, right? Like, you can, you can really annoy people by using all the quotes, but never contributing yourself. So I wanted to, like, have, I want to make my presence felt. But Shaq is like, he's, he's a guy's guy. And so, like, he like to yuck it up and, you know, make some lewd jokes here and there with guys or whatever else, which was not necessarily my vibe all the time. And so I didn't, I don't feel like I connected with him as easily one to one as I did with Kobe initially. But look, man, it's just a, It's just repeat exposure. You are there every day.

And back then, teams practiced a lot more. They were available a lot more. And so when you're there every day for every practice and shoot around, although shootarounds were not as big of a beat writer tradition in L.A. at that time. And every game, pregame, post game, home and road for seven years, everybody gets to do each other pretty damn well. And so, you know, and you have your ups and downs with them along the way as a result of that.

All right, so one more, and then we'll get to story time. Lakers leave the playoffs via sweep in 98 at the hands of the jazz, by a sweep and again in 1999 at the hands of the spurs, and in comes Phil Jackson. It's head coach. What did Phil Jackson make of reporters? Phil had one of the craziest press conferences. I've been to some crazy press conferences.

There's another one we may get to later, but Phil's introductory press conference was that I think it's the, we used to say Beverly Hilton, but I think it's like the Beverly Hills Hotel, I think is the actual name. Like super fancy. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's in Beverly Hills. The only time I've ever even been there, I think.

And the room is packed. Like, I don't know how many hundreds of people are in there. This was an event, Brian. This wasn't like a press conference. Oh, we've hired a coach. They hired fucking Phil Jackson. You hired a living legend who then opens the press conference telling the story about how he had been, like up in Alaska on like, I don't know, a fishing trip or something when some like village kid

ran up and said, hey, I just heard you've been hired by the Lakers. Like only in Phil Jackson's world is this a reality. And I totally believe it. And Phil, he has this presence, everybody knows, right? And it's often described as arrogant or aloof. And there's probably elements of that. But really, it's like Phil's kind of socially awkward, low key. Like people don't realize this. he's just not great with social niceties. Some of my fellow beatwriters would be a little bit put out or thought it was kind of funny actually in a rude kind of way that if it was like, you see Phil right after Thanksgiving,

like, hey, Phil, you know, had you have a good Thanksgiving? Or, hey, Phil, you know, Merry Christmas. He would just be like, okay. Like, there wasn't really a reciprocation. He didn't have time for social niceties. It wasn't his thing. But I, he's another one where, like, Phil is very intellectually curious.

and very worldly, right? He's well-traveled. As we know, he loves to read movies, music, whatever. And so with him, I think we got to know each other based on, like, again, the daily back and forth. And he's always, you can tell by look on his face. He's kind of looking to see where you're coming from and, you know, what are you bring to the table here?

What are you asking about and why? And he enjoyed that back and forth. And he was actually, for all the reputation of him being arrogant and everything else, always available, unfailingly respectful. Yeah, he'd snap here and there too, but he was never like Pop. And I love Popovich, but he was never like Popper, like even Jerry Sloan, guys who could be super intimidating. Rick Carlisle can really get on the media. Phil, you could like muff the question as we do now and then or be a little rambling as we do now and then. And you'll see at some point

he'll start to nod his head because he knows where you're going what you're trying to get at. and he'll just say, well, and he'll just give you the answer. And I would see him do this with, especially guys who were not really part of the beat regularly, and he doesn't even know them, and he would kind of help them out by steering them. But I would at least once a year, have a breakfast or a lunch with Phil, usually somewhere on the road. And it would be, we would talk for two hours. And somewhere in that, I would say, oh, shit, I got to turn the recorder and actually get something out of this. I told my editor I was going to get you and let's talk about Shaq and Kobe or whatever it was going to be. But the reason those things were always two hours is because,

we spent the rest of time talking about travel, movies, music, books, whatever. And he was genuinely curious about your life as much as I'm asking him questions. And so he was actually really enjoyable to cover. All right. I asked you to tee up a few favorite stories. You want to go with story number one here? I have no idea what you're about saying. I mean, I sent a few bullet points to you as figuring I didn't know where you might want to go first. I mean, did anything in particular, like, make you, like, raise your eyebrow?

I'm going to leave this to you, Howard. You know this. This is every, every beatwriter, they've got the, they've got the quiver of these, right? So let's just, what's your best story? The best story. It's more, like, I always think of it more like in snippets, mostly, mostly because it's like, like, kind of like Kobe at his best, to Kobe at his worst sometimes, shack in certain moments. but the best story, the best story, the most entertaining one on its face is simply this,

that Shaq had a pretty good sense of humor about things. And Shaq, in his interactions with us at times could be really forthcoming and want to have the conversation. And other times he would do what he called the sham method, which was, S-H was short, and the A was answer and the M was for method. So the sham method might have been like redundant. Or he be shamming, as he would. he said, which just meant he was going to give us crap. He was just going to mumble these short,

meaningless cliches. And he did that a lot of the time. So when people see him on TNT now, or they think like it or in all of his many, many, many commercials for all these different products, incredibly, personable and colorful, but he knew when he felt like turning it on, and turning it off. And he could go days of just shamming us or sometimes just shutting us out. And then suddenly he would be annoyed. He might be annoyed by, something we wrote, often annoyed by something Bill Plasty wrote at a column for the LA Times

or by whatever all of us on the beat we're writing about. Or maybe he was annoyed because Kobe was in one of his stretches of not passing him the ball enough or Shaq felt he wasn't getting enough due from the refs. And he would get in these snits, Brian. He would just get in these snits where he'd just be

like, eh, kind of grumpy for days. Very moody. What Phil once called him the big moody during that whole stretch of time when Shaq kept dubbing himself, Big Aristotle, big this, big that. My favorite of those was actually the big sewer. It was always, I'm the big whatever because blank. That was the construction.

Today I'm the big sewer because I got a lot of shit in my game. There were like 15 of them that season when he did it. But he'd get in these little snits. And one of these, I'll tell the one about Kawakami first. So one of these, he had been really known with Tim Kawakami, who was covering him for the LA Times. And he had kept doing this thing. Ask me a good question.

Ask me a good question. Finally, Tim asked a question that Shaq liked, I guess. So Shaq, and he's sitting down and he looks up, raises his eyebrows, breaks him and he goes, Kawakami asked a good question. Kawakami asked a good question. And he jumps up and he envelops Tim Kawakami and just starts Pogo sticking him around the locker room at Staples Center. I think Tim was momentarily fearing for his life.

He was fine. But my version of that was that a year, maybe same season, a year or so later, we're in Dallas one day where it shoot around. And I had been annoying him. And this was not ending the same way. I think he just finally got tired of it. But Shaq actually being a fairly gentle soul, at least off the court. Charles Oakley, Brad Miller, and some others might disagree with the gentle soul part of it.

out of the i just split second i have no time to react um he is suddenly reaching down grabbing me at the waist and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes i have my notebook and pen in one hand of my recorder in the other and i'm just trying not to drop them and just holding on for dear life might have turned me around once or twice and then put me back down somebody in dallas somewhere a tv guy had said that they got that on camera these days that would have just gone viral which would have been horrifying in its own right It was a better time, frankly, before we all had iPhones and could film absolutely everything and put it out in the world. That's my favorite one just on a just kind of a fun level.

Shack could be really playful even when he was irritated with you. Yeah, it sounds like you giving me the old airplane spin in professional wrestling. I like that. You have another notation down. I got to ask about this one. Carl Malone and his socks. please explain. So Carmelon comes to the Lakers in 2003.

Shack and Kobe have, they had the three-peat. They lose in 03, I think, to the Spurs. Spurs win the championship that year. And Robert Orr leaves. And they're just trying to patch this up and get back to the finals. Gary Payton and Caram-Malone, as a tandem, decide to sign up with the Lakers. And Peyton takes the mid-level exception. Malone signed for the minimum.

him and now you've got this historic Hall of Fame, you know, quartet with the Hall of Fame coach to boot. And I didn't know Caram alone well. I mean, he'd been, you know, a Laker opponent, obviously. I didn't really know him at all during his time with the jazz. But the thing you do know is, like, this is a really big, intimidating dude. And he's, he's a country guy. He loves hunting and fishing. And he's got a torso that looks like an oak tree. And the first time, you walk in the locker room with his shirt off, you're just like, holy crap, this man does not have an ounce of fat on his body. He just looks, and he looks like he could squash me with, you know, his elbow, you know, or any, any, the muscle between any two ribs. He's a tough dude,

is the point. Late in the season, and I'd gotten to know him a little bit over the course of the season, late in the season, we walk into the locker room, the visiting locker room in Sacramento at Arco Arena, the worst visiting locker room in the NBA at that time. Rest in peace, Arco Arena, I believe it's been knocked down. And he's sitting at this one corner locker right next to where the training room is. And I walk in and I look down and he's got something in his hands and I see there's like movement and I'm going. And I come to realize as I focus on this because I couldn't quite process it right off. Cromelone is darning his socks.

He's. What? Darning. I believe that's the phrase, correct? I'm not a big darner. I'm not a big sower, but... It's the right phrase that just never associated with the mailman before. Exactly.

So through the magic of Nexus, I looked at this up last night. I found my old notebook item on this. This is back in the day you had two stories on a game day. You write the game story, like 800 to 1,000 words or so, and you have a notebook. And that was where you threw everything else. Little observations that had nothing to do with the game. I found my notebook item, Brian.

And it's short enough, I'll just read the item. Carl Malone, one of the most bruising big men in NBA history, apparently is as much Taylor as he is mailman. Nice, nice term by me, right? Very nice. I'm nodding. Quote, I keep the same socks and jock the whole season. Malone explained as he expertly stitched a few holes. I'm not superstitious, though.

So I go on to write that Rudy Garza Duenas, who had been their equipment manager for a long time, he gave him this pair in October at training camp in Honolulu, and Malone had worn them for every game since. Malone says, quote, once they get worn right, I don't like changing. At this point, Kobe Bryant walks up, looks down, grins and says, come on, man. Minutes later, minutes later, a female member of Bryant's security team glanced over and smiled. Malone looks up, says, I'm not knitting. There's a difference. When he was done, Malone cut the thread with his teeth, then tied it off. quote, it's a fisherman's knot, he said, injecting some manliness back into the conversation.

Quote, same one I used to tie my hook. I've just never forgotten this image in my whole life, like one of the biggest, toughest dudes in NBA history, who was known, you know, obviously for his elbows and knees and everything else, is like sitting there, like, sewing, darning his socks in the corner of the visiting locker room. As a writer, my reaction is, you use that in a notebook?

Should have been lead to my story, right? Absolutely. What a, that's a hell of a notebook. You know what's funny, Ryan, is because, you know, we evolve as writers and reporters over time and you, that was actually like the second item in the notebook, by the way.

So like, terrible news judgment by me back in 2004. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. My editors should have sent it back and said, you know, reshuffle this. There's another one. And I hadn't even, I just remembered this story. I should tell this one. But it relates to this, which is that I waited a day to write about the time that

Muhammad Ali showed up in the Lakers locker room at the forum. This was like my rookie year, my first year on the beat. But there were times where back in, again, in a completely newspaper environment, sometimes you sat on stuff because everybody was like, oh, we have an off day tomorrow. Let's all save X to write about tomorrow instead. I don't remember what the reason was. This was an agreement among the beat. agreement among the beat writers so that nobody would get out ahead and then everybody else's editors

would be pissed at them. So what happened? So I'm now on the Laker beat. There were four of us that were traveling full time at any given time. And so you do check in with each other a little bit and you help each other out a little bit. Your competitors, but like, listen, man, we're all traveling. We're all doing all 82 games or close to it. And like, shit, I got there too late to get to practice that day because my flight was delayed. You know, Tim Brown from the early times might say, I'll take care of you.

Here's some quotes from practice, right? Like we were very collegial in that way. Not so much the case later when I got to New York where it was basically every man for himself, or as I once put it, seven writers, seven cabs. But you would sometimes, and by the way, the agreement we would make in L.A. I'm like, hey, guys, let's hold this one thing. We'll all write about that tomorrow on the off day when there's no practice and no game or it's a travel day.

And we need because we had to write pretty much seven days a week in New York. occasionally we would try that and then somebody would violate it. There would be a lot of hard feelings. It was a whole different thing. But we walk in after a game one night at the forum. So this must have been like 97, 98. Muhammad Ali's in there. And he'd been in there for a while.

We were held out of the locker room for a while he made the rounds in there. Apparently he performed a couple of magic tricks. That was one of his things. And Kobe was just like, you know, a wide eye, just in awe. Kobe's still like 19, I think at this point. And so Muhammad Ali always would travel with his best friend Howard Bingham, who was also his kind of like his photographer and best friend. And so he's in there.

And I'm just standing at a distance, right? Like we are trained as journalists. Like I'm not involved in this scene. I'm just here to like jot down a bunch of notes and hopefully write about it later. Ask the players like, whoa, what was it like to meet the champ? And so I'm just kind of hanging back. We're in there. And we have a job to do.

we still need to talk to the players, but like, Muhammad-A-Leeves, and it was really weird. And that's a small locker room at that time. Bob Steiner, who had been the longtime PR guy for Jerry Buss and was still working in some capacity with the forum and the Lakers at the time, is in there too. And he goes, Howard, Howard, Howard, have you met the champ yet? I said, no, no, Bob, it's fine. Like, I'm just, you know, I'm just here to do my job. And I was, I really, really wanted to keep the distance because that was how I felt I needed

to be. He's like, oh, no, come on. So first the interest would be to Howard Bingham, so my fellow Howard, who then, introduces me. The next thing I know, I'm shaking hands with Muhammad Ali, and he leans over and whispers. And by that time, of course, the Parkinson's, the way the effect on his voice, it was really hard to hear. And it's a loud locker room. Brian, Muhammad Ali could have told me the secrets of the universe and probably did, because if anybody knew him, he probably did. And I don't know what he said that day. And it will haunt me forever. But I do have a phenomenal photo of me

looking like you would expect me to look. Like, I'm wide-eyed. Like, holy fuck, I'm shaking. making hands with Muhammad Ali in the Lakers locker room. I think Andy Bernstein, the great Andy Bernstein Hall of Fame photographer, took that one. So that's a nice keepsake. Here's another story that you covered as the 2000s rolled on. Shaq and Kobe being pissed at each other. When did you first know that they were pissed at each other? You know what the funny thing is about that, Brian?

Like books have been written about this, right? Jeff Proman wrote a book about this. Other books have been written about that era about their feud, documentaries. Hell, they even eventually sat down with each other on NBA TV and interviewed each other. There were moments where you would not have known at all because they'd be goofing on each other. And in games, sometimes they would be spectacular in the way they could feed each other the ball. And so it was kind of this low home. It was like subtext instead of text a lot of the time.

Eventually it became text. But for I think the majority of the time, it was more subtext. and the way you would know that something was amiss, back to Shaq and his kind of his ways of of communicating with us, Shaq liked to speak in code, sometimes barely veiled. And so if Shaq said something to us after a game about like, you know, guys were taking ill-advised shots, there was at one point where that probably meant Eddie Jones also or Nick Ben Exel, but eventually after those guys have been traded, it was Kobe. If Shaq was talking about guys taking ill-advised shots,

probably wasn't so much Derek Fisher or Rick Fox or Robert Ory or Brian Shaw. It was probably Kobe, but he wasn't calling him out by name. So he would do that. He also, he had this line. I love to use this now. I sometimes teach some sports writing classes, and I'll use this line without context of who it came from because it's actually good reporter advice,

but it's not the way that Shaq meant it. Shaq would just say, we'd ask him all these questions, say, you go, right what you see. Yeah, but Shaq, what happened in the fourth quarter of it? Right, what you see, brother. And what he really meant was, you could see as well as I could that Kobe's not passing me the ball and I got my man pinned, you know, down under the basket. Or you guys could see as well as I can that, you know, the other team, the Kings, the Spurs,

whoever were beating the crap out of me and the rest weren't calling it. Right, what you see usually about Jack had a grievance? And now he wanted us to make sure we wrote it, but he didn't necessarily want to say it. one day my bad shack impressions are going to catch up with me he's going to hear one of these I did a Mitch Cupcheck impression on I think it was on Zach's pod last spring I got a text from him the next day basically saying don't quit your day job but my Mitch Cupjack impression is terrible I'm apologies to Mitch Cupchall I was going to say I might have needed a translator on that one that would have been a sub tweet for me because I'm not sure what Mitch Cup check sounds like

Yeah, exactly. I did tee it up by saying that it was a conversation with him and then I proceeded to do the terrible impression. But yeah, I mean, it's not like every day you walked in. Like there was a day, Kobe had a sprite commercial where he basically was like, if I had been like a construction worker or a teacher or this or that, would I still, would you still care what, I don't know, would you still care of what I drank or what I endorsed, whatever it was. Something like the hook was, they put him in all these different outfits and, you know, context as if Kobe could. you know, was some other profession. And I remember like Shaq from across the locker room, like tease him about it, giving him shit or whatever. And like Kobe fires back joking about Shaq's commercial where like the dog runs off with Shaq's something and Shaq's calling out to the dog. I just remember the dog was named Brick. So he's going, brick.

So they could be goofing on each other. And you'd think everything was fine. But it was more that it kind of built over time. And then eventually it spills. out, right? Like, Kobe gives an interview to Rick Buecker, who was at ESPN magazine at the time and says, you know, they want me to turn my game down, but I got to turn my game up. And then that shrubs Shaq the wrong way. And then Shaq will give a quote one day, I think it was to all of us where he's talking about, you know, if you want the big dog to guard the house, you got to feed him,

meaning like, I ain't, I ain't protecting the rim and the paint if you're not also feeding me, you know, the ball at the other end. And so these things, when things got really tense would, would suddenly explode. And one of the moments about that that I remember most, they win their first championship in 2000 against the Pacers. And when the final buzzer hits and the confetti falls, the staples, Kobe runs and jumps into Shaq's arms. That's an iconic photo.

You can see Kobe from the back and Shaq, you know, embracing him. And, you know, we're sports writers. We love to, we fall for the moment and we love to, you know, turn this into poetry and it's like oh here it is right they've come together at the end and all is forgotten all is forgiven they've won a championship everything's great and the next season might have been the one where Kobe gave the buker interview and things got all tense again and it all fucked up again and it was really out in the open that season it had been a little bit more contained before that and we got to the finals and i wanted to write you know they were this is the

finals against the sixers now where they just smoked them right like iverson gets this big moment in the step over in game one, upset at Staples Center. Then the, you know, the Lakers just rolled them the next four in a row. And in the midst of all that I wanted to write kind of retrospective on how we got here and how Shaq and Kobe had pulled apart, come back together, pulled apart, whatever. And I remember sitting down with Shaq, I got him at the hotel during the finals to do a one-on-one to get his perspective on this. And I said, listen, I thought you guys had put this all the way.

And he was like really like he in this kind of hurt voice. He's like, yeah, I did too. And that was the thing that I've always tried to explain to people since. This was never a linear thing. It wasn't like they were good on day one and then it got bad and worse and worse and then it was always bad. It was all over the map. There were times they were really good and times they were bad and times that they

figured it out and were on the same page and then times where they wanted to murder each other. And it just, you never knew week to week or month to month season to season what that might bring. I got two more for you before you. you sneak out of here. Former coach Del Harris attending his own firing press conference. What happened there? So I've been doing this.

This is my 29th season, which is hard to believe. But I did say I started in 97 and I think that math works out, unfortunately, for me. I've seen two coaches attend their own firing, meaning it came to the press conference to talk to us in the media about why they'd been fired and how they've been fired and how they felt about it. Del Harris was one, and I'll come back to that. That was in 99. And the other one was Avery Johnson with the Nets, who I covered.

Briefly, the Times had decided after several years of the Knicks, hey, the Nets are in Brooklyn. First time that Brooklyn's had a team once you, you know, it's in your backyard. So I covered that team and Avery got fired like six weeks into the season and attended his own press conference. An incredible move, by the way, for any coach or anybody. Like, that takes a lot of, you know, spine. and, I don't know, dignity, like, that you have your dignity.

I'm, I can address this because I'm secure with myself, but I also feel like I should speak on my own behalf. It's an amazing move. Dale Harris did it in 1999. It's the lockout season. The context of this one is that before the season, we have, like the lockout, you know, knocks the season down to 50 games. We weren't sure there was going to be a season.

Long off season. And Del Harris is under the gun always out there ever since Shaq and Kobe arrived. And he had decided to dedicate this. season to his parents, both of whom had died between seasons. And he was, we'd done a story. I'd talked to him before the season. I wrote a whole story about it. And Dell's just like a very, very warm person, very human and very open.

And he was very emotional about this when we had discussed it before the season. So he wanted to win the championship for them. Obviously, he wanted to win it for 100 other reasons, but this was the sentiment he brought into the season. 12 games into the season, the Lakers are 6 and 6. They've just come off a back to back to back, oh and three stretch. The back to back to back, and this has only happened for the most part, way back in the early days of the NBA or during the 99 lockout season

where you played three games in three nights, and this was in three cities. They went Seattle to Denver to Vancouver, which if you plot that out in your head, doesn't even make sense, right? Yeah. But that was the schedule. and everybody's just wrecked. And there are reports everywhere that they're about to sign Dennis Rodman besides. They lose all three games on this road trip.

They fall to six and six. We're being held outside of the locker room in Vancouver because there's a player's only meeting going on. And we're all like, you know, trying to make deadline. And you could hear voices booming through the walls. Mostly Derek Harper's who's got this like low bear. Like I could not do a Derek Harper impression. Incredible voice.

Listen to him on the Mavericks broadcasts. and by the time we land in LA the next morning at the end of this road trip Del Harris has been fired and Dennis Rodman has been signed we got to rush to the forum straight from the airport to go to a press conference in this dank dark little corner of the back of house area because it's a forum it was built whatever the 60s or something and there's no press conference area so they just would do these ad hoc areas we go back there and there's Dell Dell is attending his own press conference after being fired.

And so, you know, we do what we do. We all take our recorders. This is the days of mic or cassette recorders, right? Take your recorder, push the play and record button together so that it sticks down and you put it up on the table and you go and you sit down. Dell was heartfelt. He was emotional. The room was just silent, Brian. Like, it was just, like, this was like attending awake.

and Del was getting very emotional talking about his parents and everything else. And in the midst of all this, this quiet room with Del pouring his heart out, there's a snap sound. Because with a micro-cassette recorder, when it gets to the end of the tape on that side, it stops and the buttons pop. And the whole room can hear it. And Del stops what he's doing. He says, stops mid-sentence.

So someone's recorder stopped. He looks down and he sees it. He looks around. He finds the eject button and he hits the button to pop the thing out. He flips the tape over, closes it, hits record, puts it back down, says, now where was I? That was my recorder, as it turns out. He didn't know that. Wow.

But absolutely incredible moment by him where the presence of mind and actually the fact that he's just conscientious enough that he cared. And then he finishes this very emotional press conference. he walks out and there's like maybe a five-minute interlude if even that and suddenly in-walks Dennis Rodman and here's and now the circus is here. Wow. What a contrast from Hurtle Harris to Dennis Rodman. Two more different people I cannot imagine. All right.

Finally, Rick Fox gives up his YouTube tickets. Let's do it. I mean, this was pretty straightforward, but it was one of those awkward moments for me. We're in Philadelphia. It's the two, three, two format back in the day, right? So the Lakers host the first two in L.A. The next three are in Philly, and they end up winning all three of those and finishing it off there. But we're in Philly for like a week.

So there's a lot, you know, there's off nights to kill and everything else. The Lakers, some of the Lakers, I think John Black must have been, as the, he was the longtime PR guy for the Lakers. And John Black, a big music guy. This were probably, it was probably his doing that the tickets were there because John was a big music guy. but John Black, Rick Fox, I don't know who else, had U2 tickets. They were playing at the, I can remember which the arena at one point was the first union center, which was my favorite name of it because it became the FU Center. I don't remember if it was that name or if it was Wachovia or whatever it was in that year.

But on one of the off nights between finals games, U-2 was playing. Rick Fox had been harassed so badly every time he'd gone out in Philly, because, of course, it's Philly. So he's like, I'm not going out again. I'm just staying in the hotel. I'm not leaving unless we're coming out to practice or play the games. And so he offered me as you two ticket. And I'm like, oh, wow, Rick, that's really nice.

I would love to go. Like, how much was it? He's like, no, no, no, just take. And these were like, I don't know, probably a couple hundred bucks. And I'm, again, I am a traditional reporter working for a traditional newspaper who believes in this, you know, all the separation of church and state and all that. That's like, I cannot accept this. And Rick was one of my favorite guys on the team. I mean, let's be honest.

I was probably never going to write anything too mean about Rick anyway because he was a really good dude. He got a lot of benefit of the doubt from us as beat writers, I think, because of that. And Rick, you know, Rick was one of the bigger shitsters on the team, right? He was always getting in fights with, you know, Scotty Pippen or whoever. But really great guy. And I was like, I offered, I brought cash the next day. He would not accept it. But I did go to the show.

It was a great concert. the seats were pretty good. And so, yeah, thank you, Rick Fox. I appreciate it. When you said I was a traditional newspaper guy, I thought you were going to say, I couldn't afford it. Also that. The tickets, not to.

But I couldn't accept it. I went and I tried to pay him and Rick refused. There you go. Howard Beck, this was an amazing journey back to the world of the late 90s, early 2000s, Lakers and the world of micrococets. I do remember quite well. I think we're, that's one thing. Like, there's a lot of innovations in our industry that maybe have not been for the better.

Digital recorders have been a boon. And I will say, like, I don't know if you ever use, like, Otter or one of the transcription services, which, you know, they're maybe shooting 80, 85%, but that one I would take too. If I had that back in the day, my life as a beatwriter would have been far more sane. It's incredibly fun. Thanks, as always, for coming on the press box. All right. It's time for a feature that has many, many rings.

It's time for David Shoemaker guess is the Strain Pun headline. Yeah. Last Tuesday's headline about a political party trying to find a way to talk about Trump was Dem's fighting words. Love it. Today's headline comes from alert listener Dennis Reichold. It's from the New York Post, David. More a lead than a headline, but we'll allow it. It's a story about a pig.

A massive... I thought you were stopping. that's all you got now a massive runaway pig with quote maximum confidence in quote stormed a north carolina home in search of snacks and was hauled away in disgrace by a strong-armed armed copped according to wild photos all right is a big that's the whole thing can a pig be disgraced if it didn't know it was disgraced no no that's why it's it's a strange usage it feels like it must be the owners that are disgraced or something is the new york post using post AI to plug all these words yeah maybe so uh what you to think of a specific crime this pig might

have committed oh i was thinking of confidence like synonyms for confidence um while you ponder what was the new york post strain pun headline uh breaking and entering uh yeah that's it so so and what is what is a delicious pig meal not breaking and entering but uh oh Like breaking, a nice little breakfast. David's ordering himself a side of. Steak? For breakfast?

Steak and eggs. Why am I not thinking about this? Pork for breakfast. I'm ordering us. I know. Bacon and entering. Bacon and entering. Thank you, sir.

Yeah, that's beautiful. That was a little bit, a little bit of a strained pun. My mind didn't go there immediately, but it's so very good. He's David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic. by Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. Follow us at the Pressbox pod on Twitter and Blue Sky

at Pressbox Ringer on Instagram. And a couple of things for you last week. Joel and I interviewed the likely next speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, David, Joaquin Jeffries. We talked about Iran. We talked about Epstein. We talked about what he thinks of various reporters

on Capitol Hill. Check that out. That's up for your enjoyment. New email address, pressbox ringer at gmail.com. Shoemaker, you're back next. week with more lukewarm takes about the media. Can't wait to see you then. See you then, Brian.