The Press Box - Year-End Listener Mail. Plus, The Undefeated’s Jesse Washington

Episode Date: December 28, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker are rounding out the year by answering your Listener Mail (8:05). Then, writer Jesse Washington joins to discuss the writing process for John Thompson’s memoir, ‘I Came As a Shadow’ (38:00). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, the new issue of the New Yorker is filled almost entirely with a single article about the coronavirus that is written by the great Lawrence Wright. What I want to know is, what do we think about single story issues of magazines? I don't want to make light of this because I'm looking forward to reading this. I have not read it yet, and I'm sure I will eagerly read every word, or at least every other word. Really? You're really going to read every word? Is it weird? Okay, listen, this is not the first time this has been done.

There's been other, you were mentioning other great important stories that have taken up entire magazines prior to them. Hiroshima, John Hershey, right? Thompson did this for an ESPN magazine if memory serves. And yet the only thing, where my mind goes now, and probably it's because of the season and also because of the inordinate amount of time I've spent in checkout lines, you know, or, you know, in grocery stores or whatever compared to previous points in my life, the single issue

like holiday magazine where it's like every there's no regular magazine I don't even think regular magazines come out anymore they just have if you did there's just like the the trash celebrity magazines

which I love not trash in a negative way but then just like the 84 page like Jesus the real story the magazine or like Santa Claus is coming to town yeah and it's not even like specific stuff anymore it's just like you like

my running joke with my wife is we'd be standing in the aisle and I'd be like, oh, did you get the new issue of Billy Crystal? Because they're just randomly just like a tribute issue to just a single like celebrity. I don't even understand. All that said, but getting back to Lawrence Wright. I think it's, I mean, listen, there's nothing that that earns it. I mean, that deserves it more than Lawrence Wright on the subject. If this were a regular article, I'm sure I'd be sitting here making a crack about how I wish I there were more to it.

You know, I mean, this is the sort of thing you want to read exhaustively and you want in the best possible hands and you don't want any specter of like editorial decision. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of editorial decision making,

but you want, but the feeling that Lawrence Wright got to say everything that was necessary to say to make to tell the story, uh, is, is helped by the format. Yeah,

nobody said, Hey, Larry, can we cut 10,000 words? I mean, it's perfect. It's perfect. But can we just cut 10,000 words from the, yeah.

Can you get into it faster? Can you... Yeah, just make the lead go a little bit faster. Coming up on today's show, we're going to answer your year-in listener mail. Plus, the undefeated Jesse Washington talks about writing a memoir with legendary coach John Thompson. All that and more on the press box,

a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. How was Christmas, Mr. Shoemaker? It was fantastic. I kind of mistaken, I don't know what your situation was, I kind of, I think, absent-mindedly thought that our inability to travel or to see loved ones would sort of make for a more peaceful Christmas. I guess I didn't really factor in just the implicit chaos of a two-year-old and a 12-year-old and just trying to organize Zoom Christmases. Anyway, it was wild.

It was crazy, and it was a ton of fun. fun. And I don't know, I feel like it just sort of like without having, without moving around, without there being this sort of artificial parameters on the holiday, it continued right up until I had to like log on, log into work at eight o'clock this morning. Yeah, I agree. It felt pound for pound like we got more Christmas out of those couple of days than I'm used to because there weren't any flights and any logistics involved. Absolutely right. And it, it, it It felt like a long Christmas too. I don't know why, but in a happy way.

It felt like it just kind of kept going and going maybe because it was conveniently located on Friday. So we had the roll into the weekend and then the whole weekend and then here we are on Monday. It was the first. I mean, this is just so beside the point, but this is the first Christmas in like my, I feel like in my entire adult life where I didn't have to try to figure out when I was expected back at work or it just sort of all landed very naturally.

We have a podcast today. What? No, I know. It makes sense to come back on a Monday. I got two gift notes for you that you'll appreciate. Number one, my daughter, who is five, got a kid's sewing kit from my mom. She's excited to learn how to sew. And it was called So Nice, S-E-W, nice. Kind of a child's first strain pun. That could have gone in a lot of different directions, too. I'm glad that they just kind of kept it simple there. kept it very simple. That would have been like David's first guess if that had been the end of the show. The second one was my wife got me a very special present. She got on cameo. And she got me a message from John Lovitz in the guise of his immortal Saturday Night Live character Hanukkah Harry.

What a present, David. It was absolutely amazing. I know I texted this to you. Oh, it's great. it's up on my Instagram page if anybody wants to take a look and what was even more amazing

than the actual side of John Lovitz speaking to me was my wife was giving me clues as to what the present was and she's like I was like is it like an experience like you know a tour

or something we're going to do she's like yeah kind of and I'm like is it something we're going to do in the future she's like no no we're going to do it right now we do it right now so yeah we're going to watch it right now and I'm thinking like

Did she give me like the master class with Aaron Sorkin? Like what could this be? And then she hands me her phone and it's John Lovitz saying, hi, Brian. John Lovett's here. God, it was amazing. I am so impressed with Cameo's business model. And I can't, well,

not their business model. I mean, I'm guessing that they didn't go into their like, you know, investor pitch meeting saying, this is the gift for that literally for the person who has everything when you don't know what to get and not but it but it's not just the rich people it's basically people who've just aged out of gift giving right i mean it's like there is yeah and when i heard of cameo i was just like oh this is for like you know like 15 year olds who with from like wealthy families who are getting like their favorite boy band member to send them a greeting or something right i mean that sure i had i could not have predicted that like the like the like the like the like the like the sweet spot, like the bulk of cameo would be the irony market, right? I'm guessing they didn't sit down in those pitch meetings at the beginning and they're just like, I want, let me just

say one word to you, irony. You know, like that was not, that was probably not the idea, but it's become just so amazing. I mean, I think every couple of weeks, someone I know just like group text, mass text people, and they're like, you won't believe what my wife gave me, you won't believe what my best old best friend gave me. And it's, it's, it is so amazingly touching every time. And it works. Like you and I are in the media business. So we have, you know, reasonable chances to talk to famous and semi-famous people.

It's not like, oh my gosh, a celebrity is speaking my name. This is amazing. But there is still something incredibly winning about Hanukkah Harry in particular, having looked in an email and going, Brian, I have a message for you at this holiday season. Unbelievable. David, I thought we'd roll into 2021 with a little listener mail. What do you think

about that? Let's do it. All right, let's start with Jay Indiwala. Who wonders, what are your thoughts on how the media should handle the inauguration? If Donald Trump decides to have a parallel rally, I guess at the same time that Biden is taking the oath of office, how

should it be covered? God. I was just thinking about this today, not having even read the question. I, first of all, I mean, we should have predicted the situation that we're in. I think that this is just, I think we could probably chronicle the Trump administration. We could, we could build a timeline based on the moments where we were like, yes, yes, of course, all of this happened, but now is where the normalcy will resume, right? and then it just sort of steam rolls over that. It's just crazy.

I mean, we're approaching, we're so close to the inauguration and we have a exiting president who thinks that Mike Patton thinks his vice president is going to magically reverse the election for him while presiding over Congress. And just that's it. Like he doesn't believe, he thinks he's, it's crazy.

I think that if over the last four years, actually more significantly in the, the primaries and the general election leading up to the Trump presidency. If Trump was overcovered to a point, especially in the primary period, that was sort of not commensurate with his actual standing. And if the media over the past four years have been giving too much attention to the wrong things, that argument's been made in a million different ways, I think we're going to see an overcorrection.

I think that starting at the inauguration, we're going to see media outlets that are, that defiantly pretend Trump doesn't exist. At least in any way that would convey a sense of legitimacy to him. I don't think they'll stop talking about him on opinion shows and such, but I don't think they'll be covering him. I don't think they'll be covering any press conferences. I don't think they'll be covering any tweets. I don't think they'll be doing whatever.

It only, when it sort of amounts to a story subsequently, and I think that it's, I mean, it wouldn't shock me if it was an overcorrection sort of like too much of what is what I mean by overcorrection. I think we're going to be ignoring him maybe overly so. I think that's right. And I think the moment it turned, remember a few weeks ago when Trump had that like 45 minute Twitter video that was about stealing the election? Facebook video. That's when Twitter wasn't even airing that stuff.

Oh, Facebook video. And the content of which is I, the president of the United States, am stealing the election or trying to steal the election. And everybody on cable news was like, eh, video seems kind of. kind of long. I don't I don't know if I have 45 minutes to listen to the President of the United States talk about stealing the election. That was kind of the moment it changed,

I feel. And the media gave itself license. I'm speaking broadly here, but it gave itself license to ignore it. Yeah. And ignore him. They said, you know, Biden is going to be president. We're not going to bother with this. We're not going to cover this. And I think you may be right in that second half of that thought, which is that

maybe it's too much. Because I remember at the time being struck by, well, Isn't that news that the president is saying he's going to do this really terrible undemocratic thing? Yeah. But I think you're right. They're going to overcorrect reasoning that look. If Donald Trump is really running in 2024, if he really does make life difficult for the Republican Party going forward, which he almost certainly will, we'll jump on that when the time comes. But the day to day we're going to ignore.

Well, and I also think that there's a degree to which, I mean, obviously this is, armchair diagnosis or oversimification or whatever you want to call it. But I think that there's a degree to which the media in broad strokes can't just sort of like tactfully ignore him, right? They can't, I mean, I think they've realized that they are, that they have a problem. They've realized that they have an addiction and cold turkey might be the only way out, right? I don't think you can just sort of pick and choose the most important moments unless they're just really urgent things.

Yeah, you can't mute Trump. you have to actually block Trump. You have to delete the app. I mean, you really have to, it's got to be, you got to get rid of it. So yeah, I think that, I mean, I'm very interested actually to see what he does on inauguration day, right?

I mean, that's, and not just if he's going to sort of run a counter presidency or attempt to, but what in what fashion he does, I guess to me what's going to be interesting is if he does something then or if he does something later, does he, is it we might actually find out if like when he gets X ratings and claims X times you know four X ratings if this is a if it's delusion or if it's a deliberate tactic because there's

going to be some point where he's just getting clowned by the you know our current president and he's got to either acknowledge that he's getting somewhat lower ratings or not right I mean it's probably a combination of both and it'll be like you mentioned the Republican Party I mean that's really who's on who's in the spotlight now right because he's making a really, he's made already a really deliberate pivot from being the unlikely standard bearer of the Republican Party sort of to being its greatest enemy, right?

And yeah, I mean, they have a lot of decisions to make over the next six months. Enjoyed this question from Brad. Which Republican sycophant is going to release a book entitled Hindsight 2020? Good pun. On their head I known he would have been this bad. I would have done more

apology to her. So the best time to release such a book would have been about six months ago or a year ago. Wait, first of all,

can we just go ahead and copyright hindsight 2020? Can we just steal that from Brad and make that the name of our election, I mean,

of our Trump presidency roundup book? Are we sure Trevor Noah is not already doing that segment? If it doesn't exist, I call dibs.

But sorry, back to your question. Yeah. So the most lucrative of time to release such a book would have been like a year ago. You could do it in 2020. I guess I'm more interested in the when do you release the I'm breaking with Trump book than the who?

Because it sort of feels like it's valuable for another maybe like four to six months. You're going to get shouted down by everybody and say, why are you doing this now? But you can still make a lot of pay with that book. I don't think in two years anybody's really going to care. Yeah, I mean, the problem with releasing it prior to the election, is that you probably wouldn't have gotten any real credit for it, right? I mean, it wouldn't have made the odds of that actually. I mean, we saw a lot of people who tried to lead the cavalry against Trump

from inside or from the Republican Party or from, you know, be the Lincoln Project or any of these other, any of the other politicians, none of them really succeeded. I don't think it's going to go down in history as any great success on any of those parts. Certainly that, I mean, that would have been the lucrative time to do it. You're right about that. but I don't know that it would have been that, you know, it would have had any historical heft to it.

You know, maybe being, maybe, I mean, I think whoever the people who with the most historical heft are going to be the people that sort of rewrite history or write history over the next six months to a year, right? The people who were, who can kind of make some vague case that I was right all along and get introduced that way on various cable news shows or, you know, into the future. I mean, those are the people who were going to look like they had, that they had, you know, have this sort of moral standing. I think maybe the most powerful thing someone could do at this point is to just sort of

have like a more literal apology tour, right? To come out and say like, like, I know that I stood by him and I, that was idiotic. Like I didn't, we didn't know what to do. Maybe some younger politician on the Republican side can make that case. Like, I didn't have the standing to say anything. I wish we hadn't been so idiotic. I wish I hadn't been so weak. And maybe we can all learn going forward.

This is from Stephen Greenwell. One thing I'd like to hear you and David discuss on the show, the week between Christmas and New Year's, every network uses its second string of broadcasters. For NBC and Kristen Welker, it feels like a sneak peek of the future, but it can be woof for your local TV station. P.S., it's also fine if you forward this to the guest hosts of Monday's press box, Chris Ryan and my old college buddy Justin Sales.

Thank you, Stephen, for that one. How do we feel about second string broadcasters getting the graveyard week between Christmas and New Year's? First of all, Chris Ryan and obviously Chris Ryan, but if you didn't know, Justin Sales does not need any extra jobs at the ringer. No. Even in the podcast department, that guy's just a MVP. I've always thought it was weird too because at least my whole life, it felt like that's when everybody was watching these shows, right? Or when the most people were watching these shows, the most different people who might get drawn in to watching the shows. You're watching things at odd hours, you know, with different groups of people.

You know what my favorite part about it when we talk about the local ones is, and this isn't true across the board. Obviously, the NBA is launching. The NFL is coming to a close. People are taking sports seriously, but I love the second and third string, the second string, local sports personalities. If you want to see excitement, if you want to see the verve, the oomph, the drive to succeed, like just material. you're realizing right in front of your eyes, that's the, that's the greatest group of people in the world. There's a related one on sports radio too, because I think you and I used to, you know, before we were family men, would go home for the Christmas holidays. Oh, yeah. And before streaming,

I'd be like, oh, cool, it's my chance to catch up on local sports radio. This is going to be great. And I'd be driving to coffee or something, and I'd flip on the radio. And it wouldn't even be second string. It'd be like third string. And it'd be kind of like the guy who's the weekend producer, you know, got the morning show. Yeah. And if you ever want to feel better. It's the, it's the not on mic guy, right?

It's like the young producer who's there every day, but doesn't get to talk except to read stats or whatever. Sometimes it's like the local newspaper columnist who you kind of had a misimpression of how significant that person was, right?

Who just sort of... Or the guy who does local sports on TV and you're like, oh wow, he does the graveyard shift for sports radio. Exactly. Or, I mean, and listen, And we've all, this certainly has its place. And like the Howard Stern shows and I'm sure there's other places too.

But man, have you ever experienced like the sports radio best of segment? Like where they'll just go, where they just go in the new year with just some of their funniest takes of the year? I mean, that's just, that's a great. Here's our great interviews with whoever. I mean, there's a lot of, there is a weird way to fill time and a weird time a year to do it. But you're right. It happens. I often feel self-conscious about my audio abilities.

And if I ever need some help, I just listen to sports radio between Christmas and New Year's. Like, oh, okay. There's some other people who are learning like I am. This is from Elizabeth Gardner. When do your Christmas decorations get taken down? Do you leave lights up all year? Happy New Year. I'm excited to find out the answer to this question.

This is our first year in a home that we own. certainly our first year where I mean because of COVID and everything else we're like the only decorations our kids were going to see except for like the various driving tours around town. We're in our own house. So this is a

this is a whole new world for me. I assume they weren't they're not going to stay up forever but my guess is they'll stay up a little while. We also have an artificial tree which is just absolutely beautiful and you know that changes the calculus a little bit. Nothing's

nothing's dying in our living room. Yeah, I'm a, I'm a keep the tree up person, and I would keep it up till February or maybe Easter, if I could. And I don't know, do you remember that apartment that my wife and I had in Carol Gardens? Yeah, of course. I know you do, because I moved out of the Curtis Shoemaker Bachelor pad to move into that apartment. And we had a real tree in there that we bought from those French-Canadian guys that were

always on Court Street or Smith Street every Christmas. And I just was like, look, I'm going all the way. I mean, this is going through spring break. I don't want to take this baby down. Why do you impose, you know, time limits on my Christmas tree? Well, of course, it got very, very dry. And then the act of dragging it down the three stories of the walkup just put pine needles a galore. Oh, yeah.

On the carpeted steps of three stories. And I just remember there was a whole thing with the other tenants and maybe the land. landlord and yeah. That's one of the many, many adulthood lessons you learn or just as a more general life lesson where at some point in the very early going of that process you're like, would it make

sense to sort of body bag it with several trash bags or a tarp and you're like, you know what, it'll be faster just to drag it and clean it up later and you're absolutely wrong. Body baggett. This is from listener Monster Man, David. Is it too late to sneak in this? When is Donald Trump's

return to a wrestling story? Oh, man. Can I intervene here before you go off on this? I kind of want us to get a full-blown segment called a final word on Donald Trump in wrestling. Because I was talking to our friend Michael Solomon the other day. And he was saying, you know, that piece just got written into oblivion in 2016. Hey, Donald Trump is like wrestling. Like, yeah, yeah, we know.

Michael Solomon pointed out to me the other day that Trump refusing to admit he lost. is really the ultimate wrestling heel move. I didn't lose. The referee was crooked. He didn't hold me down for three seconds. Absolutely. So I think we kind of need to to sort of spin out Trump

as wrestler, Trump wrestling continuum in a whole segment. Well, he doesn't stop, right? Who was it that tweeted? I'm going to totally forgot. But at the run up to the election, how he was doing the year town sucks, your town stinks,

shtick all over the United States. I don't even want to be here. Yeah, he was going to like He's really like, I wasn't even playing on coming to Poughkeepsie, you know, whatever. Like, every, it's, it's like there's a Trump tweet for that, but there's also like a, there's a, there's a wrestling corollary for that. I mean, everything that he does. And yeah, refusing to believe that he lost. I mean, somewhere, Jesse the Body Ventura is arguing in defense of Donald Trump's victory right now. And I don't mean that as conspiracy theorist, Jesse the Mind Ventura, former governor, whatever else. I mean, WWF, glory days announcer Jesse the Body Ventura sitting next to. a gorilla monsoon. Somewhere Jesse is saying saying, oh, he gets to win. He won.

It's the referee's fault. You can't count out of the lost column gorilla. It was a slow count. It was a slow count. He was winning on election night, but then they counted really slow count. That's perfect. Yeah. All right. Hold that for maybe next week. We'll do Trump in wrestling, a final word. This is from John Mitchell on a scale of

how much does this person look like their podcast voice, where Chris Vernon is a one. And Chuck Closterman is a 10. Where do you two rank? I'm stealing this concept from the Reddit Bill Simmons page. Oh, great. For once, Bill Simmons Reddit post, I can honestly say I had never read.

We would never go back and read those things, would we, David? Not one little bit. I don't know. I don't know. I, wait, let's just, let's just, let's just take a second answer for each other. All right? Without, I mean, do you have my number in mine?

Yeah, I do. Okay. I mean, I'm not going to be too specific. I think I'll give you, I would give you like a six or a seven. Okay. Yeah, I was going to say 7.58 for you. Because I think that you have a, I think that, well, yeah, I mean, I think it's because I know you too well.

I don't think it could ever be a 10 because you don't sound exactly the same. same, right? You put it on the headphones and it's a little bit different and whatever else. But yeah, I kind of wonder that about myself. So I also wonder if people compliment me if they're crazy. I mean, so to this day. So I don't, I can't imagine what people are hearing. I don't think I have any frame of reference. I had this on, on Twitter or at least once, maybe twice. I think I was on slow newsday with Kevin Clark. And somebody was like, that guy looks exactly like I thought he did. when they saw me for the first time. And it was not a compliment.

I thought that guy was kind of a dick, and he looked like kind of a dick. So that may be a tin in that guy's eyes. This is from Small Town Teach. Do either of you write fiction? Oh, wow. I used to write a lot. And I kind of gave that up to write about wrestling.

I mean, I still occasionally will jot something down, but no, not, not, uh, uh, I think we've reached that part of life where, like, imagining novels that I want to write as just sort of a, you know, an admirable sort of fantasy and not just a great failing that it's not happening. But, but no, not really anymore. If we admit that we both have pretty fantastic jobs and we are doing what we are meant to do, at least to some capacity, do you ever regret not going down that road or is that, is that, let me put it this way. If you had like, I could choose another career would writing fiction, writing genre novels playing in that sandbox, would that be high on your list? Yeah, absolutely.

Sure. I mean, I just think that I, like so many others, like wanted to be like a literary novelist for, it didn't even occur to me that one could write like genre novels until probably too late. Although I said the same thing about comic books or anything like that, you know, I just sort of wanted to do all these things in a vague way and it sort of manifested. and like, I'm going to write the great American novel, and that's, you know, no place to, no place to be. I've always said that that dream was not especially present in Fort Worth, Texas when we

were growing up. I'm going to grow up and write the great American novel. Yeah. I may have been in other cities in America, but I don't remember, I don't remember being surrounded by people who were saying that out loud. No. It was a much more tangible goal to say, I'm going to grow up and be a sports writer. Oh, yeah.

And people around you'd be like, that sounds like a really cool job. Yeah. I mean, even like Dan Jenkins, who wrote a great American novel, was a sports writer. That's how he, like, got the opportunity to do it. He wrote a little novel, and that was never, a lot of people probably wouldn't even put that in his, except for the, if not for the movie, especially, it wouldn't put semi-tuff end. It was, you know, the first line of his obituary or whatever. So, yeah, Texas is a weird place. I mean, it has more talent per capita than probably a lot of other places, but, you know, like, I,

always say we all knew like one person who wanted to go to an Ivy League school because their grandfather or grandmother went there or something. But like the smartest people that we knew did not, we're not trying to get to Harvard. They were like trying to get a full ride to UT. They were trying to get to the Big 12. Yeah, exactly. That's what they were trying to get to. Semi related from R.S.H. I start student teaching an 11th grade American literature course on January fourth. Any content you'd recommend as anchor text from quite literally any genre would be greatly appreciated. Oh, I should have prepped for this one. What is the best? What is a great, totally, I mean, Charles Portis is like the refrain of this show. So I'll skip that. I'll skip that for

this time. Man, I need to go look at. I remember 10th grade English with you a lot more clearly, which was our American literature. Yeah, but is there anything in there that you would, that's like unusual that you would say go read this? I read Catch 22 in that class and thought it was great. Did not grasp it as fully as I have since when I've reread it, obviously, but. I'm not going to claim to read, have remembered Billy Budd particularly clearly. No, typey.

I remember. No way. It was short, Billy Budd. At least it had that gone for it. what I mean what do the what what would we assign as like our like that what it's like the genre novels I mean like are we gonna should okay if if you want to make a reading list of of um the best American like like short crime novels you got to throw some Raymond Chandler in there of course it could be appreciated by 11th graders so so let's throw like chester hymns would probably be a good one I love Chester Heimes uh great

And that's, and that kind of expands the, the map a little, the, literally the map a little bit. I mean, I would go, you know, the postman always rings twice. It's just like insanely good. Okay. In for that, for sure. Dang, there's so many good ones. There's, I'm trying to think of the ones that, I mean, I don't think George V. Higgins makes the list. I mean, you could, I think if I were doing it, I mean, all these are great.

I think you could probably make, make one of those people, like get one of those people past whoever is making the rules for this class, like approving the syllabus. I think it'd be fun to try to like, to try to make the case for Elmore Leonard

to like whatever panel is going to approve these things. Sure. Because I think that there's a really legitimate case, but he doesn't have like the, he doesn't have like the three decades you really need to sort of be a given. Everybody in the class would love it. Can you imagine?

if we'd got an Elmore Leonard in 11th grade. Yeah. As opposed to whatever we were actually reading. I don't know. I don't know if I've said this on the show, but having, being a recent New Jersey transplant, I reread John McPhee's the Pine Barrens. And this is, I'm saying this is someone who previously had literally every John McPhee book in that identical paperback format sitting on my bookshelf and got rid of them all during

one of my moves and then had to go reclaim them. That early John McPhee stuff. is just unbelievable. And if you want to read something that's just like, like, oh, that feels kind of like the New Yorker, like a really great essay, but it also has like the heft of a book and the sort of like personality

that you really want from a great writer. It's a, I mean, he's just unbelievable. I'm stunned anew every time I pick up, like it's, like I said, I mean, the later John McPhee is spectacular and he's maybe more of an assured writer, but it, you know, he's sort of in more of a rhythm subject-wise, but that early John McPhee is just wild. I did not expect you to say I recently reread the Pine Barrens.

Well, I live in the Pine Barrens. I seconded the thought, but it's fine. John McPhee, Princeton. I mean, it's, you know, it's all right? That's where you're a teacher of Princeton, yeah. Do you remember 11th grade English before we move on? You and I were in not only the same school, but the same class, and it was a classroom that had desks facing each other from separate sides of the room.

and you were on one side and I was on the other so we couldn't talk to each other but we could kind of give each other the eye and we opened our world literature textbooks and there was a I don't know a monk, an old English guy somebody who had red hair and a long

red beard and we saw this guy's picture for the first time I turned up and looked at you and you immediately did the Jim the Anvil Knightheart who was a wrestler if you don't know a thing of grabbing your beard and yanking it. I rest in

I started laughing if you started laughing. High school. All right, one more, David, from You're smarter than us, and you're smarter than us, has asked us a few times, so I want to make sure we get to it. Who would be your media four horsemen? Who are the media proxies for

legendary wrestlers, Rick Flair, Arne and Oly Anderson, and Tully Blanchard? Oh, man. Are these media bad guys? Is that the implication of this question? Tough guys? Well, when I think of the four when I think of the

I mean the first thing that comes to mind is or the four or the four big anchors of our youth, right? Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, wait, not Ted Coppill. Ted Coppel was the fourth, right? Peter Jennings, Tom Brocaught, Dan Rather. Dan Rather is when I left out.

Cople, or it would be Brokaw-Ginnings Coppel and rather. Ted Coppel was the sort of fourth one, so maybe you make the case for like Barbara Walter is taking the fourth slot or something. This is Sam Donaldson

Erasure, but go ahead. Yeah. I know, I know. There's so many people you could take out. But that's like when I think of like a, when I think of like a crew, it's like those that have, it's those four rolling together. I'm sure hitting all like the big hotspots

around the country when news breaks. And partying in the Ramada Hotel bar afterwards. I don't know. What was your first reaction of this question? I didn't know how to answer at all. I mean, at first I thought it was kind of like a Fox News style four horsemen.

But if you're talking like who are the kind of dominant personalities of our age, you know, I don't know, could you like scratch together a team of Rachel Maddow, Jake Tapper, and maybe a couple more people. I don't know.

It's so fragmented now. I don't know that we can have Ford Media Horsemen anymore. Yeah. I don't know that that's possible. I got one more here, David. Sorry, I forgot one question here. From Brian in Huntington Beach, California. How great a job did Erica Servantes do producing the press box podcast this year? I can't even imagine, I can't, a shockingly good job. I can't, like, I've had literally zero complaints about her podcast this year, especially on the production side. I mean, it just, it seems. Yeah. And how about,

parachuting into a podcast when you are in the midst of the 2020 election, the coronavirus, the Black Lives Matter protests, and then sort of all those things at once in the second, in the middle of the year and the second half of the year, plus David, plus David, guests, booking guests on every single episode and recording those guests. And making sure those recordings don't sound like crap. Yeah. And making sure even, by the way, even greater degree of difficulty that Brian, and David don't sound like crap because we do that even when the mics work.

So anyway, fantastic job, Erica Servantes. We appreciate you and appreciate everything you've done for us. All right, let's do the Overwork Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious, David, that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. David Donald Trump, who is still president, had some really horrendous pre-com. Christmas pardons. Pardon Paul Manafort. Roger Stone, Charlie Kushner,

the Blackwater Guards. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. On another note, Trump just pardoned the bees from the movie My Girl. I had to look that up. For that, thanks to David Trattner and Derek Berg for that one. Kind of a weird tweet here from Politico, David, listen to this.

At the beginning of this interminable, year, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau grew a beard. The beard was significant, a symbol of a once youthful prime minister who was now older and wiser and battle scard. It was an overword Twitter joke to write, did a beard write this? Thanks to Mitchell Tyler. That one never gets old to me. And finally, listener James Sutherland pointed out this recurring gag about a very 2020 media

condition, which is substack overload. you subscribe to one writer you like and then another writer and then another writer and pretty soon you've got all these substacks going on. The overworked Twitter joke reads as follows we all love substacks, but what if there were a publication that curated a bunch of regular complimentary writers

plus occasional contributions from specialists? Imagine that, David. You joked about the death of websites, magazines, and all journalism that doesn't fund itself. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, time for the notebook, Tom. David, there's a new memoir out by the late Georgetown basketball coach John Thompson,

which he wrote with Jesse Washington, a writer from The Undefeated. The book is called I Came As a Shadow, and I want everyone to hear this. This is a great sports book, a great book, full stop, and an incredible piece of writing. You know me, especially when it comes to sports writing. I do not say that lightly. I do not. I don't throw out those compliments all the time. Edy is freaking great.

I was curious about the book, about how it came together, about how you write a book with somebody like John Thompson. Here's Jesse Washington. All right, I want to talk to you about your career first, Jesse, and then we'll walk up to I came as a shadow. Raised partly in Poughkeeps in New York, you go to Yale, from Yale to the Associated Press where you become Assistant Bureau, Chief.

for New York City. What made you want to become a journalist? A friend of mine worked at the Poughkeepsie Journal, and I was looking for a summer job after my freshman year in college. And he said, hey, you play ball. You like to read. Maybe working at the newspaper would be enjoyable. And it really was. It was the first job I had had where I wasn't looking at the clock every five minutes to see if it was time to go home yet. And did sports writing figure into your ambitions at that point? Initially, it did. So my first internship at the Pekipsy The Gypsy Journal was in the sports department, and I really loved it. And then the next summer I went back and worked in the news department.

And I really loved that also. And so until I came to the undefeated, I had spent very little time as a sports writer. And to be honest with you, when I got invited to join the undefeated, I said, eh, you know, I'm at a point in my career where I feel like I'm doing, you know, more than just sports. I enjoy sports as entertainment, but I aspire to deal, grapple with things with a little more m-f to them, a little more meaning. And they said, no, that's what we want to do at the undefeated. And so that's why I jumped in. You were interested in a sports writing job, provided it was more than a straight sports

writing job. Absolutely, you know, and I didn't want to just write about, you know, who won and why. I wanted to get more into the societal aspects of it. The great thing about the undefeated is that sometimes, we can just deal with, you know, a basketball game or I could break down, yeah, Hardin's flopping too much. What's that about, you know? And I can indulge that fan side of me. But at the same time, we have the latitude to go into these broader things that deals with the issues that are prevalent in society right now. And that's very exciting to me. From your first run of the AP,

you go to Vibe, where you become managing editor. And then 1998, while you're still in your 20s, you've become the first editor of Blaze magazine. Will you remind us what Blaze was? Sure. Well, first I have to say it was a magazine. That's some paper. You put that together. Yeah. Start there with the current generation. It's got some pictures. Now, what a tremendous time that was. It was really fun. It was before the internet had upended the music industry. And it was before Instagram. So these magazines were really how the majority of fans, like, interacted with the culture and with all their favorite. artists and things like that. So Blaze was a spinoff. It was a hip-hop magazine. And we entered into a crowded marketplace with a lot of other rap magazines. It was very competitive. So shout out to the dudes at XXL,

rap pages, the source, you know, all these guys were inspiration and competition. And so we came in. We felt like we had to have a lot of new ideas. So we did crazy things like if we gave a artist a bad review, we would let the artist respond in the magazine. We had battles where the winner would get the back page of the magazine. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, so the artist respond to the bad review is amazing to me. And you would actually, you would do this after you ran the review or before you ran the review would show the artist, what you were going to run. Before we would run the review and we aspire to print the artist's response right next to the bad review.

And what that came from was when I got to vibe, artists were mad at the reviews all the time and I ended up fielding. a lot of those calls. And the artist, a lot of times they had a point. They were like, you wrote X, Y, Z. That isn't even what I was thinking when I made this. Like, this is what I was thinking. And their explanations made a lot of sense. And so I just felt it would really be a cool interaction and to, I guess in some ways,

not that I even intended it this way or could foresee it, but nowadays the artists can communicate their own thoughts about their work directly to us through social media. We didn't have that in the late 90s, and this was a way to hear directly from them what they were thinking when they created their music. So Blaze, and then back to the AP, where you cover race, and then the undefeated ESPN in 2015. Correct. We talked about why that job was appealing. At ESPN, and I know this from, not from personal experience, but let's say from friends' personal experience, because no one wants to put me on TV.

but there is a tractor beam that pulls people, writers, toward television. Have you resisted the tractor beam, indulge the tractor beam? How do you feel about that? I don't know if the tractor beam is really looking for, you know, middle-aged, suburban dance. Come on. You know, the tractor beam is interesting. And, Brian, you've done a lot of really interesting work with that. And I've definitely felt the drug that is television.

When you do a TV hit and all your people are blowing up your phone and post-emps, pictures of you when they saw you on TV in the airport. It's a drug, man, and that attention feels really good. But for me, I always felt like I wanted to remain, and I still feel that I want to remain a journalist. And if you get too much success in the television era, a lot of these ESPN personalities past and present will tell you they become more of entertainers. And that's not to detract from the chops that they got them to that point because, you know, there's a lot of great journalists who are on the air too. So that has been a challenge for me. But then sometimes if you don't get enough attention from TV to ESPN, you're like, you know, who am I, chopped liver?

So it's an interesting dynamic. You know, I mean, for me, if I can do work and go on TV to talk about the work, the journalism, that's great. You know, that's really my goal. But ESPN is a great platform and they've been willing to do that. I mean, I would say the same thing about podcasting, too. And it's partly because these things, television, podcasting, whatever it is, are just different acts. You know, you are doing a different thing. And then partly it's time because you're like, if I'm spending X number of hours on that, I'm not calling people. I'm not, you know, doodling around the internet looking for interesting stories that I could tell because I just need a certain amount of hours to do that well. It is hard to do both, you know.

And it's hard to do journalism rather than tweeting all day, although some people complete the two. But now, it's a crazy world we live in. And for somebody like me who came up in journalism before the internet and has somehow managed to survive this incredible shrinking of our business and still be in a place, you know, at a place like ESPN and a place like the undefeated that celebrates the journalism. And that's one of the great things I love about the undefeated is that, you know, Kevin is. at heart a journalist and, you know, advises you always, like half the time if you have an issue that you're trying to get over with a piece or some advice to, he always has, it's report, you know, like, which is a cool thing. This is the answer.

This is Kevin Meredith, by the way, who runs the undefeated. This is the answer to this. Report your way out of it and you will, you will, the answer will reveal itself to you. Yeah, I love that. Like, don't tweet your way out of it. Don't talk your way out of it. don't even write your way out of it. If you report first, then the rest will follow. And I really hold to that and appreciate it. So, you know, but then you see people getting rich and famous off

being entertainers. And so it's an interesting place to be in. But overall, I'm really happy with the work and happy with, you know, the opportunities and the way they're laying themselves out. How did the John Thompson book project begin? John Skipper, man. The literary agent that coach Thompson had hired to sort of put the project together, was looking for a writer. And our agent, David Black, asked, he was acquainted with John Skipper, the former president of ESPN. He said, who do you know who would be good to write this book? And my name was one of them that he threw out there. I'm imagining that there was a number of names ahead of mine in the list. But John Skipper said, hey, this guy, Jesse Washington, is not bad.

You know, he might be able to do a good job. And coach decided to give me the shot. Did you interview with Coach Thompson to write his memoir? Oh, absolutely. And it was as interesting and stressful as an experience as you might imagine an interview with John Thompson would be. You know, I went over to his house. His daughter, Tiffany, and his son, John III, were there. And they asked a lot of penetrating questions.

And coach his insight and intellect and ability to get to the heart of the matter, I hope comes through in the book, and it definitely came through in that interview. One of the first things he said was, Jesse, you've never written a book like this before. What makes you think you can do my? And his son John said, why did you come over here wearing Adidas? Coach Thompson is on the board of directors at Nike. Sure. But I think that, you know, they recognized, they had read a lot of the stuff I had done at the Undefeated.

And I said, yeah, coach, I haven't written a book. book like this before, but I think each chapter is like one of the stories that I do for the undefeated. It's about the same length. It's the same sort of structure. And I know I could do that. So that's why I could do your book. And he, so he said, okay, I almost said that he trusted me with it, but he definitely didn't trust me out the gate. I had to continue to work. At one time, you know, we're recording these, you know, Hoya Paranoia was real. And coach was not afraid to describe his paranoia. And as he says in the book,

it ain't paranoia if they're really out to get you. So about the second or third time we met, I was using a little digital tape recorder. And he said, yeah, what's you doing with that, Jesse? I said, oh, yeah, I get it transcribed. And I started to feel like I was on thin ice. He said, what does get it transcribed me?

And as soon as I said, I send it out to a service, he looked at me and I was like, oh, that's a wrap. He's like, send it to who? And I didn't really have an answer. You know, I don't know, some person on the other side, you know, in Russia, I don't know. So coach did not want his innermost thoughts on the internet floating about being transcribed. So we put that to an end. And then later on, I said, coach, you know, I can give you these recordings now or I could wait as we go along.

I could wait until we're all done, but you and your family should have them. He said, yeah, give them to me now because I never know what I might have to get rid of you. But, you know, after a while, though, once the book started to come together and the turning point was when he realized it was in his voice, that it sounded like him, that he was able to express himself and that I was able to interpret that in a way that was authentic to who he was, then he really trusted me. And that's when the project really took off. So let's talk about capturing that voice in print because it certainly really, really comes through in this book. you tape him, do you have like a timeline of his career that you put together that you're asking him about or does he have even a sense of a structure of the story he wants to tell? Coach had a thematic blueprint. These are the big ideas that I have. These are the lessons that I learn that I want to explain to people. These are the experiences that were important to me.

And maybe most importantly, these are the reasons why I did what I did. what I did. This is why I hugged Fred Brown. This is why I walked out over Proposition 42. This is why I refused to sit down and shut up when people said my teams were being too aggressive. That was his framework. So my job was to find the timeline and the structure to do that chapter by chapter. And eventually, you know, we didn't have to be too tricky, just the simplest thing worked best, start at the beginning. And his beginning is so compelling. We think about segregation as this thing, that was, you know, like back in the 1800s or something, but Coach Thompson lived that. You know, he experienced having to sit in the back of the church or not being allowed to

eat at a restaurant because he's black in Washington, D.C., you know, in Maryland, not Mississippi or Louisiana. So, you know, I sort of came up with the just, hey, coach, let's not make it too complicated, man, you know, we'll do it chronologically. And then we'll overlay these themes that are important to you on that chronology so people can really understand your life that way. So you would take these transcribed conversations, you would turn it into a chapter and then give it to Thompson to have him read it?

So here's a very interesting thing. And one of the things that the many surprises that I found out with Coach while we were writing this book was that in the fifth grade, Coach Thompson could not read. He had a reading disability, and he literally could not read.

It wasn't for lack of trying. It wasn't for, you know, his mom was an educated teacher. He had three older sisters. They could read, but he could not. And so the nuns who ran his Catholic school in the Anacostia section of D.C. kicked him out, said, we can't help you. So he went to a public school in D.C. And a black woman teacher named Semeta Wallace Jackson said, oh, you're not dumb.

You just can't read. And found him a reading specialist and got him on track. So fast forward to what we're doing the book. coach remained an auditory person. And so really most of the, you know, I would give him stuff and he would read it, but he liked me to read it to him. So I would show up at his office and then he was,

what you got, boy. And I would say, I wrote some stuff, you know, I wrote some stuff. You want to hear it? Yeah, let me hear it. And I would read it. Wow. And then he would step in and make correction sometimes

or no, that's not quite it. And the way his mind worked was amazing because he didn't like me to stop every five seconds say, is that good, is that good? He was just like, not keep going. And then he would go back and make some sort of like grammatical change to something I said 10 minutes earlier. He had had it in his mind the whole time.

So that was our primary workflow. And when COVID hit in March, we had it all written, but we were still refining it. And so we spent tons of time on the phone, you know, me reading it to him and him making corrections. And we were absolutely able to finish the whole thing. before he passed. And you said in the intro of this book

that he sweated over every word of this book. He was very meticulous. How did you see that process? It was fascinating. The first thing is that coach loves his cuss words, you know, and as he got more comfortable to be, they were flying fast and furious. And like so many of us, you know,

black folks, he's bilingual or trilingual and he can code switch with the best of them. And I wanted to capture that. I enjoyed that. But he kept telling me throughout the course of writing the book, there's too much profanity in the book. And I'm like, Coach, what he, like, what do you want me to do? Are you serious? But I had to figure out that he viewed this as like, which it is, as like a public address. So he's not going to get up and like give a speech at Georgetown

and be MF and everybody to death. You know, that's just not, you know, he knows how to deploy it. But he also knew that in order to capture that side of him, it wouldn't be authentic if we didn't have some. So we carefully, every MFer in the book is there for a reason. And when you do it sparingly, it has more impact, you know. So there was that aspect of it. And then also he was particular about grammar. He wanted to be grammatically correct, even though he would speak in a, you know, like a lot of us speak where we're just hanging out. Like we enjoy, there's a power in taking the English language and bending it to your

will and breaking the rules in order to express something. One of the things that he told me very early on, because we started at the beginning of his life, was how much they grew up in poverty and he had so little, but his parents protected him and gave him everything that he needed and made him feel very secure so he didn't feel deprived. And so he said, yo, I want to be very clear, Jesse, this ain't no sob story about how we grew up in the projects and, oh, look how bad we had it all. So I wrote it down. And in the book, early draft, this ain't no sob story. To me, that's classic black English. I love that. He said, take that ain't out. You know, take that ain't out. Okay, coach, you got it. So we were able to give that flavor and let people definitely know that

that's how he could get down when he wanted to. But by and large, he wanted to speak formally. And that's what we did. Yeah, there are two or three lines on every page of this book that made me stop and write them down in my notebook. I'll give listeners a few examples here. I had to win because black people didn't have the right not to be successful. Speaking of his players at Georgetown, he said, when we became champions, they couldn't minimize our ability anymore, so we had to become evil in the right. And he's talking about the eyes of the press and his critics. And then this was great. Thompson was 610. And here he's talking about beating shorter coaches. Some of his peers in the Big East were quite a bit shorter. He said, every time I beat a short guy, I considered it a step forward

for the rights of big people who are stereotyped as stupid. Isn't that amazing? Is that amazing? Unbelievable. He also said, he said, yeah, they always say the point guards are so smart. I played with a lot of dumb guards. That was great. That was great. Yes. Yeah. Coach Thompson was so funny. Like, and he would, and it wasn't like, sometimes it would just be jokes to make you laugh. But a lot of times it was the way he would just poke a hole into something and skewer it. You know, it was, you know, the part where he said paying players, you know, where he finally came to that conclusion, I asked him throughout the course of writing the book about that topic. And he only made that determination later on when he just got fed up with college basketball. And at one point we were debating about something and, you know, like I would challenge him.

and sort of try to, are you sure, coach, really? And then at one point he got frustrated with me and he said, yeah, well, what do I know? I just went to Providence. Y'all Yale, motherfuckers, you know, y'all are the ones who, you know, so what do I know? I mean, we had so many good laughs right in this book. It was great. One of the interesting balances here, too, is that he told you, I don't want this book to be about basketball. So you're obviously delivering the memoir of a great basketball.

basketball coach who was present and responsible for all these great moments. How did you balance basketball with non-basketball stuff? It was easy. I mean, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier where that's where my passion is too. What does basketball mean beyond that? How does it impact society, race relations, our evolution as a people, all these other things, education, upliftment? And so that was really important to both of us. And so I think he probably sensed that, And that was part of the reason why he chose me to write it for him. So it wasn't hard because that was what coach cared about. And he was just talking about all these things that happened to him.

And I was about 15 or 16 when they went through their run. So I experienced it in a different way. And when I went back and examined it now, as an adult, I was like, wow, a lot of this stuff was totally over my head what he went through. You know, like a lot of us, I grew up with Sports Illustrated as, you know, the gold standard. of sports writing. And I read every issue of Sports Illustrated. My grandparents got me a subscription,

and I knew every writer by name and all that kind of stuff. And when I went back and read what Curry Kirkpatrick had written about Georgetown, I was appalled. I mean, it was blatantly racist. And I didn't realize it at the time, but now, looking at it, like, he literally started a story about them winning the Big East Championship by saying those noted scholars from Georgetown. like, come on, man, really?

You know, what's that about? And Coach Thompson says the backstory, you just kicked him off campus. So now we start to understand, you know, why. And he had kicked him off campus because Sports Illustrated reporters were roaming about Georgetown campus asking if Coach Thompson was a racist, who wouldn't recruit white players. So it gets so deep. So when you start talking about stuff like this, the game itself recedes into the background for coach and for me, because these are more important things. And more importantly, they're more relevant today right now than, oh, yeah, we did win the Biggie's championship, you know, and we did, you know, we did keep Pearl Washington in check.

Like, that's cool than everything. But the bigger impact of what was going on is just more compelling. It was more compelling to coach and myself. And so when you put that together, that's what we really vibed on. I was really interested in how that theme of how Georgetown was covered in the media and how that was seeded throughout the book. there were tons of euphemisms, which he lists intimidating, being probably number one on the list, but we could keep going down that list and all these code words that would get thrown out.

And sometimes not code words, by the way. A columnist called him the Edia Mean of College Basketball, which is not exactly subtle. I mean, come on. Yeah. In the newspaper. In the newspaper. I mean, that is unbelievable. Did he remember all these pieces individually?

Or was this something where you are going back and looking up the coverage and reminding him of how he was written about? I had to remind him, and that was part of my job. Coach, you know, the man coach for 29 years, 28, 29 years. And so it all runs together after a while. So part of my job was to go back and say, okay, this is what happened. We would watch a few games together. I mean, how cool is that to watch NCAA championship game with Coach Thompson? And his trusted assistant Mary Fenlin kept meticulous scrapbooks of all of the coverage throughout the entire run.

And those books were there in the office with us. So I will go through and read. And I mean, this is a nerds, a sports nerds paradise, you know? And so I will go read and be like, coach, hey, look at this here in the newspaper. You know, like they said this. Or coach, look, the New York coach just called you a monster and an ogre. What do you think about that? And then he would, you know, the memory was to come back and he would, he would reflect on it.

I also spoke to a lot of his players who would bring up incidents that happened. And coach would say one of two things, one of three things. No, that didn't happen. Yes, that's how it happened. Or I don't remember it, but it sounds like something I would do. Maybe, okay, go ahead and use it because I can't completely. deny it. I was going to ask you about that too because I saw an interview you did with the Yale News and you're talking about how as a journalist you were trained to be skeptical when you're

interviewing somebody. And even when you have somebody like John Thompson, you've interviewed lots of old coaches and athletes and they will tell you something that they think is true, but then you go back and find out, oh, it's true, but it happened a little differently and actually happened before this, not after this. How much of that sort of correction kind of stuff did you find yourself having to do? You know, not much because I just identify with coach so much. And his struggle just really resonated with me. Like when you're 15 and 16 and you see this big black guy in charge and winning and being unapologetically black, it sinks in.

And it shapes you to a certain extent. And so to be able to explain to people, hey, this is why I did what I did. And I took all this criticism for it. but y'all were wrong like that resonated with me so i didn't have to check him too much there were a few conflicts you know right you know he said it's overlooked what a good basketball player coach was because he didn't have a big pro career and that sort of ate at him a little bit you know because his senior year providence he averaged 26 and 15 it was all-American but then he gets drafted to the Celtics and he's backing up bill russell he's like i never got in the damn game because bill russell

came out. So, you know, I do my job and go on the internet. I'm like, coach, says, uh, you average 10 minutes a game, five points, five rebounds. He said, I'll give a fuck what the internet says. That's a lie. All right. You got it, coach. It's a lie, you know, but it was more about his feeling. Um, the only other thing we argued about was Bobby Knight, man. He loved Bobby Knight. He loved Bobby Knight. He loved Bobby Knight. And I was like, but coached a kid on camera. He's like, do you really know that? You know, like, do you know what happened before that? Are you you sure? And he had this way of questioning you where, you know, he can make you doubt what you saw on camera. But as a writer, there's a way to convey these things. And he says at the beginning

of the book, you know, I'm going to tell you what happened with all these things in my life. I may not always be right, but this is how I feel. And so he acknowledges throughout, all right, you know, I'm biased. I'm me. This is my perception. If you want to take issue with it, fine, but this is how I feel. And it's really the first time he got to do that because he was so mischaracterized. So every writer had their shot at him. He was this compelling figure to write about and so complicated and so complex. And everybody had their shot.

He's like, all right, now it's my turn. And that's what he wanted to do with his book. Will you tell us about Thompson's meeting with a man named Rayful Edmund III? Man, the legend of the meeting with the biggest drug dealer in D.C., maybe on the East Coast. That is the incident that everybody asked me about when they found out I was writing the book. Man, is he going to talk about Rayful? Number two was Alan Iverson by a significant margin. So that tells you what a big... So Rayful Eben was this huge drug dealer. And when coach came back from the 88 Olympics, he came back a little late, and he found

out that Rayful was kicking it with Alonzo Morning and John Turner. And Alonzo was like the Zion Williamson of his recruiting class. He was that big of a deal and that good. So obviously this is an emergency situation. And not only did coach immediately set Alonzo and John Turner straight, but he was just like it was a no-brainer. It was obvious, I have to meet with Rayful. And I mean, let's just think about that for a minute.

Like, you know, I think that, you know, Coach K is the closest thing that I could come to now as far as John Thompson in the modern era, just in terms of having a program and values. And obviously it's so much different. And Coach K has all these titles and everything like that. But just being that presence in college basketball, Coach K has it. But we could never picture Coach K meeting with a drug dealer. Coach K probably would not.

And it was just that kind of guy that it speaks to who John Thompson was, that he immediately said, this is what I have to do. And then that the drug dealer would listen and come to meet him in his office on Georgetown's campus. It wasn't like in some back alley. No. He walked right under the practice court. And you guys wrote that he'd never seen the players shoot as many airballs as they had

in their life when this guy walks in the practice court. What? Can you imagine the players thinking that they're on the low? Coach Thompson knew everything that happened in the city of D.C., by the way. You know, like, and so he walked, he paraded him in past a pickup game and up into his office. And then they had a conversation. And it wasn't, you know, the legend, this legend was so big that I'm growing up in New York and heard about it and heard about Rafeful. And we all thought that Coach Thompson cussed him out and pointed his finger in his face and said, stay away for my players before I, you know, whatever.

But it was not like that at all. And that perception was based on the stereotype of Coach Thompson as a bully, as intimidating, as someone who tried to run over people. And that's not what he was about. Like, coach felt strongly about things and would yell and had a temper, but he wasn't going to tone that down because of your problem with his size or his blackness. And so the meeting with Rayful was not what we all expected. I was really surprised when he described it. And I hope people are also surprised and appreciate, you know, the levels of what we're. what went into it when they read the book.

How did Coach Thompson tell you when you had captured his voice in the story in a way he thought was correct? He let other people close to him read it, and I believe it was his children also. And he was very close with his children and relied on them for a lot of things for good reason because they're three, you know, John, Tiffany, Ronnie, three really smart and capable people. And he just said, people are telling me, Jesse, that they're not. this sounds like me. So you're doing a good job. And you know, and when coach Thompson tells you're

doing a good job, you know, you feel like I felt like I had Hoyas on my chest. Like I was, you know, I was ready to throw Patrick a lob or something, you know, like that's, that's how it felt. And it was, he coached me while we were writing the book. He knew instinctively how to get the best out of people. And he knew that I wanted to to do right by him. And so instinctively, I don't, you know, I don't think he sat around and strategize. or need to do it. He was just, he developed a relationship with me where I wanted to get the best to do my best for him. Why did he take so long to write his memoirs? Because I'm sure he had many, many offers to write him before now. Here's a crazy backstory on that. The late great Ralph Wiley,

coach loved him. Coach told me that Ralph convinced him to write an autobiography and wrote it, but coach didn't like it. And said, do you? You got to put that. Yes, can you believe that? Like, there's a Ralph Wiley autobiography of Coach Thompson's floating around somewhere in his papers. And, and I, me being a student and of Ralph's, like so many of us were. I mean, you know, if you guys, for those of you have not heard of Ralph Wiley, please just Google him up. Look at some of the stuff he wrote for ESPN page two for Sports Illustrated. I mean, this guy was one of the all-time greats. But he was Ralph. And he brought. brought too much Ralph to it. And Ralph, his thing was that he was so brilliant, he had to define coach. And so when he told me that early on, I was like, oh, okay. So I have to be careful of that. And I really have to capture coach's voice and let coach tell it. I have to get out of the way. And that was what I really tried to do. So he took so long because coach is a private person. And he wasn't, when we began, he wasn't really into the whole idea of bearing his innermost soul.

He had to warm up to it, you know? And eventually he did to a greater extent, I think, than he had done in any other public way. You know, there's a lot of writers that he got close to. And this whole thing about him hating the media was a lie because, you know, he names seven or eight writers in the book who we really appreciated it. Like Wilbon, you know, Wilbon, him and Wilbon were super tight. he let Wobahn know him in a really special way. But I do think that he said some things in his book by the end of the process that he may not have been comfortable saying in the beginning because he saw how it would be authentic to who he was and how he wanted to say it. If your next piece for the undefeated is not the failed literary marriage between Ralph Wiley and John Thompson, I'm going to write Kevin.

dot merida at right now because I want to read that story. Talk about two iconoclasts and you could see why I could see why it wouldn't work. I could see why it would work and be so tempting and then I could see why it wouldn't quite work. That is fascinating. Yeah, you know, I mean, Ralph was just this sort of blazing persona. And you have to have, you know, this was a service. project. This was me really having to get out of the way of myself and my own ego and make it about coach and let him do his thing. And that's such a cool and unique thing, man. I mean, like,

this, like, it was fun. I didn't feel like, oh, I'm being held back, you know, or oh, I'm not, you know, I'm being stifled. To be able to inhabit John Thompson, to talk junk in John Thompson's to go at people to get righteously indignant in the name of John Thompson? Come on, man. I had a ball. You write in the book that this was, Thompson considered this his final testimony. He died on August 30th. Did he have a sense he would not live to see this book published during the writing process? I don't think it would went that far, but he did know that this would outlast him. And that was part of his intention. Like, I'm going to leave this. I'm going to have. I'm going to have the last word. You know, early on when we were writing the book. And he was in good health,

you know, no problems or anything. We're sitting around. And he always said, Jesse, we have to get this right. You know, that was something he repeated and I absorbed. And then one day he said, Jesse, we have to get this right because I am preparing to die. Now, that, he wasn't sick. He wasn't in the hospital. He was fine. But what he meant was, I believe what he meant was that, I won't be here forever. You know, I'm 70-whatever years old. I know that at some point I'm not going to be here. And I want people to get how I felt finally.

I never really laid it out like this before, but I'm going to do this. So when I'm gone, people will really know what this was all about. The book is I Came As a Shadow. It's available right now. You can read Jesse Washington on The Undefeated, where he will be talking junk in his own name for the point. Jesse, thank you for coming on the press box.

Thanks so much. This was cool. Appreciate you. All right. It's time for David Shoemaker. Guess is the strain pun headline. Yeah. Last, when did we last do this?

Last Monday's headline about Tiger Woods watching over his golf prodigy son was Tiger Dad. Today's headline, David comes from Adam, Walton, Bo, James Raddick, and Levi. It's from NBC Sports Chicago. David, the yucksters at NBC Sports Chicago, made a graphic to show how the Golden State Warriors have tried to replace their injured star Clay Thompson. And they made a graphic showing that they've replaced Thompson with Andrew Wiggins and Kelly Ubrae Jr.

Just one problem. Andrew Wiggins is shooting two for 10 from three point range and Ubre is shooting 0 for 11 from three point range as compared to Clay Thompson. It was a great three point shooter. Uh-huh. So Clay Thompson, no more. you got these guys who can't shoot what was NBC Sports Chicago's

strain pun headline um wait so it's an infographic about the the tactics they've used to cover up for the absence of clay but the joke is that they're actually not good compared to clay mm-hmm

um missing the something uh that uh empty buckets. Let me tell you that clay is going to be on the headline. Clay is going to be in the

Clay. Clay Clay is it play? A play pun? Modeling modeling clay. Getting sort of closer.

Replacing clay with replacing clay with Plato. Replacing clay with I'm shooting here and I'm missing shots, replacing clay with bricks. Oh, God, that's great. Good stuff, NBC Sports Chicago. He is

David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. We are going to take another deep breath for the holiday. We're back Monday, January 4th with Jeff Benedict and Armand Catan executive producers of HBO's new Tiger Woods documentary. Plus, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. Later, Brian.