The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Clipped’ Episodes 5-6: Right-Hand Arm Man

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Rob Mahoney and Wosny Lambre are back to recap the final two episodes of ‘Clipped.’ They start by discussing how they enjoyed their experience with the series as a whole (2:13). Then, they get into Episodes 5 and 6 by talking about how the show recreated some iconic television moments (16:46). Later, they talk about how Adam Silver was portrayed, as well as some other NBA-related odds and ends from the series (31:46). Hosts: Rob Mahoney and Wosny Lambre Producer: Carlos Chiriboga Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my name is Dave Gonzalez, and I haven't read any of the books in George R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. I'm Joanna Robinson and I've read every book in Georgia R. Martens, A Song of Ice and Fire. And I'm Neil Miller and I have also read those very heavy books. Years ago, we hosted a Game of Thrones podcast called A Storm Spoilers, and we're thrilled to head back to Westrose to cover the second season of House of the Dragon on the Trial by Content feed. We'll be using our book knowledge to dive deep into each episode and answer your lingering questions. so send us a raven every week to trial by content at gmail.com. Follow and subscribe to trial by content on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast

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Or capture sunkissed bliss. with limonada jolada, where zesty Brazilian lemonade accord meets coconut milk and golden brown sugar. Don't miss Sol de Janeiro's limited edition perfume mist collection, only at Sephora. Hello, and welcome to the Prestige TV podcast. I am Rob Mahoney, and I'm thrilled to be joined by my right-hand arm man. Rosny Lambre. What's up, Poz? I'm good, man, I'm good. We're wrapping up the clipped season, series, or actually series, period. This can only be one season, unfortunately, for all of us. But yeah, man, it was a dope ride.

I enjoyed it. Got me to think about a lot of things that I haven't thought about really so long in terms of, you know, the NBA and its power dynamics and, like, who controls what and who gets a say in what. And just, you know, just what it means to be part of, like, some mega corporation. and then get embroiled in what's so obviously a crazy scandal. It really did give us a lot of food for thought for six pretty quick episodes, a short and sweet miniseries,

but I'm shocked that you say you think this is the end. I don't think we're getting a Kauai Leonard season two of Colt? The Paul George leaves in Free Agency season three. Oh my goodness. The Doc Rivers firing. Oh, man, that would be a crazy one. It's an eventful franchise, one way or the other. The Chris Paul trade.

I mean, it's so. much that's happened since the end of this series, honestly. There really is. It never stops with the Clippers. And look, I want to get into this week's episodes in detail. We're going to talk about episodes five and six of Clipped. The final two episodes, as we've said, was. But what did you feel about your Clipped experience overall? You know, now that we've reached the end point, how do you feel about the overall arc

of this show? I think Clip had its flaws. A lot of people will let you know about it online. Not the most exquisitely cast show I've ever seen. The basketball portions were vommetrocious. Some of the guys, these unknowns that were, you know, tasked with portraying these NBA guys, like, forget the don't look like the guy. I don't think these are some of the best actors ever, you know.

I don't think Daniel Day Lewis is going to watch this in blush. You know what I'm saying? And all of that stuff aside, I just think this story has so many compelling elements that, you know, these are things that come up in our everyday society as Americans, you know, money and power. And, you know, how do you make yourself an upwardly mobile person in our society? what happens when you do reach the summit of your given profession? What do you owe to those that aren't there? What can you even do from that perch? You know, like this series actually kind of smartly asked a lot of these questions,

which I found fascinating. So I thought this show was more than worth to watch. Yeah, it's hard not to admire how much Gina Weld and the writing staff and FX brought to this show when it could have been a purely salacious thing. It could have been strictly the, you know, here's the TMZ story, we're going to show all the ripple effects,

we're going to show all this kind of soap opera drama, but it has a lot of big ideas on its mind, and it is very watchable through and through. And I think that combination alone is a show worth watching. But let's start with some of the ideas, because I think a lot of them manifest through doc's storyline over these last two episodes and through the player storyline

over these last two episodes. And Doc, who were told repeatedly, is the quote unquote, perfect coach to meet this kind of controversy, right? Even though we see him basically being anything but a coach, he's a PR professional now, he's a CEO, he's an HR consultant. A lot is falling on Doc Rivers at this point in NBA history

and certainly at this point in the story. Yeah, and I think it's important to interrogate that question, that assertion, honestly, because if it's one thing I do remember at the actual time of events is that people were generally impressed with Doc Rivers' management of the crisis as putting on

the public face. Right? And Doc doing well, depending on what side of any given part of this you stand on, you know, there are some people, especially black people that I know in particular, who would say, you know what? It was bullshit that he talked them in the plane.

You know, like Doc as a black man should have told these dudes to go out and essentially be freedom fighters for this cause. And it becomes murky what the actual cause is when you really sit back and think about it, when you think that like, yo, we can't play for this guy and the actual mechanism that was used to get him out. like his family and his trust gets $2 billion, his wife gets 12 season tickets. I mean, like, is that what we were fighting? That's what justice looks like, apparently. That's what I'm saying.

Like, this idea that like, you know, they should have done something. I'm like, given the constraints, what were they actually able to do? And I think that's the interesting part about the series is that they keep actually asking that question. Like, what does it all even mean? for us to take a stance? Or what does it mean for us to take a hit in public as, you know, sort of docile Negroes or whatever?

Like, they're constantly asking, like, what is your actual role as Chris Paul, you know, even by this time? Damn, they're 10-time NBA All-Star, you know, pitchman, blah, blah, blah, proud black guy. What is your actual role in this? You know, in terms of prosecuting, you know, your employer because of what it means for his, you know, his scandal,

what it means for his scandal to affect how you operate as a black guy in this industry. Like, this is, like, fascinating stuff to me. Yeah, over the course of these six episodes, a lot of the player characters have kind of fallen into the background or kind of fallen into a group, we'll say. They're kind of a collective locker room. We see the kind of the decisions and the arguments

and the shenanigans and the bits and all of that is well and good. Chris Paul is the one figure who kind of is aside from that. And I think somewhat in a pointed way, you know, he's the last person invited into their little slumber party to watch the Donald Sterling interviews. He is a figure with this team and with many NBA teams who has always been a little bit separate from some of his teammates, has always kind of drawn a line with his personality

and how confrontational he can be. But in this case, I think it's because he is sort of the veteran stand in for this sort of perspective. And the conversation that Chris Paul and Doc have at the end of this show where Chris kind of confronts Doc about this idea of the fact that he wishes Doc would have let them stay mad.

I thought it was a really evocative idea. And to your point, not only are they confronting these ideas, they're not bringing them up and then letting them drop. It's something that the characters like our Chris Paul surrogate here are wrestling with every single step of the way. What I do think is odd is that we don't even really see the version of the protests that the Clippers do engage in, right?

the thing that they actually did on the court was they made this whole display of like taking off their shooting shirts and throwing them at half court. They were wearing all their clippers logos inside out. It was not the boldest protest as things go. We don't even see it in Clipped,

but they do discuss it and talk about it. And did that strike you as a little odd? The fact that we didn't even really see their display? I mean, not really. the conversation is more interesting than watching a bunch of guys, you know, take their jerseys off and throw it in a basket, right? Like, I just don't think that's a compelling visual. And if you remember, Rob, at the time, it wasn't. It wasn't a compelling visual. Nobody was like, oh, wow, that is a powerful statement. Like, you know, it was not the 196 Olympics. Let's let's put it that way. I just think,

think the conversation between the guys is important because there's a way that this show could have painted what they were doing in a sort of Remember the Titans kind of way. And by the way, Remember the Titans is actually one of my favorite movies of all time. Like, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a movie I've seen probably a hundred times. But if you don't know the story, it's like they integrate this school in Northern Virginia. Of course, the black kids and the white kids don't get along. and they have a black coach, you know, football camp starts, and they're a divided bunch, and then slowly but surely,

they all realize that they're in it together, and they put the racial differences aside, and they win, and blah, blah, blah. And it's this great, very tight, neat racial story, you know, about this team, and obviously what they're trying to say with the movie by proxy about America. Yeah, right? Also, it turns out very much stretched

from the idea of, quote, quote unquote based on a true story. The actual events, not so neat, not so tidy. Not so neat, not so tidy. And I think there's a way that the clip could have did that. Like, you know, somebody, you can imagine the Chris Paul figure saying like, guys, we're supposed to blah, blah, blah, blah. And we're supposed to stick together. And it's bigger than that.

And this is what we're going to do. What you actually got is guys like the Matt Barnes character being like, yo, this shit don't really matter. Like, what we do does not really count. Like, they're still the owners of the league. Those guys are still going to protect one another. These guys, like, we can't actually do anything in our positions as place. We can make signals and we can huff and we can puff and we can get the internet and the general public to think that we're, you know, freedom fighters and God damn. Black Panthers, but realistically, we cannot do anything.

I thought that was an interesting choice to even position that as a thought coming from guys on the team. And to position Doc's ability to smooth things over as both a real talent, but also kind of a tragic flaw, right? Kind of the thing is his talent is making people comfortable. And we get that idea confronted pretty directly. I would say much more directly than I ever would have expected from a show like this through Levar Burton, who

as far as I know from a storytelling perspective, is he a figment of Doc's imagination? Is he a fairy godmother kind of character? Yeah, he might be Bruce Willis in a sixth sense. He might be, but he is showing up in this way, frankly, an ingenious bit of casting to talk with

Doc about this idea of being a quote-unquote safe black man. And I'm curious how that conversation sat with you was about the way these things get sanded down in the sort of presentations that people like LeVar and people like Doc kind of put themselves into sometimes. Yeah, I think there's always this tension.

And, you know, the more you do well in life as a black person, you become more successful. Obviously, I'm nowhere close as rich or successful as LaVar Burton and Doc Rivers. But the more you ascend, the more you talk to more black people who are upwardly mobile people, there is this idea of how do you express, how do you express, your understanding of your racial history, not only just your racial history,

but our racial present, let's face it. Obviously, we're not completely out of the weeds with race. That goes without saying. How do you choose to express that as a successful black person? Because there's something that's, like, your success is in tension with the story that many black people want to own, even after they become successful.

It's the story of pain and violence and, you know, for some shame, although I don't subscribe to that feeling, but whatever, there are some black people that feel shame about what's happened to black people in the past in this country. And, yeah, some people aren't sure how to express it as a successful person. And I think Doc's whole thing, which, by the way, I don't mind putting my cards on the table. I don't personally condemn this whole

never let them see you sweat mentality. This whole, I'm going to hold my head up with pride. I'm not going to let these people see me wounded. I'm not going to let them wound me publicly. I'm not going to, like, I'm not going to let you see my lashes, so to speak. I'm not showing you the scars. There's a conversation with him and LeVar too in this episode about not only doing that for the public,

but doing it for your kids, doing it for your family, too, and presenting a kind of poise and strength, even to the people who know you best, know you better than anybody in the world. And there's another kind of, you know, blackness performed by elite black people in the public sphere, especially, where I'm sorry, man, it's hard for me

when a guy is, you know, a 10 millionaire, a hundred millionaire, he's constantly invoking slavery. Like, you really want to be that kind of dude in your perch? Like, I think there's a sort of, and I think the show, again, that's why I give the show credit for this, this sort of racial ventriloquist idea when it comes to black eliteness, meaning these guys who nobody elected, mind you. Like, nobody in Black America elected Chris Ball to be a racial representative. Or Doc Rivers or LeVar Burton to be our racial representatives in the elite. Right? So the idea that they're the ones that should be sending cues to us as to what we should do and how we should feel. Right. That's why I don't have a problem with Doc Rivers being like, this is how I want to handle it. As a black person and the masses of black people, I trust their instincts in terms of how they should feel about Donald Sterling. Whether Chris Paul or Doc Rivers are mad about it or not, black people out in the world can read, listen,

Watch this man speak, see the whole story, and know how they want to feel about it. I think there's this idea that these guys need to go out and perform what the feeling should be so that the rest of us down below can take our cues, right? And I think that's the tension these guys are dealing with where it's like, yo, as a, you always hear this shit. As a prominent black person, what's my duty to the race or to the cause? And again, in this case, the cause is what? Donald Sterling no longer owning an NBA team. Like, it's not an actual cause for the masses of black people

who are still struggling in this country. And not only him having to sell the team, but getting richer for it for maintaining a lot of the benefits from it. And what players like Chris Paul and figures like Doc Rivers and everyone who was in and around the Clippers orbit at that time, they're having to put up a projection and a defense against the idea of Donald Sterling that everyone is reckoning with and understanding and maybe seeing in a different light for the first time,

they're also having to respond in that moment to all of these little developing pieces of that story, including we get the interview circuit that Donald and Shelley and V. Stiviano all go on in their own ways to kind of tell their version of events. So we see Shelley and V, their interviews with Barbara Walters. We get Donald's interview with Anderson Cooper,

with eyes like a bald eagle. I was like a bald eagle, he tells us. I thought they did a pretty good job capturing the vibe of those interviews. And in particular, whoever was responsible for the soft glow fuzz of the 2020 interviews deserves a raise. I thought that was immaculate. What was your takeaway from kind of seeing fake Barbara Walters, which honestly might be the best doppelganger we had on screen all season? Fake Anderson Cooper. And like, these are very specific moments in time for people who follow the NBA close.

can still imagine and hear in my head some of the lines from those interviews. I'm curious how they struck you seeing them kind of recreated here. Shelly Sterling stuff doesn't sit in my mind's eye because she did a good job of not making waves, right? Like, I forgot she even did a public appearance. The Vista Viano and Donald Sterling, I mean Donald Sterling, the Magic Johnson part, like that, that is forever seared into my brain as having heard, like when he's like, he's got AIDS. Yeah. Like, it's just so, like, that is a moment I just will never forget. And of course, Vista Viano, like, actually hearing her voice, hearing her talk,

what felt like so many delusions of grandeur on her part, at the time, it felt like a clown show. It felt surreal, dude. Like, it felt, like, out of place with how public figures comported themselves, even 2014. It's just, people were just so much more polished, even by then. And just this idea that Sterling would be that unhinged on CNN with Anderson freaking Cooper, no less, right? A freaking Vanderbilt, you know, like, it's just, it was just crazy to be reminded of how out of time that stuff was. Like, again, you know, the stuff with the dude, I think, I forget who the guy was.

I guess he worked for the Dodgers. that was like 88 where he was just like the black people don't possess certain facilities you know basically like not smart enough to play certain positions

that was like 80 that was like already 30 years before this like just the idea that a powerful white person in a who's in

partnership and business with a bunch of prominent black people would go on TV and unprompted just be this unhinged and racist, it felt out of its time. Even in 2014, it was like, this is nuts.

You know, and that feeling, man, of watching that whole thing come together. That's what stuck with me is like even in 2014, that felt like something that was completely insane. Yeah, I hesitate to call the Sterling situation a cancellation because in a way that's true, but he also made off like a bandit from all that. Yeah. But there was something that rang very true and very familiar about seeing that interview play out again of someone who is being publicly held to account for something that they've done. And their gut defensive response is to turn themselves into a martyr. Sterling's own portrayal and characterization of himself in this show is as a truth teller, as the one person who's calling everything as it is, who's not playing by the niceties.

And my God, when have we heard that since? You know, that's not like that's an entirely foreign concept to us with public figures at this stage. V, by comparison, is just talking herself in circles. And that was what was so weird about that interview from the moment it aired was her characterizing Donald as a father figure, as her best friend, talking about him in this way where it's like so clear that they have this odd misshapen relationship and her trying to actually draw a picture of what that looks like on TV where everyone can, understand it. And even to this day, I can't really say who they are to each other. It's just, it's such a baffling thing. I mean, but again, it's not hard to understand when you consider

her position, right? Where it's like, man, this guy can still maybe one day be in position to help me in my life. He even does that as she's walking into the interview in this show, basically saying, if you take the fall for this, I will take care of you for the rest of your life. Right. So confronting the reality of just like, man, It's a scary, like, I'm turning my back on somebody who could change the fortunes of my life with a snap of a finger. I think that's the hem and horn you see. And by the way, we see the same thing as Shelly Sterling. Oh, yeah.

Right? Like, she doesn't always act so decisively in all of these moments. It's not as if she's just like, oh, I'm signing a divorce right now. Like, she understands she's hitched her wagon to this person. And, V, like, that's the craziest part about all of this. is that if she was a more savvy actor, an individual, I mean, honestly close. You mean, be the real life person. Yes.

If she were a more savvy individual, probably none of this gets out. Donald Sterling probably still owns the clippers. Or at least his family does. And like if she were savvy and cynical and cold and calculated enough to just extort the life that she wanted for herself from these people. Do her, and everybody does their best to keep this quiet. Nothing happens. And again, and we talked about this before,

that doesn't, and that doesn't even erase the actual horrible history that existed. It's that none of that shit that tangible, horrific history of Donald Sterling would have got his team loss. It's just like, bumbling, full of a schemer. All that stuff was well known and on record and public knowledge to anyone who cared to look and it did not get him bouncing in the league.

It was not an issue. It was this mistake basically that got him out of there. That, you know, it just just fascinates me, man, watching these last two episodes like, man, this thing didn't even have to happen. Like, Vista Vian is clearly not somebody who's been like extorting and extracting resources from people and all of this stuff for her whole life. She was in over her head. And it's that very nature of like her, you know, basically her deer in the headlights nature

that made it so that this thing could explode because it couldn't be handled correctly. And if anything, the version of Shelley Sterling that we get in this show projects the deer in the headlights, projects the like, oh, yeah, innocent old woman who's being taken advantage of who isn't guilty of her husband's crimes until now. And look, I would like to apologize because in our previous episodes, I thought Shelley was treated pretty generously by the conditions of this story. And it turned out that all of that was in service of a bit of a villain turn here in the last two episodes, where not only is she shown in a very different light and kind of confronted pretty directly by her friend for everything that she's done here and all the similarities that she has with her husband.

And the fact that she's been working to clear his name, that she won't actually get divorced from him, as you said, that she basically goes after V's duplex just to be vindictive about it. Not because she needs it. I mean, hell, they just got $2 billion. There's absolutely no reason they need to do that. But she is this kind of person. She is this kind of shark.

And she's been hiding and playing her part and she knows how to do it to a T in a way that clearly V does not. V is not as versed in this game as she is. I mean, this is just how people, individuals, tend to operate around power. that's just what it is. They tend to suck up to the power while they're around it.

And then once it's safe, they'll be like, yo, you know, that thing was a lot more messed up than I let you guys know while I was around it. I mean, think about all of the freaking books that have come out of Trump world. You know, where it's like after the fact that they're like, oh my God, the country could have been on fire and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But while they were in the job, while they were in President Trump's orbit, while they could still benefit from proximity to him, not a peep. And the fact that the universality of it, Rob, lets me know that it's not people, that individuals making evil choices. It's just this is how power will bend in individuals' will in one direction every freaking time, right?

And Shelley Sterling, to me, although sad to look at how, you know, thirsty for power an influence she is, it's not altogether surprising. You know, Andy Rosa, where he's talking about, hey, man, they got me from out of undergrad, 30 years, he got me, made my life in this business. I'm supposed to just individually kamikaze this thing. Are you out of your mind? You know, and down and down and down the line we went.

And so, yeah, like, they did make Shelly look pretty freaking bad in the finale. She looks pretty nasty, vindictive, greedy, power hungry, all of that stuff. But me, like, it's hard for me to cast too many judgments. Of course, the racial discrimination and the housing discrimination is horrible, has real life consequences unlike pretty much 98% of this clipper shit. But, like, do I think that she behaved in a way that is outside of the Overton window of how most people behave around? power? Yeah. I don't think so. Yeah. I think that's where, as you mentioned, Andy Roser and his speech about Mr. Stirling has been good to me being kind of the prevailing

sentiment around that office and the complicity of those sorts of mindsets. Ultimately, it's a lot of people behaving selfishly, as you said, until it's very, very, very, very safe to come out. And only then might they finally see something. But I still appreciate that they actually went there with Shelly and that they showed this side of her. I mean, sometimes just for straight comedy, like, look, Shelly and her friends complaining that tomatoes are a diuretic, I'm just like, I'm here for the writing, I'm here for the good time. But also getting her dressed down in a way, now, is it a little blunt?

Is it a little over the top? Is it a little direct in terms of telling us exactly how we should feel about Shelly Sterling? Sure. We have six episodes. There's only so much room for subtlety in a miniseries and a show like this, especially one that, as we've alluded to, is confronting a lot of much bigger and loftier ideas that need time and space to untangle. And so if some of the tradeoff for that is we have to be a little to the point about Shelley Sterling, then so be it. One of the things that I did revisit was coming out of this was the New York Post article that Shelley and Andy are kind of engineering as they're trying to create a defense for Donald Sterling.

And if you remember they're coming up with this idea of like they can plant with a sort of, at the New York Post, the realities of Donald Sterling's prostate cancer and the toll that it's taken on him to explain perhaps some of his bizarre behavior. Maybe it's the illness. Maybe it's the trauma. Maybe it's the medicine. It all, that article is exactly what you expect it to be. You can find it online. It's from Linda Mozarella. One detail it does have that I was not aware of was that during this time, Donald and Shelley had apparently, they were so paranoid that they hold themselves up in one of their office buildings that they owned because the walls of the office were cement were concrete and so they could be easily swept for bugs. That's how shook they were

by some Bees' voice recordings. Yeah, that's incredible. I'm glad you actually went back and checked that out. But again, that's one of the cool things about the show is the corporate intrigue, man. Like the freaking every, every faction of this having a dedicated crisis manager, right? And it's like, no, you say it this way. And no, you follow up with this. And no, you don't mention that. No, it's like the management of this in terms of PR, which obviously we work in media, it's squarely within our like job in our realm of like understanding and our knowledge base of how.

things get painted to the public, right? Watching the sausage get made here in terms of, oh, well, he's got cancer. Yeah. You know, because that'll win him some sympathy points. It's just, it's fantastic. But again, this is all real. This is what goes into the things that we read,

that the public is able to consume whenever powerful entities allow us, quote, unquote, behind the curtains. Just know, man, that they're shining. in your ass, man, every single time, damn there. And that's one of the lessons, too, that I think people should take from the show. It's like, bro, like, whatever these public figures are saying to you, bro, just assume,

unless they're Donald Sterling, that this thing has been PR, consultant, crisis managed to death. Okay, always assume that you're being sold a bill of good, when public figures come out with quote-unquote mea copas and all of that stuff. I hate to be that cynical.

But, like, I love that part of this show. Well, it certainly felt that way when Doc was pressed to pick up the appropriate font from the WeR One, aka focus-grouped, nonsensical, very sanded-down messaging that became kind of the clipper slogan during that time.

Look, it's against a black backdrop. It's symbolic, you know? That was quite a thing to see. Yeah, again, just know that even the font on that freaking T-shirt was, yeah, let's figure out the best way to angle, what's the message going to be, like, down to the freaking font. So that goes without saying before we get to like the details of the information that they actually, you know, get to release to us, you know, down here at the bottom.

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visit the website for full terms and conditions. I thought the Adam Silver appearances were quite interesting. Interesting. One of like a couple of almost newish characters that we got during these last two episodes. We had heard Adam's voice over the phone, but he's much more of our presence here. So I have a question for you, Rob. Yeah.

No one with 10 years on from the Adam Silver regime, right? Like it's been 10 years now, which is crazy to think about it. Really is. If Shelley Sterling couldn't just basically push Donald Sterling to the side and force him to take $2 billion from Steve Ballmer. Do you think Adam Silver could have actually whipped up the votes to get him kicked out? I do not. And some of that was even the ownership response at the time.

We talked about it on a previous episode and it was shown in Clipped, Mark Cuban, for example, saying this is a very slippery slope of holding owners to account for the things that they've said in private. I just don't think it would have had the votes. I think it would have gotten very nasty from a legal standpoint. and maybe after years and years of litigation, they could have bounced him from the league in some way. But really, the magic bullet was not just Shelley Sterling,

but effectively being able to prove Donald Sterling incompetent and unable to execute on the family trust. Without her participation in that way, in the context of this show, she portrays as a very selfless thing. She gave it up for the players, but also the VIP access and the tickets and the billions of dollars and being officially ordained as the Clippers number one fan,

which is a very true thing that is somehow real. The fact that without her participation and this sort of testing, the NBA wouldn't have been able to execute on this, I think shows how fickle some of the moral stands of corporations like the NBA really are, right? They are in partnerships with billionaires who have all sorts of opinions on all sorts of things. And most of them are not very NBA friendly if they were really to put them out there. Yeah, look, I've been saying this for a while. And, you know, I've said this on a couple of our other shows, but I'll say it again here.

After 2016, when LeBron won the championship and campaign for Hillary and she couldn't win Ohio. Tough. They're very tough scenes. Like, when you think about the, like, championship, in Cleveland and like how big of a deal legitimately huge sports story, huge obviously Northeast Ohio story, whatever, that he couldn't deliver it. Not that like probably any athlete could. It just got me to thinking just about, yes, I think LeBron can open up a school in his

hometown, get it funded, provide resources for the kids in that school. And LeBron as an individual can go out and make some change happen in a community where he's from because he's mega rich. He's mega well connected. And it's a very focused and pinpointing some issue for a certain amount of people in a certain community. I think these guys have the capacity to do that. I do not believe, say, something as contentious as abortion, an NBA as a league, LeBron James as a figure,

or NBA as a collective, like the players can go out and actually affect change on that front. Maybe I've become too cynical in my old age. I've really come to believe that, like, I don't know that these dudes can do that shit for real. It's a lot to ask of them. It's a lot to ask of anybody in any public position, especially someone whose primary trade is just being an athlete.

Right. And also you have the also added thing where it's like, should they really be alienating their audience? You know, even in the NBA, man, I would say like 40, 30 to 40 percent of the audience are quote unquote right wingers. Like, is it really, like, why should they be doing that for something they can't actually change? to butcher some PR sort of or get certain influential people with microphones to be like, clap.

They did this really symbolic thing and we should start clapping for them. Like, I don't know. You know what I'm saying? Because again, even if they didn't play, even if they went out of their way to be like, no, we're taking a stance. And you know what? Maybe collectively. I think collectively NBA players could have actually got Donald Sterling kicked out of the league.

Yes. I do. It would have to be a big enough collective. Because we've seen, even if one game is protested, the Milwaukee Bucks did this, for example, it can only accomplish so much. It has to be pervasive league action. Right. So if all the players came together,

I think they could conspire to get an owner to no longer own a team. I think so. Again, this is their industry, their jobs. I think they have the power to push an owner out for something like this. again, what change in society this is actually contributing to? I don't think any at all whatsoever, but I think they could do that. But save for that, man, I just don't know. You know what I mean?

And just the idea that like probably Adam Silver couldn't have got this shit done without Shelly Sterling. Like that for me was one of the downers and sort of reality pills I had to swallow watching the end of this. It's like, man, this shit was kind of. At the time, it felt like this big triumphant. Adam Silver said, band for a life. And we all were like, hell yeah, they got his ass down, got his ass to fuck up out of here.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, it felt like that at the time. But like with the benefit of hindsight and knowing how these guys operate in the shadows when it comes to protecting each other, man, I really don't think this guy would have got ousted. No. I mean, Adam Silver and the league office more generally are serving three different constituencies. They're serving the ownership class of the NBA. They're serving the players who are in the league.

And then they're serving like a vague corporate PR interest of the fan base. Like not being so offensive to the fans of the league that people will come watch games. The problem with Donald Sterling is not that he said something racist. It's that he said something racist in a very public and very loud way that became a public problem and became a problem for the players as we've addressed. And so most of the time when the league tries to resolve this stuff or tries to kind of put itself between, let's say, the interests of the owners and the interests of the players or the political inclinations of the owners and the players, it's much subtler. It's something like, you know, conspicuously, around

2016, NBA teams just stop staying at Trump hotels. It's just a thing they stopped doing. No one really announced it. No one really talked about it. They just stopped doing it. That's usually how a lot of the business in the league is handled, unless it's a big PR moment. And that's exactly what this was. They require that sort of corporate response. And we've talked about, the philosophical discussions and realities of the athletes and the black men who are in that position to decide what they want to do with whatever platform they want to claim for themselves. We've talked about the corporate interests now with the league and how everything is handled within the Clippers and within the NBA office.

There's also the very just individual human side of this. And it was striking seeing specifically Shelley and Donald basically go back to their normal life. They just have dinner with the Las Soros again at the end of this show. And meanwhile, Vista Viano, who I would not say is a particularly relatable character in a lot of ways or a very humanized person. She is such a strange figure. But I'm being honest while I was like watching her

in her pretty much emptied out duplex, it hit me in an emotional way that I wasn't expecting. And I think that's just an incredible credit to Cleopatra Coleman who found some humanity in that character. Yeah, excellent. And, you know, as the last and learn there, the little guy's always going to get crushed. That's just, that's just obvious.

She's freaking scrubbing the outside of a trailer home with her, you know, her adopted sons, you know, at one point in the finale, right? Like, that's just a clear message. Like, you get in the arena with these powerful people and you are by yourself, you are going to get smoked. That's just how it goes every single time, right? And so, you know, like, again, there's definitely some emotional resonance with that. And again, I found Vista Viano, I don't want to say like sympathetic, but I understand the need to try to climb.

Like, it's not, you know, that doesn't feel like fucked up or cynical to me. That's just like basic human survival. And trying to use whatever talent, like here's a thing, folks, no matter what our parents told us growing up, Not everybody has the same amount of talent and skills and is born ready to attack the world and extract everything there is for us out there, out of the world. Not everybody has that. And so you got to work with whatever it is that you got, you know. And I can appreciate that she was trying to do that.

But yeah, it was pretty tough to watch her go back to being cooked, you know, scratching and clawing for everything. And these other folks who are so clear, like Donald Sterling is such a clearly. despicable guy and just basically come out on top of this. It's a hell of a message to watch. I mean, we watch Donald go after V in court.

When he is brought into her, Shelley and V have litigation against each other. And also Shelley and Donald have litigation against each other. In both cases, Donald's just absolutely ugly and vicious and merciless

to both of these women. And afterwards, they both are effectively crawling back to him. V, literally sitting on his front porch, Shelley still living with him, still married to him, refusing to separate from him because of everything we talked about, all the power, and plus the years of ingrained habit,

I think, of these people too, and the proximity and what it has brought them in their own lives. But to show us V as someone who can understand as being fundamentally sad and desperate and reaching for that kind of fame, I agree with you, not everyone has the same talents. It seems like V's own estimation of herself. is that her talent is trying to be Kim Kardashian.

Like that is what she aspires to more than any other practical application of anything. Oh, man. It's like invoking the Kardashians at every turn in this series. She literally tries to dress up like Kim when she goes into court for this episode. It's just like perfect. But yeah, just the idea that your estimation of yourself

is like one day I might be able to be a really popular. of reality TV star. It's tough, Rob. It's tough. It's truly tough. Did you, when you were younger, think one day you might be, I don't know, the next Skip Baylis, perhaps? Who did you think you were going to be the next whatever?

I didn't think I was going to be the next anybody. I think to the extent that I had any similar delusions of grandeur, it would be like elementary school, Rob, watching who once. to be a millionaire hit for the first time. And it's like, maybe I can do this. Oh, yeah, I can kill this. You know, maybe I can absorb this trivia. And I can be the guy stunned on the million dollar question.

That's what I'm trying to aspire to out here. Did you have any other thoughts about the random NBA odds and ends of this episode? We don't get any basketball, but we do get a lot of, you know, time spent with the players. We get, you know, for example, Jamal Crawford, his bachelor party is going to play basketball, something that is extremely Jamal Crawford's shit if you know anything about him as a player.

Yeah, he's a hoops head. Did anything else jump out to you about the player elements of this episode? Again, we saw the Oklahoma City Thunder on the floor for the first time. We get some more time with Elgin Baylor. You know, I will say like, trying to find a body double for Kevin Durant,

bless whatever casting agent even tried. It's tough work. But did anything stick out to you from a player or NBA perspective in these episodes? Not really. again, everything is like being a freaking Hooper, these people who are in these highly

specialized jobs, right? Like, I don't want to compare these dudes to heart surgeons or whatever, right? But like, they're very specialized in their profession. They've spent their whole life making themselves into the kind of people who could get millions of dollars,

for playing this sport. And watching them balance that truth, that reality with the demands of the fucking internet and social media and notoriety and the demands on being a racialized person. And also like, but aren't I supposed to be this? Isn't this like my whole life I've been taught

that this is the singular focus? you know, like again, all throughout the series, they've done it. But in this series, too, it was just like the balance of it. And I think watching relationally how players relate to one another on real life stuff kind of stuck out to me that it's like, yo, man, these dudes are a collective of diverse people. And I don't mean diverse in the superficial sense of who's black and who's white or whatever. Like, there are guys from Seattle.

Washington, North Carolina, you know, of different races, of different ages, of different regions of the country. Like, this is a diverse set of people. And, you know, they're brought in, they're plopped into this disaster. And them trying to find their connections and relations to one another as the group, try to build consensus and try to build like a united front. Yeah, that stuff, you know, is always going to stick out to me. Well, they're always going to have different motivations for all those reasons, different point in their careers, different things that they're playing for.

And I think that's where you get into the larger question of like, did the Clippers players do enough? Did they do enough in this moment when history really turned its eye to them? I just have such a hard time looking at them and saying they should have done something dramatically differently. Yeah, like, the idea that we missed the moment of some real civil disobedience here, I don't think so. It's hard to square that with the reality, man. One weird part of that, and tell me if your memory of this is different, we see a confrontation between the Clippers and the Warriors after Game 7 during these episodes.

We're basically, in addition to losing the series, Draymond Green basically challenges the Clippers for not doing enough, for not protesting enough. That felt like a thematic through line to me that may not actually be consistent with the way that, real people who were in the NBA would behave after just losing a game seven? Yeah, I don't think so. I don't think they were like... There was a fight for the record.

Like there were a near fight in the tunnels between the two teams. I just don't think it was about that per se. No, I could see there being a fight and in the midst of the trash talk, Rob, somebody being like, that's why y'all ran back and played for y'all racist-ass owners. Like some fucking slaves, fuck you guys.

Like, I can see... I can see... Just for embellishment, I could see something like that happening, but like the idea that like the reason they fought is because, oh, you guys, you know, you guys weren't Martin Luther King enough in this. I just know. I don't see that. That doesn't square with what I know about NBA players.

I don't think that was it. I'm not sure that's what that was all about. One more bit of NBA business we should at least comment on. I think it is incumbent on us to talk about this. the ringer's own Austin Rivers appears in this episode for the first time I don't know how you felt about this

I actually thought the likeness was pretty good in terms of the actor who they got to play Austin how did you feel about his brief appearance in the show I mean decent decent looking guy so at least you say oh they didn't put an ugly guy on me

you can say that didn't have much to say or do he kind of just stood there as Doc That was a doc moment Yeah, undressed Shelley Sterling I thought it was shoot, man Especially by the standards of this show 8 out of 10 casting

If we're being real It's all relative Hell yeah But we did it You know, I can't say I'm expecting A lot of other NBA-themed miniseries down the pipeline We've had now winning time as a full series And clipped as a mini-series

Almost back to back Do you think we're going to see Much NBA-related stuff? I think the problem Rob is the OJ stuff. I think that looms over everything because the freaking documentary

by Ezra Edelman is this shit is going to go down in history as literally one of these single greatest works of documentary film ever. Yes. And not just a defining document on OJ in that period of time,

but on the larger, like how do you even create a narrative around something like this sort of formula. Yes. So that and then the FX show was incredible. The fictional life shit was amazing. Like it was campy. It was kitschy.

But in times it was fucking super dead on and poignant and like stirring emotionally and like had some like interesting things to say about race and class and justice. and all of that stuff. Like, I think that's the show that's kind of looming over this thing. Because the people versus OJ could just fucking nail us in every single direction.

And, like, I've rewatched that show a couple of times. Like, it so insanely stands up. It's crazy. And so I think that's kind of what, it's like, yo, this shit just not as good as OJ, man. It's just not. It's hard to get indelible, hyper-famous, very public figures right, all the time. And I think, to Clips' credit, the core characters, right, the core kind of four main characters

this show. We can't say it enough. Appears in the nude in this episode, you know? Give it up to Ed O'Neill. He's the goat. He showed up. He absolutely showed up. I think they did a pretty good job with, as we said, some thorny source material, some, like a difficult tone to walk throughout these episodes.

And they tried to bring something genuinely honorable and admirable to it. It's just a lot. And it's a lot in a way that can be blunt, that can be obvious, that can be, you know, a bit to process, I will say, as a viewer from time to time. But I honestly enjoyed my experience with it was. Yeah, like, I would probably say a seven out of ten for me. I've seen audience score Rotten Tomatoes got 6.5. Like, for me, it's like a seven out of ten.

No regrets about watching this show at all. I'm sure I can see myself in three years watching a YouTube video spliced up of the funnier lines that appear on the show. So yeah, I'm happy we did this. I'm happy me and you got to do it specifically. So yeah, man, make sure y'all watch this finale, y'all. Yeah, no regrets watching it.

No regrets covering it. Thank you to Carlos Chiraboga for producing our episode today. Thank you to you, Waz, for joining me on this journey. And if you want to hear Waz and I both talk about the actual NBA more than we already have, Come hang out with us on the Ringer NBA show feed on group chat. And if you want to hear our colleagues talk about the next big thing in TV, whatever that is, stay locked in right here.

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