The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Clipped’ Series Premiere: Welcome to the Donald Sterling Soap Opera

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Rob Mahoney and Wosny Lambre lace up and hit the hardwood to recap the ‘Clipped’ two-episode series premiere. They start by sharing their initial feelings on the first two episodes, what makes the essence of V. Stiviano so difficult to capture on-screen, and the over-the-top nature of the performances (Laurence Fishburne’s Doc voice is certainly a choice) (1:38). Along the way, they discuss how the actual basketball sequences take away from the show (23:27). Later, they point out some of their favorite NBA superstar portrayals from the FX sports drama before handing out their own awards for Player of the Game and Most Uncanny Valley Moment (26:01). Hosts: Rob Mahoney and Wosny Lambre Producer: Kai Grady Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight. Which streamer is on the brink of collapse? And which executive is on the hot seat? Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who will never eat lunch in this town again?

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But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sales signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Hello, and welcome to the Prestige TV podcast. I am Rob Mahoney. And today, we are talking about the FX miniseries Clipped, a.k.a. the Donald Sterling Saga, a.k.a. Losing time. But first, let's give a big hand to the Clippers and America and Wosney Lambray.

Was, what's up? My brother, I'm good, man. I'm happy to be on. Anytime we could be and you could pod without the likes of Justin Varyer being on, I am extra happy. So I'm hyped to be up here, man. I'm also a fan of it. But if you would like to hear us pod with Justin and barrier. Check out Waz and I in group chat on the ringer NBA show feed every Wednesday, which is why we are here, Waz. We needed some real NBA sickos during this week where we don't have any basketball going until the finals start on Thursday. What did you make of our entry into Clift? We're going to cover the first two episodes today for this double premiere. We got a lot

to talk through, but what was your feel on the show? So, so many, too many feelings. One, obviously I'm local to L.A. and doing what we do, you are going to be connected to people who work for the Clippers or have worked for the Clippers, worked for Doc, have worked for Doc. Yep.

Like, there's all those connections. But just, you know, I just thought about, like, where I was at in my own life in 2014. I was barely pursuing a career in sports at that time. But I was still hyper-lifed. into this story, right? And so just bringing myself back to this time, back to this time before the Warriors were NBA champions.

Yeah. Back to this time where, you know, Lob City was this new, shiny thing that was changing the fortunes and the juju of an entire franchise. I just enjoyed going back down memory lane because I could so easily place myself in the moment. Yeah, I think there's going to be this middle ground for people

where it's, you know, is this too recent a story? for this kind of treatment. We've obviously seen kind of ripped from the headline stuff that's even more recent than this, but it kind of feels like yesterday, and at the same time,

I have lost a lot of the pertinent details to time. So I'm kind of looking forward to getting some of this stuff back and remembering all of the moving parts. I don't remember there being so many saunas involved, but apparently that's just what we're going to do on the show. Every time we need an exposition, Dublar Burton, come on up.

Let me tell you about the clippers. Goodness. Yeah, just so good. just the time, I love that they have the period-specific Instagram user interface, which cracked me up. So that's true to your experience. You're the scrolling perspective in this show. That's you keeping up with Sterling in real time.

Oh, yeah. Just the actual way it looked. I'm like, oh, my God. Like, that's how Instagram actually looked back in those days. And just, yeah, all of it kind of spoke and resonated with me, man. And again, 2014, I had not yet moved to Los Angeles, but I haven't been here for close to seven years. Obviously, I feel an attachment to the city. So, like, I'm approaching this as a Los Angeles story as well.

Like something specific to the city of Los Angeles. And so, yeah, man, I just, I'm all in on this thing. Yeah, lots of Los Angeles paraphernalia, the Let's Be Cops movie poster. You know, we're really putting ourselves in a time and place. I appreciate the commitment to detail. But I am wondering how we're going to feel about the show going forward. You know, episode one of any sort of recent nonfiction type endeavor, a fictionalized version of a nonfiction story,

it's going to feel a little Wikipedia summary out of the gate. And look, there's a lot of scenes in the opening episode of just explaining to people literally what the clippers are. Yes. To the point that I know why we're watching the show, I know why other NBA fans will watch the show. I am wondering if anyone who doesn't care about basketball is going to be plugged in on this.

Like, is the story of a rich guy being racist enough of a saucy pull for this kind of story? I think so because it's the classics of money, power, and kind of sex? Maybe, question mark. Which we'll get into at some point, which I thought was just like, whoa, what? Which I think came out at the time, too,

but I think the themes are universal, right? Vista Viano as a character, especially to me, man, living here for seven years. Like, that character is a person that I'm very familiar with. This striver, this person who is on the outer rungs

of elite L.A. society and is desperately trying to pull, grab, some might say, suck their way into said society. Allegedly. Allegedly would say. You know, and so, like, I feel a connection to that character. In many ways, I could say that about myself, you know, moving here. Which verb? Trying to pull myself. Okay. I just want to clear that up.

Rob, you better relax. You put it out there. I'm just trying to get the details right. Like, in many ways, I myself can relate to moving out here, having a dream, doing your best to achieve it, and trying to navigate what can sometimes feel like really murky waters in the city of L.A. and, you know, I guess elevated Los Angeles society, right? And so I think those stories and themes are universal, man. If people want to see it, open themselves up to seeing it that way. And we can talk about the way this story is told, who gets to be the sympathetic figures and who gets to be the villains and who gets to be the sort of in-betweeners and stuff like.

that, but I think those themes are universal to me, money, power, sex, you know, aspiration, all of that. And there's going to be some visuals that are just appealing, you know, hanging out by a pool in L.A. It's not a hard sell to get people to sit down in front of their TV to watch something like that. Obviously, as you're saying, the power, the parties, there's going to be some parts of it that are a little repulsive and are a little gross, and that's the Donald Sterling's story, but I want to get into the V of it all right off the bat. I think we can kind of go through the four really major characters of this show.

Vista Viano's our entry point, played by Cleopatra Coleman and Waz, I don't know what your experience was with this performance. I thought it was a decent enough job, but there's something that's very hard to capture about the pure unsettling kind of weirdness of the actual Vista Viano. Wikipedia'd her,

and I'm like, no, I've never really consumed any of her prior work, right? And I don't know. I think she's doing a good job of being The seductress with the requisite amount of vulnerability, insecurity, just not quite, like, there's a face that she's trying to put on. But I think the performance is letting us know that, like, this is not somebody who feels like they are, you know, some supermodel, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Like, I think the vulnerability is there, which I appreciate. Now, I don't know that anybody could nail the eccentricities of real-life V.

That's just, that might actually be impossible. How would you describe the real-life V for people who have never seen an interview or heard her talk before? I think it's a lack of self-awareness that borders on parody or satire. But in real life, like it's almost like when you would hear her talk and say the things that she was saying, It was like, she's not actually serious, but she would say it in such a way that there was that little bit of possibility like, no, this person doesn't think that all the things that she's saying or doing are completely ridiculous and insane. Like the, you know, the face, the huge face visor that's, that is, you know, Chekhov's face Pfizer in episode two. Like, there was just so much about the interview she gave. And I wouldn't call it unassuming.

I would just call it just an insane lack of self-aware. Like just a lack of self-awareness that you couldn't even fathom. Almost like an unsettling lack of self-awareness, I would say. And then she also has kind of a speaking cadence that's, you wonder what she's high on something and you're not quite sure what it is. And so here's the thing. If you make a true-to-life Vista Vianno character at the center of this show, I think it would wear out of its welcome very quickly.

And so a slightly more charismatic version that is still, as you're saying, a striver, still weird, still kind of like going after things that seem entirely unreasonable, and yet she's talked herself into them. Like, I think that's a pretty decent anchor character for this story, especially because I don't know that you want to put us with Donald or Shelly right out of the gate. And again, to me, Rob, honestly, as again, and I hate to keep invoking this, as somebody who's lived here and has met different kinds of people trying to get their leg up and whatever

they're pursuing, be it artists, be it dancers, be it singers, be it actresses. is there does take a certain amount of self-delusion to think that one day you will win a Grammy. What about a podcaster? Does it take any delusion to do that? I mean, does it take delusion to have an Amazon Prime account? I don't think so. You just freaking order some bikes and a laptop and you're good to go. There is a certain self-delusion that you have to participate in to believe that, like, you can achieve these things. Like, how can somebody move from Iowa? to Los Angeles with, you know, $5 in their pocket,

like every single other freaking actress or actor ever tells you about. And then that one day they're going to command $30, $40 million for a film. Like, you have to be a lunatic borderline to believe that you can actually do something like that. And I think that self-delusion, that self-belief actually lives within this character. And, you know, some people might listen to this and be like, was, come on, bro, like, this is not Shakespeare. This is, like, what are we doing here? Like we're making this person into fucking Hamlet or Banquo at least.

But like I really do feel like I'm getting that from this character. Well, let's go to the second most delusional character, who I would say is Doc Rivers at this point of the story. Takes the Clipper job with the impression that it's going to go great, that he's going to win a championship. We get the full data dump on all of Clippers history, including, I will say, a very precocious 11-year-old kid at an arcade who's talking shit to Chris Paul and D'Andre Jordan

like dropping bars about Danny Manning. I don't know how that kid knows about Danny Manning. Some straining of credulity on the various information drops that we have to have in these two episodes. But the important thing is the clippers are very bad. They've been bad for a very long time.

And they're run by a pretty despicable person. And Doc is our entry point into all of that world. Meeting the infrastructure of the clippers, meeting Andy Roser. I will say, like, Lawrence Fisher, I'm not going to be mad about him being in anything. It does feel like Fish took his voice

and just put it through a bit of a dock filter. Yeah, I wish he wasn't doing the doc voice. That's the only thing. He could just do his own voice. I think it would be more or less fine. It's almost not raspy enough, I think. We're in the middle ground. You need two more packs a day

to really get the dock effect. And shouts to the podfather, Bill Simmons, because he always has a pet peeve about Boston accents where it's just like, you either got it or you don't. And like, if you go with the half-ass approach, like, you're going to completely butcher it. So just leave it alone. Like, just, just leave it alone. Like, you have to be expert at

doing the doc thing to actually do it over the course of this series. And so, like, yeah, I wish he weren't doing it, but I'm not completely taken out of it, for sure. And another thing that I really liked about watching these first two episodes is spending all this time with Larry Fishburn and Ed O'Neill, two major 90s dads. Larry Fishburn for his role. And as Trey's dad and Boys in the Hood, obviously a 90s classic. Like, it's on the Mount Rushmore of Black 90s movies, for me anyway,

like easily. And Ed O'Neill from married with children, like, talk. Al Bundy, like, it's like, bro, 90s overload from me. And I'm just absolutely loving it. The Al Bundy comp is a good one for Ed O'Neill as Donald Sterling here

because he, He does have the Bundy thing going where he's almost too likable for this part. Yes, he is. Like, he's trying to sound like deranged, but... But he's cracking me off. He can't do it. He can't be crazy enough to be Donald Sterling. What, did you swallow your key?

Dude, Ed O'Neill is, he is... And I know we're going to get into our categories later, but, like, spoiler alert, bro. he is on a heater in these two episodes, dude. And I think a lot of the comedy is actually intentional. Oh, yeah. Like, because, again, for people who don't remember the story, like some of the racist things that Donald Sterling said on those tapes were the most vile racist things that I've ever heard a prominent figure ever say,

like, say for like George Wallace and some shit, right? At the same time, Rob, like, and I could say this as a black person, sometimes the cartoonish nature of his racism was just comical. I'm sorry, like, at one point, and it didn't come up in this episode, but he says to Vista Viano that he would rather she have sex with Magic Johnson, a guy who is tested positive for HIV, then show up to a basketball game with him. Like, I can't understand the derangement, the lunacy, the idiocy of that statement. Like, what, bro? And so I think Ed O'Neill is doing a good job of just like, this dude has been a cook. He was a cook for 30 years before this happened. And everybody knew it.

Yes, an open cook, right? Everyone in town, everyone in the NBA, it was not a secret. It was just protected in the way that these guys often are. But this is such a weird thing about this show where it is about despicable behavior, but it is overtly funny. You're like played for laughs in a lot of cases. And then also just over the top,

ridiculous and some other elements where, as you're saying, you can't help but laugh. It's, look, it's a hard tone to walk. And I think so far they're doing a good job of playing into some of the sopier aspects of that. I would say no more so than Jackie Weaver as Shelley Sterling, who is doing full on, like, stare at the camera, camera soap opera face in a very deliberate way.

I think she's really setting us where we're supposed to be from a tonality point of view. I think, yes. I think the show is sort of centered around her problems. As is the reporting, we should say. The reporting around the Donald Sterling tapes and saga was very Shelley specific, especially Ramona Shelburne's reporting for ESPN.com. It's safe to say Shelley was a source for a lot of the report. I think that's extremely safe to say.

I don't think we need to like, you know, it's obvious, okay? And when you're getting the details of the story, look, man, I'm not going to denigrate Ramona Shelburne or anybody else who does, you know, heavily access journalism is what they call it. For the kids out there who aren't nerds about this stuff, it's just the idea that, like, look, man, if you want to get information from power, there's going to be some level of compromises. And I think the compromises that Shelly Sterling gets to come out of this, being the slum lord, being married to the virulent, racist, crazy guy for all those years.

She gets to come out of this still seeming like a human being. Which at the end of the day, I don't really have a huge problem with. It's hard for me to be like, yo, like, save for like, you know, war criminals and shit like that. Like, I don't really come out of stories being like, yo, you shouldn't put a human face on that, you know? And so I don't have a major problem with it, but it needs to be said. The Shelley Sterling of it all is obvious to see that she's being handled in a way that, quite frankly, the other characters aren't. Like in a light that's more sympathetic than some might say that she deserves when you think about Blake Griffin or Chris Paul or Doc Rivers and like just like their flaws are just so like manifest in how they're described where Shelly's is like kind of foregrounded. And not just manifest for those guys, but reduced to kind of sitcom level like surface level obviousness.

Right. You got like ticks for Chris Paul. You got DeAndre Jordan's lizard. You got Blake Griffin kind of making the van. playing to be the captain of the team. It's very classic TV stuff. And look, we only have six episodes of this. You've got to get these characters very recognizable, very quickly,

to the people who don't know who they are, to the point that you're Jamal Crawfords and your Matt Barnes' is, sorry, guys, you don't really get speaking lines in episodes one and two for the most part. They're going to be background players right now, and we'll see how you play out. But you're absolutely right about Shelly. For the most part, she gets to say,

what? V has audio recordings of you? and look shocked into the camera, and then also be the woman who's just very worried about her marriage. Those are her two primary motivations at this point. And again, all of the stuff that they're speaking to, right? Just the idea that he's doing this publicly and he's embarrassing her and he's making her look crazy and what that might feel like to be somebody who's aging who doesn't feel like as beautiful as maybe you once did

and this guy's parading this younger, attractive person. I'm like, anybody could, like, relate to that and understand that. Yeah, especially when it's not just that sort of parading, as I'm sure you can see all around L.A., but the weirdness of Donald Sterling's behavior, bringing people into the locker room while players are getting dressed. Obviously, the language on the tapes. In terms of who should be coming out of this looking crazy, Shelley has a fair point that maybe it should not be her. Yeah, I mean, look, in that relationship, absolutely she has a fair point. And, yo, another thing I will say about Shelley Sterling,

like she is clearly a very savvy operator. She is nobody's fool, okay? And I'm talking about the show version of Shelley and the real-life version of Shelley when you realize that her husband was banished from the league, his franchise taken from under him, you know, of course, taken from under him for $2 billion, boo-hoo, cry for him.

And she negotiated courtside seats. After the $2 billion. Like, she was like, yeah, I'm going to still be in that Clippers Club. I'm going to still be one of the prominent people involved in the team, like involved in the atmosphere of the team in terms of, you know, my prominence at court side. Like, this woman is a savvy operator, man, and I don't think anybody should cry for Shelly Sterling. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help.

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One of the things for me where they're talking about why Doc wouldn't find this job attractive. it's like, bro, it's hard to explain with these actor athletes, but like the Clippers were an extremely talented team. As horrible as Sterling's reputation was and the history of the franchise was and the fact that they were second-race citizens in their own city. Like, Blake Griffin, young as he was back in 2014,

DeAndre Jordan, like, before we didn't get to Chris Paul and his accomplishments, before even getting to the Clippers. Like, we're talking about top three. MVP finishes, point God label already. Like, if you didn't know anything about basketball and you watched Blake Griffin and D'Andre Jordan, I think I said Aiton just now, sorry, D'Andre Jordan, apply their trade, no context. These guys, physical, graceful, incredible athletes, supremely talented guys.

So the idea that Doc Rivers would want to go coach them, it's not hard to understand. and you get to get paid top dollar at your top rate, and you get to live in L.A. Maybe second to top dollar. Sure. Well, he got pretty close to what his rate would have been, right? Doc did. This is true.

This is really the turning of the page in a lot of ways for the clippers of starting to level up in terms of actual compensation for some of these employees, including Doc, going out and getting J.J. Reddick, as we see in the first episode, J.J. Reddick, who, as we're told in episode one, is very online, you be the judge. Here's the thing about the Clippers' general portrayal

in this episode. I agree with you, Waz. It's not incomprehensible that someone to want this job. And also for people who aren't plugged in on the NBA at that time, it's kind of like a low-hanging fruit job.

It's a job with the previous coach who left a lot to be desired, and as you're saying, a lot of talent, a lot of obvious talent and athleticism where someone like Doc could come in and theoretically,

in any normal ownership situation, probably clean up pretty quickly. And yet this is what he walked into. And Doc made the beautiful point about, yeah, I won a championship at Boston, but everybody knows that's a world-class organization in all of American sports. Winning there, it's almost like, okay, that's what you were supposed to do. Whereas winning with the clippers, everybody would be like, holy shit, how to fuck did you do that? I think we are contractually bound to say that Doc Rivers in this episode says,

quote, the Celtics are the best organization in sports. Everyone knows that, end quote. Welcome to the ringer.com. This is what we do here, apparently. While we're talking about the basketball side of this rather than the soapy part of this, what did you think of the actual on-court Clippers versus Warriors series,

which apparently was relegated to NBA TV. I don't remember that, but maybe it was. It was better than average. I will say that. That's all I'll say about that. And I think part of it is not even known like an NBA standard,

just like a basketball playing standard. it was like a slightly elevated YMCA pickup game. Like a more serious YMCA pickup game. It wasn't like, you know, walking to some random playground right now with like a couple of 40-year-olds or whatever. It wasn't that level. But it was like a YMCA pickup where like these guys show up like two to three times a month. All of the guys that are playing is pretty serious.

They take it pretty serious. decent enough quality, but these are not guys that are good at hooping. No. And you could tell honestly by who the camera trusts to dribble the basketball. It seemed like basically

our fake Chris Paul and fake JJ Redick were the only people actually dribbling on camera for the most part. That's the way it's going to go. Some of that is going to be part of this. I think my issue

with some of the basketball was it was in that neither fish nor foul situation of it's not cut frenetically enough to make it feel fast. And as you're saying, the athletes on the screen, the actors on the screen, are not exactly the explosive in a way that's going to make it feel like basketball. So you end up with just kind of static Blake Griffin posting up standing there while DeAndre Jordan talks at him scenes. It's not great.

And then the other part of that, which I think is part, which I want to hear from listeners if they have any feedback on this. Because again, in my life, in my world, Jamal Crawford is a mega famous. celebrity person. Huge deal, yeah. Like, his face in my mind, like, he might as well be a family member. He might as, I might have will have grown up with Jamal Crawford. So, and that's not even to speak of Blake and Chris Paul and all of that. So when I see a guy portraying him and I'm just like, this looks absolutely nothing like him. Like, there's certain times where it does take me out of it.

It's like, wait a second. That's supposed to be Jamal Crawford. Like, that's supposed to be Draymont. Like, that's a, that's the only thing as a basketball sicko that, that's, dragging me down a little bit. It's like, these dudes look nothing like these people. Well, let's go through some of them, because I think it's worth asking what we want out of those performances.

They're obviously the ones that have to do more dramatic heavy lifting. If you're playing Blake Griffin on the show like Austin Scott is, I wouldn't say looks like Blake Griffin. He doesn't have the build of a basketball player, but there is something about his cadence, especially when he's... There's a Blake Griffin essence there. Yes. When he's riffing and doing jokes,

It sounds to my ear kind of like Blake Griffin. Sure. And I think you could say the same thing for Chris Paul, you know, harping on his son eating the cookies. Some of that is affect, some of that is characterization. But there's enough going on there where, okay, he doesn't look like Chris Paul. He certainly doesn't dribble like Chris Paul. I don't expect either of those things.

Can he stand in for Chris Paul to have a couple conversations with Doc Rivers every episode? I don't see why not. Yeah, I don't, the Chris Paul is fine enough. the Blake is fine. The DeAndre, I'm... I don't know about that one. Not a fan of the Deandre. And then, like, I'm just looking at some of these things.

Like, I'm on IMDB right now. And I'm like, oh, that was supposed to be Ty Lou? Yeah. Ty Lou and Alvin Gentry just lurking in the background. Oh, that was supposed to be Jared Dudley? Yeah, Jared Dudley's out there. Matt Barnes is out there. Oh, I'm like, oh, my goodness.

This is tough. Some tough looks for our guys. Some very, very tough. But again, like, these people are like, their faces are singed into our brains. That's the thing. We've spent so, me and you have spent so much time looking at these guys' faces, both in person and on our phones and computer screens that like, I guess it is. I wonder, I truly do wonder if the average person, like, is taken out of it by, by the portrayals.

Because, like, for me, I'm just like, wait, what? I would guess probably not. How much does the regular person really know by sight the exact contours of JJ Reddick's face in the way that we probably do? I'm going to guess they're not going to tune out on something like that. They probably would think it looks more or less like JJ, and I think that's a pretty decent performance too as these things go.

But let's go to one of our categories on this front was. I want to talk to you, player of the game, any notable moment or appearance from one of these NBA player surrogates. What caught your eye in this episode? For me, I mean, the play. player the game, just on pure performance of these first two episodes, like I said, it has to be at O'Neill, like not even, not even close. But that's almost too easy.

But somebody that I thought was excellent was Yvonne Pearson, I think is the woman's name. She's playing Davey. She's playing V. Stiviano's best friend. Oh, yeah. And she is the most sober-minded, almost like the audience. Avatar explaining what's going on

how Vee should play it like I've really truly enjoyed every single scene that she was in also she delivered the line you have been blessed with blue chip pussy

one of the greater lines that I've ever heard I thought there was a 200% chance you were going to say those words on this episode you know me too well Rob so yeah definitely at O'Neill in terms of

he is on a heater. He's, he, like, he read this script and was like, oh yeah, I got this. This is easy. And yeah, Yvonne Pearson, man. Like, I'm not, I've never seen her in anything. I just thought she was excellent. And that's a character you badly need for all the reasons

to articulate. If you're going to have delusional characters, you need someone to be like, wait, do you really expect any of this to go well? Wait, what are you planning to do right now? Right. The audience surrogacy, I think, is pretty important there. I want to go on the other side of this, notable. I would say in a less flattering way.

Kirkland brand Steph Curry. Was, I know this is a, I know this is a Clippers show. That is the most famous man in this show so far. Yeah. And this is the best you got.

You got like basically vintage Mark Jackson trying to play Steph Curry. Crazy. And I wonder, I wonder what that is. Like if you just couldn't get, you know what?

It's hard. Like you can't get a bunch of basketball players to come be extras in this game and have them play basketball against actors. They can't be too good though. Like, yeah, it can't, like, because even if you went out and got some division two guys, Rob, I'm not even talking about you get the guy

that plays Arkansas Razorbacks. I'm talking about some, like, guys at Mercy College in New York, okay? Shout out to Mercy College. They would look too good next to these guys. So, like, what do you do? do you just go out and get a step look alike and pray that he can dribble the ball between his legs and behind his back?

It's a tough choice, man, because they're going to upstage these guys if real hoopers play with them. Yeah, there's a scene where V is in the luxury box getting served papers in the middle of these episodes where you kind of yada yada a lot of the on-court action at the end of it. You just hear someone over the PA going,

The Clippers have made the playoffs. I think we could probably be okay if we just move in that direction. of tell us what happened. Show us the newspaper headline. And we don't necessarily need to see the on-court product. Everyone involved might come off looking a little better for that. You know, get to it like later season Friday Night Lights is what I'm saying.

Minimize the football. Maximize the drama. We only have six episodes. We have a lot of actual plot to get through to tell this story. Yeah. And also like we saw the movie hustle not too long ago where like real NBA players are filmed hooping. and it's just, it's tough, man. But again, I do wonder if the non-MBA head watches those scenes.

It's just like, oh, it looks kind of fine to me. It's not the end of the world. Are we too close to this? Are we the doctors watching Gray's Anatomy? Is that what we're doing? Definitely. We definitely are. Definitely are.

Because I would imagine, like, you know, I watch some of this with my girl. Don't kill me, FX. I let my girl watch the screeners, okay? I know we're supposed to, you know, we're holding. and the CIA trade secrets here. We're trying to broaden up the demographic data so does it let FX know what different groups are thinking? That's all we're doing.

But yeah, there's no way she noticed a considerable drop in basketball quality when those scenes came up. You feel me? So, yeah, I think that is an us thing. I think the only reason I felt it too was coming off of winning time being the last thing I saw with basketball in it. And I don't think that's exemplary realistic basketball, but it's heightened and interesting and fun to watch in a way that feels a little more active.

Well, it's filmed really cool. That's what I'm saying. You're on the court. It's like a much more dynamic scene. And of course there's some like artistic liberties taken with what's happening there in terms of people like literally floating off the ground and things. So I almost prefer that. I almost prefer if we don't get the basketball or if we go a little bit zany with it. But we're in this middle ground so far with Clipped where, you know, look, points for having fake Clay Thompson guard fake Chris Paul.

Someone is clearly checking the notes, checking the tape, like understanding the matchups here. but it is what it is. Let's go to our next category was Uncanny Valley, the weirdest depiction in this story of this episode, or the biggest creative liberty. What are you thinking?

Creative liberty for me, and it was funny because this shit happened right off the bat. Doc Rivers, sure, they didn't send him a car to LAX. Doc Rivers,

Glenn Rivers, did not hop in nobody's Prius to take him to his office or his new home. I prove. promise you, that did not happen. And I'm skeptical if he flew commercial at all. It's a fair question.

To Los Angeles from either Florida where Doc has been headquartered for years or Boston, where he was obviously living as he coached the Celtics. So that was my favorite one. Like Doc is at LAX. He's schlepping through LAX as if he's Mia Rob Mahoney. And he's getting in- I'm never flying in L. L-A-X, Burbank to the day I die.

Well, that's nice. Actually, you live in that stuff, so that's not a hard flight to find. Yeah, just this idea that he's doing that and he's getting into somebody's freaking Prius. No, sir. No, thank you. Yeah, that I don't necessarily buy. Do I buy that the Clippers would welcome him with a deli tray? It feels true even if it's not true.

Yo, hold on. I don't know if you read, damn, I'm sorry, man. I'm forgetting who to attribute the reporting that was done on. the Minnesota Timberwolves ownership situation. Arod and Mark Lorry and all that. Yes, Arod, Mark Lurie and Glenn Taylor. And it was like, Glenn Taylor used to crappy ass catering in the media room. He's in the media room every single game.

Yeah, so I'm like, is it, and that's 2024. So, like, is it impossible to think that Donald Sterling was like, yo, let's get this guy some boar's head and, you know, pro volone on a goddamn rye bread and call it a day? I'm not completely ruling that out as a possibility. What I don't remember, and again, this may be just a matter of it, it was 2014, and this particular character detail, Waz, has escaped me.

Was Donald Sterling this into cheese? It's like his weird schick in these episodes where he's constantly asking about cheese on people's sandwiches. Is that Havardi? He paced the cheese off of... What kind of stick is... I feel like it's got to be real. How could it be just like a...

up shtick. Oh my God, dude. Yeah. Taking not even like, okay, not even like, yo, let me get a bite of your sandwich. But just picking at a piece of the cheese from someone else's sandwich is, who, next level rich guy bullshit.

What would you do if somebody picked at the cheese in your sandwich? My boss did it? I mean, I would definitely raise my eyebrows. I don't think of the type of person to be like, so you're really in the cheese. Like, I probably wouldn't say anything. I just be like, yo, this is. guy is, might be sick in the head.

Yeah, tells you a lot about a person when they start picking at your cheese. I do love, though, to that scene and many others, just like how weirdly and subtle, I say subtly, it's not so subtle, patronizing in general that Sterling is towards Doc, right? It's like in that scene, it's like, you know, kind of good for you, pat on the head type stuff when he's trying to exercise his authority. You're getting a sense of who these guys are in a somewhat cartoonish way sometimes, but you know, at least we're not completely knocking people over the head with it. Yeah, and I think, man, a different show could do different things, right?

I think a longer running show. That's the thing. Like, we zoom through the whole regular season in this first episode, because there's just not a lot of road here. Like, you got to get through the story and all of it happens, really coming into the playoffs. To me, there's absolutely a TV show just about the workplace environment of the Los Angeles Clippers. Definitely. Like, there's a show about that in and of itself.

the players relate to ownership and same goes for management and the coaches and the guys that have been there for 30 and some of them had already been there for 40 or whatever the hell it was years and like the new people and like how a culture gets built and like there's a show about that that obviously I would be super interested in and I thought some of the dudes like Kelly how do you pronounce his last name? O'Coyne. Yeah, Kelly O'Coyne. Dollar Bill. aka A.K. A.K. A. Dollar Bill. I thought he was excellent. Very funny in this. So good in both of these episodes. Um, bro from Madman. Oh, oh, the guy who plays like the PR flack.

Rich Somer. He plays Seth Burton. He cracked me up. There was like a lot of great humor in that for me. Like, yeah, Bleacher Report wanted to write about DeAndre Jordan's free throw resurgence. That's some, that's some deep cut humor for, just for us, Watson. And GQ wanted to write about JJ's haircut? Yes, I was tickled. Yeah, I just love the, just the depiction of the, the sycophants. Like, the kind of person you have to make yourself into in order to survive and, you know, basically keep a job in this environment. Like, that kind of thing actually would interest me.

Yeah, and as we go through this story, those characters are going to be put in the snow globe and shaken up. And, you know, we already see Andy Rose are just like scrambling around with the tape, trying to inform the appropriate parties, trying to keep certain people out of the loop. that stuff getting more and more hectic, I feel like is going to make the story more and more fun as we go. Any other things you want to highlight from the first two episodes that I think we should flag

for the listeners. I do want to say, man, as goofy as some of this stuff was, the locker room situation, the famous Donald Sterling bringing his season ticket holders in the locker room and touching dudes, biceps and stuff,

that was so icky. Like, I was actually made uncomfortable by that. Definitely so. I honestly pride myself for not getting too, jumpy, too jumpy at every single problematic racial thing that happens out in the world. But watching that made me wince in Queens. I was like, damn, man.

Like for everybody who had to experience it, you know what I mean? Like, not just for the players. And it was years and years of that behavior for the clubbers. Of that kind of nonsense, man. Like, not just the players, but even the coaches and the athletic guys and the, you know, the guys that work with the players every day to be in that position to be, like, made powerless in front of something that icky. Like I thought was, you know, incredible.

Oh, I was also skeptical of Doc buying his own groceries. He's got a, he's got an assistant for that. Yeah. You know, to your point about the Clippers employees and how gross that situation was, I am looking forward to getting Elgin Baylor back in the store. We only saw him in the produce department so far. He's got to be coming back to loom large over what happens. And that's someone who's certainly got to speak to kind of the institutional rot within the Clippers.

But yeah, that was really the one scene in the locker room. where the Ed O'Neill charm washed right off. And once he starts grabbing guys, touching Blake Griffin's face, it just gets really disgusting, really, really quickly. And one last thing that just made me feel older and made me feel nostalgic for a different way.

I think even in 2014, people could have the idea that something could be on TMZ and not blow up. That's true. You know what I mean? Like, the way they're talking about, like, oh, it's just on TMZ. It's like, no.

Like, if it's on TMZ, it's blown up, guys. Like, this story is global now. This story has reached every single corner of the internet now. Like, period. It's going to be on TV. It's going to be on your radio stations. It's going to be on everything. That felt very quaint for me.

Just like, oh, it's just TMZ's reporting it. This little gossip rag. It's like, no, fam. Once it's on TNZ, it's over. Also for journalists. practices. If TMZ has it, it's generally regarded as rock solid. That is as good as

fact for the most part. So I did think it was very funny the idea of what if this tape is a sex tape and how different history would have been if it was merely Donald Sterling and Vista Viano on a sex tape? By the way, I would have watched at least once. Just in the

interest of journalism, Rob. You don't have to say that on this podcast. You could just hold that with you and take it to your grave and no one would know. The people need to know. The listeners of Depressedee TV podcast need to know. Well, they certainly do now. But, yeah, lots of plot threads still up in there.

Obviously, we have the Shelley Sterling lawsuit. We're going to figure out there's all this looming drama within the Clippers. I think the Blake and Chris Paul stuff is stoked pretty heavily in these first few episodes. What else are you kind of waiting to see resolved here? Was anything, anything jump out to you in that regard? It's just a foreshadowing, man, of everybody being like, yo, Donald says, something or he got a tape coming. Like, everybody thinking that it was going to be this thing that blew over and what it

ultimately turned into, this was a big-ass story at the time, man. So, like, just the unfolding of how this story goes from, you know, cooky, weird, Donald Sterling to the biggest story in sports. And one of the biggest stories in American media at that time, like, yeah, I'm very curious to see how that unfolds on the actual show. Oh, definitely. And as we spill out of the Clippers, too, as the story gets bigger and bigger,

are we going to see other NBA figures pop into this story outside of the organization at the league office? I can't wait to see how it goes, Waz. Thank you to Kai Grady for producing this episode. Waz and I are going to be back. I believe recording kind of two episode installments. So we're doing one and two today.

We're going to do three and four in a couple weeks. We'll do five and six to wrap up the season. But also, Was, listen to you and I on group chat on the Ringer NBA show feed. You can edit out Justin Verrier if you want. Like that could be a feature that's available to you. Or just tune them out when you're listening to the episodes. I hear that's what most thoughtful, sane people do anyway.

So just do that. Do that. And let us know what you're thinking of clips, especially I would say if you don't care about the NBA and are watching this show. Hit us up on Twitter. Let us know what you're thinking about clips. Otherwise, see you in a couple weeks.

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