The Ringer NBA Show - Ep. 60: Adrian Wojnarowski

Episode Date: January 13, 2017

The Ringer's Chris Vernon is joined by The Vertical's Adrian Wojnarowski to discuss Mark Cuban's relationship with NBA referees (5:00), D-Rose's absence (16:00), potential trades on the horizon (24:00), LeBron's Eastern Conference dominance (32:00), Ice Cube's 3-on-3 basketball league (38:00), Adam Silver's open-door policy (42:00), and the origin of the "Woj Bomb" (46:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer NBA show, and today got a very special guest. He is the editor of The Vertical.com. You can also listen to this podcast, The Vertical Podcast, with Wojjjian Wojianowski. Nobody's more plugged in on all things going on in the NBA. We've got some big stories to talk to him about today. Hey, Adrian, thanks for coming on, man. Sure having me, man. Good to be here.

So you dropped one yesterday. Referees Union charging NBA's allowing Mark Cuban to wield power over refs via threats and intimidation. You were able to attain some documents that came out from the, I guess, documents you were not supposed to see, they're supposed to be internal that have been going on with the referees. When you first find out about this story, when you're reading through the documents, what are you thinking? Well, Chris, it's been, this has been an ongoing issue between, you know, the referees association, the referees union, the league office, and Cuban.

And the story is a little bit broader than Cuban. There's no question he was the headline. He is the headline to the story. But the broader story here is the referees feeling with Cuban front and center in this way, but others, that it's become open season on them. And the last straw, if you read through the memos and you talk to people, the last straw for them was January 30th in Houston when Doc and Austin Rivers were both thrown out of the game and given the language that the referee report indicated that Doc had used when he was thrown out

and then Austin not leaving the court kind of going back at the reps needing security guy and then JJ Reddick to come pull him off that there were no additional penalties there. in April, and I found this in my reporting, April 15th, the league issued a memo last year, calling for essentially an enhanced penalty that they had agreed that there had been an escalation in how people, whether it was owners, coaches, executives, players, anybody around that court area interacting with reps and that it had gone, that it was getting a little bit out of hand. and the league, but a lot of that conversation and sort of a walk up to that, and you see it in the memos and in my reporting, a lot of it was centered around the Referees Association complains about Cuban, and they list a litany of episodes,

courtside, at Maverick games with him and refs, that the union for the league to deal with it, and that memo, that directive from the league office in April, which was not public until I reported it. It stayed quiet, you know, spoke to a enhanced penalties. And they felt the referees association felt in the time last year after that, that it did calm down. It did kind of put people back on their heels a little bit. The Mavericks were also eliminated, you know,

they weren't in the playoffs very long. So that kind of put it to bed for last season. And then they fell this year. And it started up all again. There were incidents with episodes with Cuban, with Robert Sarver, in Phoenix, and, you know, the referees felt like they were, you know, you could see the, in the sequence of memos, their frustration with the league office. But the issues with Cuban go back a long time. This isn't new, but it has come to a head from the referee association's point of view. When they're asking for increased penalties, are we talking money?

Yes. I mean, essentially money suspensions just enhanced that, you know, there were certain types of behavior that was going to be dealt with more severely. And they felt like the river situation in Houston wasn't dealt with some of the ones. And you see it in the memos between Byron Spruill, who's the head of operations for the league and oversees the refs. And Leasium, who is the general counsel for the referees union. And you see it, and they're back and forth, that the league felt it didn't rise to the level. But the secondary issue, and I think more press-offrease, is their belief that Cuban has, that Mark Cuban has influence in the league office more so than other owners or certainly executives in the league, that he has impact in the high, in the termination of referees.

they felt like he played a hand in the termination of a referee named Kevin Fair, who was let go a couple years ago, who the union says met the league's benchmark in terms of the grading system and was let go. And remember, the union wants to protect their job is to protect their referees and keep guys employed. I mean, that's what their role is. But the feeling is that, you know, and if you see the verbiage from Lyceum, who charges Q. you've been with coming out and saying at different times, hey, you know, when he says to a

ref during a game, hey, I read your reports, meaning I see what you say about me. And that's, if you're a ref and you're wondering, well, if indeed Mark said that, you know, is that his way of telling me, I've got control over your, I can impact your employment, I can impact your future. Now, Mark says that's not the case. He wrote a pretty lengthy response that we posted on the site where he didn't answer all of them directly, but gave his point of view on A, some frustrations he had with appreciating and consistent, but more of his issue has been with management, the supervision, the management of officials,

how they're, I think the recruiting, the hiring, the improvement that goes on, and then who's managing them? I think he's a believer in that just because you were a good referee, and he says it's just because you were a good referee, doesn't mean you're a good manager of referees. And so I know he's certainly been, and he's not the only one in that area around the league. He's been the loudest about it,

maybe the most public about it. But others, you know, have looked at the process in which referees are pruded and, you know, and then how, you know, how they carry out you know, how they carry out within the league, whatever the mandates on points of emphasis, what they want, what supervisors, what the league wants, in terms of how games are called, if they're implementing that on the floor.

I did have to chuckle at one point, you know, because one of the things that's levied is basically the idea that he's got their career in his hands at some point. And I chuckled when he mentioned, like, basically I knew they had a pension, right? I'm not calling for guys to be fired. I knew they would be okay. I did think, honestly, Adrian, he made some good points in terms of the, you know, you've been in the league for a long, long time. You're graded on your performance.

If you've been in the league that long and you haven't been assigned to playoff games, like what's the point? Why don't we get, there's probably somebody out there that can do the job better. You know, because in any job. And I think the argument is, I think the argument is there may not be. And that the only, you know, people who officiate and the other side of this is, the only way to get better as an NBA official is to be an NBA official. That it does, that you'll see generally the grades go up.

That doesn't mean it's supposed to be a lifetime job. But I do think, though, the belief that, well, there's just somebody better. There may not be somebody grading out better in the D-League, in their feeder systems. if I'm a college ref, and I've heard this frustration with some people who think that it's not an ideal, if you've got it really good as a college rep, if you're really good in that world, and you're a really good young college ref, what's your motivation to want to go be an NBA ref? That the level of, listen, I get the scrutiny. Scrutonies there as a player in anything, but that it is harshness with which you're judge.

I'm not saying it's fair or unfair, but just the reality of it. Is it an environment where they can recruit the best college guys, the young guys, who are on their way up, who could make that transition, and identify them there and say, let's get them into our league? Is that more appealing than just being able to do college the way you can do it? It might make a little less money in college and have to work. If you're working multiple leagues, most of those guys have another job. Obviously, it's a shorter season.

but it's not a bad life. And has the NBA made it that much more appealing to recruit out of there? I do know the thing, well, just go get someone else if we don't think this guy's as good. But there has to be what's the measuring, what's the measure of that? Well, somebody else is just as good, bring them in. That's a hard way to do because what if they're not? What if they're much worse? What do refs make?

I honestly have no idea. You know, I don't have the numbers in front of me. They did a new CBA two years ago. I want to say, and we can look this up here, I want to say in the, it certainly goes by seniority experience, I think anywhere in the $300,000 to $500,000 range, but we should check on that before we're. Oh, here we go.

I don't have to do the new numbers in front of us. I just typed it in. It said referees in the NBA make anywhere from 100,000, to 550,000. Yeah. That was at least one. Who knows? But that was about where,

yeah. Yeah. Huh. Hmm. Well, I mean, that's what I would think. All right. Because I was just looking, thinking about that to your point of,

what is the motivation. Obviously, the motivation to most people's profession is money, right? I can make a lot more money doing it. But it's been, that's been a conversation with a lot of people in the years of, are we recruiting the best? Should we go recruit?

more ex-players, you know, Leon Woods a ref in the league, Haywood Workman. They were players in the NBA. Is that an avenue to keep looking at how do we go get the best possible candidates? And I think that is a real focus of theirs. It's trying

to find a feel like that they've got the best possible feeder system. But I think there's two separate issues here. I think there's one issue of improving referees, improving the officiating in the league.

A lot of teams, a lot of organizations want more transparency. They want more information, more data on referees, calls, patterns. You know, I know one particular team who's in the lottery, and their own research shows that they got a much worse whistle when they were

a bad team versus when they became mediocre versus when they've gotten better. And so are you, so coaches want to know, are we officiated differently because we're losing and what are the patterns and how do I need to adjust style of play game plan? And those are, you know, there's a lot that goes into how teams examine it. All those issues are separate from, I don't care of their, I think what part of the players, the referees associated, referees are saying is that that is a separate issue

from intimidation, bullying, threats. You can't go around and do that, right? Now, Mark will say, you know, that's their side of it. So everyone wants to say, well, the rest are terrible. You can do whatever you want to. I don't think that's really how it works. Like, I don't think that's how this country works. I don't think.

So that would be a defense to that. But I do think that general public generally thinks, we'll stop whining. You guys aren't any good, or that's their people, some people's perception. You take whatever you have to take. And that's really not how it's supposed to be. You're talking to team executives all the time on a day. basis, in fact, do you feel like Cuban is doing the owner's bidding in this, that the majority

feel the same way as him, but they aren't necessarily on the front row of the sideline cursing a ref out in the course of a game? Well, I guess it depends what you're asking. What is he doing? If it's about on-the-court behavior, no, I don't think anybody, I don't think anybody thinks that has great value of yelling. to change things up. The idea that the officiating in the NBA is a real problem.

Yeah, there are a lot of executives who feel it's not very good. And that's not just on bad teams. That's on good teams, contenders. But I think it's also, there's frustration with the management of them. And how, like I think, and Cuban said this in his response, it's not, it's more the mandates given to them. And how, again, and how they're managed and who's in charge of them.

And I think that's been a real focus of Adam Silver since he took over is what's the best system that I can have here to allow for a by refs to get better, for everybody in the league to feel like it's not an issue. And, you know, the LM2s are a big issue. And, you know, some people within the league office will call the LM2's the Cuban rule that they felt like he was, he pushes hard for those as any. Now, what Cuban even said in his response to our story yesterday was, hey, the LM2s, before, now this was his view of it, before the LM2s, people said the league was fixed. Well, now that they see the league put out in close games, you know, it's actually a blow-by-blow of the last couple minutes and evaluations of the calls made, that you don't hear that charge anymore.

People don't say that like they used to, and that that's impacted that. So, you know, that's, I don't think the, the referees would prefer that the LM did not prefer. The referees don't like the LM2. They don't like, they've never been for it. A lot of the league would like to expand the last two minutes and make, there are a couple teams who would like to make every call public. Let everybody see everything. But does the league want to expose its referees like that? And do they want, I don't know that it's going to go that far,

but I know there's some that would like for it to go, or they would like for at least the data to all be made public, or made known and available to each team. But if you make the data available to each team, it's probably going to get out in the public arena too. So those are all things that the league office is grappling with on this. Silver's in a really tough spot, right, Adrian? Because on one side, he's got his owners and Cuban and Sarver,

and on the other side he's got his referees and he's got a he cannot you know super piss off either either party right no and and you know even look yesterday at the statement that they gave us for the story they they went after lecium who's the general counsel who's the attorney for the referees they didn't go after the referees in the statement they i don't think it was an accident because they don't want to they want to protect the rest in every way that they can there was a conference call and i reported on this in in the story yesterday there was a conference call with Byron Spruill, who was the president of League Ops who they hired former Notre Dame football player years ago, who had, who is now really dealing day to day with the officials and had a conference call with many of the officials, most of the 64 rats in the league.

It was a pretty emotional call. There was a lot of, I was told, we feel abandoned. We feel like you guys have left us unsupported. by not cracking down on whether it's, you know, whether it was the river's incident, whether it's Cuban, whether it's any other number of issues around the league. They feel like that the league office right now isn't, they feel like it's open season on them within the game environment

and that the league hasn't done enough to back them. And so that was a big topic on a, a conference call that would happen earlier this week among the refs. But when the league issued a statement about our story, it was really focused on Lee-C-M who, again, is the, you know, the attorney who's been really the advocate for not to single out the referees in this battle and sort of put it on somebody that, you know, they could just put the brunt out of a quote-un an outsider. It's an incredibly fascinating story. Everybody can head over to Yahoo's the vertical and check that out about referees asserting the NBA's allowing Mark Cuban to wield power

over them via threats and intimidation. Let me move on to something that happened earlier in the week, which is everybody's kind of sitting around their house earlier in the week. There's a game that the Knicks are going to play that's about to be going on, and you report, you drop the woge bomb that Derek Rose is not there and nobody knows where Derek Rose is. This has to rank rather highly in terms of stories. that you know you're about to tweet out

and everybody's going to go, what in the world is going on? It was already known, though, because it was already known he wasn't at the guard, right? He didn't show up. He wasn't there in warm-ups, and it was clear the Knicks didn't really have an explanation. You know, I think what I advanced on it anyway or reported was that nobody knew,

nobody had gotten a hold of him. Nobody had an answer as to why he wasn't there. and his whereabouts were unknown. I had heard earlier in the evening that maybe he had gone back to Chicago, but I wasn't sure about that. I didn't report that. And then later it came out that he got on a plane and went home. But, you know, there's no question.

It's just you can't do that. Whatever's going on, it doesn't take long just to shoot a text to call your agent and say, can you let them know. I've got a family situation. You know you have to do that. And like when we had summer jobs as kids, we knew we had to let somebody know, right? Like we weren't going to, I wasn't going to cut the grass at the cemetery. I got to call somebody, right?

And then, but when you're starting point guard for the Knicks and they're playing a game at the garden, like you know, you've been in the league long enough. So there's really no, there's no acceptable excuse outside of if there had been some, you know, obviously if there had been some devastating, traumatic, people would understand, but if it was just, you know, and I'm not saying it wasn't significant what was going on, but if you're on a plane and you're flying back and you're on your way to the airport, you know you've got to let somebody know that's what you're doing. Was that a real-life example? Did you really cut grass at the cemetery?

Grass of the cemetery. Really? That was one of your... In fact, it was an old... Yeah. In fact, you had to be really careful. It was an old cemetery. And if you move the lower, if you... And I did do it once, and I felt like the, The tombstones were so old and brittle. Oh, no. You would have to walk that line between going up close to it to be able to get all the grass, but not hit the tombstone with your mower and knock it over.

And I did remember I knocked one over early in it. And you had to be read that was the biggest challenge of that was not knocking because these were like 1,900, 1900 tombstones. And while one of the, there are a few different summits here, has been to travel around to cut grass on. But they're really old ones. Yeah, you had to be careful to not. What do you do? You're trying to set it back?

You're trying to just set it back up? Yeah, you're trying to set it back up. I mean, what are you going to do? Like, nobody's, yeah. But, I mean, I like to believe if it wasn't me, somebody, it would have gotten knocked over. I think it was only one or two. Right.

But he started don't realize it. So you put your lower up, you know, it's like Bill Murray and on the golf course. You're looking around to see if anybody's looking. And you walk away from the thing. But, you know, that job and working, I worked in a school I worked in a middle school one summer

as a janitor, a custodial. And one of the jobs was take a razor blade and go through every desk in the school and you had to scrape the gum off of Oh no. You got to scrape the gum off the desk. I never in my life put gum under a desk again because I do somebody who had to clean that up

so you take a razor blade and you would just scrape the gum off of every desk and like, you know, to the kids out there don't put gum under the desk that somebody's got to do that and it sucks. It sucks. This is where you're going to. That's what I knew.

I've got to go to college. Like, I don't want to have a real job. That's what I knew. Having those jobs were the greatest thing because it made me realize, like, I can't work a real job. I'm not tough enough.

Like, I better go do something, you know, like this. And so it was a good motivator. You learned hard work. You learned hard work of mowing cemeteries and cleaning off gum, right? 7 8, 7 a.8, 7 a.m. both places, man, every day.

Oh, wow. All right. So, trade market last week, we had the Corver deal that went down where Cleveland detained him. Millsap's name was being thrown around a lot for a little bit. I'm fascinated hearing what you think about this upcoming trade market and how it could be affected by a new collective bargaining agreement. Well, I think right now, the first thing about the trade market is I think there's a lot more sellers in are our buyers. And so, you know, that usually impacts, you know, the activity. And I've had a couple teams say to me, you know, that they sort of openly wondering, are we better off getting our deals done early than waiting to ride at the deadline when maybe we get 70 cents on a dollar of what we want, whereas at the deadline, maybe we're getting 50, that waiting for the best

offer, if there's a glut of teams, you know, with so few buyers and so many sellers, and so many sellers, like, you know, a few teams said maybe we should do our work sooner than later. But I think just because there are so many teams who, I mean, people have Cap Space, a lot of teams who want Cap Space have it this summer, and there's not a lot of teams who think they can win. You know, there's how many teams out there think they're one player away? And, you know, in the West, the Clippers are trying and the Spurs are trying, and the Warriors are better, but they're, you know, I think they,

believe that, you know, those are two teams who are an absolute win-now mode. The Clippers are in a spot where they just don't have anything to trade. They, you know, they scour the market, but there's not anything that they really have on their roster because they don't want to trade from their core of guys. And then, you know, San Antonio, I don't know if there's a big deal out there for them. And I don't know that. I don't know that there's teams this year looking to mortgage long-term assets to try to win this because, you know, there's a very small chance of getting by the two best teams out there.

Toronto is the interesting team to me, and Boston, because Boston certainly come on, and they've been playing great, Isaiah Thomas is playing out of his mind, and, you know, they've crept right up there on Toronto in the division. But, you know, are those teams who, you know, I think Boston's still out there, big game hunting, could they get one of, you know, the big-time players that they pursued in the summer? you know, they would, of course, they would love to get Jimmy Butler. They'd love to get Paul George, but those players aren't available.

And that's what Danny Agen's been holding out for us to try to do that kind of a deal, but it's not available. Those guys aren't getting traded, not now anyway. And so, you know, the Marcus Cousins is not getting traded. And so I think it's, and the second party question about the new CBA, there's no question that the, you know, players, you know, players know whether it's the Marcus Cousins or Chris Paul, you know, it is really going to be hard for guys to turn down $200 million deals where they are to go

somewhere else. And you're probably going to have to really dislike where you are. You know, Paul George will be a free agent 18 and, you know, if he goes into free agency, if he doesn't resign with the Pacers, you know, does he take a look at the Lakers and say, okay, I want to go home and that maybe L.A. can make up some of being with the L. Lakers can help me with some of the money, endorsement-wise, but you're never making up all that money. Endorsement-wise, you know, that will be an interesting test to this new CBA

and the money available for players to resign. But I do think it probably will do what it's been designed to do, which is to keep, on the average, probably keep more guys where they are. But there's always going to be the occasional outlier. There's always going to be, like what Kevin Durant did, there's going to be somebody who's going to look at a particular situation, whether we are joining up on a quote-unquote super team or somebody who's going to give up a lot of money to go do that.

You can never legislate that out, and they'll always be a player who's going to break away from just taking the most money where he is and do that. But this new agreement does make it easier for Oklahoma City now to resign for Houston to go forward with James Hardin. And I think the other thing, too, is look at it if you're Hardin-Westbrook, saying, hey, I can be the MVP where I am. I don't have to be on the calves or with all the talent in Golden State, but I can get some individual things, big shoe deals, be in the MVP conversation

by being where I, you know, being, I want to say a one-man show, but being the guy with no close second in Oklahoma or Houston. And I think that's, and then hope to try to recruit somebody in, I think that what's going on with Hardin-Westbrook this year, you know, might make that, you know, somewhat more appealing to guys that you're maybe not going to win a championship, but you can get almost everything else that you want as a player in this league by, you know, staying in a, you know, being the guy at a high money, you know, making $200 million in a little bit of a smaller market. Now, Houston's not a small market.

That's a bigger market than Oklahoma. We'll get right back to it, but a quick word from our sponsor. Fueling our bodies every day can often feel like hard work. Sometimes it's challenging to decide what to eat or prepare a proper meal, but feeling good about what you eat doesn't have to be an unattainable goal thanks to Soylent Drink. Each bottle of Soylent Drink fulfills more than 20% of your daily nutritional requirements, providing you with the freedom to choose how you spend your time. Ingredients include protein isolate from soy, fats from sunflower oil, and carbs derived from beets.

plus the flavors like cacao, fruity nectar, and subtly sweet original, eating right also tastes great. Soilent drink satisfies your stomach's hunger for immediate calories and your mind's hunger for long-term good nutrition. So don't wait. Try soylent today. And just for our listeners, you can go to soylent.com and use the code NBA show for 15% off. That's soylent.com code NBA show. Do you buy that Millsap is not going to move that he is off the trade market or is that a ploy? And I think people thought, well, Millsap might be the biggest name out there that could move.

Could you foresee any circumstance where he is not the biggest name? Well, what I agree, Chris. And like what I reported last week that day was that Westwood Cox had started calling teams and said, he's off the market, we're not trading him now. Now, certainly, and as I reported, for now, he's off the market. Now, four now could last until next week. It could last until the week before the deadline. But the Hawks had been winning, and I think Mike Booneholzer was not dying to tear this thing down.

And I don't think there's any doubt they'll revisit this closer to the trade deadline, see where they are as a team, make some decisions about going forward. Do they want to resign them this summer? and if they don't and they want to start reshaping the roster, then they probably move them.

But I think for the Hawks, I think they have time to make that decision. They're really playing well right now. But there's no question. Nothing's forever.

And again, I think a lot of teams are dubious about it. They thought, okay, they weren't getting the offers that they wanted. But Atlanta hadn't really teams who I know were really interested in Millsap hadn't really had serious Atlanta hadn't really

Atlanta let them know we may make them available here we'll get back to you we want to see how this next stretch of games goes and then they won three of four two or three in that stretch and so no one really got down the road with them on talks and teams made offers but they didn't really press the market to see what the best offer

for them was they kind of pulled him off of it before they did that. But there's no question that they may revisit it again here before the trade deadline and see how they want to go forward with this group. Do they want to just

completely retool it? Sort of do a modified retool. It's a tough call for Atlanta. But Cleveland's put a lot of teams in this situation which is we can't beat them. Like we're not good enough to beat them. Do we just keep going along and try to stay in the middle? Or do we say, all right,

we've had enough of this. Let's gut it and try to to get a franchise guy and come back at it another way. It's a difficult question. You're almost sort of just waiting for LeBron to move out of his prime so everybody can go back to trying to win a conference that has been unwinnable for into its seventh year now. Earlier in the conversation, you had mentioned just in passing that Blake Griffin, that they won't move off of their core, boogie cousins won't be traded.

And those are names that come up all the time. Who is the biggest name you think could be had? I don't know about Chris the biggest name. I think it just so much of who can be had is based on who can offer what. And so, listen, anybody can be had with the right, except for, you know who the guys are that can't. We all know who they are generally. But almost everybody else is available for, you know, if Danny Ains calls you somewhere with two great, you know, two of their really good young players in the Brooklyn pick, you go, okay, somebody that we're not think about right now might be had.

So that's a tough question to answer, and I don't normally like to answer it because Right. No one's like no one's really available until there's a great, an offer somebody wants to take on them. And I think it would have been a better phrase for me to say is that being shopped around. There's no sense that some big name is being shopped around, I guess would have been a better way to put it. Right. No, there isn't. And I think, you know, if you're sure.

Chicago, you know, if you're Indiana with Butler and George, it's just, it's hard to get off those players and to decide that we're going to trade, you know, young players and their prime, all-star players until we absolutely have to. And, you know, they can do, they can reshape that roster around Jimmy Butler in Chicago. I don't know why they would move him. You know, Indiana is a different, you know, they don't have Paul George on a contract as long as Chicago does with Butler. I think the Paul George issue, at the very least, I think they'll revisit it this summer. I'm sure they'll get a sense of where his head is and he'll try to get a sense of where the organization is. And then maybe they have some conversations at the end of the season going into the last year of his deal. But I just don't see any, I don't see right now any.

So, you know, Rudy Gay is the one player who, you know, he's made it clear he doesn't want to resign in Sacramento. but they've been in sort of the playoff chase here, and there's almost any deal Sacramento does for Rudy Gay is more of a long-term deal. It's probably a young player. It's a pick or just a pick. And they're not getting back to somebody who probably helps them as much as Rudy does this season.

So if you're Sack, you might as at least take it down to the trade deadline, see where you are as a team, how badly you want to make the playoffs. And they may make the decision in Sack. You know what? We think we can get in the playoffs. That's really important to us. We're going to roll the dice. that, you know, maybe we lose him for nothing this summer,

or maybe somehow we convince him to stay because we just overpay him based on the market. But that's certainly his name. They've talked with a lot of teams about Rudy Gay. You know, they've asked pretty significant package form. No one's met it yet. Oklahoma City was pretty serious with them. And I reported this back before Cameron Payne's injury. His name was, you know, they got pretty close there.

And then Payne got hurt. And that deal went away. And I don't know that that's going to be revisited again now, that he's back. What do you think about the All-Star game boating process that has been instituted this year? I wish they would just leave it with the fans. It's like, what say to the fans have anything in the NBA? Like, everything is, nothing is about the fans.

Everything is about the business, the industry. Like, I don't care what, like, if fans want to see Dwayne Wade until he's 40 years old, let Dwayne Wade start in the All-Star game. Like, if I'm a player and he said, well, that's not fair to the players, you know what? at the end of the season, they do an all NBA team. And you'll remember your first team, second team. You will get your recognition.

But I'm a believer. If the fans wanted to keep watching Tracea McGrady in the All-Star game passes prime, Kobe passes prime, I have no problem with it because there is nothing in this league that's for them. They're not enough that's for them. Is there anywhere you draw the line, though? Is there anywhere you draw the line?

If the Zaza-Petulia thing worked, would you say, hey, they both? voted him. He starts. They voted him in. No, I don't, I don't care. I really don't. I don't, like, I don't think this is some, it's an exhibition game. It's a, it's a circuit, it's not a serious game. Why should I, it just doesn't, I'm just saying this. I get why it bothers other people, and I guess I was a player would bother me. I don't really care. Like, I just think,

I don't think media should be voting in this. Let the players, let the players vote up. And let the players and fans of it. And I know they've, they've changed the voting, the way they've made the voting now weighted on, you know, part of the, partly the fans, but because now there's another weighting of 50% here of media, I guess media and players, I would be shocked if the league doesn't find a way to make sure Zazazaz does not, he's not in that game.

Like, they're going to be able to, they're the only ones that are going to know, though, sort of the formula here. Right. And the league doesn't want that to happen. And I doubt it will happen if they don't want it to happen, but I would think getting no votes for the players and no votes from the media probably is enough to keep you out. That probably aren't enough fan votes to overcome all that, but I'm not positive on the formula.

But I'm disappointed they took it away from the fans, and I just think that it's not our job in the media to decide bonuses and contracts to decide. you know, you look at how the contract extension, how, you know, the Rose rule, where if you're a second team NBA, you know, you got a higher percentage of the salary cap, and that is voted on by a media vote at the end of the year. Well, we shouldn't be involved in that. It's not our job to impact salary caps, impact contracts. It's our job that cover the league. It's their league.

I just don't think the people cover, you know, that's just my, I have no problem anybody who does it. I'm not passing judgment, but for me, I don't think I should be impacted. that. That's why I don't vote for anything, any of the awards, because I feel like the league should be voting for its own awards. It's their league. Now, it's one thing for me to say, hey, I think Russell Westbrook's the MVP, or I think Hardens the MVP, or I think LeBron's the MVP. That's one thing for anybody to have their opinion and express it. I don't know. I don't know if that's what our role should be. But I do think with the All-Star voting, I'm disappointed. They took it away from fans, because to me, it's about who.

who they want to see. It's an exhibition game. And if they want to see, you know, the biggest names in the game, then let them see those guys come out, play their 15 minutes as a starter. And then you have a deep bench. The guys who should have been, quote, unquote, voted in, they will still be there. They will still be named by the coaches. And they will have their All-Star weekend. And they'll be on the court.

And so I don't think anybody really gets cheated by the fans voting in who they want. Adrian, you've written recently a couple of different articles about this Ice Cube Pro League, and he's attained Alan Iverson, I've seen Roger Mason. Okay, what is this and should I as an NBA fan care? I don't know. I think it's, you know what it is? It's like a, it's kind of a fun, listen, there's been a few different leagues in this vein that have not made it in all sports. You know, what's kind of interesting about it is, I guess, you know, it's three.

on three, it's half court. They're not trying to make anybody play full court. You know, there will be some big names. You know, Alan Iverson is a player coach and sort of essentially what they're doing is there's no owners, there's no team owners, there's nobody trying to, that, they'll just play like an eight game schedule where all the teams will be in the same place. So you have like, let's see, eight teams, eight teams playing like one game each in the course of a day, like have a music act at halftime and then go city to city. So they might start in Brooklyn and then go to Vegas and then go to L.A. wherever they're going to go.

And, you know, Ice-T has been the backer of this. Certainly he can bring. Ice Cube. Ice Cube. You're going to get us killed. Ice Cube. I'm sorry, yes. Ice Cube.

Listen, the greatest, the greatest, the words I never ever thought I'd write, Ice Cube told the vertical. When I talked to him for the story when they were launching the league, Ice Cube told the vertical. I said, never thought I'd write that. And then I was thinking in the second reference, so I just say, cube, or do I say? I use Ice Cube again, but, but anyway, yeah, I think it would have been great if you would have shortened it to Cube and then Cube said. Yeah, Cube said, so.

But anyway, it's, but you know, they're going to get, you know, Chauncey Billups is going to play. And I think it's more like these environments are more like sort of like almost like a festival. Like you got music, you got entertainment, you got some, you know, you got some celebrity, you know, some big name guys playing three on three. and then you go on to the Dex City next week. They're not trying to play a 40-game schedule. They're going to play like eight dates. And so in that construct, I could see for a while, a curiosity of people going out.

Well, people watch this on TV. I know they want to get a TV deal. I don't know how much people would watch it on TV. I think they'd watch once. I think some basketball junkies would say, well, let me see what Iverson looks like. Can you play in that? Like, Iverson against Chauncy.

Yeah, I might watch that. Now, you're going to sit down and watch it every week, probably not. But it's, you know, it's some interesting names coming back in the fold. And when I found out Iverson was going to be a player coach, I said, you know, like I'm not covering this league like I'm covered. But when I hear Iverson is signed up to be a player coach, I'm like, I'm right in that. Like I'm not, people A still care about Iverson more than, you know, there are stars in the NBA who don't, there aren't as there as much interest in them as there still is.

And Alan Iverson, and the fact that he's going to be a player coach is perfect, given his history. But yeah, I don't know. I think, though, that there's some serious people involved in this. I mean, Ice Cube's a serious businessman. He's built a really good, I mean, if you look at what he's built in his, he thinks pretty well in acting beyond music and business. And so, you know, we'll see how it goes.

But I think the idea of not trying to do like a full schedule where and each city has a team and you just take the show to a new city, you're not trying to sell the same show to people in the same city for like 20 dates in the summer, which wouldn't work, right? But if you hit a few different cities, if you hit eight cities, I could see a scenario where that's, that has an audience that might have some staying power. Yeah, I can kind of dig it. It's kind of like the old school, like you hear those old baseball barnstorming tours

and stuff way back when, right? Exactly. One time to go check them out. Let me ask you about Adam Silver and we talked earlier about the situation he's got with the referees and the owners dealing right now. Just your overall thoughts on the job he's done as commissioner, obviously got the deal done with Michelle Roberts and how Silver's NBA is different than Stearns or if it is. I think it is different. I think it's a little more inclusive. I think there, Adam cares what a lot of people think he literally.

to a lot of people. He's very curious about other people's ideas and their point of view. I think David Stern, especially as he got older and a little as he got older and the league was changing around him. I don't know if he adjusted. When he, when Stern

first took over and all these owners who bought teams for a few million dollars and their value of their teams went through the roof with the great Lakers Celtic teams and the television money start pouring in. and then to Jordan era. There were a lot of owners who just followed, and probably rightfully so,

just followed whatever David wanted. They were fine with because he had made them a lot of money. They could sell their franchises for, you know, significantly more than they bought them for. The value of everything went up. There came a new kind of owner in the league who a lot more self, you know, who paid hefty prices for teams,

who were struggling to, some struggling to make money on those teams in the old, based on the old economics of it, and wanted a far greater say and how the league was run. I don't know that he adjusted as well to that, where he just put sort of the days of him just pounding his fit and saying, this is the way it's going to be, this is what we're doing, we're over. And I think Adam navigates all that much better. I think he's able to interact, deal with a lot of different owners, a lot of demanding owners,

easier than Stern does, Stern did. and I think that's made for, and yet still be tough enough with guys to remind, hey, I'm in charge. This is the way, you know, when he's had to make decisions or when he's had to sell a decision, sell an idea on people, whether it was moving the All-Star game out of Charlotte. I mean, there had to be some selling to some people in the league. Why are we doing this? Whether it was, even the Donald Sterling, you know, publicly, everybody in the league, there was no owner who wasn't publicly going to back Adam Silver.

politically you couldn't do it privately. There were a lot of owners questioning him doing it because they wondered that could be me. Maybe I didn't say what. Maybe I don't have the history that Sterling has or you're not going to find me on tape saying that. But there's something else out there on me, maybe.

And if that ever got out, am I going to lose my, if we set a precedent where I lose my team too? And so he had to sell the Sterling thing internally as well. So I think he's been pretty adept at doing that. And I think one thing he's done a really great job

of his connection with the players. The players, especially in the later years, saw Stern as the enemy. He had, you know, in the 80s, I think he had a different relationship with Michael, or she did with Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. He wasn't seen

he was seen as sort of a partner in the building of the league. He was later seen by players as an enemy, a guy that they just fought and collected bargaining, the guy who put the dress coat in on them where Adam has a different rapport with players, a different relationship. I mean, guys will come through the city on trips to New York, and they'll star players will come in, and they'll just go sit for an hour with Adam Silver and just, you know, shoot the shit with

them. And so, like, he's done a really good job with that. And so when he's got something, he has to settle the players, you know, whether, you know, his relationship with LeBron James and, you know, LeBron's inner circle or other star players, He's got relationships with them. So if there's big stuff coming down the pipe, and he needs to get them on board to get, let's say get players on board for something, he can reach out to those guys in a way that Stern couldn't do later on.

And so I think that's served him pretty well. It's hard deal to be popular amongst everybody, but so far he certainly seems to have pulled that off. All right, Adrian, I've got to ask you about this because I told you, and I've told you many times that one of my favorite sports books ever is the miracle of St. Anthony, a season with Coach Bob Hurley and basketball's most improbable dynasty. For everybody that knows you as a newsbreaker in the NBA, years ago you wrote this book.

I'd encourage everybody listening to go get this book if you never read it. And I looked it up last night. I don't know if you know this. It is, what, a week away from the 10-year anniversary. You know, I didn't realize that. How about that? Thanks for reminding me on that, Chris. Ten years ago.

It was a great, it feels like it was just, I really had a great year, and I appreciate that on the book. I spent a year following around San Anthony's team and Bob Hurley, Sr., in Jersey City, and follows a group of players, young players, and kids through their school year, and then the greater story of sort of inner city Catholic high school back, inner city Catholic schools in America, which are dying and San Anthony's is fighting now, as they have been, but they're sort of at a breaking point now of trying to stay open. And you've seen all over the country, you know, generations were raised on schools like St. Anthony's in cities.

And they've gone away as the populations moved out of the city and gone to the suburbs. A lot of those Catholic parishes have not survived that and the schools don't survive it. And so that was sort of the broader story around following Bob and the team. But I never enjoyed a year more. I never enjoyed anything I've done as much as I did that book and that experience, just riding around on the bus with them and sitting in the locker room. You know, Bob is a Hall of Fame coach. He could have coached at any level.

And you really saw a genius at work. And I think about it often and still keep in touch with a lot of the people that I got to know in doing the book. And it's still fun to hear people who, you know, have read it recently or read it for the first time, even 10 years later. It's had pretty good staying power. And, you know, Bob's story is timeless. and that group of players was pretty, you know, I think their story resonates whenever you'd read it. But I've been, I was proud of, really proud of that because it was a, I was proud to get to tell their story, deserved to get told that the sisters who ran the school were really special and devoted their life to it.

And I was glad that they gave me the opportunity to kind of come in and tell the story. You can get it for 11 bucks and paperback at Amazon. brand new. So tell everybody, there's a ticket anniversary. You got to go get it, the miracle of St. Anthony. Also, I do want to ask you,

both are you, did you foresee a circumstance where we'd look up and Dan Hurley's got a D1 job, Bob Hurley's got a D1 job? Did you figure that Bob Hurley, senior, that his kids would all become coaches,

pretty much? Well, I thought Danny would be in college. And Danny, when I did the book, Danny was St. Benedict's prep, and he had had chances to jump at college as an assistant, but I remember he was waiting to try to jump as a head coach, which he did get to do at Wagner, had good success at Wagner,

and now he's having really good success at Rhode Island. Bobby, I didn't see that coming. I thought when I did the book, Bobby was scouting that year for the Sixers. He was still trying to figure out what he wanted to do. And then Danny hired Bobby at Wagner College, and then he went to Rhode Island with him. And then from there, Bobby got the Buffalo job

and then turned Buffalo into some other offers and took Arizona State. But I didn't see Bobby necessarily getting into coaching. I didn't sense even 10 years ago that his heart was that that's where it would take him. But he really poured himself into it. He's done a tremendous job. And it's, yeah, it's fun to see him. He's a really good guy and has lived, you know, a really interesting life. And it's, to me, it's amazing how quickly he's moved himself up the coaching ladder.

And Danny, you know, it's fun. I remember going to one of Danish practices when I was reported the book out. And he said, you've got to see this. I think he was a junior. I want to say he was a, no, maybe it was beginning of a senior year. And he's like, you got to look at this kid. I've got it. He threw a ball off the top of the backboard and got it like three quarters away up the backboard.

It was J.R. Smith. And, you know, JR was before his senior year, we were in the fall. I remember when we sat in the gym and he said, you know, he really wants to go to, I remember him to tell him he really wants to go to Carolina. I'm not sure he's going to have the get eligible to play. At that time, he was not talking about the NBA draft. But there's a scene in the book where I go to Danny's St. Benedict plays. I think it was a Blair Academy where Joe Kim Noah's was Joaquin at one of the prep schools in Jersey.

It may not be Blair. I don't think it was Blair. But anyway, state championship game at Danny Hurley and J.R. Smith against Joe Kim Noah. knows team. And Danny gets thrown out of the game. No, excuse me. I think J.R. falls out of the game and then takes a sneaker

off and throws it up into stands. And they gets tossed. Like, get out of the gym. Then Danny loses it. Danny gets thrown out. So Danny and J.R. are in the hallway peeking through the window trying to watch the end of the game. And Joe Kim is, who was a good, like, he was going to Florida, but no one knew he was going to be, you know, what he became.

Like, he was like that night, I was like, wow, This guy's really good. But I do remember, yeah, Danny and J.R. standing out in the hallway. I have that scene in the book. And I was sitting with Bob Sr. I was sitting with Bob Sr. in the stands. I rode with him to the game.

It's kind of some color for the book. It's watching Danny go try to win a state title. And there's J.R. throwing his shoes up in the stands. And Danny getting tossed and falling around out the door. It looks like it was Lawrenceville, I think, is the name of it. He went to Polly. Lawrenceville, right?

Lawrenceville prep. Good call. A couple quick things, Adrian. When was the last time your phone was turned off? I don't leave it off. Like, I turn the ringer off in church. I turned the ringer off at, yeah, I turned the ringer off. I'm not sure I ever turned the phone itself off.

That's probably not a good idea. But I do have the ringer off sometimes. Have you walked out of church to break a story? Well, I do remember this one. Christmas Eve, I was think of it on Christmas Eve like three years ago. I don't remember. It had not even three years. I got, we were on the steps going in at Christmas Eve, and I got a call of a trade.

Oh, I'm trying to remember who it was. It wasn't a big trade, but I was, I was on the steps of church. We were walking in, and I get a call, and I said, hey, so someone told me what was going on, and I just had that look for my wife. Like, really, you're going to do that? I'm like, it's just going to take a minute. I'm just going to, you know, so I walked down the stairs, and I can still see my kids are younger, and I can still see them standing there in their Christmas clothes and my wife with her.

arms on our hips is going like, come on, man. But it wasn't, but we didn't leave church. We were on the steps going in. And, you know, you got to get there really early anyway for like that Christmas Eve mask. So it wasn't like they were starting the thing. So I think I have some outs on that one. I have some, you know, I can justify that on some level in my head. Do you watch other sports?

And do you have favorite teams in other sports? Because, right, your whole life is consumed with this NBA and breaking NBA news and keeping up with what's going on in the league. do you have any time for other sports? Yeah, I watched, like, my son's a big Patriots fan. Like, I grew up in New England, I grew up like a big Steve Grogan, Sand Bam, cutting him. Like, those are my team. Like, my Super Bowl was watching the Bears trample with a trample the Patriots.

But he's a Patriot fan. So, like, when they're playing a playoff game or something, I'll sit with them and, you know, he's excited about it. I can't say I can sit and watch football, like, you know, like, I mean, I watched like the big, but, though, I watched the, quarter the other night of the Alabama Clemson game. Like, you know, you're, you know, I was a general columnist for, you know, a bunch of years before I started covering the NBA full time. So I had been at Super Bowls. I've been at the Olympics. I've been at, you know, a World Series. I've covered other, you know, I've been around it. I don't really miss any of it in terms of covering it, but I still like to, you know, in the summer. But I, you're not necessarily a fan of anybody.

But you're not necessarily a fan of anybody. I can't say I'm a fan. No, no, I wouldn't have a of anybody. Do you remember the first time you saw somebody call one of your news items a woge bomb? You know, I really don't. I want to, we got to find out who coined that. Yeah, I know. I wonder who coined that. I wonder who coined it. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. Like, you think I could trade. I don't know how you, uh, maybe it's like a genealogy. I don't know. Yeah, I, I don't remember, uh, but, uh, yeah. I should claim it, you know?

Maybe I should claim I did it, trademark it or something. Well, do I have to give you royalties if I trademark wode? Go ahead. I didn't see T-shirts. Somebody did tweet at me once that they had T-shirts and they tweeted like at me, hey, I've got these T-shirts and they had like a bomb and a woe, like, but I didn't really. I don't know if they did it for their, it was a joke or whatever, but I did see that one time. But that's, you know.

Do you feel pressure now because of it? because it has become such a big deal because it's like, wow, here's the news breaking. You know, Wojian, like, I'll even see,

like, you know, I don't know. There'll be some kind of like news story about somebody, somebody missing or something and people will joke, you know, I bet Woj knows where he is or whatever. Or like the NFL draft.

They're expecting you to tweet out who the, you know, second pick of the NFL draft is or something. Do you feel pressure now? No. You know what, Chris, I'm lucky to get to do this.

I mean, I don't. I'm lucky to get to do this job. You know, we talked about earlier, the jobs that I had as a kid. You know, my dad worked in a factory for 35 years. Like, he really worked. Like, I'm lucky to get to do this. I'm lucky. I like the, I love the NBA.

I really love the people in it. I like the players. I like the coaches. I like the GMs. I like the agents. I like a lot of the owners. I mean, I really like the people. I feel lucky that I get to be around it because not everybody is that

lucky in their job or has something that they really look forward to. So, you know, I just, to me, I love working at it. I try to do the best I can. And, you know, you're going to get some. You're going to miss some. But I really believe that. Like I, I never imagined when I was in college in high school, you know, I interned at the Hartford Current. Like I grew up in Bristol and I, and I used to drive to the Hartford Current at night and work in the office. And all I ever wanted was, like, if I could get a job of the current, maybe get like the University of Hartford beat someday, and I could go travel to, like, Hartford was in the knack, and they'd play like Maine and New Hampshire and play like Boston University, and I'd say, wow, like George Smith was the writer who covered

the team. And I thought, like, that's pretty cool. You get to do overnight trips. You get to drive up. You get to stay in a hotel and cover the game and file your story. And I'm like, that's great. I mean, that's what I hope I could do. So, like, everything after that, everything after the University of Hartford beat for me,

like when I was like a teenager and in that age, like feels like gravy. And I still try to keep that mindset because I don't take it for granted. And, you know, there's a lot of people, especially in our industry, and you know this, Chris, like there's so many talented people. This industry has shrunk in a lot of ways. And there's so many really talented, gifted people that you've worked with that I've worked with who aren't, you know, who are struggling to find work, struggling to keep jobs at places that are in trouble. And I'm not any better than any of those guys.

A lot of cases, most of them, a lot of them are better than I am. So I feel lucky that I get to do this because, like, we're not entitled to these jobs and we're not, you've got to work at them. But I'm frankly surprised I still get to do it. I'm surprised like no one's put the plug on me yet because I kind of feel like it's going to happen any day. Stop. But it's great that you still feel that way and have such a great perspective about everything. Adrian, I can't thank you enough for taking time to come on this today. Everybody check out Adrian at Yahoo's The Vertical.

I would tell you to follow him on Twitter, but like everybody does. And then the Vertical Podcast with Woj. You're the best, man. I'm super appreciative. Hey, Chris, thanks for having me on. It was a lot of fun, man. I really appreciate it being on the show with you. Thanks, Woj.

That's going to do it for another Ringer NBA show for this week. Catch up with us next week. If you like what you're hearing, go give us a rating and review on iTunes. And we'll talk to you next week. Everybody, have a great week.