The Ringer NBA Show - Steph Curry on Fire, and the NBA Viewership Decline | Group Chat

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

Justin and Rob discuss Steph Curry's greatness over the past set of games, and float his name in the MVP debate (02:00). Later, they are joined by The Athletic’s Ethan Strauss to talk about his recent story on the NBA’s dip in ratings and what that says about the success of the league during the pandemic (20:00). Hosts: Justin Verrier and Rob Mahoney Guest: Ethan Strauss Production Assistant: Jon Kermah Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Dave Hill takes you on a journey into the underground lives and careers of six professional gamblers. This eight-part podcast is a unique look into the gambling world that you don't want to miss. Check out gamblers on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to group chat, the Ringer's weekly MBA group discussion where I am putting in good work. But Rob, he's only putting in light work. I am Justin Varyer. Joining me today, Rob Mahoney. That really hurts.

I felt like I was really going after it this week. That just means you're the LeBron of this pairing. That's all. I'm making it look like light work, is what you're saying. Yes, exactly, exactly. Joining us later in the episode, Ethan Sherwood Strauss of The Athletic to talk about his recent article about NBA TV ratings and Turkey vulture killing. We'll explain that one later. But first, Seth Curry is pretty good.

Last night, he went on another Supernova performance, 49 points, in a win over the Sixers. In his past 11, he is averaging 40 points and about 50% from three. Rob, what's your, you're a man of nuance? What's your takeaway from this toward Stephen Curry run here? Let me search for some nuance here.

It is crazy to me that, you know, even with everything we know about Steph, you can't even go under a screen that's set at the hash mark for him at this point. point, you know, like the Warriors were just moving higher and higher to get him into higher and higher ball screen action. And every time it was ridiculous, every time it was pull up threes or, I mean, frankly, you don't see a big like Joelle Embed frozen the way you saw him frozen on some of those pick and rolls. I'm in awe of what Steph is doing. And, you know, when you see him just drive past

four sixers on the way to a layup for a guy who, I mean, his hesitation move has to be as powerful as any in the NBA at this point. Just the sheer threat factor when he comes around a screen with the ball and anything he sells you, you're going to buy because you don't want him pulling up for that 18th three of the game.

Yeah. My takeaway from it was, I don't know if Steph has been more entertaining ever in his career, which is saying something because he has some of the most exciting moments in recent NBA history, but the combination of him being perhaps the only good offensive player

on his team and having to literally, make 10-3s a game at this point in order to will his team over some of, even just like the morass of the league, obviously the Sixers don't fall into that, but he's almost single-handedly putting them back into the playoff play and discussion.

And because of that, I wonder if this is among, perhaps not the, but among the best runs of his entire career. Yeah, I mean, Bill and Rosillo, we're talking about Steph as one of the best players to watch post-Jordan. I think that absolutely has to be the case.

anecdotally speaking, even when I'm not watching Warriors games, I get more texts from people, oh my God, are you watching what Steph is doing right now than any other player in the league? And, you know, we're going to get into some of the ratings issues with the NBA and kind of where the NBA stands as a product later in the show with Ethan. There's a popcorn appeal to the way Steph is playing right now that this season just has not had. There has, you know, we've had great performances, we've had great runs, certainly some huge scoring nights from lots of different guys. but there's been no sustained run to generate this kind of

interest and friction and discussion around, I mean, a guy who's just at the top of his game, who's doing the absolute best that a player of his style and size can really do. Yeah, Steph, casual pull-up from like five to ten feet behind the three-point line

might be the most exciting, singular, like, action in the NBA game. And probably of the last five to ten years, I'm sure LeBron, all the great things he does, but that signature steff play is just so incredible. I don't think there's been anything like it

since maybe like the Iverson crossover. That's what I would like kind of compare it to because I'm waiting the entire game just to see it. And then when he does it, I'm just still excited, even though I know what's going to happen and he does it multiple times a game. It's just so awesome. And this is where, you know,

this really pains me to say, as a pick up big man myself, as an advocate for big men everywhere, where this is what really separates great bigs from great guards, from great perimeter players, is what Steph does could happen at any time. Anytime he happens to the ball, anywhere on the floor, it doesn't matter.

And that's what creates that constant sense of tension where you're not only wanting Steph to keep pushing and keep putting up crazy numbers. And he's really doing that more now than I think he has ever before in his career, in part because of what his team looks like. But the fact that he can do those things, it just adds a totally different element to a game.

gives it a constant static and sizz underneath everything else that's going on. Underneath, you know, can the Warriors beat one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference? You know, what are they going to do against Joelle and Bede when they're already shorthanded in terms of centers?

It's just scintillating to watch Curry operate in that way. That is a great transition to the MVP discussion because I think this is becoming an interesting wrinkle, I guess, to it. So ESPN published a straw poll the other day suggesting that Nikola Yokic is kind of a runaway

winner here. And that will probably be the case. You've seen some buzz in recent days for Joe Unbid, but he hasn't played as many games. I think he missed 16 games this season. LeBron, obviously, was in the conversation, missed a bunch of games. James Harden missed a bunch of games. Here's my question for you. Why isn't Steph in that conversation along with those names?

It's a great question. And I wonder with Steph, especially as he's gone on this run, I've been thinking about this a lot, if it's just a failure of imagination on our part as media members of what an MVP is supposed to be, I'm all for logical consistency of looking at the record and specifically if you're a voter or somebody who makes a fake ballot or whatever it is,

creating your own framework for these awards and what they're supposed to mean and what you value. I think that's important. But are we just stuck in the way that we think about the MVP and what their team is supposed to be, what their production is supposed to be because, you know,

the Warriors are 28 and 22 in games that Steph has actually played in. That's good enough for, you know, the 6th, 7 seat in the West, basically on par with Portland and Dallas. And I think if they were there, he would be in this conversation in a different way.

So what we're really talking about is the fact that the Warriors went 1 and 7 without Steph. And that's why he's not in the MVP, in the MVP debate in the same way he would be. And that's weird. That's, I don't accept that as a valid reason.

why this guy shouldn't be on the level of some of these other MVP candidates. Yeah, this is kind of what I wanted to discuss here. There are established rules in the MVP discussion, and one of them, probably the most important one, is your player has to win games, that the team of the player has to be among the most winningest teams of that season, right? Right. And I'm not sure I necessarily agree because part of the discussion, the MVP discussion ultimately boils down to, well, this player has.

had some help, this player had not enough help, and he overcame that help in order to push both them forward, how good would the Warriors actually be without Steph? Like, we've seen them in the games that he hasn't been playing. They've been particularly bad. And then I think if you could say that if Steph had the Nuggets team, if you just traded Nicola Yokic for Steph Curry, would they not be among the best teams in the NBA? And if you could say that, why aren't we suggesting that like Steph on a bad team is just as good of a player? Does that make sense? The old team swap.

The old let's put this guy on that team and that guy on this team. I love it. You hear what I'm saying, though. I do hear what you're saying. I think some of it comes down to we're just better at measuring the presence of things than the absence of things. And so whether it's a team's win totals, whether it's crazy advanced stats, whether it's crazy box score stats, it's just easier to calibrate our brains around.

those kinds of ideas versus, oh, the fact that Steph doesn't have support in this particular way on his team, what would that do for a player's MVP case versus what Yokic does or doesn't have? The fact that, you know, let's say in theory, Kevin Durant and James Hardin had both been healthy this whole season, the fact that they have so much superstar support on their team, how do we measure that and what their cases cut against each other? I suspect they would. You know, we're just not good at reconciling those kinds of ideas. And I don't know how we can get better, but it's something I think as a media body and as a voting body we have to do, especially as this stuff becomes even more important and ever more important in contracts for

players and who gets what bonuses. This stuff really matters in the scheme of what is happening in the league. It's not just, oh, let's talk about MVP again. This is a substantive issue as far as how the league works. And we need to get more creative and we need to be more open-minded about what MVPs are and how we go about judging them. It's more complex. It's more complex. It's more than just like, let's throw up the wind shares per 48. Let's look at the PER. Let's look at the estimated plus minus and kind of aggregate these things. Like, that's a good starting point.

But this is a nuanced conversation where you have to consider lots of different variables. And I'm sure we're going to talk a lot this year about, you know, who's played in X games and X minutes and that stuff matters too. And that has to be a part of it. But again, that's just one way into that conversation. Yeah, I mean, Juel and B, to a certain extent, is part of the same conversation where he's missed 16 games. but, you know, he's been dominant in the games that he's played.

And unlike the Warriors, the Sixers are on top of the East. They seem like they're going to maybe run away with the one seat, especially if the Nets keep losing bodies here down the stretch. So, well, that's a good question for you. Like, do you think we should hold, or how much should we hold it against Joel that he hasn't been available for those games, especially since these have been injuries and not COVID scratches, which I think are two different things.

If the players missed a couple games because of COVID, there's literally nothing you could do against the global pandemic raging against the world. But like, you know, he just got dings, which seems to be pretty par for the course in today's NBA. And if he's played a significant amount of games, I don't know why he's automatically scratched from that conversation. Yeah, I mean, do they mean different things, though, in terms of injuries versus COVID absences?

And I say that just in part because I don't know, but especially because with the pacing of the season, if we're also saying that the pacing and the way the season is structured, may have something to do with who is getting injured and when, are they really so different as variables go? Yeah, it's a fascinating conversation, but we should mention that, like, as we were recording, I started to see the burbling of Chris Paul getting some MVP love.

He would probably be the case for the opposite, right? Where he has played pretty much every game, I think, this season. He is on one of the best teams in the West. Maybe the Suns overtake the Jazz here in the West, if Donovan Mitchell isn't able to play down the stretch. And all of a sudden, he is the leader, maybe not even the best player, but the leader of the best team in the West,

potentially of the NBA. How do you feel about Chris Paul's candidacy just in this whole conversation? I think it's strong. The problem is that the bar for MVP this year is just so high. I think even higher than your average year. And I don't know why that is,

but we talked about Embed, who in that game against the Warriors, put up 28, 13, and 8. no problem. You know, Nicola Yokic had 47 points on the same night,

a double overtime game but was unbelievable in a come from behind win. You know, we have the same thing with Janice, we have the same thing with Hardin when he plays.

Like, everyone is just doing such incredible things that Paul, who I don't think is at the top of that conversation right now can have 22 and 13

and a win over the bucks and it's just like, oh, that's another night for Chris Paul. And I think that's, to some extent, that's true. But what's hard

about Paul's case is what he's given into the Sons is a level of stability and professionalization to that team and to that organization that, to your point about what if we take this guy off this team and put him somewhere else? What if we replace him with another star? I don't think even players who are quote unquote doing more could offer more to the Sons than Chris Paul has. Like his influence on that team is really profound.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. But we only get five of these guys. You know, it doesn't matter who's six through 10 on your MVP. ballot. And so at some point, you're going to have to make hard choices. Even if that hard choice is, oh, does the best player in the world, LeBron James, not end up on my MVP ballot because he missed a bunch of games? I guess maybe that's where we end up. Yeah, it's funny. Even when like the top spot on the ballot seems to be clear cut, the in the conversation conversation becomes the

heated conversation, you know, like who deserves to be in the conversation? Who deserves to be on the ballot? That becomes the more interesting case there. I mean, I do think Yoko is very deserving. The point we're trying to make, which I guess is a bit of a heated one, if you listen to other podcasts these days, but it does feel like the criteria is a little bit too stringent and we're not as open-minded about other possibilities based purely off of how we've done this in the past. That would be the more concise way, I think I would put it. And I do think Steph, there are a lot of flaws in his case. But what he's doing is spectacular. I do think we should factor him in

into what's been going on here because I think what he's been doing offensively has been just as good as what Yokic is doing. It's just the wins and some of the other stuff hasn't been there. I think the peril in this case

with this year's MVP race and I think some of where it gets heated, we need to do as best we can to avoid feeling that one candidate is the MVP based on like a gut level based on what we've seen. You watch them in a particularly dominant performance and it's,

oh my God, Joel Embed feels like the MVP. Now I'm going to create a framework in my head as to why he is the MVP. Versus to me, it's always more constructive. You need to set your ground rules from the start as far as like, what is important to me in this conversation? Is it the game's played? Is it a guy who's available every night? Is it someone who is dominant when he does play?

Is it two-way play? And do I factor in defense more than the next person does? You need to start there more so than, you know, and I realize, this is hard if you're like a fan of the nuggets or a fan of the Sixers or something. I'm speaking more, I guess, to more of a general NBA audience and how you're negotiating this stuff. But you have to know what we're choosing versus what feels right. Because I think this year, there are a lot of guys who could feel pretty right for this. Quickly here, also in the news yesterday, apparently La Mello Ball is back.

His wrist has healed. Almost back. Almost back. Right. Seven to ten days, it seems like, is the last. the timeline where the newsbreakers of the world expect him to be back in the lineup for the Hornets, which would put him back into their final playoff push here and potentially into the playing in game, which would be really exciting to see him if he's able to suit up into playing

game in his first year. I always appreciate some of the young superstars in the league getting that first glimpse of the playoffs early on because you could tell their babe in the woods, but they still have so much potential. I think Anthony Davis's first playoff appearance against the Warriors in that series where, like, I think they got swept, but every game was tough based purely off of him alone. That always feels like a special, a little relic, especially when these guys come to form and actually win the finals. But Lamello is back. What do you think? What do you think the horn's chances are here? Do you think it's going to make much of a difference? Well, if Lamello is the babe in the woods here, is this like, is the playoffs him coming out of

the woods upon a highway and seeing the Mack truck that is like, like Joelle and Beter James Harden coming at him and needing to cross the street. Is that what's happening? I think so. So this is going to get pretty dark pretty quickly. Well, I mean, they need him in such a big way. And I think they came out of the gate really strong initially after his injury. I think there was a lot of just kind of adrenaline pumping through that franchise to try to sustain itself. Since then, they've really evened out. And overall, they've been about 500 without him, which I think, given their personnel and that Gordon Hayward has missed a lot of those games too, is pretty admirable.

But this is a team that's just missing so much playmaking and missing bodies at this point. You know, Terruzier and Devante Graham have missed games too, which certainly doesn't help when you're missing your point guard. But there are two and a half games at a fourth place. Like, you know, the gift that is the Eastern Conference right now is that if you're in that range and you have guys who could theoretically come back, especially with something like a wrist injury where, you know, you can manage that in a game. I don't think, you know, it's something that you can clearly,

they think he can play through, I think it's going to help them a ton. You know, one of the things I'm always watching with young players and how they come back from their first significant injury is not how they recover, although we're certainly monitoring that and like, will he be using that hand and stuff like that? But really, what happens when good health isn't something that a guy like Lamello can take for granted? You know, one of the best parts about his game this season, I thought, was the way he drove. You know, it's really, and it's how we got hurt, was, you know, caught the ball,

transition, tried to make a hard push, ended up falling on his wrist, injured it. When he gets in those positions again, what does he do? Is he still feeling like an aggressive player, like an aggressive driver, or is he going to start to change the contours of his game? Because those are the kind of tendencies that can stay with you if you're a young player.

So this kind of mirrors in a little way, the conversation we were having with Embed and just about the MVP conversation, where I would assume that most people would have still voted for lamello ball for rookie of the year, even though he missed the good amount of games here. The other candidates

just aren't as competitive as we talked about last week with Chad Ford. But I mean, if anything, this probably puts him, just makes him more of a surefire one. If he's able to suit up again and remind people how good he is, because that tends to be as much as we don't want to admit it,

tends to have an effect on voters. If you're just not front and center, if you're not throwing those cross-court dimes and just on the highlight reels, people tend to forget you. And then all of a Hey, Anthony Edwards had an incredible dunk and I'm more likely to maybe put him ahead of Lamele in the ballot.

But if anything, maybe this assures him that award and that'd be in a nice little feather in his cap and for the Hornets. They always need some good news down there. Oh, sure. I mean, for him, I think the distance between him and the other candidates is what's so important in that race

versus the MVP as we've been talking about games played and minutes played is almost like more of a tiebreaker than it is a disqualifier. You know, it's with players who are this good and this close, how do we measure them against each other versus, to me, what Lamello did this season and what Anthony Edwards and Tyrese Halliburton are doing, those are not comparable things. You know, one of those is so significantly outweighing the other in the way that we just talked about. Like, this is a playoff team that needs to get its rookie point guard back. That's

fucking nuts. Like, in the grand scope of the league, that is a crazy thing that does not happen. Right. Is there anything else you want to get to before we break here? Maybe Jake Paul's boxing victory. I know you're a big fan. I mean, if you want to explain to me who Jake Paul is, then we can get into that. I saw it was probably on Instagram, but there was some controversy about other TikTok stars handing him a belt and while, and that was for some reason controversial. And it occurred to me that I have no idea what's happening in the world. I love a recurring segment on this show, which is we talk about some TikTok adjacent controversy and try to parse it with no information. whatsoever. I mean, it's also following the old guy thing of you dismissed it for years,

thinking that it wasn't going to like have a be a factor in real world life. And all of a sudden, this is now our popular culture. And I'm just saying to myself, why? What do I do? Like, I am officially washed. How do I get out of this? I guess talking to you about it on a podcast is my attempt. But it's therapeutic for both of us. I mean, we can both shake. our fists at the cloud that is TikTok if you want. Sure, sure. Or we could do a dance together. You can get Kerm involved?

I don't think Kermm signed up for that. Well, he has to go along with it. All right. We are going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk to Ethan Sherwood Strauss about the NBA TV ratings. All right. Now joining us, acclaimed author, Turkey, Vulture, Hunter, extraordinaire from the athletic, Ethan Sherwood Strauss.

Hello, my friend. Hey, man, I wonder what a turkey vulture would taste like. That's a pre-show conversation we were having about the indomitable turkey vulture, well represented in my area, incredible scavenger, the ability to smell death, really rising up the power rankings of the local animals, I've got to say. Yeah, I would say more appreciator than hunter at this point. Yeah, yeah, you don't know how that is. Although I do wonder, because there are a lot of actual turkeys, like wild turkeys here, too.

They're very fast. They run out in front of my car. I do sometimes wonder, is there any practical downside if I had the ability to hunt them on spec? Is there some law against that? Would I catch some disease? I don't know how to handle weaponry, but let's say,

I sometimes wonder, could I do it with a lasso? Could I lasso a turkey if I absolutely needed to? Seems like a good freelance gig. Mmm, mm, yeah. Time will tell. So not even hunter or appreciator now. You're just a wrangler. You're just a turkey wrangler.

Turkey wrangler. The turkey vulture, don't want to eat that. It seems like they get into some stuff that you wouldn't want on your stomach. The turkey looks pretty good. But yeah, we've got it all out here. We got turkey vultures, turkeys. I see coyotes. I see deer.

It's a whole different world in the hills. It's true. Ethan's expertise ranges far and wide, as you could see, from the vultures of the hills of the east. Bay Area to TV ratings for the National Basketball Association, which is why we bring him on today because of his just delightful article he published Friday on the Athletic. Ethan, maybe give us the cliff notes here. Pretty much the NBA is lying to us is what my takeaway was from it. But you would have a better idea.

Yeah, that was obvious before. I want to set it up by saying when we talk about their viewership this season, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that the viewership numbers this season are disappointing because frankly, I don't even know what disappointment would be. This is such a weird season where you don't have crowds, where you've got these weird protocols. And you might even say that the numbers are ahead of expectations. But what I was referencing in the article is back in January, the NBA said its viewership was up an astounding 34%. And, well, that was quite a headline. And I saw various media people, various publications. I think Forbes is one of them, all triumphantly sharing it because the NBA is part of this culture war where its numbers go down.

One side gets happy. Its numbers go up. The other side gets happy. And so the NBA kind of fed into it by saying that we're up 34%. The problem with that was that the whole basis of the 34% rise was that the season started, I think we can all remember, later. right? So they compared X amount of games, you know, from the start of the season against last season when the season started earlier. Now, what that did was took a segment this season that included the Christmas Day games, which is their big sweepstakes bonanza, just on a level.

I'm not even sure a lot of people understand, but that's when they get these big numbers, way bigger than the other games on Christmas, that slate that's been very successful for them. So they compared a segment where they had the Christmas Day games against a segment in the last season where those games hadn't happened yet. And they turned around and they said we're up 34%. So obvious BS. And now it's clear. And those are ABC games primarily with the Christmas Day games to get the big numbers that the ABC viewership is going to be down this season versus last season. Last season was already the record low.

it's going to be even lower than the record low. I don't think any of that is really a surprise, but it's just further confirmation of how silly it was to lie to everybody. It's a very strange impulse. Yeah, I mean, and as you know in the article, sports are down overall, but you'd previously written

that the NBA does have a viewership problem. So I'm curious, just generally, where do you think the NBA is at this point? Are you worried? Should they be worried? I think the NBA is probably bottomed out, I think, for instance, this season is going to be lower, I believe, than last season when we incorporated ESPN and TNT. But I don't think it's going to be tremendously so. I think the NBA has fallen. And what a lot of people don't seem to understand, this conversation gets confused.

Because I was talking about it on Slate. I was getting interviewed about it. And, you know, the interview is a very smart guy. But he was saying, well, there's a lot of reasons for why the NBA might be down. the pandemic, and he was referencing last season, I said, everything in my article that I wrote before, you know, this was months ago, was about before the pandemic. Like the NBA really fell on hard times before the pandemic hit. So I just think it's bottomed out. Maybe when this whole pandemic thing is over, it can dust itself off and it can start asking itself some questions. I think they were in a similar situation after Jordan and the mid-day.

2000s when they had their low and nobody could score and they changed the rules in seven seconds or less happened. And then perimeter players started getting to the hoop again and LeBron became a big star. I think that the NBA might want to even look at it the other way where it's gotten too goofy. It's too many three-pointers. It's 140 to 130. I know Evan Wash from the NBA was on a podcast saying, hey, all our focus groups say that people like more points. And I don't know how you weigh the focus groups against the declining interest in real life. I mean, yeah, that's great that the focus group says that. It seems like people have this internal sense of what an NBA game should be, and I don't think that's 140 to 130. As for the culture war stuff, I mean,

I don't even know how that gets handled or what you do about all of that. I think my position on it is if you're somebody who believes the NBA should just keep on doing what it's doing in that department, okay, find them well, then there's all these other things that they could potentially do to reverse the trend and why be opposed to looking at that. So I guess that's the rundown. I do want to focus on the messaging part of this for a second. You know, there's what the NBA tells us and what they put out in press releases and what they leak to media. And there's what they're telling themselves, the members of the league office, in meetings before those press releases go out. And Ethan, you touched on this in your article too, that I think it's important that we don't conflate them. two things. How important is the outward messaging in the grand scheme of things? Like the fact that the NBA puts out these numbers, does that really matter that they're disingenuous considering this is basically them doing PR? Yeah, it's a good question. I would say it doesn't matter in the sense of it hasn't helped them. They are, in my experience, the most aggressive league when it comes

to this. And that's why I believe they get some of the softest coverage when it comes to what's happening. I didn't give the overview. I mean, the overview is that within 10 years, the NBA has lost about half its audience. That should be, in my opinion, one of the biggest stories in sports. It should be. And there's a lot of pushback when I say it. Frankly, I think there's a little bit Doth protest too much. Frankly, I think it's a lot of people who would be pounding their chest and celebrating if the trend was in the opposite direction. And now they claim as a cope to say, I don't care or this doesn't matter. No, it's a pretty huge deal.

If it was the NFL, it would be the biggest story in sports by far. We know that because the NFL had a downturn, and a lot of people were talking about it, and it was nowhere near losing just half. It's really half the audience on ABC games, maybe a little bit less than that within about nine years. And so the NBA concurrent with that dynamic has been very aggressive about promoting the opposite.

I know it firsthand. When I write these things, I get phone calls, I get emails. It's often very cordial. They're not cursing at me. But the idea is you're going to hear footsteps. You know, you're going to hear footsteps and you talk about this from us. And I don't think that it's like that for the other leagues.

There's a sensitivity to it in the NBA. I think part of that too is that they have their TV deal that they're negotiating. They've had a lot of financial losses of late. So they would like to get liquid again and get this guaranteed money. But to what you're saying, I think it's counterpresenting. productive. I don't think it's good for an organization to pretend a problem away. And I know that they have their internal sense of what's happening and they have their external messaging, but I think the two get conflated when it's so important within your organization to push a message that's the

opposite of reality, you're going to distract from what the reality is that you might want to address and might want to fix. And I might feel differently if the trends were different, but that's just what I've seen. I've seen a lot of pom-poms and a lot of things are great. Gee whiz, young demographics, social media, rasmataz, and just more and more viewership flight, more and more domestic popularity decline. Sure. I mean, I know there are a lot of things feeding into this. I'm always a little surprised, though, that the three-pointers and the rising scores are the thing that people kind of pinpoint or one of the things that they pinpoint, because I don't know, I tend to like three-pointers, and I don't understand

that if half of those shots were just taken as mid-range pull-up jumpers is like the game better off. That to me always, like, struck me as a bit curious. And I don't know, like, do you really need to solve for that, I guess is my general feeling? Maybe it's not about

the three-pointers. You just maybe want to make defense a little bit easier to play. I know it's a complaint on a lot of teams that the big man has just the world against him right now. as far as what you can do. And as far as what can be done, how it's so easy to nudge and shove people when they're posting up.

And that isn't really roughed aggressively. But then, you know, Trey Young can just flail in the people on the perimeter and that's going to get called again and again and again. And so there's something a little bit off there that they might want to take a look at. So maybe it's not the three-pointers necessarily, but there is this sort of. of dynamic of one possession seemingly getting devalued. I mean, that Warriors game, Warrior Sixers that I watched the night before, I thought that was good in part because the Sixers are such a great defensive team. And neither team was scoring that much.

And it was around a 100 average or 200 total. I can't remember the final score. And I think that there is a platonic basketball ideal that we want, that we don't want 72 to 75. but we also probably don't want twice that. And so that, I think, is what a lot of people are responding to. And I would tend to agree. I mean, I would like it in the 100 to 110 range.

Well, especially when that kind of officiating is squarely within the zone of what the NBA can address, right? Like, if these are marketing issues, if these are bigger cultural issues, if these are, you know, pandemic issues, there's only so much the NBA can do with that stuff. The competition committee can get together and say, we're going to be. going to cut down on these Tray Young-style fouls. We're going to open things up in terms of, or we're going to officiate more tightly on the interior for guys who are back to the basketball players to diversify the style of play to create some kind of middle ground here. I think, you know, and that's where these conversations kind of converge.

I think if you're a basketball fan, you may wonder, to what extent should I care about the league's ratings? Does it really matter to me if... You don't have to. Yeah. Certainly not. There are certainly people who are going to listen to this and go, I don't care. And that's a cohort.

But when I write about it, it frankly, on the back end, gets great numbers. And I think there is an interest. And there are a lot of people who are interested in how the league is doing. And how the league is doing informs a lot of what the league does, right? The league is going to get a better TV deal no matter what. That's the other thing that's worth saying. I mean, they're going to get a bigger TV deal than last time for a variety of reasons. One of them is simple inflation.

Money is not worth as much these days versus back in the day, but the other is the streaming wars and this strange economic dynamic where these companies want to get all the content that then have a monopoly on content so they'll overpay for the content. I mean, it's a crazy world. And maybe if you're trying to get very heady about it, Rob, that maybe is why the MBA isn't so hungry to address the shrinking population. It's they're going to make money no matter what. So what's really incentivizing them to hustle?

One thing I've been thinking about a little bit as we kind of drive toward this play in tournament, which is the first of its kind. They did something similar in the bubble. But this is wholly different, I would say. They're trying to make it permanent. Yeah. And you got to see the effects on an entire regular season knowing that this was coming. One thing I'm curious what you guys think about is I wonder if they sacrifice some

intrigue this regular season in order for this play and payoff because I do find myself, I mean, this is probably a dead time of the year anyway, but I found myself earlier than usual looking at the standings and things were pretty much clear. And I don't know how much just fascination I'm going to draw from whether or not the Mavs are going to fall into an extra game or two versus, you know, making it right away and just probably losing in the first round. I do wonder if the play in tournament ultimately is compounding some of the issues that they're having in the regular season. It's an interesting idea because I think a lot of the reason the plane exists was to make some of these late season games more competitive, right? Like you want teams in that 9 to 13 range

to be fighting for something. And the fact that this season, we've just had an incredible amount of blowouts overall, like the level of play has been so stilted. I wonder if we're really seeing the effects that the NBA wanted from having the play in or if those two things are even related. be the blowouts or from some completely different cause. Yeah, it does feel like another form of inflation of we're going to devalue what making the postseason. It's not technically the postseason to make the play in, but I don't even know what we're calling it. Do we need to come up with a new term for that? The liminal season? What are we even calling it? Pergatory. The purgatory? Yeah, I have no idea, but we're expanding the postseason to give fans more

interest, but in doing that, we're diluting the meaning of making the postseason, as Luca Donsich was saying, I will say that at least the NBA is trying. I do think that this makes tanking less likely. I can appreciate the attempt, and I do think it's an attempt at trying to solve the viewership trends and trying to get it in the other direction, because the thing we haven't brought up is, I think load management has been a huge problem for the NBA. The sense that the season doesn't matter. The players don't care.

They're going to show up whenever. They're not really invested in putting on a show. All of these are part of the whole word cloud that fans have with the NBA right now. And I think the playing tournament was an attempt to do it. I myself am not for it, but I can appreciate that they're trying versus some of the other reforms that I think are dumb. I mean, I think the NBA sometimes learns the wrong lessons from the NFL, for instance,

where it's, oh my God, the NFL so popular, could it be the scarcity of games? Could that be why it's so popular on a regular schedule that everybody knows? I'm pretty sure it's the long replay reviews. That's the thing. That's the secret sauce. That's what we need to take

and put into our own league that will make us as popular as the NFL. That to me is a crazy, crazy reform in air quotes. But the play in tournament, like I said, not for it, can appreciate it. Maybe it will work out. I mean, I didn't think the Elam ending All-Star game was anything but a dumb gimmick,

but it's made the All-Star game better. I mean, I would say I'm on the opposite side of the plan. I am very much in, I'm in for it. And the fact that players like Luca are complaining about it, who are in that range. I mean, to me, it gives it, it's giving those players and those teams a level of interest, a level of excitement, of something to play for and compete for in a way that they otherwise wouldn't have, that I am, I'm in the bag for that.

I'm in the bag for seeing a Luka Donchage team play for its life before the playoffs even start. You know, I, I'm fine with that. I'm into that. As a consumer, the question is, are you turning off the players so much in doing that and devaluing the regular season in the process to a degree that you kind of can't come back from. Yeah, I think that the play-in is going to be great.

Like, I think those two one games that we get from it are going to be really exciting basketball. I just wonder if, like, they're sacrificing the stuff leading up to this. And Rob, you kind of wrote about this a little bit with the Nets where you kind of basically said that they mastered the regular season where they, or the regular season has never mattered more than ever for a team because they've kind of used it as this petri dish where they're trying stuff.

They're basically rebuilding their team on the fly. They're playing, they're picking up 10 days and those guys are going to start for them some games. And my one thing I said to you was, I wonder if it matters less than ever to the consumer as a result. So if more teams are going to be assured play in spots, especially the top tier teams,

I wonder if they have less incentive to really make a regular season battle between the Nets and the Lakers as good as it can be, they're more likely to maybe sit some guys or not show all of their cards because they know that the playoffs are what matters and they're more likely to get there than ever.

Well, there's always this tension between, does the NBA want to set up games, event games, like everyone tuning in on this Saturday, Sunday, matinee, or do you want to develop storylines? And can you find a sweet spot between those two, between these long-arcing ideas from the course of a season or a career and get you to turn, on ABC as a result of that.

That's always the tension. The issue, though, because there is this idea of, okay, we can devalue the regular season, we'll make it about the playoffs. If fans aren't watching the regular season, they're not going to show up for the playoffs. I mean, the two are highly correlated. That's how you maintain a connection to them. It's how you make them curious about what's going to happen. Is this player going to do this or that?

With a plan, I think my concern is maybe more that you are. diluting the postseason, you have this initial exciting tournament, and then it leads into the first round that's not that exciting. And it didn't really work well. I mean, it was a crazy confounding variables everywhere, caveats everywhere for the last playoffs. The last playoffs, of course, were historically not watched too well. And to be clear, one of the reasons why the NBA gets extra focus, because you mentioned sports are down, all sports are down. That's true. the extent to which the NBA collapsed last playoffs is that's that's what we're talking about here. It's degrees.

Nobody collapsed quite like that, where the NBA had a finals that was about a third of the audience of the finals three years ago. That is insane. And you wonder if you're getting some viewer fatigue by throwing that play in there and just kind of extending the playoff experience. And I guess what we're talking about is how hard these. issues are because whatever you do, there tends to be no free lunch. There's some sort of cost that goes along with the benefit. And it's a difficult, it's a difficult thing. So as much as I might castigate the NBA for lying to people about the numbers, I can also appreciate that if I were running things, I wouldn't have all the answers either. Yeah, I wonder if what they actually needed

was a mid-season tournament. And they were very unlikely to probably pilot that this season, just because the pandemic and like probably would have been even tougher with injuries and just drove more players into the ground. But I wonder if what they need is something in the middle of their season to break up the monotony because especially this season where we rolled pretty much from the playoffs into the off season right back into this season, there was just like there's no break. There's no pause. There was no time to really recalibrate and get re-excited about the product again. I think even in a regular season like a regular regular season that having something to look forward to in the morass of

January, like, that is probably what they need the most. I think what they need is a commissioner who takes up the mantle of David Stern and scares these teams into thinking they're going to get screwed on refing in the playoffs so they don't fall

in line and play the games that are on TV that everybody wants them to play. And I'm only half kidding. I mean, everybody knew back in the day, not accusing RIP David Stern of anything or the NBA of anything on tour, but it was known that the NBA would send film

to its referees on a point of emphasis. And maybe that point of emphasis just overlaps with what your superstar does all the time. Maybe that's something that happens. And maybe you should think about that when you're sitting your players and treating the NBA season that makes so much money like some sort of exhibition.

Maybe that's something you should think about. I mean, that's how these things used to get. handled as far as I can recall, but now it just seems as though every team for themselves do whatever, no downsides. I didn't expect us to get into a better to be feared than love spin-off of this conversation. Oh yeah. Yeah, it can be. You want both, ideally, but maybe a little more fear factor is what's needed, but I mean, it's also just possible that this thing is broken and can't be put back together, that the cabs maybe when they won in 2016 over the Warriors and the fact that the Warriors won all these games in the regular season just added that their

humiliation was a lesson the league learned and can't be unlearned. Well, it's interesting because one problem that they've been having is the injuries. They happen to be hitting a lot of the star players this year. But even when I look out, like last night, for instance, Steph is probably playing some of the most exciting basketball of his career right now. And, Zion Williamson is in the midst of just like this incredible run where he was supposed to be a Larry Johnson lob machine, but now he's playing point guard. And nobody really seems to care. I think people who follow the NBA care, but I don't get the sense that the like fans at large, your moms and like the casual fans are really paying attention to that, perhaps because like the Pelicans aren't playing well. Maybe they don't get enough media coverage. I don't know. But I do wonder if one of the major is, issues is that we don't have the temple superstars that we've had. And I often get asked the question,

like, who's the next LeBron? Like, who should we be covering more, yada? I think the answer might be, like, there will never be a celebrity quite like LeBron coming up. And maybe that is one of these issues feeding into this. Look, shout out to moms. This is a pro mom podcast. Justin may hate moms, but that's not the stance of the ringer group chat. Well, I mean, the conversation with Zion is about he needs to go and be forced out of there. And if you connect all the dots, maybe it's because New Orleans can't hold him because he's such a creative artist who plays a lot of agency. You know, the listeners can't see me winking. Can't see me winking about that.

It's a subplot that's right there. It's right there. If anybody wants to see it, it's just standing. It's just right there. So that dynamic, I think, is one to watch. But to what Justin is saying, I don't think you can replicate LeBron's fame, which was really launched into orbit by people receiving a physical magazine in their mailbox. I mean, that is what put LeBron James into the public consciousness

was the chosen one cover story of Sports Illustrated, of him in his St. Mary's uniform. And Sports Illustrated telling America, hey, you haven't heard of this guy, but he is going to be historically great, and every GM would trade their superstar for him. That's how I learned about LeBron. And that's just a different way to get started, I think,

that helps build a mythology. His mythology was built in that moment. And to his great credit, he has just exceeded expectations and validated, you know, validated everything along with it. But you're not going to replicate that. We're just in a different world now where there's a lot of oversaturation. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point.

And I almost wonder if, like, the pandemic almost exacerbated some of the things that were already happening. And this feeds into what you're saying about fame in general and some of the superstars that they're counting on, but also in terms of like this idea of appointment viewing. Like, I've lost track of, like, when I'm. supposed to watch things. And if you don't have cable and, like, there are going to be more people working from home, I wonder if, like, being able to signposts your life will be more difficult and thus having to, like, to know to tune into a game at 8 o'clock every night is

becoming more and more difficult. Like, I guess it's the same old cord cutters argument, which clearly has some, like, is valid to a certain extent. But I almost wonder if, like, the way we're living is different now, and thus it's going to be harder to draw people into the rhythms that brought people into basketball prime time every night. It's a great point. It's something I'm thinking about a lot. I do like to make the point that when it comes to cord cutting, the NBA's fall off is just bigger than what happened for the big games for NFL,

for the big games for MLB, which at least last year comparison point, pretty much the same versus that segment of time where the NBA lost half, but all the sports are down in the pandemic. And we say it like it's obvious and everybody should know it, but nobody predicted this. That's the thing. I mean, creeping determinism always frustrates me how whatever happens, we convince ourselves that it was obvious it was going to go that way. Nobody predicted that this was going to happen, that sports were going to have this massive falloff.

Everybody was saying the opposite. And why were they saying the opposite? Well, the last dance got over 6 million viewers on cable, you know? better than the NBA conference finals that followed on network TV. Wasn't on network? No, it might have been on cable. Whatever.

It got, you know, the last dance was a bigger deal than the conference finals. Everybody watched it. Then there was this goofy charity golf tournament with Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Tom Brady, and Peyton Manning.

That got crazy numbers on TNT. And so the assumption was people are bored. They don't have anywhere to go. they're desperate for some form of entertainment. All these TV shows have run out of content because they can't film anything. Everybody is going to watch sports. Adam Silver was talking about how America needs this.

This is where we can really step up and give them what they want. And then sports came back and people kind of went, you know, we sort of learned how to live without you. And we're not for the time being really coming back. And I don't know what happens when this whole, whole pandemic ends because this just might be a longer-term trend where people have decided and learned from themselves that this is not a crucial part of their lives. And so that's a huge

question to me. It's, is this just temporary and has to do with these particular conditions, or does this represent a shift that's longer term for all of these sports where people have decided this is archaic and doesn't really fit into their lifestyle as a modern person in the world. I have a theory on that that I want to flow by you guys, which is, you know, not to go into full therapy mode here, but I think personally speaking, I think from a lot of people I talk to, there's been a lot more comfort viewing than there has been exploring new things, seeking out new stuff during the pandemic. A lot of Schitt's Creek people are watching. A lot of Schitt's Creek. Or like, like, I find myself revisiting a lot of stuff I've already seen, things I already know I like,

things I can dial up easily and tap into. I wonder if sports scratches that itch for people in quite the same way, because it's different enough, it's unreliable enough, as we've touched on with load management,

maybe your superstar isn't even going to play in this game. I wonder if it's just not tapping into what people need. I like this theory. It's a good theory. I mean, the thing I enjoyed most

during the pandemic was the Sopranos, which I had seen before, but it was excellent to revisit. And whatever you're watching, even if it's something as grim in many ways as the Sopranos is, I think it transports you to a time when all this stuff wasn't happening. And the issue with sports,

it's too present in a moment where people aren't so happy. And I'm big on that theory. I think we tend to celebrate sports heroes most who hail from eras where the getting was good economically. I mean, it's so subjective that it would be difficult. to really map it out. But if you look back at baseball, you can really map out the eras where we remember baseball players from when times were good versus when times were bad, that, hey, the roaring 20s, we've got the Bronx bombers and Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

Oh, who are the great players in the Great Depression? I don't know. I mean, I'm sure somebody is probably listening who knows. And it was like, oh, it was this guy. It was that guy. But for the most part, that 1920s echoes in history, as does the post-World War II baseball players, right? You know, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, all those guys, 1970s. I mean, maybe there's a couple, but it's just not the same resonance. And then with the NBA, obviously, the guy who echoes across time and space is Michael Jordan. In America, relatively, the 1990s were a good time, relative to other times, I would say. You know, confidence was high, stock market going crazy.

the Vietnam War and we had kind of faded there was a lot happening that people liked and so I think that the problem with sports as you're saying is it's connecting us with the memory of the recent

which isn't so great and that's why we want to go a little bit further back and be totally transported away. Yeah. I guess the flip side is just I wonder if we're building up the muscle memory

to live without sports. Like I always go back, I always think about this because the content business, as you guys know, is just thriving these days. But there's similar issues in both. And I remember,

I think it was Dan Wetzel, and it was an interview in like the APSE, which is the Associated Press Sports Editors. I have no idea why I was reading this or why I came across my timeline to begin with. But I remember, and this was like 10 years ago, and he was like,

the biggest problem is that what we're writing, the competition for is now everything on the internet. It's like a song that you could dial up on Spotify. It is Netflix, yada, yada. It's not just another outlets article that day. That is a huge difference. And I think a lot about that in sports where I wonder now if sports, the direct competition for it is Netflix, is the sopranos that you can dial up. And I wonder if this is only just showing us that you don't have to just watch what's on the TV that night. The TV. I sound like I'm 80 years old. But TV. that this world of content out there is now in direct competition with the NBA sports.

And that's never been more clear to me than it has been before. Yeah. And also, I think I wrote my article that the MLB reliever, Sean Doolittle said when baseball wasn't really getting its act together for getting the season going, that sports are like the reward for living in a functioning society. And in a way, I found the quote to be trenchant, but, also almost a little bit arrogant because it almost seemed to be telling fans. It was still in that moment where people assumed that fans were desperate for this. And it was telling them that you can't have it because we're dysfunctional right now.

Sorry fans. But I think what we've learned is an addendum, which is that sports get rewarded in a functional society. That when people are happy and feeling good and feeling connected to one another, sports, it's this watering hole of connectivity. And right now we're very disconnected. We're very atomized. And so that's also a big factor, I think, in people not digitally joining or locking arms and watching these big events. So whatever it is, I think it's multi-factor because this isn't said so much. People go, sports are down, sports are down, sports are down.

They don't mention that they actually change the numbers to give a boost to television right before this drop happened. I mean, it might be between 7 to 10% of just of a boost because they're now counting, they used to never count outside of homes. Now they're counting everything. So if you're watching in a hospital that's counted towards the Nielsen ratings, if you're watching in an airport that's counted for the Nielsen ratings, that's going to help them, by the way, when people start moving about more because a lot of sports bars are finally going to have people there,

and that will count towards their numbers. But more inflation, they juice the numbers. Even still, people aren't watching, people aren't into it. So whatever's happening, it's not just one thing. It's multi-factor. And it's just become a perfect storm that's changed America's viewing habits, which, hey, I find it fascinating. If people don't find it fascinating, if they're not into it, if they just wanted to be the game, that's cool too. But when tens of millions of people change habits they've had for the entirety of their lives, yeah, I find that interesting.

All right. Well, before we go, Ethan, Rob and I talked about the Warriors a bit at the top of the show. Any just general feelings from inside the Warriors bubble? Are you an optimist? Are you not feeling as good about the Steph Curry-Torid run through the NBA right now? The problem with Steph's run is that you really struggle when he's on woman like this. There's not a lot of value added that you can really do as a pundit. or as a media person. It really speaks for itself. It's one of the most aesthetically pleasing games that we have. And it's just fun. I know Marcus Thompson just wrote something on Steph, and I think he really captured it.

But often I'm watching him, like, Steph good. Steph good. But pad funny. Appreciate Steph. Yeah. Well, it turns into this lecture. I mean, that's the whole thing with NBA Twitter, where you start lecturing people about how,

You know, you better appreciate Steph Curry. If you don't appreciate Seth Curry, I'm going to get mad at you. You're mad at you if you don't appreciate him. It's incredible. I hope that they can preserve him. And we'll see if they, it's a complicated thing for them. They've got a timeline misalignment issue right now

where they've got their stars on the back end of their primes, frankly. And they've got this young. player in Wiseman where nobody totally knows what he's going to be. And they've got this upcoming Minnesota pick if it falls outside the top, you know, outside the top three. And so I just look at them as

what happens this season is only so meaningful. They've got a big road fork in the off season. They've got big choices ahead of them. And so they're just one of the more intriguing teams, I believe, of the next few months regardless of what happens.

I know Steph probably wants to win some playoffs. games, but they're not going to win the championship. And so the intrigue, I think, is a little bit beyond what we're seeing. I do love that, though, that when a player or a team is good enough, we get analytical and lyrical. And then when they transcend that point, we just go full caveman. Yeah. It doesn't need any help.

I mean, the way we would do it back when I was a beat writer was to do it numerically. You know, Steph is but da, so you see that. Like, that's a good place to go. But it is especially difficult now because at least when you're on the scene, you can come up with scenes and you can this conversation in the locker room and they're joking with him about whatever. And that right now is not happening. And it's all over Zoom. And so there's just only so much you can really only so much you can really do. And I just think it's fun.

It's it's been nice to see. I mock the idea of going at people and saying you better appreciate it. It has been a weird thing on NBA Twitter where there are these factions that want to undermine how much praise one guy gets versus the other guy. And the Steph season is a reminder that he's incredible. It's fun to watch. And that's really the main takeaway from Steph Curry. Yeah, the praise pie, as I call it. Everyone wants to cut it up.

And everyone, like one person gets 75%, but that other person only gets 20, not 21. It's not fair. It's not fair. CAA won't abide that. That's not CAA, but I'm just joking about CAA. Anyway. Sure. Well, one thing we could all agree is Ethan good. Ethan, thank you so much for joining us, man. Thanks for having me.

Always a fun time. I don't have any smart, funny thing to say after that sentence. I was trying to come up with something. Oh, the effort is appreciated here. Reed, Ethan, at the athletic, House of Strauss, all the other many good things that he does. We'll be back next week. Thank you to Curiamond Production. We'll see you then.