Chuck Klosterman on the Cinema Revival, Sports Tsars, Owners and Commissioners, Analytics, U.S. Soccer Groundhog Day, and State of Reading

We are also brought to you by the ringer podcast network where I did a rewatchable last week we did Ali. If you missed it, it was our ninth Michael Man movie and the one we have coming up on Monday. It's a move that's also on Netflix, by the way. She's the one.

“30th anniversary, very important gen X movie. We're going to explain all the reasons you”

should care about this movie. It's an interesting one, and it discussed 30 years later. So we have that, and then we have hitched with Will Smith, and they have a mend as, um, that is going to be the week after. So that is the plan. Um, coming up is a long conversation ahead with Chuck Costerman over the weekend. Um, it goes, you know, all the directions that

always goes with Chuck and I, uh, sports culture, all kinds of things. And, uh, it's a really

good one. So if you haven't heard me in Chuck, we've been doing these shits since, uh, I got my podcast that he's been in 07. So, um, I don't remember when he started to come in on, but we do these a bunch. And this was a rollicking, rollicking effort. So it is all coming up next. We're going to take a break, Pearl Jam, and then Chuck.

This episode of the Bill Simmons podcast is presented by PayPal. You know, a clutch move when you see one, a no look pass, a buzzer beater, a big steel. Well, imagine if you're wallet could pull off moves like that. That my friends is PayPal right now. You can find offers from hundreds of brands like Sony, all birds and vieter and save offers for you check out earn unlimited rewards. Plus you can add those rewards on top of credit card

points. Now that is clutch download the PayPal app today. Save those offers start scoring rewards. Terms and exclusions apply, see PayPal dot com slash rewards terms credit card points subject to issuers, terms and conditions. All right, Chuck close to minutes here. We're recording this on a Friday of notes running on Sunday. So there's going to be some world cup stuff this weekend. Hopefully nothing

“too crazy. Have you been into the world cup, Chuck?”

Yeah, I mean, not really. I haven't watched much of it.

It can never suck you in. You know, now, now you have, you'll even have to try to follow

things, things just come to you. So of course, I hear non stop conversation around it. I know that the games for the United States are supposed to be like a good times now, but the times have not worked out perfectly for me. So I've seen here in the air. I've seen some of it. Yeah. Do you feel like we're in a loop with US soccer where every four years, everybody decides this is the time that it's, I feel like you and I have talked about this for

20 years. And it just becomes groundhogged every four years where they build our hopes up and then people get disappointed and then everyone says have soccer is taking off. And I feel like we've been doing this since the 2000s. There is some similarities with the conversations. Although I will say every time this happens, the conversations become a little more serious. Like, you know, in the 90s or whatever, it almost would be sort of, you know, people making

more jokes about people are less willing to joke about soccer now. In the same way, they're kind

“of less willing to joke about everything. What is, of course, I think to me, always fascinating”

is then the, the, as soon as the US gets eliminated, there's the immediate conversation about why don't we dominate soccer? Why aren't we more dominant? What do we need to do? Do we need to have our best athletes, not play football and basketball? Yeah, is it that we have to change youth sports? Is it the financial structure? It's very interesting. I kind of have a my own theory

about this, but I'm wondering, first of all, what you would say if you were

tasked with this idea that everybody seems to want, that we need to have like a national team that says good as anybody in the world, what do you think would need to happen? Well, I want to hear your theory first. You said you had a theory, what's your theory? Well, a sort of, I do. Okay, so it's kind of seen me, Andrew, but so like after the communist revolution in China, okay? Okay, okay, China's the sort of what's the, once like just mostly a grayerian country, you know,

now it's, it's, it's poor, the, the, the entire country has been sort of thrown into chaos, but they need, they want to become a world power in every context. They want to sort of be, you know, be, you know, not just in economically, but also like in things like sports and arts.

and they said, what is a sport that is not emphasized anywhere else, and that there is no sort of

“problem with the physicality, the size of our athletes or their, and what they came to the conclusion,”

one of the things was like table tennis, like ping pong. We can nominate like they made a choice to become a ping pong power, and that happened. It was like they saw this vacuum, right? They saw this empty space that if we want to be a dominant, you know, they did this with lots of things, like the manufacturing of very small, cheap plastic toys, you know, like the kind of toys, they're like 99 cents or whatever. They're like, no one's really thinking to themselves,

we need to build an industry around this. They did all these things. They made all these choices based on sort of seeing what wasn't there, and then like kind of feeling that vacuum.

I don't think that can be done with a sport that is basically the most popular sport in the world.

All these other countries are obsessed with soccer, and it has this big head start, and I'm not sure what could be done. It might be that you just can't decide. We're going to be greater than something. Have it happened, and like maybe that shouldn't even be a demand. I have a friend of mine, David Diamond, and sent me this long text after the World Cup after we lost. Talking about just everyone was like, oh, see, we weren't as good. This was all mirage,

and his take was, we actually did have a lot of talent, and the difference with our team compared to, you know, some of the other teams that you see out there is like the experience, kind of the nastiness, like the edge, which I mentioned on the podcast the other day, Burhalter came in at one point, and you know, it was like energy guy, and they actually felt like they had some cohesion, and his question was, it's not a question of how do we get more athletes. It's how do we get the

type of athletes that seem to succeed in the world cup, who are all these guys that have these edges, right? When we have this in the NBA, we have the NFL, all these other ones. And in soccer, it seems like our teams are always too nice, like the best, the most successful team we ever had was the O2 team. That was the team that beat Mexico, and then probably should have beaten Germany, and there was the handball in the net that would have been a big deal if that happened.

But that team was just feisty, and I wonder if I'm trying to do like the blame pie for all the different reasons we can ever get over the hump. The athletes things at piece of it, the use soccer is a piece of it, but as I wonder, like is there some sort of mentality, personality

thing that we're just never going to have? Like it's basically some cost. There's just, there's no

way we're going to have it compared to what some of these other countries have, where they know

“all the tricks and pulling jerseys, and there's a nastiness to even the best players, right?”

And I always feel like over and over again, we don't have it. So why don't we have it? Well, I mean, that would suggest though that there's like these kind of intangible secrets to soccer that somehow we can watch and not, that shouldn't be the case, right? I mean, but that's it. How do we copy how do we build on these intangible secrets that we apparently just don't have? And I guess the other question would be, why don't we have it? Is it something about

the structure we have that building from youth soccer, the culture of it? Is there some sort of weird toughness that we seem to be missing? Because the weird thing about the Belgium game was they really like pulled our pants down. Like that was like one of those football playoff games you watch and run one where one team just gets blown off the field and embarrassed and knocked around and they just don't seem tougher, gritty or anything at all. So I just, I don't know how we

get those people because it feels like those are the type of athletes that drift to the other sports. So to me, it's less like athletic talent and more like all the other stuff that comes from being great. Like somebody said me a great email about Anthony Edwards, how he just carries himself in a basketball game. And did you see anybody had America who carried themselves like that? Right? And you watch these other countries and you see somebody like a Bapé and, you know,

he's not like the biggest, most intimidating guy, but he's got some some oms to him, you know,

“and that's what we seem to, and it's a weird thing to be like, how do we develop that? But I don't”

know how we do. But I like, okay, there are more people in the United States playing soccer than there are in Belgium. We have a large way more. We have a larger pool to choose, so it's not like, you know, that that's where this idea that it's like, if well, all our best athletes play soccer would, I'll be different. I'm not sure that would necessarily be the case. It's just, I mean, I don't know, like he needs Anthony Edwards in this example. So like, let's say, let's say, we lived

our basketball players. And then they look at the Norwegian basketball players. And I'm like, why don't

“you guys carry yourself like Anthony Edwards? I don't like, I'm like, how do you say in that's a piece”

of it? But they, so Norway is a good example, right? They have Holland who cares himself like a cross between, you know, Rob Grunkowski and Ray Lewis. And he just moves around the field like a shark. And that's somebody who his dad was a really successful soccer player. Like, they have like a whole infrastructure in place that if they have somebody like that, they can develop them differently. Everyone's talked about this use soccer stuff, which I, I have some experience with, because,

you know, we're in California, my daughter went through the whole thing. It is expensive. It is one of those things where the coaches put a lot of pressure on people to only play soccer and do nothing else and not play multi sports, which I've talked about on past podcasts. That seems to be really dangerous when you're specializing in something from like age seven eight on. But I, I don't, I don't think there's some grand solution. I, I just feel like this is going to be the

way it is for the rest of my life. We're going to be. We're going to be solid, but never

bring life in the course of your life. They have gotten better. So maybe that will, maybe they'll continue this in the, you know, same sort of general up. I mean, I would think overall the trajectories upwards, right? Maybe like we were really good in 2002. Like we were good in 1994. Like, and I would say all the countries got better because there's just more people playing soccer and probably a better infrastructure for it. Now, the people like the,

the diehard soccer fans that I know and we've had some of them on the pot are saying, we have the most players playing abroad on good teams that we've ever had. So that seems like a bonus. But then you, you go against a team like Belgium and they have people all over the place that are like playing key roles for the best teams. And that's where, you know, I don't know how we get over the hump with that. I mean, it also might be that you might have to do more balligan stuff

for you. You're just basically getting people to switch citizenship and come here.

“All right. Well, how good, how good should they be? I mean, this is, I think, a question that”

is kind of the unasked thing here. It's like what people keep thinking that we should be able to challenge for the world cup. We should be a consistent world champion or a world power. I'm not, you know, get a biggest country in the world of China, most popular sport there now is basketball. They're not a world cup power. I agree that these India is India, most popularly sport there is cricket. They're biggest countries in the United States. So soccer is the most popularly sport in the

world except that the, except in the three biggest countries, it's the separate thing. So I mean, maybe this is just maybe the natural way these things kind of work out. I mean, it's like, that there has to be sort of a distribution of sports excellence or whatever. And the United States is not in position to have that role in soccer. You know, I, it's almost seems like people are

saying like, we've got to be good at the world cup. Otherwise soccer will never be popular here.

“But is this about being here? The thing is, I think soccer has got more popular here.”

It's over the last 25 years. There's no question. And I think even you see some of the stars that are in this world cup, where people will like, we have real familiarity with now that we've been watching on all these different channels and streamers for 20 years. There's, there's one piece that, I don't know how we fix this. But like, you know, if you're an England, growing up in like Manchester, the moment you're like three years old, they're putting the

soccer jersey on you. And if you have any talent at all, you're playing and you're just dreaming like someday I'll be in the world cup team in England. What if, what if kids dream about here? It's all kinds of things, right? Like if I'm in Florida and I'm growing up and I'm a good athlete, maybe I'm dreaming of playing for University of Miami football someday, or, you know, or Florida State, or if I'm in Alabama, maybe like my dream is to play for Alabama someday,

from the moment I'm four, whereas I can some of these other countries, the dream is to just be playing soccer for, you know, the best possible teams and for the, for the country, and that's it. So, so all those young, like, fledgling athletes are just thinking about that. But here, they think about all kinds of sports. That might be a piece of it. I guess depends if, you know, what you're saying is the dream sort of manifests itself as reality.

And that if kids hear dream of winning the world cup, eventually that will happen, they will almost sort of like wishcast it into. Yeah, it's like you take like somebody who has awesome jeans and athletic ability. And at age four, they've just decided, I love messy. That's my guy. I want to be the next messy. Like, a good example is what happens in Canada, right? Canada has

even like, like, we finally, I think caught up to them. You can see from the Olympics, like,

“our best 30 guys are probably pretty even with Canada's best 30 guys. But if you talked about the”

percentage of Canadian athletes who were like four years old, like some day, I want to do blank. It's the hockey is going to be way, way higher there than it would be here. I mean, what you're basically saying is it's, it's, this is a cultural thing. Yes, it's definitely okay. So if that is true, if that is the case, and that's a very good, but if let's say if it's the culture, well, then it's not just the culture directly around the sport. Like, the reason that we produce

great football and basketball players here is not just the culture of football or the culture of basketball. It's sort of the culture of everything. In Canada, for example, you're saying, why's what makes that different? Well, it's not just their interest in hockey. It's not just them getting kids on the ice, young. It's not just them worrying about what month their kid is born or whatever. It's everything about living in Canada. You know, so if that is what does,

if it is so tell the of these cultures, then it's got to be everything about the United States.

“It's got to in a way change. And I think some people think it kind of is. I think there's a lot of”

people who feel like the culture of the United States is changing, but I don't know if it's necessarily changing in a way that's going to produce more soccer players. Like, these, these questions might be too big to solve. Like, there's nothing that can be done. Now, somebody would say, like, the people in Norway would say, well, you know, 40 years ago, we changed youth sports. They all became free. And now, what's happened 40 years later, this is,

you know, this is the result. Maybe that's true. I mean, it would be, it would be really, I think, wonderful if the United States decided to call youth sports. We're going to be free for

everyone. It's something that they could do, but they never will. That's never going to happen.

But if we, if that did happen, I wonder if that would change a lot of things. You know, it would change the kind of kid who, you know, it would become something that, if it was free, that like, some parents would be like, you're playing football this year, you're playing soccer, you're playing tennis because it would be like a free summer camp, basically. And that would, there's probably some kids we miss due to that. Like, they just have no chance to be involved,

so we never know if they could potentially. Now, it's, so when you get to the travel club soccer level, it's legitimately expensive. You know, and for some people, it becomes prohibitive, unless their scholarships or teams raising, raising money to pay for a couple extra kids,

things like that. There's one other piece that we did mention. We've never had the transcendent

soccer player here that would become like the hero for somebody, you know, like, for instance, Caitlyn Clark dating back to the last two Iowa seasons in the gun that WBA had a profound impact on girls who play basketball. Like that, it's just a fact. People watched her there like, "I want to be like her. I want to shoot like her." We saw this with Steph Curry, too, with three pointshooting in America, where Steph started having that. Basically, it started at Davidson,

but when it really started to happen with the Warriors, you just saw the sport, transform, and all of these people all over the place where like, "I want to shoot like Steph does."

We've never had a soccer player like that here. We've never had an American messy. We may never

will, but, but I do wonder if we had somebody like that how different would be. How many people did Tiger Woods affect when he made his girlfriend in the late '90s? Did he, did he cause more people to play golf? I would argue that he did. Did golf in the United States improve in the

“wake of Tiger Woods? I think more people played. I do think he had an impact. I don't have a research”

expert hand, but it's actually, in a way, starting to seem like Tiger Woods impact is slightly less than we thought. It was going to be if we'd had this conversation in say 2003. Sure, well, I think they had talked about minority officers, 2003. I think we would have imagined a world of golf now that would have been like many guys who looked like Tiger Woods and different, and golf has changed, but I think that not as much as we thought it would.

What's another sport that you need money to get really good at? That's like a it's not like there's not money here. There's enough money in the United States for enough people to play golf. I don't like this question. Don't follow soccer. I'm not watching

as the United States, anything that we want to be good at, we should be able to be great at.

We should be able to do it. We have the resources. We have the people, but it kind of is proof

“that there's just a different way of thinking. I mentioned that. I think about the Chinese”

evolutionary. Have you ever seen the documentary on general those chicken? No. It's fascinating for a ton of different reasons, but particularly for one. It was history of Chinese food in the United States. After the railroad roads were built, there are all these Asian people in California. They may have this draconian law, where it was like if you were of Chinese origin, you could only operate a restaurant or a laundromat. They changed the laws of who could

own these businesses. The people there did something that's just incredible to me. They got all the people, all the Chinese people, and they said, "Look, if we all open restaurants, here in San Francisco, or whatever, we're going to kill each other. We won't be able to survive."

So here's what's going to happen. You and your family, you're going to go to Carnegie Nebraska.

You're going to open a Chinese restaurant. You and your family, you're going to go to still water Oklahoma. You're going to open a Chinese restaurant. They just sit these families to these places where there was no one else like them and said, "Open a Chinese restaurant."

“And that's why sometimes you drive through a town, like a small town in the middle of the country,”

and they have like a subway, a grocery store, but there's a Chinese restaurant there. You know, it's like, it really worked. That's a kind of mentality that I don't think, it's not a very American way of doing it. It would be really hard to do that to take Americans, put them together and go, "Look, I'm going to send you someplace you don't want to live." You're not going to know anybody, but you're going to start a business because it'll be better

for all of us if we do that. You know, it's just, I don't know if the way that, you know, like the US mentality, the things that were good at, maybe create problems that make it very difficult for us to improve it things that don't naturally come. You know what I'm saying? That was a really interesting. What did they figure out who came up with?

The general gau or saueron has it to deal. There is no general saueron. There used to always be this

idea. There used to be all these, okay, they basically took a Chinese food and they were like, we're going to make this palatable to Americans. What's it? There's going to be people who have never seen Chinese, you know, since the past, people have never seen Chinese food before. They're going to be freaked out. So we're going to use chicken and we're going to make a sauce. It's kind of sweet and kind of crispy and we're going to throw some broccoli in there. Then they're all kind of

myths about it. Oh, general zo was a general and when he would win battles, he would reward his troops with his foods. Or general zo when he was fighting battles needed an easy food to make

“defeat his troops, you know, so that's what they ate when they were, you know, sort of out in the”

wild. None of this is his true. And then even though general zo's chicken is a completely constructed, Americanized food, there's now sort of an issue over its authenticity. Can you use white meat in it? People say, no, traditional, let's say, no. How spicy or sweet is the sauce supposed to be? Like even though this thing was a completely manufactured concept, there's now a debate over whether or not tradition of it. Yeah, you know. And it's just what's great about this documentary,

it really does show like this is how culture actually works. Like things that become so entrenched in our life. It's like we seem to think in some ways that like their arbitrary or that there's some puppet master and it's kind of a weird hybrid of those two things where it's like, you can't control how people feel about things. We can't really control how people feel about soccer. We every four years, they try. Like the soccer community in the media tries to do this every time the

world cup happens. They try to convince people that both soccer is going to become more popular and that it's actually more popular than you realize that people actually already like it. And you're just not going to talk people like they got to actually feel that way. Which I think is what's happened in the last 15 years, 15 years or so. I actually feel like more people do like soccer myself. They do. There's no question about it. But in the 2000s, I did feel like they were

that community was trying to sell us on it versus it actually being the reality. It's also unique in that it has a different meaning in the United States than in other countries. The the idea

like, you know, like the book, like among the thugs or whatever, like it's like the view for the world for people who were cut out of everything else. Yeah. It's like they don't have a relationship to arch. They don't have a relationship to make it a lot of money and entrepreneurship. But they have

“this thing. Soccer is for like the kind of person who has, you know, that's what they're unique.”

In the United States, it's the opposite. That if you're really into soccer, it tends to mean like, well, you kind of have a globalist mentality. And that you're kind of, you're not like some SEC football fan, you were to ever like, you're, you know, you're to call the beautiful game or whatever. And they read like how soccer explains the world. And these things like so, I think that the, that the rise in popularity of soccer in the United States is also the rise

of a certain kind of person that there's a certain kind of person who likes to see themselves as a sports fan who is not like a retrograde thing. It's like that they're, that they're sophisticated, that they're, that they're, that by, and you really see this on like on social media, like there's like there, every time the world cup happens, there's these people who wanted like suddenly become like soccer tacticians and want you to describe all the things you're not seeing.

Yeah. And it's like, oh, it's like, I know you like watching, you know, you like watching baseball or whatever, but like we know this is how it is. So it, it, but that's right. It is more popular for sure. There's no question. I was, when I wrote about soccer back in the 90s, I was wrong about that. Like soccer is going to become one of the major U.S. sports, if it isn't all right. But it doesn't necessarily mean we're going to do well in the world.

Coming like there's history with it, too, because people have teams that they picked, you know, when this was happening to that, like I wrote that piece about picking in Premier League team in '07, I think. And I, I'd definitely, I was in my mid-30s. What you're seeing now is people are picking their team when they're eight or nine, like they'd become and aren't, and now those people are in their 20s. So they have like the same way you would pick any team.

It's not like they jumped in late. It's been part of their lives. And I think that's,

“that's what's probably changed the most. But I still feel like, you know, big picture with the”

soccer stuff. Like, basically what we've been certainly around is the concept of the sports are,

and, you know, which I've joked about for 25 years. But we actually saw a glimpse of it when Trump did the red card thing and got it lifted for, for Balgam, the, the striker of the American team. And there was some wheeling dealing going on. And I was thinking about, I don't, this is the first somewhere I'm like, we actually might need somebody who's job that is for real. And I've made the cases in the past, but even like with this Kawai situation right now,

it's ostensibly supposed to be the commissioner of a league, right? But it almost feels like we need somebody who has more oversight than that, who can be like, "Yo, what's going on with this aspiration thing?" Like we have to, we have to come up with a decision. Somebody who could float around, who has, I don't know, a little bit of authority. And I, I don't know why that's not a job. Like, we have a department of transportation. We have

all these different parts. What, what part of America generates like more, more money from an entertainment value than sports? And why wouldn't we have more oversight over it? Well, you know, when you, when you, when we were a bit over it, over to say for example, the sports are thing like back when

we first heard you in the podcast, it was more like a joke. I will admit it doesn't seem insane now in

that same, what, what, what, what, what we're just talking about youth sports. Yeah, like, if I was sports are before I would deal with anything with pro sports or college sports, I would first get involved with youth sports. That is the, the place where it really does need, seems like somebody could have enough oversight to say, like, look, this way, this isn't good for anyone. It's not good for the parents. Well, same thing with the NTO and the college conferences where, yes, it's like, all right,

“we've now drifted to this place that I think everybody feels like is pretty rock, like this,”

this could, maybe it'd be not sustainable in 10 years. So how are we going to fix this? And nobody seems to care. Well, like the situation like what the Texas Tech quarterback and the gambling stuff, it's like, there was a point where it was like, this seems crazy, but what can we do? Like, it would really be done. Like, there is, there isn't anything. It can really, like, it's not really made up that way. It's as crazy as it is. It's like, pro sports are actually probably,

you know, a little more stable than all the things below it. I mean, it's like, there's just, right, they have these pro sports has commissioners and billionaires and smarter things though. It's like the commissioners tough because it's working for the owners. So of course,

it always seems like the commissioners not doing what they should be, you know, and if there was this next level,

do not like the intersection of sports and politics. And in the other go, like, well, people don't like it when it's against them. It's like, well, that's going to happen half the time. It's like,

“it's that, you know, you should look at the world covered over like, you know,”

mandami coming out and he's like, I'm looking forward to like Morocco be upsetting France or whatever. And it's like, that's a weird thing to say. Kind of, I mean, it's like, I understand why he wants that. I understand it's really, but it's like, that that is, it's not really necessary to the, like, I don't, I don't, I don't like when this happens. When I was having a debate about this, with some people over Texas yesterday, kind of it's, it's, it's, whatever, a political figure

uses sports in any way. It seems to make things less comfortable for everyone. What we saw twice with Trump, right? We saw when he went to Game 3 of the finals in the next, the next loss. And then we, the red card, which, um, it just made people crazy that he got above, right? Especially since so many people who love soccer hate Trump, so they didn't know how to

“feel about this. It was like, most complex day of their life sorts. It's like, the person I hate most has”

done this thing. I need more than anything. It's like, you know, right? Yeah. And also like, technically, the red card was kind of ridiculous. And it's weird that that act would cost somebody a game in a half. But this goes back to like, even the concept of the sports are like, hey, what's up with this red card situation? So you, you basically out like in the NBA where they have a commissioner, when be when he elbowed the, not as read and he got kicked out of that game.

By World Cup rolls, he would have also had to miss the next game and that I'm so overlooked that that and said, all right, that's, that's kind of done. We're not going to, he's not going to lose two games for that. So he brings him back. There was like common sense prevailing, which I'm

not sure we always have. We had to take a break. You know, sports, I can't be a world sports

star, though. So it's like, how could not be an American sports star? Yeah, so it's like they could end them. Wait, we, we had to take a break. I wanted to talk commissioners with you for a second. This episode is brought to you by TikTok. Did you know you can use TikTok to connect even more for the sports you love? I love a lot of sports. It's not just highlights. It's everything around the game, including the sports community. You could find breakdowns a classic basketball place. I love

that deep dives on baseball stats, even videos on how athletes train and recover. I guess they don't have podcasters. There are people teaching strategy sports history in ways to improve your on jump shot. Mine doesn't need improvement. It's a great 18 footer. It's kind of like the biggest locker room ever and everyone is sharing what they know on TikTok. Join the fun download TikTok today. So we're talking about how leagues and world cup all these different things. You sport,

all these different things could run, doing it as sports star. But then the commissioners of these different leagues that we've had forever, you know, going back to, I don't even remember

what the first NFL commissioner was in baseball. We had, you know, most famously when a

commissioner used his power in the 1900s. It was the black stock scandal. Yeah. That was the first time where a commissioner was like, I actually need to take over and take control of a situation

“that got really bad. And I have the authority to do so from the owners. And I think about that,”

I'm sober. And just in general, commissioners, because we've seen this with good del. When a commissioner takes over a league, they come in initially and they care about the sport, the sport itself and the good, the good things that they can affect in the sport. But then also the owners and the business side of the owners and making everybody more money and making the, making the league healthy and sustainable. Right. So these two separate things. And what's interesting

is the commissioner will come in with the, you know, a little more idealistic, right? And then

as the years pass, they basically become Michael Corlion, Godfather, too. It's all about the business.

And we see this over and over again with everybody. And I don't really know why it happens. But I feel like we're seeing it right now at the NBA. And I think sober for the most part is done a good job. But some of the things that are happening with the league, the second apron thing they did, the CBA that they negotiated with the players to put in basically a hard cap is having so many bad ramifications already for team building for player staying in the same place. And they did this

to basically protect the owners and so everybody could make more money. Now they're going to do expansion, which I think is, I personally think that hurts the league and I would much rather see them

But I don't think any of them have made the NBA better. I think the NBA is in a worse place than it was four or five years ago because they're making business decisions in not league decisions. And when I say that, everyone in the league gets mad at me. And then it's like, well, why are you so hard on Adam? And it's to me that's not the question. The question is, is his job to elevate the league

“or just make money? And they would argue, well, both. But have you elevated the league this decade?”

And I don't know if the answer is yes. And even I look back to the COVID thing. And when they had

the COVID, they come back, they play the bubble playoffs. They start the next season. They have to do 72 games or whatever they ended up 71, whatever. And there was that grind and then playoffs. And then the next season, there was basically no off seasons for two years. They basically played almost three seasons in two to try to keep all the money the same. And I think it had real damage to the players and to the teams and the competitiveness of the league. And it was just kind of like, well,

we had to do it that way, everybody can't lose money. I'm just concerned about the intentions of the league. And even some of the owners, they've led in like this Portland owner, some of the stuff he's done. Yeah. You know, and you know, they greenlit this Dallas owner, I still don't know why Mark Cuban sold. But just in general, I just think that leagues in a weird place. So what's your take? Okay, like the thing about how they began sort of with the good

of the league, what's good for the sports? How can we grow this over time? And then over, and then eventually it becomes a thing where they're just kind of like the owner of the package.

Well, I mean, the first part is like, how you get the job? It's like they're trying to pick

and do commissioners and they talk to guys about basketball and about the meaning of basketball, or it's placed in the world in all these things. But then as soon as they're actually doing it, then it's like, well, okay, but you remember, you weren't for us, we need to make money. I've glad you have those ideas, try to implement those ideas while also doing exactly what we want. It's a, the amount of money is part of, I mean, it's just the sheer mass of money, the expansion.

Right? Yeah. You make a lot of arguments over why expansion is just going to water the league down. There's already too many teams taking. There's already too many games where you turn on a no one's playing. How old, you know, pretty, two more teams in their help. You can't really make the argument for it, except that the buy-in is now, you know, in them. So every, every owner gets

“what, if this one, I think you know the number. So it's like, so if they get, let's say they get”

seven and a half billion for each team. Yes. It's 15 billion for the combo. There's 30 teams.

They would, they would all get a check for $500 million. That they wouldn't have to share with the players by the way. Well, he thinks it's a five. So you know, because, so if that check, you know, is like, you know, $80 million. It's possible. Somebody can go like, well, though, it's like, this could hurt the league. Maybe in the long run, it could cost me money. You know, but when the number is 500 million, it's just too big. It's like the expense. They're going to

expand the NCAA basketball tournament again. To like, $76,000. That was the number next year. $76. They're going to expand World Cup, too, to probably, they'll probably go to 48. I do not know. Or 64, right? I forgot. A single person. I've got to one person who's like,

“I think the NCAA tournament needs more teams. I think it'll be better if they get it. Here's the”

difference. Here's the difference with the NCAA. It's completely rudderless and wireless right now, right? Who's in charge? No, but even knows. And people just do whatever they want. And they're afraid of all the big universities. And people can just form new conferences and super conferences. And we're in this situation. We're in an hour. You have UCLA who's flying around to all these different parts of the country, which makes sense if it's the football team, but not if it's like

across country team or the women's soccer team just flying all these these alleged college athletes are just flying around because we've just like college sports go to shit. I think the NBA's a little different because they have actual control over what they should be doing, where the team should be, how many should they have? What should the salary cap be that could be? I just think when we get to the point when in there's a lot of reasons why Brown and Tatum

couldn't have stayed together. But when it makes no sense for them to stay together financially, that's not good. Because if you go back to the league that we love, do we grow up with? You're basically saying, all right, I love the, I loved watching the 80s, makers and Celtics. And it was really fun when MJ and Pippon were together. Well, I don't know,

other three titles with MJ, Pippon because Pippon's on Seattle. You know, Kevin McKayles not on the Celtics and the mid 80s because they absolutely would have had to trade them in like 1985 because

“they couldn't have afforded max contracts for Bird and McKayle. Like, I honestly, I think this is”

what the league wants. I think they want complete parity like NFL. I don't think they want teams to be good for more than three or four years. Well, one thing I think and this kind of happened this year to be honest, this, you know, I felt that from a consumer perspective, this was a real troubling NBA season. Like, it's, you know, I mentioned this so many times. I just, I can't count how often I tried to watch, you know, look forward to a basketball game that realized a bunch of guys weren't

playing suddenly or it's just similar. But they're always like when the playoffs happen and the

playoffs are, yeah, we're playing bailed out at the end and that kind of happened. We had this great sort of Western Conference final where this guy certainly is like, oh, this is the new Will Chamber, Leonard, whatever. Then he goes and plays the nicks becomes the villain. It's like, for if you're trying to write it, if you're, if they NBA trying to write this better, they can't be any better than this. Yeah. Plus they lose to the nicks. One of the most likable teams,

yeah, I can remember it a very long time, but also from New York, it's like, it's a contradiction. Like,

“it all kind of works out at the end. I think that's kind of how the NBA sort of looks at this,”

right. But like, you know, and then they had a great draft with a whole bunch of great players that came in and have all these problems people will forget. People will forget when they see these

amazing games. They'll just sort of be like, oh, yeah, I still, you know, you know, fantastic or whatever.

Right. I wanted to ask you something about Jim Brown though and not really about him, but sort of about kind of the debate going on around him. Okay. And I'm sure you, you probably talked about this already, but maybe not in this specific way. So, you know, if you, I listen to like Bob Meyer talking or maybe it was when he was kind of over the rational guy, right? It was a rational guy talking about analytics. And what do you think they said about the

use of analytics? What's the rational take about analytics in basketball? What are you supposed to say if you're like not a crazy person? You're supposed to say it's part of the puzzle for evaluating a player in a team. Exactly. It's not the part, but it's part of the process. Okay.

But can that be? Like, you know, like, one of the stats that was really hurting, you know,

Jalen Brown was I think it was, it was one where it's like, Yoke, it was number one and then he went down a little bit in the, but the one of the stats. Yeah. Yeah. It was the one that hit him. Yeah. Okay, him and DeRosen were the ones the box. Yeah. And when you look at all the other guys, actually did seem pretty accurate. It was like Yoke, it was the joke was the best player, but he didn't play as well on the play out. So it went down like he kind of went down the list. It kind of

made sense. Yeah. Like, if, if the idea is that analytics, watch every game, that the humanized season one, but analytics sees them all. Can you actually say we need a hybrid of these two things? I mean, doesn't work that way in chemistry. If we're doing chemistry experience experiments, we can't be like, we got to measure everything out, except when we use, you know, a radioactive material. Then we're just going to eyeball that because that's like, like, if something has kind of

a numeric underpinning. Yeah. You can add, you know, it doesn't have to kind of be all or nothing,

“either you have to say that we're not going to look at this because this is a good point. I think like,”

I don't know if it can be both. I mean, you don't have to say kind of, it seems counterintuitive. It seems like it shouldn't like a reasonable person's to be like, well, of course you consider this, but you also got to consider the old stuff. But if it's numbers and it's math, isn't don't you have to sort of accept it into telly if you accept it? Yeah, how's that I talked about this little yesterday? Because I went back and I looked at there was 85 guys ever

who had a usage rate of 30% or more. And then average at least 20 points again. There's 85 guys ever in the history of the league. And then if you rank those guys by like win shares, warp, and some of, you know, some of the better advanced metric stuff that we can understand. Jalen was like the worst or one of the worst than ever list. And the best guys in the league that you would think would be the best guys were the best guys in the list. So then the question becomes,

can you have outliers with numbers like this or, or is this telling you like, yeah, the the guy test is actually fooling you. It's, it's a tough one for me and I tried to explain it when I talked to House about it. Like, because I, obviously, watch more Celtics. I watched the Celtics the most that of any team I watch. Like, I have the most opinions on them. I have the most thoughts.

And it was one of the only times like, what I saw with my eyes did not match the stats.

Usually I'm like, oh, I see that, but I can see this too. This one, I'm like, I'm seeing this and you're telling me this instead. But, but the good news is they did win 56 games and maybe that's the ultimate advanced metric. And you could argue like, well, how they do that. But so it's possible. You can just have outliers with stats, right? It's not a massive sample. What, what, how can that be? I mean, I'm not, I'm not even just kidding with you. But I'm saying like,

how can there be, like, well, here's a good example. However, some birds are in a sequence. There is sometimes where a number actually is larger than it seems that actually, you know, six items is more than eight items sometimes. If we're using these, if they're actually doing what they're saying they're doing, right? The idea of the outlier doesn't really, I mean, it's granted these are still healing. Here's where it applies to. So, Averson's a good example,

too, with the 2006ers, where Averson was a pretty flawed player about that by the stats. Here after you're, because it wasn't a good 3-point shooter. He needed the ball a lot, defensively, even though I loved Averson. But, you know, he was 5 foot 10. So you take advantage of him. And you really needed to build the right kind of team around him to protect him, right? And you couldn't have, like, he played with Jerry Stackhouse that didn't work. You know, he needed, like,

people like Eric Snow, Aaron McKee, the Oratliff, these Keith fan horn, beats people that

“filled specific roles, trying to build the right kind of team to make Averson succeed, right?”

So if he comes out of the lineup from that, and the team's built around him specifically, it's going to be weird, right? Maybe it might, so maybe the on-off stuff will look better with him. But it doesn't change the fact that they built this specific team for him that really only succeeded once. Like, he lost in the playoffs every year, except for 01. And you could argue in 01. Like, Toronto took them to 7 Milwaukee. The next series is one of the most rigged

playoffs series we've ever had. Like, like, the Ask Any Bucks fan about that series. So he didn't have as much success as it seemed. And then every other year, he had no success. So people revere Averson. It's Iverson argument for against analytics. You're saying it's an argument for analytics. I think it but that's the thing. I think he's at our good fore and against because they succeeded and made the finals in 2001. And the analytics are actually a little bit more favorable to

him that year than the other years. But he's basically playing the same style over year. So it feels

like the team they put around him affected his numbers in the right ways. So last year with Jalen,

“the Celtics were supposed to be a 500 team. The only way they're going to do better than that is if”

he played 90% of the games had this huge bird and scoring wise, right? And had to guard the other guys best player and do all this stuff that nobody thought he could do. And he did and they won more games than it thought. But then the analytics said, well, okay. I don't know. He said, they were supposed to win 50 games. You said. No, they're supposed to win 41. Why are they supposed to win 41? Because they didn't have Jason Tatum. Yeah, but who said they were supposed to win 41?

What was the, what was the thing? Good point. So Tatum, this is a 41. Well, they, you asked her move for Zingas and you moved Drew Houdes. So they last three and our work for it. So they last four of their best seven guys, including their best guy and Vegas looked at that and all the advance, everybody runs numbers as I am. That's a 500. So do you suspect that the 41 number was mostly an analytic conclusion? Or was that a conclusion of this hybrid? Where they were using analytics.

“It's tough because I think it was kind of people throwing that number in the middle because they”

didn't know if the Celtics were in a tank. So it's almost like that's the safe number. And if they

tank, you don't get killed. And if they don't tank, you don't get killed either. But I never thought

a million years had won 56 games. You know, so that's where it's like, and that's where I, the, I touch just an image. The analytics in that case, here's the difference. So baseball, which we've discussed in the past, like, that is a mass sport. In basketball, the teammates and who you put around people and your bench can affect on off stuff. If your bench is awesome, you're on off stuff. It's going to look worse than it is. Somebody like Denver who's had no bench

the last few years, Yoke comes out. They crater. You could see with Wemby in the San Antonio games when he came out, they were cratered. So his on off would be better. But baseball's just math. And as we've discussed in the past, it's made it less fun to argue about because the arguments solved by math every time. That's it. You're just like, oh, here, here's the evidence. So then the arguments over. Okay, I'm not because what I'm expressing when I'm asking these questions,

I don't want to seem like I, I, I, I, I, I really ensure about this. But like, I,

why the Celtics would have done this. Yeah. And what no one seems to be saying is this possibility. Maybe they just didn't want him. Oh, I think that's, I mean, that's a big piece of look. And then we don't, we actually don't want him. I think what they, but what they didn't want,

I think is the him as a complimentary player did not make sense to them at $57 million.

If you're paying him to be the best guy in your team and you're trying to overachieve,

“maybe that's what you want your contract is also real large. The money for two years. Yeah.”

You know, I, I, I, I just, if, if the, if you think about analytics as like this is like, as just like a small tool, I guess, but if you think of it as something that's like a real thing, and this is a way to understand the world. I mean, maybe that was just, I, I do, this is trade still like, have you kind of changed your view on the trade? Do you feel better about it now? Or do you know, I, I still don't like it. I, maybe understand it a tiny bit more.

I do think it was more of a personality trade than an analytics trade. I just feel like they felt like they ran their course. And when Jalen ran the team last year, now he can't go back to the other way of doing it. The question for me is like, you know, you have these people that own teams. It was interesting that more teams didn't go after them. And I, I thought that that peak my interest. Like, what are the reasons? Is it, like, if you, if you, if you, if you're someone around another

team, do you look at him be like, I, I don't know. I saw him going at Steven a Smith last week. I'm not sure that's kind of guy we won around here. Like, I just kind of want guys who are just going to play some basketball and go hang out with the kids in the community. I'm like, son of a guy's like, I trust Brad Stevens, why do you want to get rid of this guy? Well, that's, that's another piece. It's like, what, what, what, why are they doing this? Like, there must be something else there.

But that's that, but that's a real thing, though, if it's like, why is this person trying to sell his car so frantically? You be like, huh, it's wrong with the car. So nice car. I thought you loved it. Or like, now you'll take half price. I would guess people don't want to trade the Danny age because they feel like he likes to go over the makers just did. Well, one of the things that's happening in Boston is they're talking about the new owner, Bill Chism, who's, you know,

“a VC hedge fund background and people really worried about, you know, and I think this is a”

fault that is, but a lot of the moves he's made since he took over the team were shedding salary, right? Because they had all this tax stuff. And now if you're going to defend him, you'd say, well, they're all these penalties with the tax stuff. There's repeater tax. There's frozen picks. You can't make two for one trades. I can really does hamper the week, but a roster. So, but they got rid of poor zingas. They got rid of Drew Holiday. They let Lucorneco. They traded

assignments for Vusavitch last year, which was whatever. And then Jalen goes for Paul George, who's a

year less than his contract and makes like three, four million less. But it did make me think,

because I was reading this book, you know, the book Tall Tales by Terry Pluto. I was zipping through that, because I was, I was interested in owners. And I was, it has some good stuff about the owners back then. And I was thinking there's five errors of sports owners. Five errors. Okay. We're in the fifth era. And I don't know how this error plays out. First era basically takes us all the way through the

“sixties. And it's the people that own teams are like local business owners and families. Right?”

Wasn't like very rarely was it just somebody who was like Mr. Moneybag. So it was like the guy who owned the Syracuse Nationals, you know, like a bowling alley. You know, Walter Brown, the guy who owned the Celtics, you know, was it like the super rich guy? Not that one. It was not an impossible drink to own NBA franchise during that time. Right. And very doable. And maybe you didn't want to own it. You know, same thing for NHL, maybe had a little more money because there was only 16.

So they were a little more desirable. But then we go into the 70s and 80s, which is the era. We remember as kids. Staying at wealth here at people. You get like the Dr. Jerry Bus types. You get the goofy characters. Like we grew up with Charles O. Finley. People like that. These people were like, you know, their own documentaries. And then you would get that I wrote down misguided local heroes. People who felt like they either had to save the team or keep the team, but maybe they

didn't totally know what they were doing. Like we had the solvents in New England for the Patriots. They were local guys. But they really kind of kind of overskied with what's that saying when you

show your skills. Yeah. The third era, this is 90s now. Legacy kids,

all by whoever. So it's like mark human. No, we're not there. Mark is the next era. This is more like 90s. Like, oh, it would be cool if I owned a team and it's starting to, you know, the prices are starting to go up. I'm going to get in. But you also had the kids from the families or stout. Like the Celtics had Paul Gaston, who was Donald Gaston's son, who was terrible. But there was a lot of like legacy kids, stolen takes over the Nixon 2000. The fourth era is the 21st century.

And this is internet guys, guys with internet money, early BC guys and smarter legacy kids. And all of a sudden now you have, you have like the guys who bought the Celtics, where it's like quick grossbacks, son of, herb grossback, one of the most respected, you know, business guys out there.

“And he buys it was Deepak Luca who I think was a bank capital. And they're like, well, by the”

Celtics, we're going to blow this out, make it bigger than Apple with the Red Sox that Apple went the Warriors. You know, there was like real purpose to this where, oh, these are better assets in these big cities. We're going to blow them out. They were right. You know, the Red Sox are were 20 times probably what they paid. Now in the mid-20s, I feel like we're in this kind of massive money state where you just need like a shitload of money to buy anything, right? So you have like,

you buy the Broncos, it's like the Walton's, right? You buy the, the, the, the, the, the Lakers, it's the guy who had the Dodgers and probably has like, you know, Middle Eastern money behind them. The guy about the Celtics, he puts this whole consortium together and then gets

as the final piece. So I think second richest family in India throws in another billion.

And the groups that are being put in with Vegas, these are now like finding these giant giant things. And I guess the question is why, what are these people trying to get out of this? And how do you, how do you gain value when you could argue that the value is already there? So like if we wanted to buy the bears right now, let's say the bears became available. What type of person wants to buy the bears? It's not somebody who's like, I lived in Chicago and I'm rich. That guy has no chance.

Okay, so I, I don't know what era according to your kind of sequence of this bit sound. This is three or four. But I remember there'd be kind of a cliche a lot of times. It was like, these rich guys buy these sports franchises and they're not trying to make money off this.

Like, it's like a tax right off. Like they break their money. And that's the second era.

Yeah, that's like when John Wybram bought the Celtics and the old content right chicken. But now like when you look at someone like Jerry Jones and like what he paid for the Cowboys in 1989 or '88 or whatever year was. What is now? It's like now that it's, I guess it's completely sort of lost its relationship to the idea of like the ultimate rich guy hobby. Like, you know,

“like I think there was a time when it was like a rich guy was like, yeah, my friends buy race horses,”

you know, I, right, you know, the boss ruins. That's sort of the Celtics over and over again. They would have these guys buy it in. They have it for two years and they'd sell it. I mean, because now you're buying something that I mean, as long as the world exists as it does now, it's like it's an asset that's just going to be worth more and more because it's almost like

kind of like, you know, when I, I first started making a little money, I remember my dad trying

to tell me he was like, come back here and buy a bunch of land in North Dakota. I was like, I'm not going to do that. I would have been a good idea because they can't create land. He's like, they cannot make more of it. So yeah, that's like, yeah, now I obviously, I should have done that. I mean, I like, I, I, I, I, I, I probably wouldn't have been smart, you know, you'd be like the new Taylor shared it. You just have this giant ranch. You know, I just, I thought it was the crazy

thing he was suggesting to like, you know, I was like, but, you know, you know, there's so many franchises are these things where it's like, you know, it's, it is the thing itself, the rest of the world is becoming the sort of this kind of digital, almost like, false similar kind of reality. But these things are real. So I suppose a guy who would be buying the bears, he would be saying like, well, I'm really investing in in many ways D NFL and that, you know,

that there's this thing that it is maybe opinion is like one of the few things that is not only

“stable, but has the potential to get bigger in big ways, you know, like, I, I think that it is”

the meaning of the franchise has less to do. There was probably a period where it was like a, I, I want something kind of for me for fun, like, I love sports. So this is a way to do like,

attempted to buy into some sports franchise. I know a question. Why I remember, this really was the, like, the late 2000s when I, at one point, I remember writing about this for ESPN. It was pre-grantland and there was at one point it was like nine or 10 NBA teams available because including New Orleans, which the league had to take over. Like, think about that beginning of

it's not New Orleans for like, I don't know, 500 million or whatever they wanted for it. Because

there was this lock-out coming, they were really scared about what was future of the business. What's going to happen with media? What is the internet going to mean? Like, they, everyone kind of looked at it the wrong way. And I remember when Lake up in those guys bought the Warriors,

“I think they paid like 360 or like 400 or something. And it seemed like a lot and they outbed”

what's this face, the, the, the Ellison. I think that's who, or the Oracle guy, one of those guys. I remember it's like, wow, that's a lot of money. And I was either writing about our talk about. I was like, that's, that's an amazing purchase. Like, they, they just bought this, everyone loves that team in the Bay Area. That's one of like the seven best teams you can own. Like, it's been poorly run for 20 years. Now I, now you have that asset. You can turn that into something

great. The problem is there's not a lot of those opportunities. I don't think anymore in 26.

Like, even the bears would be, do you get the bears? That's amazing, right? You have, it's the third biggest city. It's the only team be you're paying like 11 billion. Like right now, the Seahawks are available. And there's two groups going for it. It's supposedly, who knows a bomber is going to be in it. One of the people is with Grossback, who combined with that, that Indian family, the, the middle's. And, you know, that might go for like 9 billion. So if, like, if we were, if he was on

right now, be like, why would you do this? The answer would be no NFL franchise has ever gone

“down in value. Right? That's, that's why these guys get in. It's like, go back and look at the”

values. Five years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, is the arrow just pointing like this. Yes,

well, why is that? Because people love football, live rights, media, all that stuff. So I guess the answer your question is, it probably is still a great investment. Well, it can probably, I mean, certainly it seems that way, although it's just like, you know, we for, so easy to forget things. Like, you know, like, do you remember why Monday night football moved to ESPN? I don't. I used to know this. So bizarre. ABC was like, desperate housewives is more popular. Right. They didn't want it.

Now, that seems impossible, not that you had a chance to have a prime time NFL game somewhere. What could you possibly be like, well, this TV show could be bigger. That wasn't that long ago. No, that was what happened. You have the right thing, but it was, they could have had Sunday and football, Monday and football. Well, that was part of it. That was part of it. Yeah,

“and NBC ended up getting Saturday football because Disney decided. I think this was Iager to”

say, well, it was Disney with this word housewives to huge night for us. You take something like the NBA. It's like, why do these values keep going up? Because people want to buy in because they want to own teams. You have a lot of wealthy people that have extra money that they can spend. But you also have a league that seems to be perfectly willing to just let everything kind of go, all the prices, all the salaries, everything just go up and let it in,

and that's just how it's going to go. Franchises are going to go up. Players are going to make more money. The media rights are going to make more and the tickets are going to go up. The ticket parts are going to be the one that's going to be hard because already the Kaplan backwards because the local TV stuff kind of wasn't what they thought, right? Local TV revenue got really hurt. The national TV revenue went up. But if the ticket prices keep going up,

but they can't solve the schedule piece and have in the players be more available on regular season games, now you're really playing with fire, I think. But we know we kind of see this was everything with like concert ticket prices, movie ticket. But if it's concert tickets, you're paying for Taylor Swift. If you know Taylor Swift is going to be in the arena for the date you paid. That's true. If you paid for where is coming to Portland, you're like, I want to see

Steph Curry. And then he doesn't play. Are you less likely to go see the words the next time they're important than I would say yes. Yeah, but I would think more so the thing is, okay, using Taylor Swift is the example because you play so far or whatever, five nights on the last night. Yeah, worst ticket was $1,800. So it's the worst seed in the place on the fifth night was $1,800.

like how, how is what I'm getting worse when I'm investing? Like you say what's like the the warriors come to Portland and even if Steph does play. Okay. So yeah, I can take yeah, what is the what is the price point where it's like this doesn't really. I can't do this. Yes,

we'll keep it safe whenever they can do it because there's always going to be people who can do it.

But at some point, even they will be like, this is crazy. Like, you know, like, you know,

“you would, well, always have enough money to pay for these things, but I think at some point”

somebody's being like, it's just, I can't justify it. Like, it's ideologically too weird. Like, I'm not going to pay $3,000 to see a play or something and be able to be like, even if I have a billion dollars, like, I'm not going to pay this much for that. I wonder if like, will this, will that become what it is? Not the idea that you're not getting your money worth. Like, that you're missing Steph Curry, whatever, but like the event itself can't equate with the

amount of costs. This leads into the movie conversation I want to have over and take one more break. Meditirium, yoga, jogging, nothing is exciting.

I really like my story, totally.

Steuja, how do you feel about the story? Yeah, I have a lot of over 1000 euros to come. Do you have connections or do you really like it? No, just like the story. Wow, and that's easy.

Yeah, the macht fast, all is automatic. I feel so, so exciting. Hold your money to go. Upgabe frist 31st July. What?

Do you really like it with this story? Oh, yeah. All right. So we were talking about tickets for movies. And I was thinking about this with the Odyssey, which I actually went to a screening for. So I didn't have to get tickets.

“But um, do you know, you can give your response to the movie yet?”

Because one day on social media, I just saw all these people saying the Odyssey is wonderful. The Odyssey is, I mean, yeah, I mentioned a tail end of a podcast last week. I was just saying, uh, I thought it was awesome. You know, it's under embargo, Toka comes out. I'll have more thoughts, but uh, I thought it was an awesome movie theater experience.

I had a great time, um, and there was a lot of care and great casting and, um, a whole bunch of things. But what's interesting is post-COVID, um, we had this moment in, I think it was maybe late 2000s or early 2010s when they started to try to shove 3D down our throats. Remember, it's like 3D is the next thing. You got to get 3D TV, 3D theaters, and nobody really liked it.

It took like three years, but it was, they were able to charge more money for the tickets, all this stuff. Now they have half stumbled in half, um, because of the best directors, like seeing their movies on these awesome theaters. Now it's like this 70 millimeter, all that Inax, the experience of going to the theater is actually

back. It's been an amazing resurrection this, this decade, which seemed inconceivable,

even pre-COVID, but definitely during COVID, like, wow, movies, oh my god, TV, you're just going to watch everything from home. And that's flipped. But now there's this next piece, and I wonder if it's going to happen, and you think about it with something like the Odyssey, where Odyssey, it's like, oh, it's the 70 millimeter and universal city here in LA. Oh, I want to, I want to go the Friday night.

It's just the tickets are gone. Next night gone, tickets are just gone for a month. Do you think we're going to get into a world where like the best 25 tickets or best 30 tickets,

“the best 30 seats in a theater when these things come out are going to be treated like we do with sports?”

Where it's like Odyssey Friday night, $1,000 in ticket for the, for middle row, center, best seat, and the thing. It's not going to be $25, it's going to be a thousand. And do you think people would pay it? Sure to answer yes. I think what is going to happen or might already be happening is the idea of seeing movies in theaters now is going to be come closer to a luxury experience. It's sort of like the lowest tier of the luxury experience.

Because when people talk and this is a common thing now, it's like Tom Cruise, I guess, is the forefront of this. We must save movies. Movies are important. The experience is going to a movie and eating this popcorn and all these things. This is central to the American understanding of how we understand the world. Movies teach us this now. This, but we're trying to save that. There's this really tend to save this. Nicole Kidman walking down the stairs

with a smile on her face sitting in the chair. What was that for AMC? That, you know,

But this is what I think is kind of getting like, it could be like kind of a misstep or maybe

“on a misstep. I guess there's maybe no other way to do it. But I think when people talk about”

the magic of movies and the experience of movies and how that is so different. It's actually a somewhat simpler experience than we're now sort of evolving into. The thing that was magical about a movie is that like the screen was big. It was totally dark. Nobody was talking. You're just looking at the thing. So the reality becomes that screen. There's no other part of your life is there. And you're feeding off like some reactions from everybody else. Like laughter,

scared silence all that stuff. You're sharing it with other people. But I think it was mainly

just that to me, maybe I'm just speaking from my own experience. But for me, it was sort of like

when you go to a movie, that's all that's happening. There's no other part of your life that's going on. You're only with the movie. Your vision of sight is encompassed by the screen. That's all that is. That is what I'll be for you for two hours or whatever. You zone out of everything else in your life. But now they're sort of like, well, we've got to make this something people that's different from their house. So it's like the seats have to be better. And maybe we're going to give

better food or feed them during this thing or doing all these things around it and stuff. I think

“that will sort of make it into like I said, this luxury experience where it's like you have to”

pay a lot for all the trappings of seeing the movie. Even if the movie is now almost secondary, like it'll be like something like, I suspect in the future, 20 years from now, there will be people who are like, we really got to take the kids to a movie. They got to know what that's like because maybe no one will do that them because they'll be one theater down or whatever that will be this high in place. So yeah, I would argue it's gone the other way and people are going to move

is more than ever. I think especially with the younger generations. Yeah, I think it is. I think especially with people 25 and under, which I don't think we're going to movies quite as much for a little bit there. I think it's back. I think especially like, and they've found out ways with like the 70 millimeter or the IMAX, like the special experience of it combined with like horror movies or the hottest they've ever been in years. That's like people been talking about that for like

too much. But it's kind of happening. Like what just happened with the session was really unusual, like over the course of movie history. We've seen hit horror things before. This became like something else. And it infiltrated culture in a way. I thought I talked about this in a podcast last month that I felt like TV had taken the baton from movies for setting cultural conversations and like a consistent, just kind of elevated way. And it feels like it's shipped them back to

movies now and TV's just getting worse. And these shows are these TV shows are just like bees and bee pluses. And then the movies are where the really interesting stuff is happening. We've seen a bunch of them come out this year already. Does it not seem like the cultural conversation about obsession and backgrounds seems to be about the idea of those movies being popular, no? No. There's that there's that's coming up. You feel like the idea is from those movies.

Especially obsession. I don't know if you've followed some of it, but obsession has led to some pretty intense discourse. And it's a little like what's happening with the WMBA now or it becomes like this kind of thing that we use to discuss all the other things we want to talk about

“anyway. That is interesting because it's like you know sometimes I think we've talked about it,”

I think you and Derek Thompson have talked about this idea that it's possible to follow the NBA in one of two ways like you can watch the games or you can just follow the narrative and the discourse. And it's almost as if we're doing this and they do it in a way that's actually

much more elevated than the way the NBA does it. The WMBA is just it's incredible to follow

something if you're not watching the games. It's just still, it's just crazy. The crazy thing about the NBA. Now there has not and Sierra wrote a really good piece for the ringer about this this week that now that now politics has gotten involved and there's like you know and it's I think that's probably gonna enforce and get worse and worse but what's interesting is I really want to talk about movie theaters but I did want to say this one WMBA thing. Have you seen Olivia Miles by

WMBA player for me. I like the links anyway because I just for you know not like I like the Celtics but that was kind of the team that I was you know fair weather fan rooted for. But Miles is like pretty special and it's crazy to me that all the discourse has just centered around Caitlin Clark and our team speed mean to her and then politicians coming in and it's the lead and and the commissioner being terrible which is you know a topic people should

talk about but it's not like they don't have like page backers and Olivia Miles like these are really fun people to watch play basketball and none of the dialogue is about them like nothing

it's all about all the other stuff I've never seen anything like it. Well I mean it's always like

it's it there's just no there's no league like this it's just you know it's like you know it's like they're like you usually happens to Caitlin Clark you just know immediately now like you know she gets punched or something and you're like now she's got to apologize for getting punched like it's got to look you know it's like it doesn't it's it's so in like the listen like the 11th best guard or something by the play yeah nothing that be like

if it was like well the bigger yeah the bigger like any van Halen's the 7th best guitar player on Los Angeles or something like it's just so weird I can't think of any what when Caitlin Clark

“came in the league I think a lot of people would have been like boy you know it's just going to”

get sickening they're going to ram or down our throat all we're going to do is hear about it literally

the opposite beyond the opposite I just I you know it's just it's so I guess in the past couple years they left or off the Olympic team which she clearly just should have been on because she's the most popular women's part we've had it's the same reason like LeBron and Durant will be on the 2,028 Olympic team for the man like sometimes you got to do it the Nike who you would have thought would have got behind her right away like they did with Tiger Woods like did the opposite I don't

they took like forever to put her shoe out the the players definitely seem like like they resent the attention she got I don't know whether they don't like her or not but you know like they're not doing any of this stuff I haven't seen to Olivia Miles who's coming this year as like the rookie phenomenon and she's not getting knocked around at the same time it's been kind of kind of fascinating

“a little bit fun to watch it's almost like there's like a hockey omit to the wig now where I think”

I think I really like the old like nicks it's really it's like it's like really it's like both sides or whatever um I just you know but it's kind of bad at WNBA almost seems like kind of like the psychopath where it's like someone's like you know these staring of types about gender and race and sexual orientation we've got to bring these back into the world like it's put all into this league and have them just sort of it's it's just nothing comparable to it I can't think of anything

that's comparable to it and it's I I just don't know how it plays out what's ironic is the the quality of plays easily the best it's ever been like the games are good like you watch something as games this is like really good basketball like it's like it's a lot of I just think the the the play has evolved so much and yet I don't feel like people talk about that at all and it almost seems like you're better like I'm sure this will get cut out and aggregated in some way

“and you know but that that's how this has gone where it's become like almost political it”

would even talk about it anyway and well yeah here's a really good example and controversial by saying that everyone knows that but here's everyone knows yeah here's this is where I thought

like if you're gonna be a giant league so Dallas has the first pick in the draft last summer right

and they take you come guard who's pages former teammate yeah who they really move really moving in terms of getting people to talk about the deli went well and they were had been in a relationship at one point and they don't seem like they were but if you go back in your read all the draft mock draft stuff and everybody's like decision why why are we trying to make a big deal of this and it's like if this happened in the NBA this is all we would talk about for months that they

didn't take who the best person in the draft was and now you think like they could add miles and page backers together who I think you know are probably as fun or maybe even more fun to watch the Caitlyn and they could have been on the same team I don't even know how that would have worked but holy shit if this was the NBA we we this would have led like seven podcasts for me

with the league but it it does feel like this Caitlyn situation I talked about it like two months ago

“I don't think I think it's saps some of the joy for her I don't think she ever wanted any of”

this I think she just want to play basketball and shoot through is I can't imagine what it must be like to be her she seems to be miserable she is having a singular experience in American

history right like I mean she's got the first person who's ever dealt with problems as an athlete

or if it but like her specific experience is so strange and she seems to be handling it extremely well by the way nothing and letting it all happen around her but it's got to be wearing on her I mean I just I don't know if you go back and you look at even footage from her like three or four years ago versus now like she looks like she's carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders now by the way she's making a lot of money she's famous like there's a lot of good things that come

with it it's just this was not what was happening with Steph Curry in like 2013 and 14 it was like who the fuck is this guy he's done his 11 the 11 best guard thing which Greenhead was you know a

“player pull and I think too much has been blown out of portion for it but there's just no way”

if you actually watch the league there's no way she's not one of the five best guards you could say she's

fifth third whatever but there's just like you know it's the whole thing's just bonkers anyway okay

make my bold prediction though oh go let's hear okay this is my is the bold prediction okay Sophie Cunningham in the next maybe I'm gonna I'm gonna say 250 is gonna be vice president of the United States she's going to be vice president of the United States by 2050 I think yeah I think that will be the year I think that will be that I don't know what party she'll be in the election there yeah so be like 20 48 or 20 50 yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I don't I don't know a party she'll be in

I don't know anything about her political just but she will be the vice presidential candidate at least the can't I love this I hope we still have the internet in 20 years 20 plus years that people can be like

“oh remember remember that that's I was I was pretty wrong about Cooper flag okay”

but she also saw that I feel I'm gonna go the other way and take even bolder attempts you know even bolder predictions I don't know what it is like I have no you know that's a different it's something about the fact she wears like she wears those sleeves on the court something about the way she triggers inbound plays at the end of games makes me think she will be someone's ideal vice person you know and she's game likable personality and you know she's definitely like about

I thought the finger pointing thing was one of the funniest things that's happened in like three years I thought it was like generally hysterical and she was just like she kept it going for 25 seconds and at one point she kind of caught her head to a side and that was like you know it's like that was what she really is funny well I I don't know I now that world comes going to be done like there's gonna be no sports on I feel like I'm gonna why I feel like I care about the

characters in the league down in a way that I haven't before I have real opinions on the teams I like Minnesota the most I also like watching Indiana I like watching Becker's you know Wilson on

Vegas is yeah I don't even know what her MBA equipment would be at this point if she's basically like

putting together like a Korean 1970s kind of run but there's a lot of good stuff going on did we have any more things you wanted to hit on you said you had a big picture thought about movies did we hit it oh well you know this is you know sometimes you guys but the ringer like you'll do these live events yeah okay you know these live events if you ever do a live event around the world watching we have yeah I know I'm saying important okay yeah I'm not

anyone for this but I'm saying if you do I'm out there tomorrow I would like to be the person you like moderates the event because I think something interesting has happened okay I'm gonna start this with a compliment okay like I think it could safely be said that you absolutely change sports writing when you were writing a lot of the espionne I think that that was an incredibly kind you know like I think that that you altered the way people wrote about sports and in some ways

maybe even you know thought of those sports but it can really alter the way people consume

idea sort of like the success of the were watchables has had a very interesting impact on the culture

of how the average person thinks about movies now okay I would like to interrogate that idea which you guys you want to do that in Portland instead of ever watch somewhere like that you know because it's almost as though the rewatchables and the big picture and you all the imp all this together you have kind of created this aesthetic for consuming film what's good about film and I find it to be a very interesting kind of collection of ideas and there's some things

like you really overrate and it sort of made things like like I feel like you guys obsession with Tom Cruise is weird I feel like you've now made heat and overrated movie we're for a long time we're directed and now it's vastly overrated um so excited we're proud of that like there's there's like a variety of things I just sort of the idea of like what a movie's supposed to do in your life

“I think that this has been like a real kind of like you're like you've affected movie culture”

and I think it's very interesting not in a negative way but in a different way that's that's surprised all right so counter you don't feel like a lot of that stuff was in there already like we like TBS would show shoshank redemption every two weeks for you know 20 years like I do think people were rewatching stuff over and over again I remember oh no even with my going back to the Boston Sports Guide days when I was writing about like sports movies and stuff

we were all rewatching the same 20 sports movies over and over again I don't know if that's the case but here's the difference so if it's like 1999 and they were like re-showing the shoshank redemption and someone is at home and they're like oh well I guess I'll just watch this I've seen it it's good oh watchin now you've sort of created this idea that there's a mean to that right just an outlet you're rewatched because you used to be a few people who rewatched movies

“yeah those were people interested in filmmaking cinematographers that's what you would rewatch”

you guys have sort of introduced the idea of rewatching movies for the content like for you know nitpacks and what it matters the moment it's it's it's it's what I love is that sort of it's sort of dovetails with like my ongoing you know slow cancellation of the

future stuff I always talk about because it seems as though the idea that what we have

in the world of cinema now is kind of just going to be the world that we exist in going forward which is sort of rewatch and re-turper it remake and reboot these things over and over again all right I just think it's a dude I think that there is something that is changing about what a movie fan is supposed to be now and that there was a time when the idea of moving being a movie fan mid you liked a specific kind of movies and now it means you support movies

ideological like the political idea it's more it's more than just us like there's other there's other movie podcasts there I think letter box is a big piece of this that's part of it which by the way that's

the one part I've never dove in on the letter box I always make fun of Sean and Chris about this

or it's like I have neither I would you know I would you like you like Sean buying you know all these blue rays and stuff like that it's it's a it's a different kind of possession just possessing them seemingly more like artifacts than then like waste to watch and movie like you know or a combo yeah the physical media it's interesting I found this piece I wrote 'cause we were doing a leap for rewatchables and I wrote about a leap back in 2001 whenever that was

“and I had written a piece hitting into the holidays my favorite DVDs you know if you want to buy”

stuff for the holidays or ask for stuff here all these different DVDs I like because I really like DVDs back then and I realized I'm actually in the king of physical media at the ringer not Sean because I have this calm he didn't that he doesn't have anything I mean as 2001 I had like 30 DVDs so I don't know I feel like I should get more credit for that I was talking about the director's commentaries and the deleted scenes I was doing this years ago so I don't think

that it's quite or anymore I mean this is a tough thing in a way for you to respond to but like okay you know you did that list you did that episode with Sean and Chris about your most rewatchable the my 50 most rewatchable yeah yes and I think I saw this clip of you mentioning limitless yeah yeah number 16 limitless yeah why do you think that happened why do you think that specific moment with what people were still like they almost seemed in a way to be like like a like a

I didn't it seemed like people like that pod because it was just that thing everyone was doing

all those lists the whole those first 25 years all these different movies TV's all this stuff and

“the premise of that list kind of I think just flipped it where it was basically the premise was”

I can't defend this list these are the 50 movies I've watched the most the last 25 years and I'm gonna rank them from 50 to 1 I don't know why this was the list but this was the list and then I got to limitless 16 I think it was the reactions of Sean and Chris or that was part of it I think the reaction made it very tell yeah but we've all been working together for 15 years so it's like we I mean we have like a shorthand with each other but it's sort of in some ways described I mean I guess

if somebody was like there was like writing an academic paper about it and they were kind of like Rick Ranger and War or something or like what like what is the ringer aesthetic for what makes a film great you know yeah it's like all these things it's like well it's kind of like oh Michael man you know anything he does is great or like you know but it's also this idea that it has to be like hyper populist but it also has to have like kind of a major star because you guys are really

into stars more than acting like you like actors way more than acting like you like the people right and so of course we've had movies that we were going nuts about the performance more than

all these existers they're always like I'm doing broad strokes here yeah like what is the

overall to me limitless though is like the ultimate rewatchable because it's a pretty dumb movie but it's got a great premise you put yourself in the thought of how far would I go if I was in the shoes there's good actors it's well done and it's just easy to watch it also like it has essentially low stakes in reality you don't really look at that you know but but it also it's like it has high stakes in terms of like you say like like like the pitch the concept of this yeah

I just think it would be interesting to Dev because I feel like when I listen to the rewatchables you guys are always kind of like talking around these ideas but they're always there but what is

“let you know and I just I think it would be interesting is more so we do we just stay to rewatchables”

about she's the one the Ed Burns movie from 1996 which is not a movie that should probably be on

the rewatchables but it's a really interesting movie to talk about and that's always what the

premise of that podcast is like is there a good conversation to be had about this movie what what is the reason for it so sometimes it's easy because it's a classic you've come on you've done a bunch of one with us so like we did did we do reality bites we did which is a thing yeah your reality bites yeah it bites is a perfect conversation for rewatchables because we get to go into gen X and early thin hawk and ben store directing and like the music that's

in it kind of like that that the strangely brilliant part of this is like on my plan Spielberg goes on through rewatchables right in some way and like he's really upfront he really loved it it was shocking in some ways this kind of rewatchables concept has tapped in to like the primitive primordial feeling people have about movies like what they like like what is really important about these movies to them like the reason that like you know 2001 or whatever is important

to him you can talk about all these little detail you know is Kubrick knows all these things um but it's like it's like I it's more like I want to say this about the movie I want to be able to say this thing that resonates with me because that that show was like what the meaning of this movie it's you know right well that's the thing you have like I watch Kramer versus Kramer a couple nights go just because it was on and I still have kept but we've already done that on rewatchables

like I wasn't watching it to scout it for the next one and sometimes when you've seen movies a bunch of times and then you're watching them again you're watching them for different things right totally and for whatever reason I started watching in this time and I was really focused on the structure of how they do it with the Dustin Hoffman character the first 20 minutes first how things

“change and how much they're showing and that telling which I think for some reason I took a”

shared it on the podcast Kubrick's going he was talking about how he structures storytelling and how the mistakes people made I thought he had some really interesting comments in there but one of them is he thinks basically he's he's one of his takes was everything's overwritten I want to show stuff to you I want I want you to like feel the location and um I'd much rather like dwell on an actor and how they're reacting versus like having this like witty rep our tape back and forth

when Dustin Hoffman he's lost the suit right Marl Streets going to get the sun and they have one last breakfast together and they're just like kind of making the French toast which in the fur in the earlier in the movie they make French toast and it's a disaster they spell it like it said everything goes wrong because they have them made a meal together by the end of it it's

just like the routine of them making the French toast and they never say anything and then the

kid starts you know he's the kid wells up and it's like this emotional moment but I was thinking like you know as watching this time and I'm thinking like this is this is like a the kind of thing

“you should show young directors like that are thinking about how do I make a movie like”

little moments like this that we don't seem to have in movies in the same way anymore and I feel like they're starting to come back so I wonder like the next generation of people that are moving into movies making films are really starting to think of these moments now instead of just being like oh I if I could do two movies maybe I'll maybe I'll be able to do a Marvel movie and I don't really in general little movies are becoming less visual but my my point is maybe it's

going back the other way because obsession has moments in it that obsession was really interesting but obsession has moments that are all about the visuals it's all about the choices the actress is making you know with with like some of her faces and stuff I mean it's a it's a

visual medium but by saying it's getting less visual in the sense that I always hear these things

“now that well I mean like actually your buddies old Matt David and then F like talk about this I”

like Netflix wants you to give exposition at times for no reason because people might be full the streamers yeah there's yeah so that that's you know it's kind of the opposite of like what charity would be saying or whatever that that you know if you're folding laundry while he shows her on I suppose it might you might not know what's going on but I would argue the streamers have different different kind of things they have to solve right they're gonna streamer

there's so much content now and they they've been open about this there's so much content you

have to grab somebody in the first four minutes or they go right you click on it I don't know if I

like that you're out if I'm going to a movie I'm stuck there I already made the decision to go so whatever whatever ride you take me up for the next two hours I'm not going anywhere I already bought my ticket so when he texted me about this podcast you mentioned that Atlantic story about like the end of reading or whatever you know yeah yeah that's another thing seems like no one's going you know the reading might be over or whatever yeah so a couple of weeks ago I read this book

it's a book called Stoner you're familiar with this novel no my whole life people have told me to read this book and I assumed it was through the guy must be stoned all the time that's not what it is it's about it's you know it's just about the story of this guy it starts in like you know you know early 1900s and kind of goes through his life and it's really quiet novel and now I'm reading a book called a you know but you're crossing by the same author similar kind of

tone in some ways but you know it reminded me of how like how you're reading these books you know and and everything that you visualize has to be described to you like you know everything about the way the guy's hair sits on his face the way he walks into a room all of these things you know and it is you know it's really deliberate and it it's easy to understand why the way things have changed makes reading novels harder now and that we're just so accustomed to the idea that

we're just going to have like a passive relationship like this things would be dumped on us all

“what what everyone looks like how we're like I think part of the reason that people struggle”

reading now is because it's like they just aren't willing to imagine everything they have to imagine like it really is a it's been an erosion of the potential for imagination like people I just like I'm not going to spend time to visualize what a green shirt looks like I just want to see the guy's shirt you know and I wonder if this part of you know everyone thinks this this reading situation is all solely because of phones in the internet I think that is the biggest factor

but also wonder if our imaginations now have changed in a way that it makes very difficult to understand anything that isn't obvious like you know that that that because it's where it's worked to frame your reality yeah you know do you think people like I I feel like more people my life listen to books than read them is the other interesting piece to this they're basically like

and I don't know what that means either and yeah a lot of the head to do with the overcoming

“of what was a prejudice like when I wrote my first book in 2001 there is an audio book and at the”

time the idea of doing an audio book I mean they almost said like well you know that's for people who can't actually read huh whatever for blind people whatever now it's like it's almost like half the market like the book I have coming out this September I'm recording the during some

of the audio stuff next week and it's you know now any book I write I will always do the the

audio for you know but it's great but it's it you know because I know people people want that like people want to hear yeah I keep want to mention one thing that I find it's kind of interesting kind of ties back to this but I had more on books okay good because I had to I had that this office where I stood through my podcast and it became before we moved out and finished this thing the studio we have now and so I fixed the office and I really like my wife was making fun of me for

“weeks because I was like really like I should post a picture of it on Instagram”

putting all my books in the right shows yeah well so well I read it but I read it I found more books in the attic and now I've even more books and I have it stacked and I had these two shelves of basketball books but I found this I found these two basically things of paperback books that I had not like the smaller paperbacks but the bigger ones because you know in the 90s we would buy the paperback books was there cheaper right so I had I had basically like 10 years of books I read

that that we're just in these two things so I added that to the thing and then I was looking back and I was looking at all the books and I've actually read all the books you know and it's it's a lot of books and you and you think like fuck this probably shaped 95% of the choices I made in life were all these books I read because I was an only child I read books all the time so did you and so when I read this stuff about how people don't read anymore reading and

it's turned into texts and you know internet stuff and Twitter and Reddit and that's people are reading the same amount but they're not reading the actual books like the question I get the most from everybody you know if people are like people with young kids who want to be a podcast or a writer or somebody who's breaking in the business or somebody who's in college like hey how do you

have a tip for me and I'm always like fucking read I feel like the reading that was how I learned

“everything that's how I learned how to pick styles that's how I learned information that's how I”

learned what happened in the course of history and how to not repeat the same mistakes or decisions people made or analyzing the decisions and you know every book you read is going to have the different effect on you but that's the part that scares me is that if people are reading less and they're just going to these other things is that is it affected their brains in the same way and I don't know the answer to that yes it's wild you know like one thing okay so this book I

have that's coming out yeah September okay I'm doing an interesting event in October okay so the book comes out September but I am doing a book event at you your Comic Con okay now I was completely baffled when this was initially thrown at me I have to say it is my sons ultimate dream it's the greatest thing that could have possibly happened you know so we're all going to New York to go to the Comic Con or whatever so I don't even care if no one comes to

this event because in my mind I'm like well can these people are paying a bunch of money to I see the stuff you know see comic books and Marvel movies and you know actually gathering all the stuff you know are they gonna come on to see this like a book reading or whatever like a book event

then you always started to wonder if maybe what will happen going forward is this maybe if reading

really does kind of fade from the culture people will still buy books as collectible objects like physical media almost like Pokemon cards or something it's like oh I like this author I know what yeah he I've heard him on podcasts I've seen him or whatever oh buy this book and this book will sort of be like the physical representation of what why what my identity is what I like what I'm made by the book show maybe I won't maybe it'll just be on the shelf or whatever you know

but I wonder if there is I mean I don't I don't I mean a way that's kind of scary thing to think about is somebody sells books for a living or price still books for a living but I I do wonder if the possession of physical books in the future could help say books it will yet will like it'll

even though they had it on CD or they had it on cassette they liked collect records they liked the

gatefold they liked the feel of it they like the smell of it they like the idea of what it was you know like

“maybe that's how it's going to become for books in a way that like you'll you'll still have to”

write them you can't you you know the books have to be written you have to put all the work in it if someone actually does read it it will need the merits of a book in the classic stop but they will just buy a book just for what it looks like it's got to be the thing it's got to be that if people see that you own this book they know that it's like that's you know it's it's all this information so I'll maybe so maybe like going to like a Comic-Con is like a reasonable thing to do

sort of like you know it's going to go over that are already in the mindset it's like I buy the things that are you know important to my life like I you know guy buys like a figurine of like

the incredible Hulk or whatever he's not going to play with the incredible Hulk he might not even

take it out of the box but maybe he will and he'll put it on his shelf and it'll be like when

“people see this they will know not only do I like this but like I'm invested in this so I'm I'm”

very curious to see what this is going to be like I've got very curious to see if I do this book of it and Comic-Con New York and people show up or not you know and if they want to buy the book or if they have questions I just have no idea yeah one thing about books you said this earlier because you mentioned among the thugs which I knew immediately meant because I have it and I read it I didn't know anything about early 90s who again soccer fans in the UK right neither did you when

you read that book so it's like brought me into the soul world that I would have known nothing about otherwise and it's that by the way an excellent excellent sports book um is it too easy to discover stuff like that now where you don't need a book I feel like people now would have opinions on who gonnaism and soccer and different thing and they they would just know more and they wouldn't even necessarily have to read a book to learn all this same stuff we learned from the book

yeah I mean there's shortcuts to it now you wouldn't have to read the book which is kind of frightening I mean the the scary thing about this is that it is possible that maybe books are just not

“the most effective way to learn things right I mean I think you and I both were raised or kind of”

with this but maybe it's not because I will admit some nights I'm at home you're lying in bed and I'll just go to YouTube and I will watch say like just random shit a nine minute documentary about oh like like the like how primitive men were able to keep fires burning during and climate weather and it'll be like nine minutes long yeah like I will get all like I will learn this thing you know or I like I watched why I think I maybe have mentioned it another

but it was just a fascinating short little documentary about like how they selected Hiroshima and Nagasaki's two places they adopt a topic about them like without the conversation that led to the amazing yeah I mean like like one city was saved just because one guy at the meeting was like I've been there it's nice you want to drop a bomb on there yeah it's like here there was like there were these you know and it's these things that you know in a way I almost

didn't even had never even invested the time and wondering about you know and that can be done

so quickly now that you can watch so many you can watch them it's time like 1.5 speed like you don't see it so even something that's nine minutes it's now six minutes you've got all this stuff it's it is hard sometimes to like I'll I'll write a book and I'll be like okay so who's the person who's going to read this who's the person who's going to put the time into this like right it's just kind of praying that there's a hundred thousand of these people out there but

yeah that would be a great letter box sequel is just you log crazy things you watched on YouTube because I guess today I went on I went on my YouTube that was but it was literally I was like a half hour from going to bed and I went to search for something on YouTube and you know the algorithm really knows me now at this point so for some reason it suggested this Mark Noffler this concert that he did in 1996 where he plays with some people think or the grit

is the greatest guitar solo of all time it gets from express a love or tunnel of one of those and it was on some concert thing and then he didn't like I guess he messed up like two things

but all these people had sworn they had seen the thing and then in 2024 it appeared again on YouTube and people like Noffler guitar god it's back and they were so I watched the whole thing and it was

amazing and then I was like I feel like I saw him on Letterman once in the mid '80s and he did a song

“with the band and it was like the best thing I've ever seen anyone do with the band on late night and”

then I went and I was right it was 1985 Mark Noffler came in and he's saying express a love with the band when the Letterman band was like the best it's ever been like shape or it had a steep Jordan was there and it's like this awesome five minutes my point is that was just 15 minutes of my night last night where I watched those two things and then I watched five minutes of a 1980 dire strike and all of a sudden I was that in a 20 minute dire straits deep dive out of nowhere

and that's just what happens that after night if you let it you know it's very easy to do that I mean I that would be a good letter box but also it's just the fact that like it's all there yeah memories that you don't even know were real memories section and like when I ever fugger oxity like a 1999 2000 yeah 2001 there's a chunk in that book where I talk about the strangest thing about rock videos is that you see them constantly for two months and then you

never see them again right there's gone summer I saw the black rose video for the song

remedy every day at some point because MTV was on my house all the time you know I saw the video for remedy every day and then it was like gone and it appeared like this was just sort of how the world was going to be there would be these things you're hyper involved with and then it's pretty much gone unless you like buy black rose DVD or something now there's nothing like that like there's nothing that that if you experience you have to you know you know it you know that if I

well if I don't see it now I can see it again or I can see it my leisure or whatever I wonder if that has changed the way that we watch these things we're not doing it consciously but I wonder if unconsciously we know realize that these things kind of course be accessed at a different time right different way and as the consequence I don't have to care as much I don't have to invest anything

in it intellectually because it'll always be there and that we're kind of doing this with everything now

“and maybe that's why everything seems less satisfying than it used to I remember I had these VHS”

tapes of different things from the 80s that I just recorded in real time including think three letterman anniversary shows in a row right and I was like I would have put these in a safe I had that I had a whole bunch of stuff like whole bunch of games and just things like I'm so glad I have these because if I didn't have these would be gone and one of the one of the VHS like the tape melted or broke and it was just gone I think it was the letterman anniversary

once maybe it was something else and I was just like oh my god it's gone now that shit's on YouTube it was like my what are some of my prized possessions you know the Michael Jackson Motown 25 and shit like that that I actually recorded in real time it was like oh my god what would happen if somebody stole this you should keep those though because actually what is amazing is that the stuff that you didn't thank you were recording the ancillary stuff right the commercials and stuff

yeah from up from my birthday my wife I guess went on eBay and got me a bunch of sports little strays from the early 80s so I was really through them on July 4th or whatever and you know and like you know like there's this story about like I think I think it's a friend of Ford story

“about like Will Chamberlain at the age of 15 I remember that one that was a good one yeah”

but also I forgot about this it was like yeah almost came back and played for the next you know and like you probably could have you know like almost certainly could have it's like um and you know and I kind of did the vaguely remember that story because you might remember this at the front of the magazine it's a close up of Will's hand how big his hand is and you know that you could put your hand on it's like a jump so I give you remember that story and I remember that happened but it was so

weird like looking at some of the cigarette ads in this name or like the 19th hole all the letters like the lit some were a letter to sports illustrate there's no way you can't you cannot go on the internet now and find like random letters to sports illustrated from 1983 but here they all are right and it's like it was also strange to hear to to read some of these letters and like see like boy you know people are still saying that now but he's he's describing this thing as a new

thing but it's like still happening now people complaining about an answer which now we have with a lexie lawless for everybody's just like I can't stand a lexie lawless but in the 80s we had

ready the football book you know it I was like with back and I rewatched like the Boston college by any game or something you know yeah you know when the flutey gave it ever but like before it happens I think it's like brain musper talking about like felt-in-crest is gonna be on your way to like

he thinks like totally forgot he'd forget it happened but well there's this first of all I don't

“you must have watched some of these old NFL games just ran them weeks six browns versus Steelers”

1978 and it just would be the complete NBC broadcasts hmm it's kind of riveting there's this account a new tube called rare NBA footage which has only 8.4 K-8400 followers right now and they just he I don't know where this person gets all the video stuff but he'll have some good fights every once in a while and he had he had the when Korean punch Kent Benson he had that whole thing but then the aftermath of Kent Benson with this huge black eye being like what the fuck just happened

um it feels like everything's out there there's I it's just there's more and more footage people are just finding and it's really crazy now where it's like it's almost more surprising if you can't find something but you almost expect you should be able to find it um yeah because there's stuff there's

“NBA stuff from the 60s and 70s where they did they literally didn't tell us the game so there's”

no way to find it unless somebody for whatever isn't at a camera and a predictor something it's just games that don't exist most famously the Wilcam but that was 1962 but there's you know a whole bunch of stuff anyway all right we went to hours we went too long can you plug some stuff well no I mean I got I have I got this book that's just called rock that's coming out of September what's so what's rock about quickly okay I don't want one thing I found promoting that

football book I just I could so many podcasts that occasionally you'd end up saying the same thing on multiple podcasts and I really feel like a lot of people are like I kind of read this book like I heard of talk about it enough like you know like a piece of mystery so this is just called a Robin I'm gonna try to not talk about what's in this book as much but I will say this okay so it's like it is a fictional history of rock music it's fictional but it starts in 1967

with the premise that the velvet underground's first record is released and immediately becomes

25 times more popular than the Beatles and the Stones come out of this idea it's just a great idea and it completely odors all of the culture over the next you know many years and then ends in 2002 where 9/11 it has been blamed on the strokes okay yeah so but there's a lot that happens in between that so that's those are kind of the bookends of this book wow you really wear a podcast horror for that football book well I guess you know but they can't you know people

have to do what I'm not because the thing is also they don't it's amazing how little they overlap yeah so it is like pieces of different audiences but it could I think it could have been

a mistake though because I did so many of those podcasts and people always wanted to talk about

one section of the book they wanted to talk about the one chapter near the end about the eventual sort of erosion of football or football receding from the culture which now I think many people think

“that's what the book is about it's like it's like 5% of that book maybe at most but I did I probably”

did too many podcasts for that you know trying to think of what the velvet underground what the sports version of that would be because I was going to say like if the next had bought Dr. J from the Nets in 76 is the next 50 years of NBA history different but it was Dr. J had already been around for half his career so maybe it's not as impactful but he's like the conceited of this book though is that all the records from 1967 till 2002 they're exactly the same the records haven't changed

it's the perception of the records and the perception of the arts so that could only that could be a sports yeah so and well no it and the sports version would be that all the games played out exactly as we remember them but everything we think about sports is completely reversed got you because the way it is perceived off to think about what the sport I I I need to I don't want to say the wrong thing here trying to think of what the basketball version that would be

was considered to be the series that save basketball on Gus Williams was like magic johns for magic

“johnson and then we just go all right Chuck thank you for the two plus hours I had a great time”

as always okay now you made me want to come to Portland we never do you know well I don't have to

twist Chris Ryan's arm he goes there anyway just to socialize yeah all right said everybody

“important for us thanks for coming up okay all right that's it for the podcast thanks to Chuck”

close to men thanks to go how and Eduardo and Jack and Chris and everybody else at the ringer

as well I'm going to be coming back midweek with a podcast it's going to be a very unique podcast

“probably on Wednesday so stay tuned for that and don't forget rewatchable she's the one is coming”

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