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{PICTURE ME ROLLIN'}
BS : It's March Madness time. The sports athiest Chuck Klosterman is on the line. I don't know who he's rooting for in this NCAA Tournament. Probably nobody, but probably everybody. Who are you rooting for?
Chuck Klosterman (CK) : Well, let's see. You know, as often is the case, partially because it drives so many people crazy, I find myself kind of rooting for Duke again.
BS : Oooh, I like that.
CK : I think this kid Grayson Allen is just hilarious. It's sort of like if JJ Reddick and Hope Solo had a kid and gave it up for adoption to Montgomery Burns. He's got that, that - everything about 'em. Also, you know, he's like, there's all these stories about he's like the latest in this long line of, you know, Duke players that people hate. He's kind of a different kind of athlete I think. In that one game against North Carolina, I think it was the second game, Carolina was ahead and Duke was coming back, he had a dunk late in that game. He took off from about 13 feet away on the right wing. And he got from the floor to the rim so fast, I was like wow! This guy is different from the other players who have been like him. So I find him to be an intriguing individual.
BS : Tate is trembling with rage right now. Tate the producer. He's trembling. He can't even. Oh my god, we might have to get him outta here.
CK : It's, it's like this guy was built for this this role. I mean, even like his name obviously. His name is you know, it seems as when you're a little kid, maybe in 5th grade or 6th grade, you would read those books about, like, sports you know, and there would always be one kid who was the antagonist. He would be named Grayson Allen in one of those books. That's such a strange name. And he's got that, kind of, Boardwalk Empire kind of 2009-Sean Hennesey hairdo. He's just made to be this, this kind of villain, this person.
BS : It is...I didn't really think about this until you just brought it up. It is like we've created a Duke super-villain that incorporates all these different pieces from Duke supervillians in the past, who weren't super - I guess they were just villains. He's got a little Laettner, he's got a little Hurley, he's got a little Reddick. He's got a couple new wrinkles.
CK : Well, some of those guys are different. Like Hurley kinda, he just got lumped in there 'cause he was good. I mean, it's sort of like, you know, Laettner, Reddick, Scheyer...
BS : Tate just groaned. When you said Hurley was good, Tate was like "ohhh" <Duke-hater sickness sounds>. Hurley was annoying. I mean, it was an era where college basketball was so much fun and, for lack of a better word, had just become very, kind of...I don't know what the right word is...flamboyant I guess? It was that LJ, Larry Johnson-UNLV era. It was very kinda-chest-thumpy, and dunking, and a lot of posturing and all that, and Hurley just seemed like he was from the 1950's compared to what we were seeing. You know, I think that's why people didn't like him.
CK : Oh that's gotta be part of it. And also he seemed to be like almost a visual extension of Krzyzewski and people hate him to.
BS : Yeah it was like if Krzyzewski had a kid.
CK : Yeah, yeah. <laughs>
BS : He had, like, some sperm-bank child that then came back to be his point guard or something.
CK : But I'm also, I'm kind of...I like Michigan State. I always seem to root for Michigan State in the tournament. I know there's kind of a growing belief I've seen that some people might feel this is the most complete and balanced Kansas team. So they're kind of the favorite across the board. I'm getting the sense, you know. I watched a little less college basketball this year because of the way my life is. But I've been following a lot and reading a lot of box scores. I'm kind of following college basketball the way people did in the 60's.
BS : Yeah. I like that. You're just reading newspaper agate.
CK : I see some of the games but it's all with timing, you know. I miss a lot of the afternoon games.
BS : I thought I was gonna really get into college hoops this year because the Celts have this Brooklyn pick. So I just adopted Ben Simmons and-
CK : You must be off that bandwagon though, right?
BS : No, I'm still on, I'm riding it. I'm in the front row. Everybody can fuck off. I'm all on in Ben Simmons still.
CK : Okay, but tell me this though. Okay, he probably is the best player in the draft. I would take him first, too. But you have to admit the idea of building a team around a guy who was 1 for 3 on three pointers for the year does not seem like a modern idea. I mean, he should've had 3 three point attempts just in situations when the shot clock was running down. I think it was somewhere like the Wolves or something where he won't be the best player on the team. I think he can be great. I think he can be the second best player on a good team. But I can't...what's the track record of guys that have faced the basket and can't make jump shots?
BS : Let me introduce you to somebody else that couldn't make three pointers in college - a guy by the name of Kawhi Leonard. Remember him?
CK : He made three pointers in college.
BS : No, not really.
CK : In San Diego State?
BS : No, no he didn't.
CK : That was a great team!
BS : He didn't make three pointers. He made 41 total in two years. He was 41 for 164 and the rap on him coming into the league was that he couldn't shoot. I think if you're talented and if you care and if you just trap yourself in a gym, you can learn how to shoot unless your shot is just so fundamentally broken. You know, even Bruce Bowen taught himself how to shoot! I went - I watched Bruce Bowen in Celtic games for two years in the late 90's and the guy couldn't hit the side of a backboard.
CK : So you're not worried at all about this? BS : No, I-
CK : Even the unwillingness to shoot is almost a big a part of this. And granted, that's a weird thing to criticize a guy for, for being unselfish. But his team was bad. I mean, in the game against A&M in the SEC Title game, they didn't score for I think 14 straight minutes. How is he on the floor and they don't score? That just seems weird to me.
BS : Well he got taken out for part of it.
CK : He did, yeah.
BS : I always thought Rick Barnes was really bad when he was coaching Durant. I was just, you know, I loved Durant in college and I was just so stunned by how bad the coaching was, and I hadn't really had a lot of experience watching college and how primitive some of the thought process is. And the LSU coach I think was actually worse than Rick Barnes, and I thought they played Simmons out of position the whole year. He's a point forward. I don't understand why you're playing him at the 5. Just give him the ball. Nobody else should have the ball. He should have the ball in his hands all the time or he should be posting up. Everything should run through him.
CK : Okay, two more things. First of all-
BS : But I don’t care that he can’t shoot yet. He’s gonna learn how to shoot. The thing that worried me was that he seemed kind of contest with losing. And I don’t know if that’s-
CK : I think it’s pretty weird that they’re not going to the NIT. And I think that he’s certainly a part of this. I mean something’s going on with that program. I don’t know what it is. LSU as a whole is mystifying to me. Les Miles was sort of gonna lose his job and yet they had the #1 recruiting class in the country still. Ben Simmons could go anywhere and he went to a place that doesn’t have any basketball tradition. What is happening when you take a visit to that campus? Did Shaq, like, build his own private Six Flags for recruits or something? How come everybody who goes to LSU decides to sign a letter of intent to go there? It’s very strange to me.
BS : He had a family thing. His godfather was like one of the-was the head assistant coach. So it was kind of a done deal from the get-go. And I just feel bad for him. You can see he had, early on in the season, the team wasn’t talented and he was way ahead of them from a hoops IQ standpoint. And the coach…just a bad coach. Even in that Texas A&M game, I don’t know if you watched it on Saturday.
CK : Yeah.
BS : They’re down six with like, I don’t know, 10 minutes left, and Simmons gets his second foul. And I’m just sitting there going, if they take him out, they’re gonna be down double digits in a minute, and the game’s gonna slip away and Texas A&M, they’re too good defensively. They’re not gonna be able to come back. You have to leave him in. It’s not even a debate. If you take him out now, you’re gonna lose the game. And they took him out. By the time he came back, they were down 13 and it was over. It’s just little stuff like that, doesn’t make sense. But it does worry me. The Oklahoma game worried me where…it was a bad, this was about a month ago, five weeks ago. And Buddy’s just stepping up, right? Buddy’s a beast. I love that guy. And it becomes clear, it’s now a mono-a-mono Buddy vs. Ben, who’s gonna be an alpha dog in these last five minutes. And Ben didn’t shoot, and he didn’t try to get the ball. And on the other side, Buddy’s just making shots and making plays and coming through. And it was really weird to me, just as a longtime basketball fan, that Ben didn’t get a little alpha-doggy. He just kinda laid back. And I think scouts…that’s what worries the scouts. Is this guy too passive? And I don’t know how he changes that perception.
CK : Yeah I think just from a skill perspective, they’ll overlook it. I mean, I’ve kinda been tough on him for the last five minutes of this conversation, but I would take him #1, too.
BS : He’s 19.
CK : He’s 19, and I think he could just be devastating on a good team.
BS : He almost has - he also went 20/10/5 in college, which is crazy.
CK : Oh yeah.
BS : And my thing is, if he goes to the Celtics, or he goes to the Timberwolves, and he’s surrounded by other…you know this sounds like a cliche but it really does apply to certain guys. The better the teammates are, the better he’s gonna be, because he’s such a good passer, and he’s so…He doesn’t care if he shoots 20 times, you know. He’s that guy that’s gonna fit in. So if he goes to…with Towns and Wiggins, or if he’s on the Celtics with Isaiah as the crunch-time guy and Brad Stevens and like…it could be an awesome situation. If he goes to Philly as the quote-unquote #1 pick/savior, that could be dangerous.
CK : Yeah, on a good team I think he could play the 4 and average 10 assists a game. I think that’s possible, because he’s so…the passing part of his game is so, I hate to say natural because it makes it seems like it’s something he hasn’t worked at, but it sure seems that way.
BS : Can I introduce a theory to you?
CK : What theory?
BS : You’re gonna love this. You’re really gonna love this. I hope you’re sitting down.
CK : I am.
BS : The best thing that could ever happen to this guy is that he doesn’t go first. If he goes second-
CK : Sure.
BS : - I think that is the thing he needs. If you love Ben Simmons, and I really- I’m still a believer and I’m still in the front row. The best thing that will happen to him is if Brandon Ingram has like four good games in the tournament. Or if the Utah Center, who I really like - Jakob Poeltl! Chipotle <laughs>. If one of those guys go nuts, and then it turns into this Andrew Bogut type situation where all of a sudden everybody’s talking themselves into somebody who’s not Chris Paul as the #1 pick. And we’re having the draft and it’s like, “Wow! So Deron Williams is gonna go ahead of Chris Paul, and so is Andrew Bogut and Marvin Williams. What’s happening here?” This could happen.
CK : One point about your theory, though. In what case isn’t that how it is? That if the best player went second, it wouldn’t be good for him from a perception perspective. Isn’t it always better to go later? Because -
BS : Yeah, I guess. Well, it was great for Durant.
CK : It was.
BS : I think it was awesome for him. Obviously, Jordan’s-
CK : And Durant is kinda your card. This is why when you were so into Simmons I was like, you know, you have a good track record but I’m thinking that I’m seeing guys early, deciding that they’re transcendent and being right. But I’m wondering if I’m overemphasizing the thing with Durant, because you were so on that so quick.
BS : Here’s…Durant to me I would’ve bet my life on it. Simmons made two mistakes that make me nervous and I wouldn’t bet my life on it. But I would bet, I would bet your life on it. How about that?
CK : Would you bet your left arm?
BS : <laughs> No.
CK : Not your left arm? You bet my life. My fucking life. But not your left arm.
BS : I’d bet my baseball card collection but not my basketball card collection. Here are the two things that worry me. One is that he went to LSU. I just think that’s weird. I don’t care if my godfather’s the coach at LSU. Then I’m at LSU. You know? Why not just go…go to one of the best schools and play with the best players for a year. You’re…this is a, this is a program to teach yourself how to be a pro basketball player. Why are you gonna be at LSU? It’s stupid.
CK : From Australia, do all the major programs in America seem the same?
BS : He was here! He was in Florida for three years.
CK : He was in Florida. It was a weird move. I mean-
BS : I just didn’t like it.
CK : The one thing he has done, though, is…we probably have played this game and I forgot or whatever, but I love to take the five best players of the history of any college and play them against other colleges.
BS : Oh, he spruced up their lineup!
CK : Well, no, they were really good to begin with. They were Shaq, Marivoch, Chris Jackson, and Bob Pettit, and now they have him.
BS : Wow!
CK : Because typically, it’s sort of hard to imagine Carolina losing this game.
BS : I was gonna say. Carolina wins because they have Jordan.
CK : They have Jordan, but you know UCLA has Kareem, Walton at the 4, and then a lot of other good guys all over the place.
BS : Right. That’s true.
CK : And Georgetown has a really good team, because it’s got, like, Ewing, Mourning, and Mutombo in the game. And then Iverson in the backcourt with maybe, I don’t know, Reggie Williams, you know?
BS : So the most underrated team that you would never suspect would be the Houston whatever-they’re-called.
CK : The Cougars?
BS : Yeah, ‘cause you get Hakeem Olajuwon and you get Clyde Drexler.
CK : Yeah.
BS : Nobody would think of them but they would actually…and probably a couple other guys that we can…oh they have Elvin Hayes, too.
CK : Yeah, they have a good team. Michigan State has a good team. Michigan has a, I’m sure Jalen would argue Michigan has a good team. Another team that’s kind of underrated is actually the Gophers. Because you’ve got McHale and Mychal Thompson and, you know, like Trent Tucker and these guys who weren’t fabulous but had pro careers, you know.
BS : Yeah.
CK : And you would never think of them as, sort of, these major programs. Duke actually is hard to get a really good vibe out of that.
BS : Duke has the best white five.
CK : Well, yes, probably so. And I guess they’ll be playing BYU as far as the racist title.
BS : <laughs> Wait, another mistakes Ben Simmons made. He goes with Clutch. He goes with Clutch Sports. He goes with Lebron’s agency. That’s his move.
CK : I don’t even know that. I haven’t followed that.
BS : Yeah, and apparently this was a done deal for awhile. That makes me nervous.
CK : Well, why is that a bad idea?
BS : I don’t know.
CK : I don’t…what’s the good one? What agency should he? If I decide to go pro, what agency should I sign with?
BS : I’m so confused by this Lebron thing. It seems so illegal on so many levels, and yet I don’t think the NBA can do anything. He owns an agency with his buddy who runs it. But he doesn’t own it. But it represents other players. But, like, Tristan Thompson - they represent Tristan Thompson.
CK : I think the Warriors are in their head a little bit, too. I think Lebron is sort of confused by the fact that, you know for…I said this, a lot of people said this. There was that period where it was like, you know we always know Lebron’s the best player. Maybe we give the MVP to Durant one year, you know, cause he’s a great player, too. But if everyone could pick. If it really came down to a schoolyard pick out of all the guys.
BS : Right. Gun to your head.
CK : Everyone is always gonna take Lebron, and I don’t think that’s true right now. And I think that that’s been a, probably a long time since he’s felt that way. I mean, he certainly never felt it growing up, even when he was a rookie - even his second year in the league I think if most GM’s could trade anyone for him, they would’ve said, “We’re doing it. His upside is too great.”
BS : But that’s recency bias, though. I think Lebron is still incredible. To me it’s still-
CK : Oh sure, wait a second.
BS : No, no, I know what you’re saying. I just think it’s weird that everybody is just moved on to Curry. Like, I went to see Lebron on Sunday. He’s amazing. He had like 28-8-8 and he completely dominated the game. To me, he’s still in the conversation.
CK : No, he’s the second best guy. It just-
BS : But I think he might be the best guy.
CK : Well, he could be again next year because - and this has gotta be the apex for Curry. He can’t play any better than this.
BS : I don’t know.
CK : How-how could…I mean, what would that be?
BS : I’m very disappointed in his free throws. He’s down to 90% free throws.
CK : <laughs>
BS : I just think he’s gotta do better. He keeps missing these key free throws. You gotta do better than nine outta ten.
CK : I’m in a couple fantasy leagues and I’m just astounded by how often he gets 8 rebounds. I mean, he’s just having this incredible year and I don’t think - it’s not like, he’s not gonna be like this for four year. I mean, maybe I’ll look back on this podcast and be like what an idiot I was but I can’t fathom how that would be.
BS : But his age right now suggests that this will, this prime is gonna last a couple years. Like, if you look at the Bird prime, the Jordan prime, the Magic prime - even somebody like Kobe’s prime - um, it’s usually four or five years. So he’s in year two.
CK : What I would say is that his prime may keep going but - and this is a weird way to phrase this - but just the sheer percentage of shots that go in I feel like will slightly decrease.
BS : But you don’t think that - you don’t think that he’s mastered shooting to some degree? Like Tiger Woods had that six year stretch where every drive just went right down the fairway.
CK : I guess. It’s just, it…when he pulls up from 40 feet away at the end of a quarter, I find myself thinking he’ll probably make this.
BS : Me, too.
CK : I mean it’s just such a weird thing that I don’t think. I mean, maybe, I hope it does. It’s kinda - it’s good for everyone I feel.
BS : I gotta say I’m more amazed by - the shooting I’m almost used to. I’m more amazed by how consistently he drives to the basket, and his footwork, and how he’s never going 100% full speed - he’s always going 80% - but he’s so quick and he’s so smart and how he can go off either foot and shoot with either hand. And it just doesn’t matter who’s coming over to block the shot. He’s always gonna - it’s always the perfect kinda basketball play. I’ve never seen that.
CK : Okay, do you think that this is the reason - maybe you’ve talked about this in other podcasts and I’ve missed it. But, you know, when someone like Oscar Robertson comes out and complains about him. My theory on that, maybe everyone thinks this but, when a guy like Oscar Robertson sees Lebron, or sees a guy like Durant on the perimeter at 6’11 or whatever, their reaction is, “Wow, these guys are just different people than the ones we played against and no wonder they’re better. They’re just, you know, they’re built the way, you know, Durant would’ve been a center in the 1950’s and 60’s.” But when they see Curry, he looks like the guy that they played against and, in fact, he looks slighter physically than Robertson was. And is that what drives them crazy? That they, like, just can’t believe…that they can understand how the physiology has changed and made guys better, but they can’t understand how a guy the same size of them can be that good?
BS : I think they don’t understand it. They just fundamentally can’t understand it. And the reality is, if Curry played in the 1960’s, he would’ve been out of the league in six years because he never would’ve been able to stay on the court with his ankles. And 50 years later, you know, there was that giant piece on ESPN The Magazine about-
CK : Yeah, yeah, Pablo Torre wrote that. That’s not what Oscar’s thinking about.
BS : No, no, I’m saying…I’m saying that he doesn’t understand it because in his era, you were just good and things made sense and there were certain type of players and nobody shot like this, right? So it’s gotta be everyone else’s fault that they’re letting him make all these shots. But really-
CK : Well it seems backwards. It seems like that should be the kind of guy old-timers like. Like, I wish my dad was still alive. I think he’d love Steph Curry. But then I think that, I don’t know, maybe he’d be from a generation of guys who see this phantom problem.
BS : But, but Oscar was…Marivoch was basically the 1960’s Curry, right?
CK : Except when you look at his field goal percentage.
BS : Well, true, but I’m saying, like, he had like, the 30 foot range and you always heard about…I just think that there’s something about the old guys. First of all, they always think that their era was better. That’s just the thing. And that’s been the case for 50 years. That’s why I always laugh when people get so bent out of shape cause an old guy thinks their era was better. They always think their era was better. But I just think that fundamentally he doesn’t understand how Curry is shooting like this so he’s blaming everybody else without thinking that, “yeah actually the way science is going and the way you can study your technique and hone it in and you can work your body a certain way so that your leverage and your balance is perfect and your sneakers are perfect and you have first class accommodations and all these things - they all lead to us creating better basketball players.” And that’s the part he doesn’t understand. And Curry should be better than the guys-
CK : I also think that he hasn’t thought about it that much. I think a lot of these guys talk off the cuff but in the old days, you know, you speak on the radio and say something crazy like that and the only people that find out are the people in St. Louis.
BS : True.
CK : And now it seems as though, it seems like Oscar Robertson is leading the charge against Steph Curry.
BS : To be fair, Oscar - and I wrote about this when I wrote about Oscar in my book - like, Oscar is the all-time NBA superstar curmudgeon that we’ve had in sixty years. There’s nobody grumpier than Oscar.
CK : Well a lotta bad things happened to him.
BS : Yeah and that’s a thing. He’s - it’s totally understandable and that’s why I don’t think anybody should give him shit ever. Because I think he took…he went through the most stuff of anyone from that era. ‘Cause he went to the University of Cincinnati during the, um, not a great time to be there if you’re a black athlete. But I just think that in general, all these guys, they all think their era is better. Like Magic, when I did TV with Magic, we would argue about these new guys versus the old guys. And Magic was adamant that the guys from, like, the 80’s Lakers would’ve beaten anybody in the game now. And I just didn’t understand it because they didn’t shoot threes back then. The teams now get an extra - what - 8 to 10 points from the three point line that in Magic’s era a team didn’t get. And he’s like, “No, we would’ve pounded ‘em down low.” Like, he generally felt that. It wasn’t like he was theorizing. He was like, “We would’ve beaten them.”
CK : The psychology of aging is interesting. I mean, people have been often comparing the Warriors to the Bulls teams because, you know, they’re going after the wins record, you know. But, if you remember, even when that Bulls team was winning all those games - when they asked Jordan how they would’ve fared against the first three-peat, he was like, “The first team was way better.” Because he was like, Cartwright was a, you know, an uptick from Kukoc. And Paxton and Kerr were kinda interchangeable and there was just a better team, you know. So even while he was doing it, he was like, “The old team was better.” I mean, I think that that’s a natural way to feel.
BS : I wrote about this in my book because I thought that it was a really, really important point. And if you’re gonna compare teams - which is so hard to do - you really have to look at what the league was like. Because the reason the teams in the 80’s were so good is because there was only 21 teams. And somebody like McHale could be on the Celtics. And if you had a 30-team league, it would’ve been humanly impossible to have McHale, Bird, and Parrish on the same team. It just wouldn’t happen. That’s why it was so amazing that OKC for four years had a chance to have Durant, Harden, and Westbrook on the same team. It’s the all-time fluke of flukes. It would be the equivalent of, if Minnesota won the lottery this year and got Ben Simmons and somehow Towns, Wiggins, and Ben Simmons on the same team like - it might happen once a decade in a 30-team league.
CK : Is it a fluke or is it a bad move? You know, the Oklahoma City gave up Harden. You look at the Warriors. They seemingly have the two best shooters in the world on the same team. It seems like a fluke except everyone in the world at one point was saying to trade Klay Thompson for Kevin Love. Everyone was saying that.
BS : Including me.
CK : Yeah, and they didn’t do it, right? So it seems fluky that they have this situation but actually they deserve credit for not making that move when everyone demanded they do.
BS : Hold on. Hold that point for one second. I think that was one of the seminal moments in the history of the NBA - that summer. The more I look at it. Because it’s a clear demarkation between an old way to play basketball and a new way to play basketball. Kevin Love we all thought was one of the best seven footers in the league and of course you should trade Klay Thompson and David Lee and a #1 pick for him and, of course, you should trade Andrew Wiggins for him. But what you’re getting was this guy who’s a power forward in a league where power forwards are becoming increasingly irrelevant, and you can only play really one non-perimeter guy and succeed in the way the NBA is being played now. And now, a year later there is no way in hell you would trade Wiggins for Kevin Love because it’s so hard to find perimeter guys and wing guys. It’s the same way the Warriors looked at it and said [that] actually we should keep Klay Thompson and there are less guards than big guys. It’s easier to get a big guy. We can build a team around these two shooters. We’re gonna make nine three pointers a game. That’s a bigger advantage. The fact that they saw that in the moment, I think, is one of the great strategical, big-picture things we’ve ever seen in the league.
CK : If not, I’m kinda giving them maybe more credit than they deserve. We don’t know if they wanted the deal and they just couldn’t make it happen.
BS : No, no, no, no they argued about it. I know the whole story. They had two camps. And there was one camp that was like, “No, this is a better advantage to have these two shooters.” Like it was a real thing.
CK : Who was in that camp?
BS : Steve Kerr. I think…I actually think Jerry West was one of the guys who was like, “Don’t do this. Klay, you know…” He was just like ba-ba-ba, he was adamant that you couldn’t win a title with Love and Curry as yours - as two of your defenders.
CK : Well I wouldn’t be shocked if those are the two guys who were right.
BS : I forget. I think now everybody takes credit for keeping Klay Thompson, but at the time I couldn’t believe they didn’t trade for Kevin Love. I was talking to somebody at work yesterday. I like this guy Ivan Rabb on California, and I have no idea if he can play in the NBA even though I know he’s a good basketball player, because he’s…he’s gonna be a lottery pick. He’ll be in the 10-14 range. He’s a good athlete. He’s a good rebounder. He plays hard. Where do I play him in the pros? I can’t play him at center. So now it’s like I have to play him with another shot blocker? Or could he be a Draymond Green center? You’re asking questions that I wasn’t asking two years ago because you can’t play two low post guys anymore. So where does he go, you know?
CK : That’s a good question.
BS : The Celtics play…the Celtics are gonna win 50 games. And in crunch-time they play Isaiah Thomas, Avery Bradley, Markus Smart, Jay Crowder, and either Jared Sullenger or Tyler Zeller. They play Jay Crowder at power forward even though he’s not a power forward. And that’s what every team does now. I don’t know where Ivan Rabb plays in that. It’s weird. I don’t understand basketball anymore is what I’m trying to say.
CK : I assume it will switch again.
BS : Well right now everybody wants swing dudes.
CK : Yeah everybody’s doing the same thing because it kind of seems like the best way. But, you know, in ten years - in five years even, who knows.
BS : Well remember when we were growing up in the 80’s? There was that run on centers. Everybody was like, “You gotta have a center.” Houston had Sampson/Olajuwan. The Celtics had McHale and Parrish. You need centers!
CK : It was that thing where you need two guys. Where you needed Cartwright and Ewing. And everybody was like, this is the key. To essentially have two centers on the floor at the same time.
BS : Yeah, we need big guys! And that - that’s what led to Karl Malone going after Jon Koncak and Joe Kleine in that draft.
CK : Also, I think I was talking about this before. I read…I came across a pre-draft analysis of that draft and one of the big knocks on Karl Malone was “bad jumper - bad jumping ability.” He had a low vertical. <laughs> He went like 17th in the draft or something didn’t he?
BS : I think he went 13th. And was immediately great. Alright, speed round, ready?
CK : Okay.
BS : CBS screwing up the selection show. Did you care?
CK : No, because it doesn’t really matter to me what time it comes out. I look at the bracket when I get around to it which isn’t usually during the show anyway. So the fact that it came early…I don’t…who cares?
BS : Why doesn’t every team imitate the Patriots with NFL free agency? Bill Belicik never spends on anyone in the first 10 to 14 days. Why don’t other teams do this considering the Patriots go 13-3 every year?
CK : I think the Patriots have the advantage that they can take guys who wouldn’t succeed at other places and they can fit in their system. Where the other teams are in a position where they need obvious talent, and the way to do that is to go after guys real aggressively. But the Patriots can take a guy…you know a…some running back who couldn’t really have a job anywhere else and, you know, have a Monday Night game where he scores three touchdowns. And he gets cut.
BS : Would you move the NBA three point line?
CK : Maybe. I think I would move it back eighteen inches.
BS : Eighteen inches?
CK : I mean it would be interesting to see. That might be too big of a move. It might change the game too much, but it seems as though it would…guys shoot from there anyway so it would just spread the floor more. I mean it would…we kinda got off this subject but - and we were talking about the NCAA Tournament - but there’s a lot of people now, because college basketball has kinda struggled the last couple years, that don’t really watch the regular season much and they only watch the tournament. And I think when those people watch the tournament this year and see how much the flow of the game has improved with those rule changes - there’s gonna be like this college basketball renaissance where people are really gonna be excited about it. Because the game is much better. The changes they made really helped and I wonder if moving the three point line out a little bit in the NBA might have the same effect - less guys shooting from deep and more guys going to the basket.
BS : What’s been worse for you this last ten years - ten years of the Kardashians or ten years of Roger Goodall?
CK : Well the Kardashians have had no impact on my life. Roger Goodall has been a troubling commissioner and yet the NFL now is turned into something to follow even when there aren’t games on
BS : He’s turned it into a 12-month sport.
CK : Yeah, and there’s just always something happening. It’s…the Kardashians…I guess I know a little bit of what’s going on in their life because of who their dating. Kind of a push.
BS : A push, okay. Every single baseball player walks into your favorite bar one at a time over the course of 24 hours. How many can you recognize.
CK : Oh man.
BS : Under twenty?
CK : Yes, under twenty. It might be under ten. I think it would be under ten. I mean, okay, there’s the guys from the Yankees and the Mets who I see on the covers of tabloids around here sometimes so I might recognize them a bit. But I don’t know if I would - there are whole teams where I wouldn’t recognize any of the guys. Although I did…I know we’re in the middle of the speed round but I wanted to ask you a little bit about this Bryce Harper stuff. Is that possible?
BS : You want to pause the speed round for a second?
CK : Yeah, just hit the pause button. Okay.
BS : Alright, pause button.
CK : So for people that don’t know about this, there was a story in ESPN The Magazine where I think Bryce Harper was saying things like “baseball’s tired and it’s a tired sport because you can’t express yourself”. I’m reading this off the internet. “You can’t do what people in other sports do. I’m not saying baseball is, you know, boring or anything like that, but it’s the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair.” What did you think about that? I firstly want to get your take on that.
BS : I thought that what Chris Rock said when he did that great monologue on Real Sports like a year ago. I thought he made some good points about baseball is a sport that is trying to keep into place all these rules and traditions that existed 50 to 100 years ago, and maybe that’s why it skews towards more - an older, white audience. My point is what’s fun about baseball if I’m a kid? Like, if…I don’t know. I would just gravitate towards other sports unless I played baseball. Like, I watch baseball party because I wanted to hang out with my dad and we had ten channels. And my dad watched the Red Sox so I was like, “well I’m gonna watch the Red Sox.” That’s how I started watching the Red Sox. My son is like, “I”m gonna go on my iPad and watch a hundred John Cena videos on Youtube and would never watch a baseball game with me.”
CK : Yeah, I don’t watch baseball either. I agree with the idea that it does feel tired. But I do feel like Bryce Harper is conflating something. He’s conflating personal expression with intensity. I think baseball’s problem is that it’s not intense enough. I don’t think it’s problem is that guys aren’t allowed to celebrate enough. I mean, okay, we were talking about - like we so often do - talking about baseball from the 80’s or whatever. I mean, Robert Parrish didn’t celebrate. He was intense. Nobody ever complained about that. Ron Artest didn’t celebrate a lot when he played but he was very intense. I feel like what he’s saying somehow - and I feel like there’s a lot of people that feel this way now, is that they seem to think being demonstrative and sort of doing something that seems to - has the appearance of being edgy - is somehow the same as being intense. And I don’t think that’s the case. I mean, the reason people get annoyed by, say touchdown celebrations, is that they seem very orchestrated. You get the sense that the guy thought of this for a week and waited for the opportunity to use it and then he did. Of course people don’t like that. It makes it seem like you’re watching, you know, the circus or pro wrestling or something. But no one seems to care if somebody celebrates as an actual extension of how they feel in that moment or what’s going on. And I think that the problem is that there’s been a decrease in the intensity in sports - certainly in baseball and I think to a certain degree in basketball. Football I’m not so sure about. But even this, it kinda ties back to some of that Oscar Robertson stuff. It’s like even - I wonder what they’re really complaining about. It’s not actually what they’re seeing, but what they’re feeling from the players. If they see the players seem to be great friends both before and immediately after the game. And you talk about Ben Simmons’ passivity and the idea of getting beat by Texas A&M doesn’t matter that much. Isn’t that more the problem? And that’s really an extension of the fact that there’s so much money in these sports now that there’s no reason that these guys would be that personally invested. Because it’s such a good job, you know?
BS : Doesn’t that go to everything we’ve seen with Kobe’s hilarious farewell tour? All these people paying homage to him before and after the games? Kobe was famously not a friend to anyone and just wanted to destroy everyone and didn’t try to help anyone. And now it’s like he’s having these emotional moments at mid court with whoever.
CK : It’s a weird thing to say but it’s kind of disappointing.
BS : Oh I think it’s super disappointing.
CK : It just completely contradicts the quality about him that, for better or worse - very often for worse but sometimes for better - that made him such a, sort of a unique dynamic person. And now it just - I mean it seems like he’s already retired.
BS : He’s on this…it seems like it’s been a three year campaign to prove to everybody that he was a normal person all along. And unfortunately I watched him play basketball from like 1996-2012 and he just wasn’t this person that he’s now portraying himself as. I think he had a really good career. I think he’s one of the ten best players ever. But I don’t think he was somebody that affected all these different peoples’ lives in the league. I think that they respected him and they wanted to beat him and they probably learned stuff from him. But do you think, you know, Durant and Westbrook, that he had this profound impact on their lives? I’m so confused by all this. I guess maybe this is what happens when people retire. Over and over again it’s just kinda the same recipe.
CK : Yeah, as far as impact, I’m not so sure about that. It’s, you know…maybe, I mean, you look at a guy like Durant…when Durant was 16, Kobe what? Kobe was in the league obviously, right? And so you never know how much it matters to a 16 or a 15 year old kid. If player X is his favorite player.
BS : Yeah they dream about playing against whoever.
CK : Yeah or when they’re playing by themselves, you know, and it’s just a boy and a ball and a hoop, and you believe you are him for a second or whatever the case may be. Maybe that has some influence. I don’t know. I’m just saying that I’m not really looking at this. I’m looking at this from…I have come to the conclusion that Kobe Bryant finally was sort of being honest about his nature and now it seems like either he’s went all the way through this door of reality or whatever and now he’s just a different person - he’s changed, or he’s still changing. Or, I mean I hate to say this, but part of me is sort of like, he wouldn’t be doing this this way if he was still great. Like if he was still going out and really beating people, I wonder if he would still be affable to them after the game. But it’s almost as if he recognizes that this is - that he’s hung on maybe a year too long.
BS : So maybe he got humbled a little bit and maybe that made him more of a normal person. ‘Cause I don’t think - especially the guy from the 2000’s, the last decade - had no interest in any sort of interactions of any sort that weren’t just like, you know, quick. He didn’t…wasn’t really a great teammate. I don’t think, you know, I don’t think he was a bad teammate because his teams won so I don’t think it was a situation like what people would say about Boogie Cousins. But I think he was pretty withering to teammates that kinda didn’t meet his standards almost to a fault. You could’ve said the same thing about Jordan. I don’t…the thing that was interesting to me is a guy like Gasol, who a lot of times seemed like a prisoner in the situation. Like, you know, he was sort of trapped in that situation. The life would just get sucked out of him every so often. To now see him talk so glowingly about Kobe like they were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid…I felt like I was there for all those games. Did you ever feel like those guys were, you know, like a buddy cop movie? I never got that sense.
CK : Not really but you know, Gasol’s a guy raised in Spain, was gonna be a doctor. I assume is a pretty intellectual guy. I assume he could talk about the idea of Kobe as fluently as, you know, guys that make a living talking about Kobe do. Maybe he has a little more mature perspective on this and, you know, I would…I often think that guys raised in different countries just have a much different view of the sport they played and people from America who play the same sport.
BS : Well the one thing we know is bullshit is when Shaq and Kobe try to pretend that they didn’t hate each other’s guts when they were on the Lakers. That’s what makes me suspicious of all the other stuff when Kobe…when they’re like, “No, no man, now we’re in a great place.” Like, those guys hate each other. Flat out. I still don’t believe that they like each other.
CK : The fact that Shaq is on TV now, though, and…
BS : Yeah, I think they have to pretend to like each other.
CK : Well, also, I think that maybe Shaq is of the opinion that this is all kinda show. This is all show. Us liking each other is show. Us hating each other is show. It’s all just a show.
BS : It’s like when they have, like, a David O’Russel movie released and all the actors have to pretend they’re really close on the set. That’s kinda what sports has turned into. But to go back to your question and then we have to go. The baseball…when you look at basketball and how the guys kinda market themselves and just how fun the NBA has become from an internet standpoint. And let’s face it, for people under 30, under 25 - Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat are a huge way of how everyone communicates in those two generations. You know, 18-25 and 9-18. And the NBA fits into that. And I don’t know how baseball fits into that. Especially, you know, you don’t see baseball players, you know, instagramming from the dugout and snapchat and watch it. It just feels like it’s from another era and I think that’s their biggest obstacle. How do you make baseball more fun for people under 25? I don’t know how you do it. It’s too slow. They seem to frown upon expression.
CK : But I feel like they have a pretty loyal fanbase. I feel like the guys who like baseball like it more than anything else. Do they have to be as big as football and as big as the NBA to succeed? I don’t think so. I mean, why can’t they sort of occupy the space and the culture that they do? Why is that not enough? I don’t get it.
BS : Well the fundamental problem…I keep saying “fundamental problem” for some reason…is that you have all these under-25 people who are now going to eventually be the people who buy tickets and buy League Pass and do all the things that baseball’s gonna need to stay at the level it’s at and I don’t know if they’re developing those fans. And the other problem is that you have 81 baseball games a year for the home team and now it’s so easy to get tickets…and everybody has nicer TV”s and…like 15 years ago my dream in my life was to have Red Sox season tickets. I couldn’t have imagined anything better - like, “Oh my god I go to 81 Red Sox games…I’ll go to 70 of those.” I would never want to go to 81 baseball games now. I don’t think anyone would. It’s too slow. It’s too hard to park. Your whole night. It’s much more fun a lot of times just to be home. So I don’t know how they fix that. You know? Would you want to go to 81 baseball games?
CK : Well no, I wouldn’t.
BS : Do you know anyone who would want to go to 81 baseball games?
CK : But is baseball actually struggling though?
BS : Hold on, let’s turn on Tate’s mic. Tate, you can turn your mic on. Tate’s 22? Did you just turn 22?
Tate : Just turned 23.
BS : 23. Happy birthday, Tate-Tate. In your circle, how many people care about baseball? Small sample size.
Tate : Uhhh, well there’s no team in North Carolina so it’s the Braves. You know…probably three out of ten. 30%.
BS : Do you feel like under-25 people…is baseball anywhere close to basketball?
Tate : No. It’s probably football, basketball.
BS : Alright, thanks Tate. And that’s the thing with baseball. It used to be the three of them together. And now it feels like baseball’s falling off.
CK : It’s definitely the third sport now, there’s no question about that. I guess is the…is the motive of any sport to be a dominant American sport?
BS : Well in this case it’s America’s past time.
CK : You’re the commissioner of baseball, you know, is that supposed to be your goal? To make baseball the central part of…you know, I’ve talked about this and maybe we have…the fact that football has expanded it’s magnitude so much is really central to a lot of the problems it’s having. Like it’s gotten too big. It’s now involving casual people who are really bothered by what they’re seeing and what they’re experiencing because they sort of though, “Oh, everyone does this on Sunday so I’m gonna do it to.” You don’t see NASCAR fans or bull riding fans or anything freaking out about the dangers of their sport because it’s a niche audience and they’re aware of what they’re getting. They realize…like everybody who follows NASCAR knows that if you drive a car into a brick wall you will die and they’re not shocked when that happens. Football now has got this huge audience of people who have never really thought about - they’ve never really thought about any of this stuff. It’s just that now, all of a sudden they’re hearing about CTE and all these things and it’s like oh, they’re all disturbed because you’ve got…they’ve got too back. I think baseball might be well served to stay at the size it’s at.
BS : What’s interesting to me about baseball is that it’s almost turned into a TV sport like football did in this way. Like you look at…it’s 162 games plus all the spring training. And it is become one of the great commodities for these local cable stations, and you see these TV deals and they’re just so gigantic and that’s why baseball players get paid so much money. It’s the TV deals are just out of control because everybody looks at it and goes - wow that’s a thousand hours of television that we can put on over the course of 7 months. We don’t have to worry about any other programming. This is great. And we know who we’re getting. And we just gotta…and, and, that’s why in a weird way baseball’s as strong as it’s ever been. Because you look at these TV deals and it’s like, yeah, baseball’s not going anywhere. I just worry from a relevancy standpoint with the younger generation. Is it just keep getting worse? Especially if like, Bryce Harper, Trout, all these guys really, if they’re in as good shape from a talent standpoint as the NBA is with Curry, Durant, and Westbrook. I mean, you look at baseball the under-28 guys are just as loaded. But you wouldn’t recognize most of them if they walked into your bar. That’s just weird.
CK : It is weird. I think for awhile now we’ve had this conversation. Well over ten years.
BS : We have. We have.
CK : And also the idea of baseball sort of losing its relationship with young people - that’s an old argument, too. I mean that was definitely happening in the 90’s.
BS : It was, no question. Once they postponed the World Series games and all of a sudden they’re ending at midnight. I think that became a problem. But you know, I think baseball’s weirdly fine, you know. Between the local TV and the late-September through October, I felt like baseball was as relevant as it’s ever been in the post-season last year. Lot of people were talking ‘cause those games were really exciting.
CK : Well when baseball’s dramatic, it’s more dramatic than the other sports. I mean, golf is kind of the same way because it’s so god damn slow, that when meaningful things are happening, it’s just crazy. You feel like it’s just real palpable events of drama. So there’s always the chance that that can happen in the playoffs and the World Series and all these things. So I…I don’t know. My main point was that I think that if there is a main issue with baseball it’s the lack of intensity. It’s not the lack of guys being able to express themselves. I think a lot of times expression seems like theatrics.
BS : Interesting. And the pace…I guess that’s the same argument. The pace, the intensity. It’s just slow.
CK : But again the thing is you need the slow pace in order to have the high drama. They’re kinda tied together. It’s just that what’s boring as fuck in August is great in October.
BS : Really it should be a 145 game season and they’ll never do that because they’ll never lose it. But it should move a little faster. I think 162 games is a little high. I don’t know if we need that many. We have to go. When’s your book coming out?
CK : June 7th.
BS : Alright, and we’ll follow you on Twitter during the tournament. Are you gonna tweet during the tournament or you’re too busy?
CK : We’ll see. I may if I have something to say.
BS : Alright, a pleasure as always. Thank you.
CK : Bye bye.
{PICTURE ME ROLLIN’}
BS : We’re gonna call John Abrams real fast ‘cause his book’s coming out today. If you’re in a March Madness pool, which I’m guessing you are, you’re not just forking over the entry fee for the hell of it, right? You’re investing. Oh yeah. Well, investing in the safety of your home is no different. That’s why I want to talk to you about home security. Researchers from leading universities like Rutgers and UNC-Charlotte have proven security systems deter burglars. We’re talking a deterrence rate of almost 90%. So if you’re trying to find a system that’s right for your home, I have a suggestion. SimplySafe home security. SimplySafe not only protects your home but saves you hundreds of dollars. No hidden fees. No complicated installations. And since there’s no middle man the savings goes straight to your pockets. You get 24/7 professional protection for just $14.99 a month. You could start or cancel service any time. Go to SimplySafeBill.com to start protecting your home. Once again SimplySafeBill.com. Okay, we’re calling John Abrams as promised. My dude Jonathan Abrams wrote a book. He started working on it when we were at Grantland together. He finished it. They made many pages. They put them into book-size things with covers. And now it’s out. It’s out today. It’s called Boys Among Men and it is about the high-school-to-pro phenomenon which actually started way back with with Bill Willoughby who you talked to right, Abrams?
John Abrams (JA) : Right, Bill, uhh, Bill Abrams got into a couple fights with a couple cops a few weeks ago.
BS : Oh, no. It wasn’t at your book signing.
JA : No, luckily not.
BS : So you talked to basically everybody since 1975? That came out right from high-school?
JA : Yeah, Moses was the first one that came out in ’75 and there was a big lull for two decades and then Kevin Garnett opened that door up again in 1995.
BS : Yeah, I remember. The Kevin - a lot of that stuff is on Youtube which I’m sure you watched. The…it’s so funny now to hear people try to talk themselves out of Kevin Garnett before that draft. “He’s not ready! He’s too skinny!” All that stuff, and then he turned into Kevin Garnett. Do you feel like, working on that book, obviously there’s a lot of high-profile failures, but we also had Kevin Garnett and Kobe in back-to-back years. Is that almost a historical fluke?
JA : Yeah, and I think, you know, what’s really interesting about it is how much the NBA shifted in that timespan because back then the Bullets, who obviously became the Wizards, wouldn’t take Kevin Garnett just because he was a high-school player off of principle alone and their owner Abe Pollin, a few years later, was talked into drafting Kwame Brown #1 overall. So the NBA just shifted so much in five or six years.
BS : Right. Well, the Celtics had ’98 when we didn’t get Tim Duncan. We ended up with the third pick and the sixth pick, and they passed on Tracy McGrady twice. So even after Kobe and KG, the draft after that teams were still not seeing it, you know. I don’t think people really saw it until…what was the draft that had Chandler, Kwame, and Curry? That was 2001 right? Or 2002?
JA : Yeah that was 2001.
BS : 2001. That was when everybody was like, “Oh, so if we get these guys, you’re basically developing them for four years and it’s great. It’s a huge advantage.” And it kinda went haywire in a bad way.
JA : Yeah well, your guys worked out Kobe. You know that, right? You had a chance to take Kobe because he shut out all the workouts after the Lakers were interested in him but the Celtics were one of the few teams he worked out for.
BS : Oh, I’m aware of this whole story. Here’s the thing. The Antwan pick was totally defensible. Like, I was super-duper excited that they got him. He was only 19. He had only been at Kentucky for a couple, for a year. He was…almost won Rookie of the Year, and had a good career, and I’m not against him. It gets a lot less defensible when you go through the 7, 8, 9, 12…I mean, the Nets are really the team that should’ve taken him, right?
JA : Yeah when you go back and look at Vitaly Potapenko and Todd Fuller got taken before Kobe Bryant, you just scratch your head.
BS : I know. Well, that’s the draft. These guys…I mean, Minnesota passed on Steph Curry twice. I think that’s my favorite of all time now. ‘Cause it was insane when it happened and now it’s become a hundred thousand times more insane. So what’s your favorite chapter in the book?
JA : I think it was just looking through that ’96 draft and kinda dissecting what every team was thinking at the time they did pass up on Kobe Bryant and talking about, you know, the Hornets at the time who drafted Kobe and then traded him.
BS : So I’m going through that draft now. Iverson, 1. Camby, 2. Sharif went 3. These are all defensible at the time. Marbury, 4. Ray Allen, 5. And Antwan 6. I think all these are still defensible. But here’s where it gets less defensible. Lorenzen Wright to the Clippers. God, the Clippers could’ve had Kobe. I totally forgot that.
JA : He worked out for them, too.
BS : Kittles to the Nets, who had a good career until he got hurt. Samaki Walker to Dallas. Dampier to the Pacers. Todd Fuller to Golden State. Potapenko to the Cavs. And then Kobe, 13. And Charlotte trades it. They didn’t just keep him. They traded it for Divac. So it was like a double-whammy.
JA : You know, what was funny was that the Hornets, they got better after that. I think Bob Bass got Executive of the Year for that trade, because the Hornets won like 50 games that year.
BS : Yeah they actually, the late-90’s Hornets weren’t bad. Vlade had a lot left in the tank, and then he went to Sacramento. It was a defensible trade except for the part where Kobe became one of the ten best players of all time. So you think the T-Mac thing for some reason is not as big of a deal? Where did he go? Seventh? Eighth?
JA : He went eighth I think to the Raptors. He was good because that brought about a whole big negotiation between Nike and ADIDAS and it was the first time one of these high-school guys had created a shoe bidding war with Sonny Vaccaro - ADIDAS and Nike.
BS : Yeah, and who, I forget…ADIDAS won that one?
JA : Yeah, they paid him 12 million dollars and all the veteran players were jealous. They hadn’t gotten a shoe contract like that. And it just setup a whole generation of these guys trying to make that jump afterwards.
BS : After you finish this book, do you feel like guys should be able to come right out of high-school or no?
JA : I think so. Obviously there’s a lot of grey in this issue but, by and large, most of these guys were successful. There’s a lot more successful guys like Tracy and Kobe and Lebron than there are in the busts like Korleone Young and Leon Smith and those guys.
BS : Right. I mean it would’ve been better for Ben Simmons to just of come out now. I mean, to come right out a year ago versus just going to LSU and just having four unsatisfying months there. I don’t know how that helped him in any way. And it does seem like the league is so much smarter now about protecting younger players and putting them in a position to think about choices they make and all that stuff. It just seems like…I don’t know. I’m of the belief that it should be - I’ve said this before but I really think it’s one of my best ideas. The rookie contract length should depend on when you came out. So if you stay in school for two years, and you come out, it’s a four year rookie contract. If you come out right out of high-school, it’s a six year contract. If you come out after your freshman year, it’s a five year rookie contract. I really think that’s the best solution.
JA : I like it.
BS : Yeah because now, if a guy comes right out, all of a sudden he’s not getting paid when he’s like 22. And the team really gets to keep them under control. And try to groom him. And there’s no rush. A lot of these issues were just sometimes just guys getting money too soon. I mean, that was Antwan’s biggest thing. Antwan was making, I think he signed for 71 or 81 million bucks after his third year in the NBA. He was 22. That’s not good, you know. What do you think…what was the biggest reason Kwame failed?
JA : Oh, there was the big combination of I don’t think he loved the game. He declared for the NBA because of family pressure and to lift his family out of poverty. He just came from a terrible situation. One of the quotes from the book that stood out to me was Billy Donovan who got to thinking Kwame didn’t really wanna go pro in the least bit because he had originally committed to the University of Florida when Donovan was there. And also the pressure of playing for Micheal Jordan at that time. Michael Jordan only had one or two years left in him at the Wizards and needed Kwame to be a superstar fast and that just wasn’t gonna happen.
BS : Was there a guy that, as you worked on the book, you changed your opinion?
JA : You know, it was interesting seeing Tracy McGrady’s progress because I didn’t know all that much about his back history and it just seemed like he almost lucked into basketball to begin with as well. He was a big baseball guy growing up.
BS : Yeah, he’s a good example of how they changed the rules to make the rookie contracts longer and after, you know, his generation you could leave after three years. And he left Toronto. He goes to Orlando. Grant Hill gets hurt and he just, you know, wastes a good chunk of his career on teams that aren’t very good. And had the contracts been longer, him and Vince Carter are together and all of a sudden that has a chance to be something really special. I always felt like, if he’d come along five years later in the same situation his career is different.
JA : One of the other big things with Tracy as well was, he was really close to signing with the Bulls after that Toronto contract but Jordan basically nixed it because they’d have to give up Pippen at the time.
BS : Right. Yeah I remember that. Alright well I’m excited for people to read this book. You sent me an early copy. I enjoyed it. I enjoy all basketball books but I really enjoyed yours. Can you talk about your next project yet or no?
JA : No. I hope to have it out soon but…I’m excited.
BS : Yeah, you’re next project is gonna be super-duper exciting. Hey, you’re in Charlotte now, right?
JA : I am.
BS : Have you gotten sucked in by the Hornets? By college hoops? Anything? How’s your basketball life changed?
JA : I got a two-year old that I’m trying to groom into the next Steph Curry. That’s why we got out here.
BS : That’s smart. Get a Davidson #30 jersey on him! Have you gone to a Hornets game yet?
JA : I’ve been to a couple, but I’m friends with a woman whose daughter goes to Steph’s high-school and plays basketball there so I’ve been to Steph’s high-school gym a few times and it’s just this tiny, tiny place and I just can’t imagine Steph ever playing there.
BS : I know. That’s probably where he started making 40 footers routinely and starting wondering, “hmm, I wonder if this’ll work in a game.” And he was right.
JA : There’s like two stands, two rows of stands on each side of the court. If he had been a bigger prospect in high-school, they would not have been able to play in that gym.
BS : No. Okay, so your books out today. Shay Sorrano (?) did some cool covers for you but those are all sold out, right?
JA : W
CK : Yeah, I know.
BS : He makes 82 million dollars.
CK : Didn’t he represent Mark Jackson? And there was some belief that Mark Jackson would get the Cavs job?
BS : Yeah <bewildered>.
CK : That is…also I was talking about this with somebody as it was all going on and they’re like, well, you know, it seems odd that Lebron would, like, you know, want to hire Mark Jackson just to get the commission, you know, for the agency. But I was like, I don’t know how much money is at stake here. Does he kinda view a lot of these guys as interchangeable? Do you think there is any chance that Lebron will leave Cleveland? Or is that totally something people talk about on TV to kill time?
BS : Well, that can never be underestimated. The, uhh, the people talking about stuff on TV to kill time. Because there’s a lot of time on TV. I think if he left Cleveland…I can’t even imagine how that would play out. I mean, think how mad everyone was the last time. And then he comes back and does this whole Sports Illustrated letter and the minute-long Nike commercial and, and the Becoming show on Disney Channel, you know, and does this whole “Cleveland, this is my last thing. I gotta win a title for Cleveland.” Makes all the trades, makes all the signings, and then he’s gonna be like, “I’m out”? That would be crazy.
CK : It would be insane. But look at, like, this is the thing I’m always thinking. If you’re Lebron, think of what has happened. I’m from Akron. Everybody loves me. I go to Cleveland. They love me more. I go to Miami. They now hate me. They burn my jersey. I come back. They love me again. Maybe you start to think, do I really care what these capricious people feel? If that they hated me so much that they were burning me in effigy, and then as soon as I came back and wrote this fake letter to Sports Illustrated, they’re all like - “Oh you know what, we love you, you should be governor. You should be governor!” You know, maybe that makes you think, this really isn’t that meaningful of a thing to worry about.
CK : Something’s going- I mean that whole team is screwed up. There’s something really weird going on.
BS : But then I went to the Clippers game on Sunday and as soon as they took a lead they seem great. The first half Kyrie and Love sit on one side of the bench, cause I was, you know, I was in full body language doctor mode. I was studying the timeouts like, you know, it was like the Zapruder film. And it was…Kyrie and Love were on one side and Lebron was on the other side and they did not interact. So then the second half when they started playing well, the whole team’s up. Hebron comes out. They’re up like 15. And Kyrie starts torching Austin Rivers, which felt like there was a little extra - cause I don’t think Lebron likes Doc Rivers going back to, like, the Celtics-Cavs series. Just…I have no evidence at all. Umm, just a, just a gut feeling, because the way Kyrie was torching Austin Rivers for like a minute-and-a-half, and the way Lebron was celebrating on the bench - it was just a little weird. So, it seems like he’s great when you’re up 15, but when the chips are down, we’ve, we’ve kinda seen him kinda melt, kinda melt away as soon as it seems like the team has no chance. I don’t know what to make of Lebron. I gotta be honest. I been thinking about the guy for 12 years and I do not have a handle on him mentally.
CK : Yeah, it’s a…I mean he does have the, the sort of, the burden of having his legacy analyzed in real time pretty much more than any other basketball player than I can remember. But it is odd. It’s like when Joe Johnson signed with the Heat.
BS : That was weird.
CK : Lebron was like, “We should’ve got him.” It’s like, he does seem a little obsessed with making things easier for himself. Which, when you say it like that, seems like such a practical thing to do. But it’s unlike the way athletes tend to be. You know, it seems odd that he’d be like “Yeah, you know, I can play 4 and we get Joe Johnson here and we’d be, you know, incrementally better.” They certainly have the talent to win the title now, but not really, he’s not like that. It’s always like, “well what if we add this extra piece”, you know.
BS : That’s the thing. He’s always looking for something a little bit better than what he has. And if I was one of his teammates, that would make me feel weird. Because, like, if I’m Kevin Love right now, I’m thinking, “I’m barely - I might not play in crunch time in these playoffs. Oh, now you’re gonna go out and get Joe Johnson. Well, all Joe Johnson does is move Lebron to the 4 and now I’m out.”
CK : Although Lebron was like, “We play Love at the 5, which, that would put him down on the block a lot. And I think that could actually be a good idea. But he,” - he being Love - “clearly does not want that.”
BS : Well that’s what he did in the Olympics. I actually think that’s the destiny of this team - is Lebron at the 4 and either Thompson or Love playing the 5, and then you just surround everyone with shooters. I think they kinda deep down know that, which is why they wanted Joe Johnson. I don’t know. Lebron - he has these moments, right? Like last year, remember when he just wouldn’t shoot? When he was trying to prove some weird point to Kyrie Irving? He’s always trying to prove points.
CK : Yeah.
BS : It’s a strange way to lead, but, you know, I look at - when Bird was on the Celtics in the 80’s. Bird clashed with dudes all the time. And Bird was furious after the ’83 playoffs and he said they played like a bunch of sissies in 1984 and he’d feuding with McHale in the late 80’s and, I wonder if everybody is wired this way. Like, Jordan’s teammates didn’t like ‘em.
CK : Well, also the fact that some of this happens in social media. It seems to, predictably, amplify very small complaints to bigger deals. So I think that there’s maybe a lot of a lack of clarity over how annoyed he is with people. Because sometimes he’ll say something on Twitter about Love and I guess it seems a little pointed but not totally pointed. But then because it just, everyone sees it and it gets discussed, it becomes a bigger deal. I don’t know what they actually - how they communicate in person. Like, do they ever yell at each other do you think? Do you think that, do you think that Lebron ever yells at Kyrie Irving? Like, yells at him?
BS : I don’t know. I think he’s more disappointed and guilt trips them. It’s like, it’s like he’s just more disappointed. “I’m just more disappointed at your shot selection, Kyrie!”
CK : “I”m not mad at you, Kyrie.”
BS : Yeah. “I’m just, I’m just sad. You made me sad.” I thought it was weird. See, here’s the part that people miss. With everything. I don’t think it was weird at all that he hung out with Wade and that he worked out with Wade. I thought it was weird that he kinda trumpeted it.
CK : Well wasn’t he promoting a gym or something?
BS : I don’t know, but-
CK : I thought I read somewhere that he was promoting the facility they were working out at. And that’s something that…that’s just…I’ve just come to accept this is just a generational thing. That we’re the last generation of guys who are gonna be like, it’s weird he did that, even though there was this sort of commercial upside to doing so, potentially, because it’s just - nobody thinks like that anymore. And that’s what I kinda thought it was. He’s like “This is a business thing.”
{PICTURE ME ROLLIN’}
BS : Right. Gun to your head.
CK : Everyone is always gonna take Lebron, and I don’t think that’s true right now. And I think that that’s been a, probably a long time since he’s felt that way. I mean, he certainly never felt it growing up, even when he was a rookie - even his second year in the league I think if most GM’s could trade anyone for him, they would’ve said, “We’re doing it. His upside is too great.”
BS : But that’s recency bias, though. I think Lebron is still incredible. To me it’s still-
CK : Oh sure, wait a second.
BS : No, no, I know what you’re saying. I just think it’s weird that everybody is just moved on to Curry. Like, I went to see Lebron on Sunday. He’s amazing. He had like 28-8-8 and he completely dominated the game. To me, he’s still in the conversation.
CK : No, he’s the second best guy. It just-
BS : But I think he might be the best guy.
CK : Well, he could be again next year because - and this has gotta be the apex for Curry. He can’t play any better than this.
BS : I don’t know.
CK : How-how could…I mean, what would that be?
BS : I’m very disappointed in his free throws. He’s down to 90% free throws.
CK : <laughs>
BS : I just think he’s gotta do better. He keeps missing these key free throws. You gotta do better than nine outta ten.
CK : I’m in a couple fantasy leagues and I’m just astounded by how often he gets 8 rebounds. I mean, he’s just having this incredible year and I don’t think - it’s not like, he’s not gonna be like this for four year. I mean, maybe I’ll look back on this podcast and be like what an idiot I was but I can’t fathom how that would be.
BS : But his age right now suggests that this will, this prime is gonna last a couple years. Like, if you look at the Bird prime, the Jordan prime, the Magic prime - even somebody like Kobe’s prime - um, it’s usually four or five years. So he’s in year two.
CK : What I would say is that his prime may keep going but - and this is a weird way to phrase this - but just the sheer percentage of shots that go in I feel like will slightly decrease.
BS : But you don’t think that - you don’t think that he’s mastered shooting to some degree? Like Tiger Woods had that six year stretch where every drive just went right down the fairway.
CK : I guess. It’s just, it…when he pulls up from 40 feet away at the end of a quarter, I find myself thinking he’ll probably make this.
BS : Me, too.
CK : I mean it’s just such a weird thing that I don’t think. I mean, maybe, I hope it does. It’s kinda - it’s good for everyone I feel.
BS : I gotta say I’m more amazed by - the shooting I’m almost used to. I’m more amazed by how consistently he drives to the basket, and his footwork, and how he’s never going 100% full speed - he’s always going 80% - but he’s so quick and he’s so smart and how he can go off either foot and shoot with either hand. And it just doesn’t matter who’s coming over to block the shot. He’s always gonna - it’s always the perfect kinda basketball play. I’ve never seen that.
CK : Okay, do you think that this is the reason - maybe you’ve talked about this in other podcasts and I’ve missed it. But, you know, when someone like Oscar Robertson comes out and complains about him. My theory on that, maybe everyone thinks this but, when a guy like Oscar Robertson sees Lebron, or sees a guy like Durant on the perimeter at 6’11 or whatever, their reaction is, “Wow, these guys are just different people than the ones we played against and no wonder they’re better. They’re just, you know, they’re built the way, you know, Durant would’ve been a center in the 1950’s and 60’s.” But when they see Curry, he looks like the guy that they played against and, in fact, he looks slighter physically than Robertson was. And is that what drives them crazy? That they, like, just can’t believe…that they can understand how the physiology has changed and made guys better, but they can’t understand how a guy the same size of them can be that good?
BS : I think they don’t understand it. They just fundamentally can’t understand it. And the reality is, if Curry played in the 1960’s, he would’ve been out of the league in six years because he never would’ve been able to stay on the court with his ankles. And 50 years later, you know, there was that giant piece on ESPN The Magazine about-
CK : Yeah, yeah, Pablo Torre wrote that. That’s not what Oscar’s thinking about.
BS : No, no, I’m saying…I’m saying that he doesn’t understand it because in his era, you were just good and things made sense and there were certain type of players and nobody shot like this, right? So it’s gotta be everyone else’s fault that they’re letting him make all these shots. But really-
CK : Well it seems backwards. It seems like that should be the kind of guy old-timers like. Like, I wish my dad was still alive. I think he’d love Steph Curry. But then I think that, I don’t know, maybe he’d be from a generation of guys who see this phantom problem.
BS : But, but Oscar was…Marivoch was basically the 1960’s Curry, right?
CK : Except when you look at his field goal percentage.
BS : Well, true, but I’m saying, like, he had like, the 30 foot range and you always heard about…I just think that there’s something about the old guys. First of all, they always think that their era was better. That’s just the thing. And that’s been the case for 50 years. That’s why I always laugh when people get so bent out of shape cause an old guy thinks their era was better. They always think their era was better. But I just think that fundamentally he doesn’t understand how Curry is shooting like this so he’s blaming everybody else without thinking that, “yeah actually the way science is going and the way you can study your technique and hone it in and you can work your body a certain way so that your leverage and your balance is perfect and your sneakers are perfect and you have first class accommodations and all these things - they all lead to us creating better basketball players.” And that’s the part he doesn’t understand. And Curry should be better than the guys-
CK : I also think that he hasn’t thought about it that much. I think a lot of these guys talk off the cuff but in the old days, you know, you speak on the radio and say something crazy like that and the only people that find out are the people in St. Louis.
BS : True.
CK : And now it seems as though, it seems like Oscar Robertson is leading the charge against Steph Curry.
BS : To be fair, Oscar - and I wrote about this when I wrote about Oscar in my book - like, Oscar is the all-time NBA superstar curmudgeon that we’ve had in sixty years. There’s nobody grumpier than Oscar.
CK : Well a lotta bad things happened to him.
BS : Yeah and that’s a thing. He’s - it’s totally understandable and that’s why I don’t think anybody should give him shit ever. Because I think he took…he went through the most stuff of anyone from that era. ‘Cause he went to the University of Cincinnati during the, um, not a great time to be there if you’re a black athlete. But I just think that in general, all these guys, they all think their era is better. Like Magic, when I did TV with Magic, we would argue about these new guys versus the old guys. And Magic was adamant that the guys from, like, the 80’s Lakers would’ve beaten anybody in the game now. And I just didn’t understand it because they didn’t shoot threes back then. The teams now get an extra - what - 8 to 10 points from the three point line that in Magic’s era a team didn’t get. And he’s like, “No, we would’ve pounded ‘em down low.” Like, he generally felt that. It wasn’t like he was theorizing. He was like, “We would’ve beaten them.”
CK : The psychology of aging is interesting. I mean, people have been often comparing the Warriors to the Bulls teams because, you know, they’re going after the wins record, you know. But, if you remember, even when that Bulls team was winning all those games - when they asked Jordan how they would’ve fared against the first three-peat, he was like, “The first team was way better.” Because he was like, Cartwright was a, you know, an uptick from Kukoc. And Paxton and Kerr were kinda interchangeable and there was just a better team, you know. So even while he was doing it, he was like, “The old team was better.” I mean, I think that that’s a natural way to feel.
BS : I wrote about this in my book because I thought that it was a really, really important point. And if you’re gonna compare teams - which is so hard to do - you really have to look at what the league was like. Because the reason the teams in the 80’s were so good is because there was only 21 teams. And somebody like McHale could be on the Celtics. And if you had a 30-team league, it would’ve been humanly impossible to have McHale, Bird, and Parrish on the same team. It just wouldn’t happen. That’s why it was so amazing that OKC for four years had a chance to have Durant, Harden, and Westbrook on the same team. It’s the all-time fluke of flukes. It would be the equivalent of, if Minnesota won the lottery this year and got Ben Simmons and somehow Towns, Wiggins, and Ben Simmons on the same team like - it might happen once a decade in a 30-team league.
CK : Is it a fluke or is it a bad move? You know, the Oklahoma City gave up Harden. You look at the Warriors. They seemingly have the two best shooters in the world on the same team. It seems like a fluke except everyone in the world at one point was saying to trade Klay Thompson for Kevin Love. Everyone was saying that.
BS : Including me.
CK : Yeah, and they didn’t do it, right? So it seems fluky that they have this situation but actually they deserve credit for not making that move when everyone demanded they do.
BS : Hold on. Hold that point for one second. I think that was one of the seminal moments in the history of the NBA - that summer. The more I look at it. Because it’s a clear demarkation between an old way to play basketball and a new way to play basketball. Kevin Love we all thought was one of the best seven footers in the league and of course you should trade Klay Thompson and David Lee and a #1 pick for him and, of course, you should trade Andrew Wiggins for him. But what you’re getting was this guy who’s a power forward in a league where power forwards are becoming increasingly irrelevant, and you can only play really one non-perimeter guy and succeed in the way the NBA is being played now. And now, a year later there is no way in hell you would trade Wiggins for Kevin Love because it’s so hard to find perimeter guys and wing guys. It’s the same way the Warriors looked at it and said [that] actually we should keep Klay Thompson and there are less guards than big guys. It’s easier to get a big guy. We can build a team around these two shooters. We’re gonna make nine three pointers a game. That’s a bigger advantage. The fact that they saw that in the moment, I think, is one of the great strategical, big-picture things we’ve ever seen in the league.
CK : If not, I’m kinda giving them maybe more credit than they deserve. We don’t know if they wanted the deal and they just couldn’t make it happen.
BS : No, no, no, no they argued about it. I know the whole story. They had two camps. And there was one camp that was like, “No, this is a better advantage to have these two shooters.” Like it was a real thing.
CK : Who was in that camp?
BS : Steve Kerr. I think…I actually think Jerry West was one of the guys who was like, “Don’t do this. Klay, you know…” He was just like ba-ba-ba, he was adamant that you couldn’t win a title with Love and Curry as yours - as two of your defenders.
CK : Well I wouldn’t be shocked if those are the two guys who were right.
BS : I forget. I think now everybody takes credit for keeping Klay Thompson, but at the time I couldn’t believe they didn’t trade for Kevin Love. I was talking to somebody at work yesterday. I like this guy Ivan Rabb on California, and I have no idea if he can play in the NBA even though I know he’s a good basketball player, because he’s…he’s gonna be a lottery pick. He’ll be in the 10-14 range. He’s a good athlete. He’s a good rebounder. He plays hard. Where do I play him in the pros? I can’t play him at center. So now it’s like I have to play him with another shot blocker? Or could he be a Draymond Green center? You’re asking questions that I wasn’t asking two years ago because you can’t play two low post guys anymore. So where does he go, you know?
CK : That’s a good question.
BS : The Celtics play…the Celtics are gonna win 50 games. And in crunch-time they play Isaiah Thomas, Avery Bradley, Markus Smart, Jay Crowder, and either Jared Sullenger or Tyler Zeller. They play Jay Crowder at power forward even though he’s not a power forward. And that’s what every team does now. I don’t know where Ivan Rabb plays in that. It’s weird. I don’t understand basketball anymore is what I’m trying to say.
CK : I assume it will switch again.
BS : Well right now everybody wants swing dudes.
CK : Yeah everybody’s doing the same thing because it kind of seems like the best way. But, you know, in ten years - in five years even, who knows.
BS : Well remember when we were growing up in the 80’s? There was that run on centers. Everybody was like, “You gotta have a center.” Houston had Sampson/Olajuwan. The Celtics had McHale and Parrish. You need centers!
CK : It was that thing where you need two guys. Where you needed Cartwright and Ewing. And everybody was like, this is the key. To essentially have two centers on the floor at the same time.
BS : Yeah, we need big guys! And that - that’s what led to Karl Malone going after Jon Koncak and Joe Kleine in that draft.
CK : Also, I think I was talking about this before. I read…I came across a pre-draft analysis of that draft and one of the big knocks on Karl Malone was “bad jumper - bad jumping ability.” He had a low vertical. <laughs> He went like 17th in the draft or something didn’t he?
BS : I think he went 13th. And was immediately great. Alright, speed round, ready?
CK : Okay.
BS : CBS screwing up the selection show. Did you care?
CK : No, because it doesn’t really matter to me what time it comes out. I look at the bracket when I get around to it which isn’t usually during the show anyway. So the fact that it came early…I don’t…who cares?
BS : Why doesn’t every team imitate the Patriots with NFL free agency? Bill Belicik never spends on anyone in the first 10 to 14 days. Why don’t other teams do this considering the Patriots go 13-3 every year?
CK : I think the Patriots have the advantage that they can take guys who wouldn’t succeed at other places and they can fit in their system. Where the other teams are in a position where they need obvious talent, and the way to do that is to go after guys real aggressively. But the Patriots can take a guy…you know a…some running back who couldn’t really have a job anywhere else and, you know, have a Monday Night game where he scores three touchdowns. And he gets cut.
BS : Would you move the NBA three point line?
CK : Maybe. I think I would move it back eighteen inches.
BS : Eighteen inches?
CK : I mean it would be interesting to see. That might be too big of a move. It might change the game too much, but it seems as though it would…guys shoot from there anyway so it would just spread the floor more. I mean it would…we kinda got off this subject but - and we were talking about the NCAA Tournament - but there’s a lot of people now, because college basketball has kinda struggled the last couple years, that don’t really watch the regular season much and they only watch the tournament. And I think when those people watch the tournament this year and see how much the flow of the game has improved with those rule changes - there’s gonna be like this college basketball renaissance where people are really gonna be excited about it. Because the game is much better. The changes they made really helped and I wonder if moving the three point line out a little bit in the NBA might have the same effect - less guys shooting from deep and more guys going to the basket.
BS : What’s been worse for you this last ten years - ten years of the Kardashians or ten years of Roger Goodall?
CK : Well the Kardashians have had no impact on my life. Roger Goodall has been a troubling commissioner and yet the NFL now is turned into something to follow even when there aren’t games on
BS : He’s turned it into a 12-month sport.
CK : Yeah, and there’s just always something happening. It’s…the Kardashians…I guess I know a little bit of what’s going on in their life because of who their dating. Kind of a push.
BS : A push, okay. Every single baseball player walks into your favorite bar one at a time over the course of 24 hours. How many can you recognize.
CK : Oh man.
BS : Under twenty?
CK : Yes, under twenty. It might be under ten. I think it would be under ten. I mean, okay, there’s the guys from the Yankees and the Mets who I see on the covers of tabloids around here sometimes so I might recognize them a bit. But I don’t know if I would - there are whole teams where I wouldn’t recognize any of the guys. Although I did…I know we’re in the middle of the speed round but I wanted to ask you a little bit about this Bryce Harper stuff. Is that possible?
BS : You want to pause the speed round for a second?
CK : Yeah, just hit the pause button. Okay.
BS : Alright, pause button.
CK : So for people that don’t know about this, there was a story in ESPN The Magazine where I think Bryce Harper was saying things like “baseball’s tired and it’s a tired sport because you can’t express yourself”. I’m reading this off the internet. “You can’t do what people in other sports do. I’m not saying baseball is, you know, boring or anything like that, but it’s the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair.” What did you think about that? I firstly want to get your take on that.
BS : I thought that what Chris Rock said when he did that great monologue on Real Sports like a year ago. I thought he made some good points about baseball is a sport that is trying to keep into place all these rules and traditions that existed 50 to 100 years ago, and maybe that’s why it skews towards more - an older, white audience. My point is what’s fun about baseball if I’m a kid? Like, if…I don’t know. I would just gravitate towards other sports unless I played baseball. Like, I watch baseball party because I wanted to hang out with my dad and we had ten channels. And my dad watched the Red Sox so I was like, “well I’m gonna watch the Red Sox.” That’s how I started watching the Red Sox. My son is like, “I”m gonna go on my iPad and watch a hundred John Cena videos on Youtube and would never watch a baseball game with me.”
CK : Yeah, I don’t watch baseball either. I agree with the idea that it does feel tired. But I do feel like Bryce Harper is conflating something. He’s conflating personal expression with intensity. I think baseball’s problem is that it’s not intense enough. I don’t think it’s problem is that guys aren’t allowed to celebrate enough. I mean, okay, we were talking about - like we so often do - talking about baseball from the 80’s or whatever. I mean, Robert Parrish didn’t celebrate. He was intense. Nobody ever complained about that. Ron Artest didn’t celebrate a lot when he played but he was very intense. I feel like what he’s saying somehow - and I feel like there’s a lot of people that feel this way now, is that they seem to think being demonstrative and sort of doing something that seems to - has the appearance of being edgy - is somehow the same as being intense. And I don’t think that’s the case. I mean, the reason people get annoyed by, say touchdown celebrations, is that they seem very orchestrated. You get the sense that the guy thought of this for a week and waited for the opportunity to use it and then he did. Of course people don’t like that. It makes it seem like you’re watching, you know, the circus or pro wrestling or something. But no one seems to care if somebody celebrates as an actual extension of how they feel in that moment or what’s going on. And I think that the problem is that there’s been a decrease in the intensity in sports - certainly in baseball and I think to a certain degree in basketball. Football I’m not so sure about. But even this, it kinda ties back to some of that Oscar Robertson stuff. It’s like even - I wonder what they’re really complaining about. It’s not actually what they’re seeing, but what they’re feeling from the players. If they see the players seem to be great friends both before and immediately after the game. And you talk about Ben Simmons’ passivity and the idea of getting beat by Texas A&M doesn’t matter that much. Isn’t that more the problem? And that’s really an extension of the fact that there’s so much money in these sports now that there’s no reason that these guys would be that personally invested. Because it’s such a good job, you know?
BS : Doesn’t that go to everything we’ve seen with Kobe’s hilarious farewell tour? All these people paying homage to him before and after the games? Kobe was famously not a friend to anyone and just wanted to destroy everyone and didn’t try to help anyone. And now it’s like he’s having these emotional moments at mid court with whoever.
CK : It’s a weird thing to say but it’s kind of disappointing.
BS : Oh I think it’s super disappointing.
CK : It just completely contradicts the quality about him that, for better or worse - very often for worse but sometimes for better - that made him such a, sort of a unique dynamic person. And now it just - I mean it seems like he’s already retired.
BS : He’s on this…it seems like it’s been a three year campaign to prove to everybody that he was a normal person all along. And unfortunately I watched him play basketball from like 1996-2012 and he just wasn’t this person that he’s now portraying himself as. I think he had a really good career. I think he’s one of the ten best players ever. But I don’t think he was somebody that affected all these different peoples’ lives in the league. I think that they respected him and they wanted to beat him and they probably learned stuff from him. But do you think, you know, Durant and Westbrook, that he had this profound impact on their lives? I’m so confused by all this. I guess maybe this is what happens when people retire. Over and over again it’s just kinda the same recipe.
CK : Yeah, as far as impact, I’m not so sure about that. It’s, you know…maybe, I mean, you look at a guy like Durant…when Durant was 16, Kobe what? Kobe was in the league obviously, right? And so you never know how much it matters to a 16 or a 15 year old kid. If player X is his favorite player.
BS : Yeah they dream about playing against whoever.
CK : Yeah or when they’re playing by themselves, you know, and it’s just a boy and a ball and a hoop, and you believe you are him for a second or whatever the case may be. Maybe that has some influence. I don’t know. I’m just saying that I’m not really looking at this. I’m looking at this from…I have come to the conclusion that Kobe Bryant finally was sort of being honest about his nature and now it seems like either he’s went all the way through this door of reality or whatever and now he’s just a different person - he’s changed, or he’s still changing. Or, I mean I hate to say this, but part of me is sort of like, he wouldn’t be doing this this way if he was still great. Like if he was still going out and really beating people, I wonder if he would still be affable to them after the game. But it’s almost as if he recognizes that this is - that he’s hung on maybe a year too long.
BS : So maybe he got humbled a little bit and maybe that made him more of a normal person. ‘Cause I don’t think - especially the guy from the 2000’s, the last decade - had no interest in any sort of interactions of any sort that weren’t just like, you know, quick. He didn’t…wasn’t really a great teammate. I don’t think, you know, I don’t think he was a bad teammate because his teams won so I don’t think it was a situation like what people would say about Boogie Cousins. But I think he was pretty withering to teammates that kinda didn’t meet his standards almost to a fault. You could’ve said the same thing about Jordan. I don’t…the thing that was interesting to me is a guy like Gasol, who a lot of times seemed like a prisoner in the situation. Like, you know, he was sort of trapped in that situation. The life would just get sucked out of him every so often. To now see him talk so glowingly about Kobe like they were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid…I felt like I was there for all those games. Did you ever feel like those guys were, you know, like a buddy cop movie? I never got that sense.
CK : Not really but you know, Gasol’s a guy raised in Spain, was gonna be a doctor. I assume is a pretty intellectual guy. I assume he could talk about the idea of Kobe as fluently as, you know, guys that make a living talking about Kobe do. Maybe he has a little more mature perspective on this and, you know, I would…I often think that guys raised in different countries just have a much different view of the sport they played and people from America who play the same sport.
BS : Well the one thing we know is bullshit is when Shaq and Kobe try to pretend that they didn’t hate each other’s guts when they were on the Lakers. That’s what makes me suspicious of all the other stuff when Kobe…when they’re like, “No, no man, now we’re in a great place.” Like, those guys hate each other. Flat out. I still don’t believe that they like each other.
CK : The fact that Shaq is on TV now, though, and…
BS : Yeah, I think they have to pretend to like each other.
CK : Well, also, I think that maybe Shaq is of the opinion that this is all kinda show. This is all show. Us liking each other is show. Us hating each other is show. It’s all just a show.
BS : It’s like when they have, like, a David O’Russel movie released and all the actors have to pretend they’re really close on the set. That’s kinda what sports has turned into. But to go back to your question and then we have to go. The baseball…when you look at basketball and how the guys kinda market themselves and just how fun the NBA has become from an internet standpoint. And let’s face it, for people under 30, under 25 - Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat are a huge way of how everyone communicates in those two generations. You know, 18-25 and 9-18. And the NBA fits into that. And I don’t know how baseball fits into that. Especially, you know, you don’t see baseball players, you know, instagramming from the dugout and snapchat and watch it. It just feels like it’s from another era and I think that’s their biggest obstacle. How do you make baseball more fun for people under 25? I don’t know how you do it. It’s too slow. They seem to frown upon expression.
CK : But I feel like they have a pretty loyal fanbase. I feel like the guys who like baseball like it more than anything else. Do they have to be as big as football and as big as the NBA to succeed? I don’t think so. I mean, why can’t they sort of occupy the space and the culture that they do? Why is that not enough? I don’t get it.
BS : Well the fundamental problem…I keep saying “fundamental problem” for some reason…is that you have all these under-25 people who are now going to eventually be the people who buy tickets and buy League Pass and do all the things that baseball’s gonna need to stay at the level it’s at and I don’t know if they’re developing those fans. And the other problem is that you have 81 baseball games a year for the home team and now it’s so easy to get tickets…and everybody has nicer TV”s and…like 15 years ago my dream in my life was to have Red Sox season tickets. I couldn’t have imagined anything better - like, “Oh my god I go to 81 Red Sox games…I’ll go to 70 of those.” I would never want to go to 81 baseball games now. I don’t think anyone would. It’s too slow. It’s too hard to park. Your whole night. It’s much more fun a lot of times just to be home. So I don’t know how they fix that. You know? Would you want to go to 81 baseball games?
CK : Well no, I wouldn’t.
BS : Do you know anyone who would want to go to 81 baseball games?
CK : But is baseball actually struggling though?
BS : Hold on, let’s turn on Tate’s mic. Tate, you can turn your mic on. Tate’s 22? Did you just turn 22?
Tate : Just turned 23.
BS : 23. Happy birthday, Tate-Tate. In your circle, how many people care about baseball? Small sample size.
Tate : Uhhh, well there’s no team in North Carolina so it’s the Braves. You know…probably three out of ten. 30%.
BS : Do you feel like under-25 people…is baseball anywhere close to basketball?
Tate : No. It’s probably football, basketball.
BS : Alright, thanks Tate. And that’s the thing with baseball. It used to be the three of them together. And now it feels like baseball’s falling off.
CK : It’s definitely the third sport now, there’s no question about that. I guess is the…is the motive of any sport to be a dominant American sport?
BS : Well in this case it’s America’s past time.
CK : You’re the commissioner of baseball, you know, is that supposed to be your goal? To make baseball the central part of…you know, I’ve talked about this and maybe we have…the fact that football has expanded it’s magnitude so much is really central to a lot of the problems it’s having. Like it’s gotten too big. It’s now involving casual people who are really bothered by what they’re seeing and what they’re experiencing because they sort of though, “Oh, everyone does this on Sunday so I’m gonna do it to.” You don’t see NASCAR fans or bull riding fans or anything freaking out about the dangers of their sport because it’s a niche audience and they’re aware of what they’re getting. They realize…like everybody who follows NASCAR knows that if you drive a car into a brick wall you will die and they’re not shocked when that happens. Football now has got this huge audience of people who have never really thought about - they’ve never really thought about any of this stuff. It’s just that now, all of a sudden they’re hearing about CTE and all these things and it’s like oh, they’re all disturbed because you’ve got…they’ve got too back. I think baseball might be well served to stay at the size it’s at.
BS : What’s interesting to me about baseball is that it’s almost turned into a TV sport like football did in this way. Like you look at…it’s 162 games plus all the spring training. And it is become one of the great commodities for these local cable stations, and you see these TV deals and they’re just so gigantic and that’s why baseball players get paid so much money. It’s the TV deals are just out of control because everybody looks at it and goes - wow that’s a thousand hours of television that we can put on over the course of 7 months. We don’t have to worry about any other programming. This is great. And we know who we’re getting. And we just gotta…and, and, that’s why in a weird way baseball’s as strong as it’s ever been. Because you look at these TV deals and it’s like, yeah, baseball’s not going anywhere. I just worry from a relevancy standpoint with the younger generation. Is it just keep getting worse? Especially if like, Bryce Harper, Trout, all these guys really, if they’re in as good shape from a talent standpoint as the NBA is with Curry, Durant, and Westbrook. I mean, you look at baseball the under-28 guys are just as loaded. But you wouldn’t recognize most of them if they walked into your bar. That’s just weird.
CK : It is weird. I think for awhile now we’ve had this conversation. Well over ten years.
BS : We have. We have.
CK : And also the idea of baseball sort of losing its relationship with young people - that’s an old argument, too. I mean that was definitely happening in the 90’s.
BS : It was, no question. Once they postponed the World Series games and all of a sudden they’re ending at midnight. I think that became a problem. But you know, I think baseball’s weirdly fine, you know. Between the local TV and the late-September through October, I felt like baseball was as relevant as it’s ever been in the post-season last year. Lot of people were talking ‘cause those games were really exciting.
CK : Well when baseball’s dramatic, it’s more dramatic than the other sports. I mean, golf is kind of the same way because it’s so god damn slow, that when meaningful things are happening, it’s just crazy. You feel like it’s just real palpable events of drama. So there’s always the chance that that can happen in the playoffs and the World Series and all these things. So I…I don’t know. My main point was that I think that if there is a main issue with baseball it’s the lack of intensity. It’s not the lack of guys being able to express themselves. I think a lot of times expression seems like theatrics.
BS : Interesting. And the pace…I guess that’s the same argument. The pace, the intensity. It’s just slow.
CK : But again the thing is you need the slow pace in order to have the high drama. They’re kinda tied together. It’s just that what’s boring as fuck in August is great in October.
BS : Really it should be a 145 game season and they’ll never do that because they’ll never lose it. But it should move a little faster. I think 162 games is a little high. I don’t know if we need that many. We have to go. When’s your book coming out?
CK : June 7th.
BS : Alright, and we’ll follow you on Twitter during the tournament. Are you gonna tweet during the tournament or you’re too busy?
CK : We’ll see. I may if I have something to say.
BS : Alright, a pleasure as always. Thank you.
CK : Bye bye.
{PICTURE ME ROLLIN’}
BS : We’re gonna call John Abrams real fast ‘cause his book’s coming out today. If you’re in a March Madness pool, which I’m guessing you are, you’re not just forking over the entry fee for the hell of it, right? You’re investing. Oh yeah. Well, investing in the safety of your home is no different. That’s why I want to talk to you about home security. Researchers from leading universities like Rutgers and UNC-Charlotte have proven security systems deter burglars. We’re talking a deterrence rate of almost 90%. So if you’re trying to find a system that’s right for your home, I have a suggestion. SimplySafe home security. SimplySafe not only protects your home but saves you hundreds of dollars. No hidden fees. No complicated installations. And since there’s no middle man the savings goes straight to your pockets. You get 24/7 professional protection for just $14.99 a month. You could start or cancel service any time. Go to SimplySafeBill.com to start protecting your home. Once again SimplySafeBill.com. Okay, we’re calling John Abrams as promised. My dude Jonathan Abrams wrote a book. He started working on it when we were at Grantland together. He finished it. They made many pages. They put them into book-size things with covers. And now it’s out. It’s out today. It’s called Boys Among Men and it is about the high-school-to-pro phenomenon which actually started way back with with Bill Willoughby who you talked to right, Abrams?
John Abrams (JA) : Right, Bill, uhh, Bill Abrams got into a couple fights with a couple cops a few weeks ago.
BS : Oh, no. It wasn’t at your book signing.
JA : No, luckily not.
BS : So you talked to basically everybody since 1975? That came out right from high-school?
JA : Yeah, Moses was the first one that came out in ’75 and there was a big lull for two decades and then Kevin Garnett opened that door up again in 1995.
BS : Yeah, I remember. The Kevin - a lot of that stuff is on Youtube which I’m sure you watched. The…it’s so funny now to hear people try to talk themselves out of Kevin Garnett before that draft. “He’s not ready! He’s too skinny!” All that stuff, and then he turned into Kevin Garnett. Do you feel like, working on that book, obviously there’s a lot of high-profile failures, but we also had Kevin Garnett and Kobe in back-to-back years. Is that almost a historical fluke?
JA : Yeah, and I think, you know, what’s really interesting about it is how much the NBA shifted in that timespan because back then the Bullets, who obviously became the Wizards, wouldn’t take Kevin Garnett just because he was a high-school player off of principle alone and their owner Abe Pollin, a few years later, was talked into drafting Kwame Brown #1 overall. So the NBA just shifted so much in five or six years.
BS : Right. Well, the Celtics had ’98 when we didn’t get Tim Duncan. We ended up with the third pick and the sixth pick, and they passed on Tracy McGrady twice. So even after Kobe and KG, the draft after that teams were still not seeing it, you know. I don’t think people really saw it until…what was the draft that had Chandler, Kwame, and Curry? That was 2001 right? Or 2002?
JA : Yeah that was 2001.
BS : 2001. That was when everybody was like, “Oh, so if we get these guys, you’re basically developing them for four years and it’s great. It’s a huge advantage.” And it kinda went haywire in a bad way.
JA : Yeah well, your guys worked out Kobe. You know that, right? You had a chance to take Kobe because he shut out all the workouts after the Lakers were interested in him but the Celtics were one of the few teams he worked out for.
BS : Oh, I’m aware of this whole story. Here’s the thing. The Antwan pick was totally defensible. Like, I was super-duper excited that they got him. He was only 19. He had only been at Kentucky for a couple, for a year. He was…almost won Rookie of the Year, and had a good career, and I’m not against him. It gets a lot less defensible when you go through the 7, 8, 9, 12…I mean, the Nets are really the team that should’ve taken him, right?
JA : Yeah when you go back and look at Vitaly Potapenko and Todd Fuller got taken before Kobe Bryant, you just scratch your head.
BS : I know. Well, that’s the draft. These guys…I mean, Minnesota passed on Steph Curry twice. I think that’s my favorite of all time now. ‘Cause it was insane when it happened and now it’s become a hundred thousand times more insane. So what’s your favorite chapter in the book?
JA : I think it was just looking through that ’96 draft and kinda dissecting what every team was thinking at the time they did pass up on Kobe Bryant and talking about, you know, the Hornets at the time who drafted Kobe and then traded him.
BS : So I’m going through that draft now. Iverson, 1. Camby, 2. Sharif went 3. These are all defensible at the time. Marbury, 4. Ray Allen, 5. And Antwan 6. I think all these are still defensible. But here’s where it gets less defensible. Lorenzen Wright to the Clippers. God, the Clippers could’ve had Kobe. I totally forgot that.
JA : He worked out for them, too.
BS : Kittles to the Nets, who had a good career until he got hurt. Samaki Walker to Dallas. Dampier to the Pacers. Todd Fuller to Golden State. Potapenko to the Cavs. And then Kobe, 13. And Charlotte trades it. They didn’t just keep him. They traded it for Divac. So it was like a double-whammy.
JA : You know, what was funny was that the Hornets, they got better after that. I think Bob Bass got Executive of the Year for that trade, because the Hornets won like 50 games that year.
BS : Yeah they actually, the late-90’s Hornets weren’t bad. Vlade had a lot left in the tank, and then he went to Sacramento. It was a defensible trade except for the part where Kobe became one of the ten best players of all time. So you think the T-Mac thing for some reason is not as big of a deal? Where did he go? Seventh? Eighth?
JA : He went eighth I think to the Raptors. He was good because that brought about a whole big negotiation between Nike and ADIDAS and it was the first time one of these high-school guys had created a shoe bidding war with Sonny Vaccaro - ADIDAS and Nike.
BS : Yeah, and who, I forget…ADIDAS won that one?
JA : Yeah, they paid him 12 million dollars and all the veteran players were jealous. They hadn’t gotten a shoe contract like that. And it just setup a whole generation of these guys trying to make that jump afterwards.
BS : After you finish this book, do you feel like guys should be able to come right out of high-school or no?
JA : I think so. Obviously there’s a lot of grey in this issue but, by and large, most of these guys were successful. There’s a lot more successful guys like Tracy and Kobe and Lebron than there are in the busts like Korleone Young and Leon Smith and those guys.
BS : Right. I mean it would’ve been better for Ben Simmons to just of come out now. I mean, to come right out a year ago versus just going to LSU and just having four unsatisfying months there. I don’t know how that helped him in any way. And it does seem like the league is so much smarter now about protecting younger players and putting them in a position to think about choices they make and all that stuff. It just seems like…I don’t know. I’m of the belief that it should be - I’ve said this before but I really think it’s one of my best ideas. The rookie contract length should depend on when you came out. So if you stay in school for two years, and you come out, it’s a four year rookie contract. If you come out right out of high-school, it’s a six year contract. If you come out after your freshman year, it’s a five year rookie contract. I really think that’s the best solution.
JA : I like it.
BS : Yeah because now, if a guy comes right out, all of a sudden he’s not getting paid when he’s like 22. And the team really gets to keep them under control. And try to groom him. And there’s no rush. A lot of these issues were just sometimes just guys getting money too soon. I mean, that was Antwan’s biggest thing. Antwan was making, I think he signed for 71 or 81 million bucks after his third year in the NBA. He was 22. That’s not good, you know. What do you think…what was the biggest reason Kwame failed?
JA : Oh, there was the big combination of I don’t think he loved the game. He declared for the NBA because of family pressure and to lift his family out of poverty. He just came from a terrible situation. One of the quotes from the book that stood out to me was Billy Donovan who got to thinking Kwame didn’t really wanna go pro in the least bit because he had originally committed to the University of Florida when Donovan was there. And also the pressure of playing for Micheal Jordan at that time. Michael Jordan only had one or two years left in him at the Wizards and needed Kwame to be a superstar fast and that just wasn’t gonna happen.
BS : Was there a guy that, as you worked on the book, you changed your opinion?
JA : You know, it was interesting seeing Tracy McGrady’s progress because I didn’t know all that much about his back history and it just seemed like he almost lucked into basketball to begin with as well. He was a big baseball guy growing up.
BS : Yeah, he’s a good example of how they changed the rules to make the rookie contracts longer and after, you know, his generation you could leave after three years. And he left Toronto. He goes to Orlando. Grant Hill gets hurt and he just, you know, wastes a good chunk of his career on teams that aren’t very good. And had the contracts been longer, him and Vince Carter are together and all of a sudden that has a chance to be something really special. I always felt like, if he’d come along five years later in the same situation his career is different.
JA : One of the other big things with Tracy as well was, he was really close to signing with the Bulls after that Toronto contract but Jordan basically nixed it because they’d have to give up Pippen at the time.
BS : Right. Yeah I remember that. Alright well I’m excited for people to read this book. You sent me an early copy. I enjoyed it. I enjoy all basketball books but I really enjoyed yours. Can you talk about your next project yet or no?
JA : No. I hope to have it out soon but…I’m excited.
BS : Yeah, you’re next project is gonna be super-duper exciting. Hey, you’re in Charlotte now, right?
JA : I am.
BS : Have you gotten sucked in by the Hornets? By college hoops? Anything? How’s your basketball life changed?
JA : I got a two-year old that I’m trying to groom into the next Steph Curry. That’s why we got out here.
BS : That’s smart. Get a Davidson #30 jersey on him! Have you gone to a Hornets game yet?
JA : I’ve been to a couple, but I’m friends with a woman whose daughter goes to Steph’s high-school and plays basketball there so I’ve been to Steph’s high-school gym a few times and it’s just this tiny, tiny place and I just can’t imagine Steph ever playing there.
BS : I know. That’s probably where he started making 40 footers routinely and starting wondering, “hmm, I wonder if this’ll work in a game.” And he was right.
JA : There’s like two stands, two rows of stands on each side of the court. If he had been a bigger prospect in high-school, they would not have been able to play in that gym.
BS : No. Okay, so your books out today. Shay Sorrano (?) did some cool covers for you but those are all sold out, right?
JA : W
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CK : Podcast users, man. How many people who’ve added MailChimp do not listen to podcasts. Five? That’s the market they’re after I think.
BS : And it’s very smart, because we used MailChimp to launch our new newsletter for The Ringer. And we’ve already passed-
CK : I’ve seen that. I’ve seen that letter, but you know, it went to my spam folder and I had to…I saw that it came out on Twitter and I had to go to my “All Mail” and…
BS : It went to the "Promotions". Yeah, we’re, I think because I put an F bomb in what I wrote - I think that was a mistake. I think that screwed up our thing. So we’re gonna go with no swears with the next one.
CK : But why? People swear in emails all the time, it doesn’t go to-
BS : Listen, we’re gonna try different things. We don’t wanna end up in your Promotions folder.
CK : I think it was maybe the logo.
BS : Maybe. We’ve already passed 140 thousands subscriptures (sic) and it’s a roaring success thanks to MailChimp. When we start sending the listeners emails about our 20% off T-shirts with Chuck’s face on them…it’s going to be on MailChimp. Just kidding. We’re not doing that.
CK : You could. I would license my image.
BS : Cool. Thanks to MailChimp for helping me and everyone at The Ringer build my audience. Incredibly easy to use. Check them out at MailChimp.com. I had to do that because you were talking about how Lebron leverages things. The part I didn’t understand about what Lebron did was - it’s not like the situation in Cleveland was a grand slam and just humming along and it was just great. And now he’s…and now if I’m on Cleveland, and I know he’s a free agent again this summer, and I know things aren’t going great, and I know we’re on our second coach. And I know Kevin Love’s not that happy, and I know the Kyrie/Lebron thing has never been totally smooth. And now Lebron’s like, “Hey I’m over here in Miami.” I would think that, I would kinda take that personally a little bit. I would be like, “Hey why, why are you doing that? You can work out with Wade but why are you making a big deal about it? You dick.” That would’ve been my attitude, but I’m spiteful.
CK : I think the Warriors are in their head a little bit, too. I think Lebron is sort of confused by the fact that, you know for…I said this, a lot of people said this. There was that period where it was like, you know we always know Lebron’s the best player. Maybe we give the MVP to Durant one year, you know, cause he’s a great player, too. But if everyone could pick. If it really came down to a schoolyard pick out of all the guys.
BS : Right. Gun to your head.
CK : Everyone is always gonna take Lebron, and I don’t think that’s true right now. And I think that that’s been a, probably a long time since he’s felt that way. I mean, he certainly never felt it growing up, even when he was a rookie - even his second year in the league I think if most GM’s could trade anyone for him, they would’ve said, “We’re doing it. His upside is too great.”
BS : But that’s recency bias, though. I think Lebron is still incredible. To me it’s still-
CK : Oh sure, wait a second.
BS : No, no, I know what you’re saying. I just think it’s weird that everybody is just moved on to Curry. Like, I went to see Lebron on Sunday. He’s amazing. He had like 28-8-8 and he completely dominated the game. To me, he’s still in the conversation.
CK : No, he’s the second best guy. It just-
BS : But I think he might be the best guy.
CK : Well, he could be again next year because - and this has gotta be the apex for Curry. He can’t play any better than this.
BS : I don’t know.
CK : How-how could…I mean, what would that be?
BS : I’m very disappointed in his free throws. He’s down to 90% free throws.
CK : <laughs>
BS : I just think he’s gotta do better. He keeps missing these key free throws. You gotta do better than nine outta ten.
CK : I’m in a couple fantasy leagues and I’m just astounded by how often he gets 8 rebounds. I mean, he’s just having this incredible year and I don’t think - it’s not like, he’s not gonna be like this for four year. I mean, maybe I’ll look back on this podcast and be like what an idiot I was but I can’t fathom how that would be.
BS : But his age right now suggests that this will, this prime is gonna last a couple years. Like, if you look at the Bird prime, the Jordan prime, the Magic prime - even somebody like Kobe’s prime - um, it’s usually four or five years. So he’s in year two.
CK : What I would say is that his prime may keep going but - and this is a weird way to phrase this - but just the sheer percentage of shots that go in I feel like will slightly decrease.
BS : But you don’t think that - you don’t think that he’s mastered shooting to some degree? Like Tiger Woods had that six year stretch where every drive just went right down the fairway.
CK : I guess. It’s just, it…when he pulls up from 40 feet away at the end of a quarter, I find myself thinking he’ll probably make this.
BS : Me, too.
CK : I mean it’s just such a weird thing that I don’t think. I mean, maybe, I hope it does. It’s kinda - it’s good for everyone I feel.
BS : I gotta say I’m more amazed by - the shooting I’m almost used to. I’m more amazed by how consistently he drives to the basket, and his footwork, and how he’s never going 100% full speed - he’s always going 80% - but he’s so quick and he’s so smart and how he can go off either foot and shoot with either hand. And it just doesn’t matter who’s coming over to block the shot. He’s always gonna - it’s always the perfect kinda basketball play. I’ve never seen that.
CK : Okay, do you think that this is the reason - maybe you’ve talked about this in other podcasts and I’ve missed it. But, you know, when someone like Oscar Robertson comes out and complains about him. My theory on that, maybe everyone thinks this but, when a guy like Oscar Robertson sees Lebron, or sees a guy like Durant on the perimeter at 6’11 or whatever, their reaction is, “Wow, these guys are just different people than the ones we played against and no wonder they’re better. They’re just, you know, they’re built the way, you know, Durant would’ve been a center in the 1950’s and 60’s.” But when they see Curry, he looks like the guy that they played against and, in fact, he looks slighter physically than Robertson was. And is that what drives them crazy? That they, like, just can’t believe…that they can understand how the physiology has changed and made guys better, but they can’t understand how a guy the same size of them can be that good?
BS : I think they don’t understand it. They just fundamentally can’t understand it. And the reality is, if Curry played in the 1960’s, he would’ve been out of the league in six years because he never would’ve been able to stay on the court with his ankles. And 50 years later, you know, there was that giant piece on ESPN The Magazine about-
CK : Yeah, yeah, Pablo Torre wrote that. That’s not what Oscar’s thinking about.
BS : No, no, I’m saying…I’m saying that he doesn’t understand it because in his era, you were just good and things made sense and there were certain type of players and nobody shot like this, right? So it’s gotta be everyone else’s fault that they’re letting him make all these shots. But really-
CK : Well it seems backwards. It seems like that should be the kind of guy old-timers like. Like, I wish my dad was still alive. I think he’d love Steph Curry. But then I think that, I don’t know, maybe he’d be from a generation of guys who see this phantom problem.
BS : But, but Oscar was…Marivoch was basically the 1960’s Curry, right?
CK : Except when you look at his field goal percentage.
BS : Well, true, but I’m saying, like, he had like, the 30 foot range and you always heard about…I just think that there’s something about the old guys. First of all, they always think that their era was better. That’s just the thing. And that’s been the case for 50 years. That’s why I always laugh when people get so bent out of shape cause an old guy thinks their era was better. They always think their era was better. But I just think that fundamentally he doesn’t understand how Curry is shooting like this so he’s blaming everybody else without thinking that, “yeah actually the way science is going and the way you can study your technique and hone it in and you can work your body a certain way so that your leverage and your balance is perfect and your sneakers are perfect and you have first class accommodations and all these things - they all lead to us creating better basketball players.” And that’s the part he doesn’t understand. And Curry should be better than the guys-
CK : I also think that he hasn’t thought about it that much. I think a lot of these guys talk off the cuff but in the old days, you know, you speak on the radio and say something crazy like that and the only people that find out are the people in St. Louis.
BS : True.
CK : And now it seems as though, it seems like Oscar Robertson is leading the charge against Steph Curry.
BS : To be fair, Oscar - and I wrote about this when I wrote about Oscar in my book - like, Oscar is the all-time NBA superstar curmudgeon that we’ve had in sixty years. There’s nobody grumpier than Oscar.
CK : Well a lotta bad things happened to him.
BS : Yeah and that’s a thing. He’s - it’s totally understandable and that’s why I don’t think anybody should give him shit ever. Because I think he took…he went through the most stuff of anyone from that era. ‘Cause he went to the University of Cincinnati during the, um, not a great time to be there if you’re a black athlete. But I just think that in general, all these guys, they all think their era is better. Like Magic, when I did TV with Magic, we would argue about these new guys versus the old guys. And Magic was adamant that the guys from, like, the 80’s Lakers would’ve beaten anybody in the game now. And I just didn’t understand it because they didn’t shoot threes back then. The teams now get an extra - what - 8 to 10 points from the three point line that in Magic’s era a team didn’t get. And he’s like, “No, we would’ve pounded ‘em down low.” Like, he generally felt that. It wasn’t like he was theorizing. He was like, “We would’ve beaten them.”
CK : The psychology of aging is interesting. I mean, people have been often comparing the Warriors to the Bulls teams because, you know, they’re going after the wins record, you know. But, if you remember, even when that Bulls team was winning all those games - when they asked Jordan how they would’ve fared against the first three-peat, he was like, “The first team was way better.” Because he was like, Cartwright was a, you know, an uptick from Kukoc. And Paxton and Kerr were kinda interchangeable and there was just a better team, you know. So even while he was doing it, he was like, “The old team was better.” I mean, I think that that’s a natural way to feel.
BS : I wrote about this in my book because I thought that it was a really, really important point. And if you’re gonna compare teams - which is so hard to do - you really have to look at what the league was like. Because the reason the teams in the 80’s were so good is because there was only 21 teams. And somebody like McHale could be on the Celtics. And if you had a 30-team league, it would’ve been humanly impossible to have McHale, Bird, and Parrish on the same team. It just wouldn’t happen. That’s why it was so amazing that OKC for four years had a chance to have Durant, Harden, and Westbrook on the same team. It’s the all-time fluke of flukes. It would be the equivalent of, if Minnesota won the lottery this year and got Ben Simmons and somehow Towns, Wiggins, and Ben Simmons on the same team like - it might happen once a decade in a 30-team league.
CK : Is it a fluke or is it a bad move? You know, the Oklahoma City gave up Harden. You look at the Warriors. They seemingly have the two best shooters in the world on the same team. It seems like a fluke except everyone in the world at one point was saying to trade Klay Thompson for Kevin Love. Everyone was saying that.
BS : Including me.
CK : Yeah, and they didn’t do it, right? So it seems fluky that they have this situation but actually they deserve credit for not making that move when everyone demanded they do.
BS : Hold on. Hold that point for one second. I think that was one of the seminal moments in the history of the NBA - that summer. The more I look at it. Because it’s a clear demarkation between an old way to play basketball and a new way to play basketball. Kevin Love we all thought was one of the best seven footers in the league and of course you should trade Klay Thompson and David Lee and a #1 pick for him and, of course, you should trade Andrew Wiggins for him. But what you’re getting was this guy who’s a power forward in a league where power forwards are becoming increasingly irrelevant, and you can only play really one non-perimeter guy and succeed in the way the NBA is being played now. And now, a year later there is no way in hell you would trade Wiggins for Kevin Love because it’s so hard to find perimeter guys and wing guys. It’s the same way the Warriors looked at it and said [that] actually we should keep Klay Thompson and there are less guards than big guys. It’s easier to get a big guy. We can build a team around these two shooters. We’re gonna make nine three pointers a game. That’s a bigger advantage. The fact that they saw that in the moment, I think, is one of the great strategical, big-picture things we’ve ever seen in the league.
CK : If not, I’m kinda giving them maybe more credit than they deserve. We don’t know if they wanted the deal and they just couldn’t make it happen.
BS : No, no, no, no they argued about it. I know the whole story. They had two camps. And there was one camp that was like, “No, this is a better advantage to have these two shooters.” Like it was a real thing.
CK : Who was in that camp?
BS : Steve Kerr. I think…I actually think Jerry West was one of the guys who was like, “Don’t do this. Klay, you know…” He was just like ba-ba-ba, he was adamant that you couldn’t win a title with Love and Curry as yours - as two of your defenders.
CK : Well I wouldn’t be shocked if those are the two guys who were right.
BS : I forget. I think now everybody takes credit for keeping Klay Thompson, but at the time I couldn’t believe they didn’t trade for Kevin Love. I was talking to somebody at work yesterday. I like this guy Ivan Rabb on California, and I have no idea if he can play in the NBA even though I know he’s a good basketball player, because he’s…he’s gonna be a lottery pick. He’ll be in the 10-14 range. He’s a good athlete. He’s a good rebounder. He plays hard. Where do I play him in the pros? I can’t play him at center. So now it’s like I have to play him with another shot blocker? Or could he be a Draymond Green center? You’re asking questions that I wasn’t asking two years ago because you can’t play two low post guys anymore. So where does he go, you know?
CK : That’s a good question.
BS : The Celtics play…the Celtics are gonna win 50 games. And in crunch-time they play Isaiah Thomas, Avery Bradley, Markus Smart, Jay Crowder, and either Jared Sullenger or Tyler Zeller. They play Jay Crowder at power forward even though he’s not a power forward. And that’s what every team does now. I don’t know where Ivan Rabb plays in that. It’s weird. I don’t understand basketball anymore is what I’m trying to say.
CK : I assume it will switch again.
BS : Well right now everybody wants swing dudes.
CK : Yeah everybody’s doing the same thing because it kind of seems like the best way. But, you know, in ten years - in five years even, who knows.
BS : Well remember when we were growing up in the 80’s? There was that run on centers. Everybody was like, “You gotta have a center.” Houston had Sampson/Olajuwan. The Celtics had McHale and Parrish. You need centers!
CK : It was that thing where you need two guys. Where you needed Cartwright and Ewing. And everybody was like, this is the key. To essentially have two centers on the floor at the same time.
BS : Yeah, we need big guys! And that - that’s what led to Karl Malone going after Jon Koncak and Joe Kleine in that draft.
CK : Also, I think I was talking about this before. I read…I came across a pre-draft analysis of that draft and one of the big knocks on Karl Malone was “bad jumper - bad jumping ability.” He had a low vertical. <laughs> He went like 17th in the draft or something didn’t he?
BS : I think he went 13th. And was immediately great. Alright, speed round, ready?
CK : Okay.
BS : CBS screwing up the selection show. Did you care?
CK : No, because it doesn’t really matter to me what time it comes out. I look at the bracket when I get around to it which isn’t usually during the show anyway. So the fact that it came early…I don’t…who cares?
BS : Why doesn’t every team imitate the Patriots with NFL free agency? Bill Belicik never spends on anyone in the first 10 to 14 days. Why don’t other teams do this considering the Patriots go 13-3 every year?
CK : I think the Patriots have the advantage that they can take guys who wouldn’t succeed at other places and they can fit in their system. Where the other teams are in a position where they need obvious talent, and the way to do that is to go after guys real aggressively. But the Patriots can take a guy…you know a…some running back who couldn’t really have a job anywhere else and, you know, have a Monday Night game where he scores three touchdowns. And he gets cut.
BS : Would you move the NBA three point line?
CK : Maybe. I think I would move it back eighteen inches.
BS : Eighteen inches?
CK : I mean it would be interesting to see. That might be too big of a move. It might change the game too much, but it seems as though it would…guys shoot from there anyway so it would just spread the floor more. I mean it would…we kinda got off this subject but - and we were talking about the NCAA Tournament - but there’s a lot of people now, because college basketball has kinda struggled the last couple years, that don’t really watch the regular season much and they only watch the tournament. And I think when those people watch the tournament this year and see how much the flow of the game has improved with those rule changes - there’s gonna be like this college basketball renaissance where people are really gonna be excited about it. Because the game is much better. The changes they made really helped and I wonder if moving the three point line out a little bit in the NBA might have the same effect - less guys shooting from deep and more guys going to the basket.
BS : What’s been worse for you this last ten years - ten years of the Kardashians or ten years of Roger Goodall?
CK : Well the Kardashians have had no impact on my life. Roger Goodall has been a troubling commissioner and yet the NFL now is turned into something to follow even when there aren’t games on
BS : He’s turned it into a 12-month sport.
CK : Yeah, and there’s just always something happening. It’s…the Kardashians…I guess I know a little bit of what’s going on in their life because of who their dating. Kind of a push.
BS : A push, okay. Every single baseball player walks into your favorite bar one at a time over the course of 24 hours. How many can you recognize.
CK : Oh man.
BS : Under twenty?
CK : Yes, under twenty. It might be under ten. I think it would be under ten. I mean, okay, there’s the guys from the Yankees and the Mets who I see on the covers of tabloids around here sometimes so I might recognize them a bit. But I don’t know if I would - there are whole teams where I wouldn’t recognize any of the guys. Although I did…I know we’re in the middle of the speed round but I wanted to ask you a little bit about this Bryce Harper stuff. Is that possible?
BS : You want to pause the speed round for a second?
CK : Yeah, just hit the pause button. Okay.
BS : Alright, pause button.
CK : So for people that don’t know about this, there was a story in ESPN The Magazine where I think Bryce Harper was saying things like “baseball’s tired and it’s a tired sport because you can’t express yourself”. I’m reading this off the internet. “You can’t do what people in other sports do. I’m not saying baseball is, you know, boring or anything like that, but it’s the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair.” What did you think about that? I firstly want to get your take on that.
BS : I thought that what Chris Rock said when he did that great monologue on Real Sports like a year ago. I thought he made some good points about baseball is a sport that is trying to keep into place all these rules and traditions that existed 50 to 100 years ago, and maybe that’s why it skews towards more - an older, white audience. My point is what’s fun about baseball if I’m a kid? Like, if…I don’t know. I would just gravitate towards other sports unless I played baseball. Like, I watch baseball party because I wanted to hang out with my dad and we had ten channels. And my dad watched the Red Sox so I was like, “well I’m gonna watch the Red Sox.” That’s how I started watching the Red Sox. My son is like, “I”m gonna go on my iPad and watch a hundred John Cena videos on Youtube and would never watch a baseball game with me.”
CK : Yeah, I don’t watch baseball either. I agree with the idea that it does feel tired. But I do feel like Bryce Harper is conflating something. He’s conflating personal expression with intensity. I think baseball’s problem is that it’s not intense enough. I don’t think it’s problem is that guys aren’t allowed to celebrate enough. I mean, okay, we were talking about - like we so often do - talking about baseball from the 80’s or whatever. I mean, Robert Parrish didn’t celebrate. He was intense. Nobody ever complained about that. Ron Artest didn’t celebrate a lot when he played but he was very intense. I feel like what he’s saying somehow - and I feel like there’s a lot of people that feel this way now, is that they seem to think being demonstrative and sort of doing something that seems to - has the appearance of being edgy - is somehow the same as being intense. And I don’t think that’s the case. I mean, the reason people get annoyed by, say touchdown celebrations, is that they seem very orchestrated. You get the sense that the guy thought of this for a week and waited for the opportunity to use it and then he did. Of course people don’t like that. It makes it seem like you’re watching, you know, the circus or pro wrestling or something. But no one seems to care if somebody celebrates as an actual extension of how they feel in that moment or what’s going on. And I think that the problem is that there’s been a decrease in the intensity in sports - certainly in baseball and I think to a certain degree in basketball. Football I’m not so sure about. But even this, it kinda ties back to some of that Oscar Robertson stuff. It’s like even - I wonder what they’re really complaining about. It’s not actually what they’re seeing, but what they’re feeling from the players. If they see the players seem to be great friends both before and immediately after the game. And you talk about Ben Simmons’ passivity and the idea of getting beat by Texas A&M doesn’t matter that much. Isn’t that more the problem? And that’s really an extension of the fact that there’s so much money in these sports now that there’s no reason that these guys would be that personally invested. Because it’s such a good job, you know?
BS : Doesn’t that go to everything we’ve seen with Kobe’s hilarious farewell tour? All these people paying homage to him before and after the games? Kobe was famously not a friend to anyone and just wanted to destroy everyone and didn’t try to help anyone. And now it’s like he’s having these emotional moments at mid court with whoever.
CK : It’s a weird thing to say but it’s kind of disappointing.
BS : Oh I think it’s super disappointing.
CK : It just completely contradicts the quality about him that, for better or worse - very often for worse but sometimes for better - that made him such a, sort of a unique dynamic person. And now it just - I mean it seems like he’s already retired.
BS : He’s on this…it seems like it’s been a three year campaign to prove to everybody that he was a normal person all along. And unfortunately I watched him play basketball from like 1996-2012 and he just wasn’t this person that he’s now portraying himself as. I think he had a really good career. I think he’s one of the ten best players ever. But I don’t think he was somebody that affected all these different peoples’ lives in the league. I think that they respected him and they wanted to beat him and they probably learned stuff from him. But do you think, you know, Durant and Westbrook, that he had this profound impact on their lives? I’m so confused by all this. I guess maybe this is what happens when people retire. Over and over again it’s just kinda the same recipe.
CK : Yeah, as far as impact, I’m not so sure about that. It’s, you know…maybe, I mean, you look at a guy like Durant…when Durant was 16, Kobe what? Kobe was in the league obviously, right? And so you never know how much it matters to a 16 or a 15 year old kid. If player X is his favorite player.
BS : Yeah they dream about playing against whoever.
CK : Yeah or when they’re playing by themselves, you know, and it’s just a boy and a ball and a hoop, and you believe you are him for a second or whatever the case may be. Maybe that has some influence. I don’t know. I’m just saying that I’m not really looking at this. I’m looking at this from…I have come to the conclusion that Kobe Bryant finally was sort of being honest about his nature and now it seems like either he’s went all the way through this door of reality or whatever and now he’s just a different person - he’s changed, or he’s still changing. Or, I mean I hate to say this, but part of me is sort of like, he wouldn’t be doing this this way if he was still great. Like if he was still going out and really beating people, I wonder if he would still be affable to them after the game. But it’s almost as if he recognizes that this is - that he’s hung on maybe a year too long.
BS : So maybe he got humbled a little bit and maybe that made him more of a normal person. ‘Cause I don’t think - especially the guy from the 2000’s, the last decade - had no interest in any sort of interactions of any sort that weren’t just like, you know, quick. He didn’t…wasn’t really a great teammate. I don’t think, you know, I don’t think he was a bad teammate because his teams won so I don’t think it was a situation like what people would say about Boogie Cousins. But I think he was pretty withering to teammates that kinda didn’t meet his standards almost to a fault. You could’ve said the same thing about Jordan. I don’t…the thing that was interesting to me is a guy like Gasol, who a lot of times seemed like a prisoner in the situation. Like, you know, he was sort of trapped in that situation. The life would just get sucked out of him every so often. To now see him talk so glowingly about Kobe like they were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid…I felt like I was there for all those games. Did you ever feel like those guys were, you know, like a buddy cop movie? I never got that sense.
CK : Not really but you know, Gasol’s a guy raised in Spain, was gonna be a doctor. I assume is a pretty intellectual guy. I assume he could talk about the idea of Kobe as fluently as, you know, guys that make a living talking about Kobe do. Maybe he has a little more mature perspective on this and, you know, I would…I often think that guys raised in different countries just have a much different view of the sport they played and people from America who play the same sport.
BS : Well the one thing we know is bullshit is when Shaq and Kobe try to pretend that they didn’t hate each other’s guts when they were on the Lakers. That’s what makes me suspicious of all the other stuff when Kobe…when they’re like, “No, no man, now we’re in a great place.” Like, those guys hate each other. Flat out. I still don’t believe that they like each other.
CK : The fact that Shaq is on TV now, though, and…
BS : Yeah, I think they have to pretend to like each other.
CK : Well, also, I think that maybe Shaq is of the opinion that this is all kinda show. This is all show. Us liking each other is show. Us hating each other is show. It’s all just a show.
BS : It’s like when they have, like, a David O’Russel movie released and all the actors have to pretend they’re really close on the set. That’s kinda what sports has turned into. But to go back to your question and then we have to go. The baseball…when you look at basketball and how the guys kinda market themselves and just how fun the NBA has become from an internet standpoint. And let’s face it, for people under 30, under 25 - Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat are a huge way of how everyone communicates in those two generations. You know, 18-25 and 9-18. And the NBA fits into that. And I don’t know how baseball fits into that. Especially, you know, you don’t see baseball players, you know, instagramming from the dugout and snapchat and watch it. It just feels like it’s from another era and I think that’s their biggest obstacle. How do you make baseball more fun for people under 25? I don’t know how you do it. It’s too slow. They seem to frown upon expression.
CK : But I feel like they have a pretty loyal fanbase. I feel like the guys who like baseball like it more than anything else. Do they have to be as big as football and as big as the NBA to succeed? I don’t think so. I mean, why can’t they sort of occupy the space and the culture that they do? Why is that not enough? I don’t get it.
BS : Well the fundamental problem…I keep saying “fundamental problem” for some reason…is that you have all these under-25 people who are now going to eventually be the people who buy tickets and buy League Pass and do all the things that baseball’s gonna need to stay at the level it’s at and I don’t know if they’re developing those fans. And the other problem is that you have 81 baseball games a year for the home team and now it’s so easy to get tickets…and everybody has nicer TV”s and…like 15 years ago my dream in my life was to have Red Sox season tickets. I couldn’t have imagined anything better - like, “Oh my god I go to 81 Red Sox games…I’ll go to 70 of those.” I would never want to go to 81 baseball games now. I don’t think anyone would. It’s too slow. It’s too hard to park. Your whole night. It’s much more fun a lot of times just to be home. So I don’t know how they fix that. You know? Would you want to go to 81 baseball games?
CK : Well no, I wouldn’t.
BS : Do you know anyone who would want to go to 81 baseball games?
CK : But is baseball actually struggling though?
BS : Hold on, let’s turn on Tate’s mic. Tate, you can turn your mic on. Tate’s 22? Did you just turn 22?
Tate : Just turned 23.
BS : 23. Happy birthday, Tate-Tate. In your circle, how many people care about baseball? Small sample size.
Tate : Uhhh, well there’s no team in North Carolina so it’s the Braves. You know…probably three out of ten. 30%.
BS : Do you feel like under-25 people…is baseball anywhere close to basketball?
Tate : No. It’s probably football, basketball.
BS : Alright, thanks Tate. And that’s the thing with baseball. It used to be the three of them together. And now it feels like baseball’s falling off.
CK : It’s definitely the third sport now, there’s no question about that. I guess is the…is the motive of any sport to be a dominant American sport?
BS : Well in this case it’s America’s past time.
CK : You’re the commissioner of baseball, you know, is that supposed to be your goal? To make baseball the central part of…you know, I’ve talked about this and maybe we have…the fact that football has expanded it’s magnitude so much is really central to a lot of the problems it’s having. Like it’s gotten too big. It’s now involving casual people who are really bothered by what they’re seeing and what they’re experiencing because they sort of though, “Oh, everyone does this on Sunday so I’m gonna do it to.” You don’t see NASCAR fans or bull riding fans or anything freaking out about the dangers of their sport because it’s a niche audience and they’re aware of what they’re getting. They realize…like everybody who follows NASCAR knows that if you drive a car into a brick wall you will die and they’re not shocked when that happens. Football now has got this huge audience of people who have never really thought about - they’ve never really thought about any of this stuff. It’s just that now, all of a sudden they’re hearing about CTE and all these things and it’s like oh, they’re all disturbed because you’ve got…they’ve got too back. I think baseball might be well served to stay at the size it’s at.
BS : What’s interesting to me about baseball is that it’s almost turned into a TV sport like football did in this way. Like you look at…it’s 162 games plus all the spring training. And it is become one of the great commodities for these local cable stations, and you see these TV deals and they’re just so gigantic and that’s why baseball players get paid so much money. It’s the TV deals are just out of control because everybody looks at it and goes - wow that’s a thousand hours of television that we can put on over the course of 7 months. We don’t have to worry about any other programming. This is great. And we know who we’re getting. And we just gotta…and, and, that’s why in a weird way baseball’s as strong as it’s ever been. Because you look at these TV deals and it’s like, yeah, baseball’s not going anywhere. I just worry from a relevancy standpoint with the younger generation. Is it just keep getting worse? Especially if like, Bryce Harper, Trout, all these guys really, if they’re in as good shape from a talent standpoint as the NBA is with Curry, Durant, and Westbrook. I mean, you look at baseball the under-28 guys are just as loaded. But you wouldn’t recognize most of them if they walked into your bar. That’s just weird.
CK : It is weird. I think for awhile now we’ve had this conversation. Well over ten years.
BS : We have. We have.
CK : And also the idea of baseball sort of losing its relationship with young people - that’s an old argument, too. I mean that was definitely happening in the 90’s.
BS : It was, no question. Once they postponed the World Series games and all of a sudden they’re ending at midnight. I think that became a problem. But you know, I think baseball’s weirdly fine, you know. Between the local TV and the late-September through October, I felt like baseball was as relevant as it’s ever been in the post-season last year. Lot of people were talking ‘cause those games were really exciting.
CK : Well when baseball’s dramatic, it’s more dramatic than the other sports. I mean, golf is kind of the same way because it’s so god damn slow, that when meaningful things are happening, it’s just crazy. You feel like it’s just real palpable events of drama. So there’s always the chance that that can happen in the playoffs and the World Series and all these things. So I…I don’t know. My main point was that I think that if there is a main issue with baseball it’s the lack of intensity. It’s not the lack of guys being able to express themselves. I think a lot of times expression seems like theatrics.
BS : Interesting. And the pace…I guess that’s the same argument. The pace, the intensity. It’s just slow.
CK : But again the thing is you need the slow pace in order to have the high drama. They’re kinda tied together. It’s just that what’s boring as fuck in August is great in October.
BS : Really it should be a 145 game season and they’ll never do that because they’ll never lose it. But it should move a little faster. I think 162 games is a little high. I don’t know if we need that many. We have to go. When’s your book coming out?
CK : June 7th.
BS : Alright, and we’ll follow you on Twitter during the tournament. Are you gonna tweet during the tournament or you’re too busy?
CK : We’ll see. I may if I have something to say.
BS : Alright, a pleasure as always. Thank you.
CK : Bye bye.
{PICTURE ME ROLLIN’}
BS : We’re gonna call John Abrams real fast ‘cause his book’s coming out today. If you’re in a March Madness pool, which I’m guessing you are, you’re not just forking over the entry fee for the hell of it, right? You’re investing. Oh yeah. Well, investing in the safety of your home is no different. That’s why I want to talk to you about home security. Researchers from leading universities like Rutgers and UNC-Charlotte have proven security systems deter burglars. We’re talking a deterrence rate of almost 90%. So if you’re trying to find a system that’s right for your home, I have a suggestion. SimplySafe home security. SimplySafe not only protects your home but saves you hundreds of dollars. No hidden fees. No complicated installations. And since there’s no middle man the savings goes straight to your pockets. You get 24/7 professional protection for just $14.99 a month. You could start or cancel service any time. Go to SimplySafeBill.com to start protecting your home. Once again SimplySafeBill.com. Okay, we’re calling John Abrams as promised. My dude Jonathan Abrams wrote a book. He started working on it when we were at Grantland together. He finished it. They made many pages. They put them into book-size things with covers. And now it’s out. It’s out today. It’s called Boys Among Men and it is about the high-school-to-pro phenomenon which actually started way back with with Bill Willoughby who you talked to right, Abrams?
John Abrams (JA) : Right, Bill, uhh, Bill Abrams got into a couple fights with a couple cops a few weeks ago.
BS : Oh, no. It wasn’t at your book signing.
JA : No, luckily not.
BS : So you talked to basically everybody since 1975? That came out right from high-school?
JA : Yeah, Moses was the first one that came out in ’75 and there was a big lull for two decades and then Kevin Garnett opened that door up again in 1995.
BS : Yeah, I remember. The Kevin - a lot of that stuff is on Youtube which I’m sure you watched. The…it’s so funny now to hear people try to talk themselves out of Kevin Garnett before that draft. “He’s not ready! He’s too skinny!” All that stuff, and then he turned into Kevin Garnett. Do you feel like, working on that book, obviously there’s a lot of high-profile failures, but we also had Kevin Garnett and Kobe in back-to-back years. Is that almost a historical fluke?
JA : Yeah, and I think, you know, what’s really interesting about it is how much the NBA shifted in that timespan because back then the Bullets, who obviously became the Wizards, wouldn’t take Kevin Garnett just because he was a high-school player off of principle alone and their owner Abe Pollin, a few years later, was talked into drafting Kwame Brown #1 overall. So the NBA just shifted so much in five or six years.
BS : Right. Well, the Celtics had ’98 when we didn’t get Tim Duncan. We ended up with the third pick and the sixth pick, and they passed on Tracy McGrady twice. So even after Kobe and KG, the draft after that teams were still not seeing it, you know. I don’t think people really saw it until…what was the draft that had Chandler, Kwame, and Curry? That was 2001 right? Or 2002?
JA : Yeah that was 2001.
BS : 2001. That was when everybody was like, “Oh, so if we get these guys, you’re basically developing them for four years and it’s great. It’s a huge advantage.” And it kinda went haywire in a bad way.
JA : Yeah well, your guys worked out Kobe. You know that, right? You had a chance to take Kobe because he shut out all the workouts after the Lakers were interested in him but the Celtics were one of the few teams he worked out for.
BS : Oh, I’m aware of this whole story. Here’s the thing. The Antwan pick was totally defensible. Like, I was super-duper excited that they got him. He was only 19. He had only been at Kentucky for a couple, for a year. He was…almost won Rookie of the Year, and had a good career, and I’m not against him. It gets a lot less defensible when you go through the 7, 8, 9, 12…I mean, the Nets are really the team that should’ve taken him, right?
JA : Yeah when you go back and look at Vitaly Potapenko and Todd Fuller got taken before Kobe Bryant, you just scratch your head.
BS : I know. Well, that’s the draft. These guys…I mean, Minnesota passed on Steph Curry twice. I think that’s my favorite of all time now. ‘Cause it was insane when it happened and now it’s become a hundred thousand times more insane. So what’s your favorite chapter in the book?
JA : I think it was just looking through that ’96 draft and kinda dissecting what every team was thinking at the time they did pass up on Kobe Bryant and talking about, you know, the Hornets at the time who drafted Kobe and then traded him.
BS : So I’m going through that draft now. Iverson, 1. Camby, 2. Sharif went 3. These are all defensible at the time. Marbury, 4. Ray Allen, 5. And Antwan 6. I think all these are still defensible. But here’s where it gets less defensible. Lorenzen Wright to the Clippers. God, the Clippers could’ve had Kobe. I totally forgot that.
JA : He worked out for them, too.
BS : Kittles to the Nets, who had a good career until he got hurt. Samaki Walker to Dallas. Dampier to the Pacers. Todd Fuller to Golden State. Potapenko to the Cavs. And then Kobe, 13. And Charlotte trades it. They didn’t just keep him. They traded it for Divac. So it was like a double-whammy.
JA : You know, what was funny was that the Hornets, they got better after that. I think Bob Bass got Executive of the Year for that trade, because the Hornets won like 50 games that year.
BS : Yeah they actually, the late-90’s Hornets weren’t bad. Vlade had a lot left in the tank, and then he went to Sacramento. It was a defensible trade except for the part where Kobe became one of the ten best players of all time. So you think the T-Mac thing for some reason is not as big of a deal? Where did he go? Seventh? Eighth?
JA : He went eighth I think to the Raptors. He was good because that brought about a whole big negotiation between Nike and ADIDAS and it was the first time one of these high-school guys had created a shoe bidding war with Sonny Vaccaro - ADIDAS and Nike.
BS : Yeah, and who, I forget…ADIDAS won that one?
JA : Yeah, they paid him 12 million dollars and all the veteran players were jealous. They hadn’t gotten a shoe contract like that. And it just setup a whole generation of these guys trying to make that jump afterwards.
BS : After you finish this book, do you feel like guys should be able to come right out of high-school or no?
JA : I think so. Obviously there’s a lot of grey in this issue but, by and large, most of these guys were successful. There’s a lot more successful guys like Tracy and Kobe and Lebron than there are in the busts like Korleone Young and Leon Smith and those guys.
CK : I think the Warriors are in their head a little bit, too. I think Lebron is sort of confused by the fact that, you know for…I said this, a lot of people said this. There was that period where it was like, you know we always know Lebron’s the best player. Maybe we give the MVP to Durant one year, you know, cause he’s a great player, too. But if everyone could pick. If it really came down to a schoolyard pick out of all the guys.
BS : Right. Gun to your head.
CK : Everyone is always gonna take Lebron, and I don’t think that’s true right now. And I think that that’s been a, probably a long time since he’s felt that way. I mean, he certainly never felt it growing up, even when he was a rookie - even his second year in the league I think if most GM’s could trade anyone for him, they would’ve said, “We’re doing it. His upside is too great.”
BS : But that’s recency bias, though. I think Lebron is still incredible. To me it’s still-
CK : Oh sure, wait a second.
BS : No, no, I know what you’re saying. I just think it’s weird that everybody is just moved on to Curry. Like, I went to see Lebron on Sunday. He’s amazing. He had like 28-8-8 and he completely dominated the game. To me, he’s still in the conversation.
CK : No, he’s the second best guy. It just-
BS : But I think he might be the best guy.
CK : Well, he could be again next year because - and this has gotta be the apex for Curry. He can’t play any better than this.
BS : I don’t know.
CK : How-how could…I mean, what would that be?
BS : I’m very disappointed in his free throws. He’s down to 90% free throws.
CK : <laughs>
BS : I just think he’s gotta do better. He keeps missing these key free throws. You gotta do better than nine outta ten.
CK : I’m in a couple fantasy leagues and I’m just astounded by how often he gets 8 rebounds. I mean, he’s just having this incredible year and I don’t think - it’s not like, he’s not gonna be like this for four year. I mean, maybe I’ll look back on this podcast and be like what an idiot I was but I can’t fathom how that would be.
BS : But his age right now suggests that this will, this prime is gonna last a couple years. Like, if you look at the Bird prime, the Jordan prime, the Magic prime - even somebody like Kobe’s prime - um, it’s usually four or five years. So he’s in year two.
CK : What I would say is that his prime may keep going but - and this is a weird way to phrase this - but just the sheer percentage of shots that go in I feel like will slightly decrease.
BS : But you don’t think that - you don’t think that he’s mastered shooting to some degree? Like Tiger Woods had that six year stretch where every drive just went right down the fairway.
CK : I guess. It’s just, it…when he pulls up from 40 feet away at the end of a quarter, I find myself thinking he’ll probably make this.
BS : Me, too.
CK : I mean it’s just such a weird thing that I don’t think. I mean, maybe, I hope it does. It’s kinda - it’s good for everyone I feel.
BS : I gotta say I’m more amazed by - the shooting I’m almost used to. I’m more amazed by how consistently he drives to the basket, and his footwork, and how he’s never going 100% full speed - he’s always going 80% - but he’s so quick and he’s so smart and how he can go off either foot and shoot with either hand. And it just doesn’t matter who’s coming over to block the shot. He’s always gonna - it’s always the perfect kinda basketball play. I’ve never seen that.
CK : Okay, do you think that this is the reason - maybe you’ve talked about this in other podcasts and I’ve missed it. But, you know, when someone like Oscar Robertson comes out and complains about him. My theory on that, maybe everyone thinks this but, when a guy like Oscar Robertson sees Lebron, or sees a guy like Durant on the perimeter at 6’11 or whatever, their reaction is, “Wow, these guys are just different people than the ones we played against and no wonder they’re better. They’re just, you know, they’re built the way, you know, Durant would’ve been a center in the 1950’s and 60’s.” But when they see Curry, he looks like the guy that they played against and, in fact, he looks slighter physically than Robertson was. And is that what drives them crazy? That they, like, just can’t believe…that they can understand how the physiology has changed and made guys better, but they can’t understand how a guy the same size of them can be that good?
BS : I think they don’t understand it. They just fundamentally can’t understand it. And the reality is, if Curry played in the 1960’s, he would’ve been out of the league in six years because he never would’ve been able to stay on the court with his ankles. And 50 years later, you know, there was that giant piece on ESPN The Magazine about-
CK : Yeah, yeah, Pablo Torre wrote that. That’s not what Oscar’s thinking about.
BS : No, no, I’m saying…I’m saying that he doesn’t understand it because in his era, you were just good and things made sense and there were certain type of players and nobody shot like this, right? So it’s gotta be everyone else’s fault that they’re letting him make all these shots. But really-
CK : Well it seems backwards. It seems like that should be the kind of guy old-timers like. Like, I wish my dad was still alive. I think he’d love Steph Curry. But then I think that, I don’t know, maybe he’d be from a generation of guys who see this phantom problem.
BS : But, but Oscar was…Marivoch was basically the 1960’s Curry, right?
CK : Except when you look at his field goal percentage.
BS : Well, true, but I’m saying, like, he had like, the 30 foot range and you always heard about…I just think that there’s something about the old guys. First of all, they always think that their era was better. That’s just the thing. And that’s been the case for 50 years. That’s why I always laugh when people get so bent out of shape cause an old guy thinks their era was better. They always think their era was better. But I just think that fundamentally he doesn’t understand how Curry is shooting like this so he’s blaming everybody else without thinking that, “yeah actually the way science is going and the way you can study your technique and hone it in and you can work your body a certain way so that your leverage and your balance is perfect and your sneakers are perfect and you have first class accommodations and all these things - they all lead to us creating better basketball players.” And that’s the part he doesn’t understand. And Curry should be better than the guys-
CK : I also think that he hasn’t thought about it that much. I think a lot of these guys talk off the cuff but in the old days, you know, you speak on the radio and say something crazy like that and the only people that find out are the people in St. Louis.
BS : True.
CK : And now it seems as though, it seems like Oscar Robertson is leading the charge against Steph Curry.
BS : To be fair, Oscar - and I wrote about this when I wrote about Oscar in my book - like, Oscar is the all-time NBA superstar curmudgeon that we’ve had in sixty years. There’s nobody grumpier than Oscar.
CK : Well a lotta bad things happened to him.
BS : Yeah and that’s a thing. He’s - it’s totally understandable and that’s why I don’t think anybody should give him shit ever. Because I think he took…he went through the most stuff of anyone from that era. ‘Cause he went to the University of Cincinnati during the, um, not a great time to be there if you’re a black athlete. But I just think that in general, all these guys, they all think their era is better. Like Magic, when I did TV with Magic, we would argue about these new guys versus the old guys. And Magic was adamant that the guys from, like, the 80’s Lakers would’ve beaten anybody in the game now. And I just didn’t understand it because they didn’t shoot threes back then. The teams now get an extra - what - 8 to 10 points from the three point line that in Magic’s era a team didn’t get. And he’s like, “No, we would’ve pounded ‘em down low.” Like, he generally felt that. It wasn’t like he was theorizing. He was like, “We would’ve beaten them.”
CK : The psychology of aging is interesting. I mean, people have been often comparing the Warriors to the Bulls teams because, you know, they’re going after the wins record, you know. But, if you remember, even when that Bulls team was winning all those games - when they asked Jordan how they would’ve fared against the first three-peat, he was like, “The first team was way better.” Because he was like, Cartwright was a, you know, an uptick from Kukoc. And Paxton and Kerr were kinda interchangeable and there was just a better team, you know. So even while he was doing it, he was like, “The old team was better.” I mean, I think that that’s a natural way to feel.
BS : I wrote about this in my book because I thought that it was a really, really important point. And if you’re gonna compare teams - which is so hard to do - you really have to look at what the league was like. Because the reason the teams in the 80’s were so good is because there was only 21 teams. And somebody like McHale could be on the Celtics. And if you had a 30-team league, it would’ve been humanly impossible to have McHale, Bird, and Parrish on the same team. It just wouldn’t happen. That’s why it was so amazing that OKC for four years had a chance to have Durant, Harden, and Westbrook on the same team. It’s the all-time fluke of flukes. It would be the equivalent of, if Minnesota won the lottery this year and got Ben Simmons and somehow Towns, Wiggins, and Ben Simmons on the same team like - it might happen once a decade in a 30-team league.
CK : Is it a fluke or is it a bad move? You know, the Oklahoma City gave up Harden. You look at the Warriors. They seemingly have the two best shooters in the world on the same team. It seems like a fluke except everyone in the world at one point was saying to trade Klay Thompson for Kevin Love. Everyone was saying that.
BS : Including me.
CK : Yeah, and they didn’t do it, right? So it seems fluky that they have this situation but actually they deserve credit for not making that move when everyone demanded they do.
BS : Hold on. Hold that point for one second. I think that was one of the seminal moments in the history of the NBA - that summer. The more I look at it. Because it’s a clear demarkation between an old way to play basketball and a new way to play basketball. Kevin Love we all thought was one of the best seven footers in the league and of course you should trade Klay Thompson and David Lee and a #1 pick for him and, of course, you should trade Andrew Wiggins for him. But what you’re getting was this guy who’s a power forward in a league where power forwards are becoming increasingly irrelevant, and you can only play really one non-perimeter guy and succeed in the way the NBA is being played now. And now, a year later there is no way in hell you would trade Wiggins for Kevin Love because it’s so hard to find perimeter guys and wing guys. It’s the same way the Warriors looked at it and said [that] actually we should keep Klay Thompson and there are less guards than big guys. It’s easier to get a big guy. We can build a team around these two shooters. We’re gonna make nine three pointers a game. That’s a bigger advantage. The fact that they saw that in the moment, I think, is one of the great strategical, big-picture things we’ve ever seen in the league.
CK : If not, I’m kinda giving them maybe more credit than they deserve. We don’t know if they wanted the deal and they just couldn’t make it happen.
BS : No, no, no, no they argued about it. I know the whole story. They had two camps. And there was one camp that was like, “No, this is a better advantage to have these two shooters.” Like it was a real thing.
CK : Who was in that camp?
BS : Steve Kerr. I think…I actually think Jerry West was one of the guys who was like, “Don’t do this. Klay, you know…” He was just like ba-ba-ba, he was adamant that you couldn’t win a title with Love and Curry as yours - as two of your defenders.
CK : Well I wouldn’t be shocked if those are the two guys who were right.
BS : I forget. I think now everybody takes credit for keeping Klay Thompson, but at the time I couldn’t believe they didn’t trade for Kevin Love. I was talking to somebody at work yesterday. I like this guy Ivan Rabb on California, and I have no idea if he can play in the NBA even though I know he’s a good basketball player, because he’s…he’s gonna be a lottery pick. He’ll be in the 10-14 range. He’s a good athlete. He’s a good rebounder. He plays hard. Where do I play him in the pros? I can’t play him at center. So now it’s like I have to play him with another shot blocker? Or could he be a Draymond Green center? You’re asking questions that I wasn’t asking two years ago because you can’t play two low post guys anymore. So where does he go, you know?
CK : That’s a good question.
BS : The Celtics play…the Celtics are gonna win 50 games. And in crunch-time they play Isaiah Thomas, Avery Bradley, Markus Smart, Jay Crowder, and either Jared Sullenger or Tyler Zeller. They play Jay Crowder at power forward even though he’s not a power forward. And that’s what every team does now. I don’t know where Ivan Rabb plays in that. It’s weird. I don’t understand basketball anymore is what I’m trying to say.
CK : I assume it will switch again.
BS : Well right now everybody wants swing dudes.
CK : Yeah everybody’s doing the same thing because it kind of seems like the best way. But, you know, in ten years - in five years even, who knows.
BS : Well remember when we were growing up in the 80’s? There was that run on centers. Everybody was like, “You gotta have a center.” Houston had Sampson/Olajuwan. The Celtics had McHale and Parrish. You need centers!
CK : It was that thing where you need two guys. Where you needed Cartwright and Ewing. And everybody was like, this is the key. To essentially have two centers on the floor at the same time.
BS : Yeah, we need big guys! And that - that’s what led to Karl Malone going after Jon Koncak and Joe Kleine in that draft.
CK : Also, I think I was talking about this before. I read…I came across a pre-draft analysis of that draft and one of the big knocks on Karl Malone was “bad jumper - bad jumping ability.” He had a low vertical. <laughs> He went like 17th in the draft or something didn’t he?
BS : I think he went 13th. And was immediately great. Alright, speed round, ready?
CK : Okay.
BS : CBS screwing up the selection show. Did you care?
CK : No, because it doesn’t really matter to me what time it comes out. I look at the bracket when I get around to it which isn’t usually during the show anyway. So the fact that it came early…I don’t…who cares?
BS : Why doesn’t every team imitate the Patriots with NFL free agency? Bill Belicik never spends on anyone in the first 10 to 14 days. Why don’t other teams do this considering the Patriots go 13-3 every year?
CK : I think the Patriots have the advantage that they can take guys who wouldn’t succeed at other places and they can fit in their system. Where the other teams are in a position where they need obvious talent, and the way to do that is to go after guys real aggressively. But the Patriots can take a guy…you know a…some running back who couldn’t really have a job anywhere else and, you know, have a Monday Night game where he scores three touchdowns. And he gets cut.
BS : Would you move the NBA three point line?
CK : Maybe. I think I would move it back eighteen inches.
BS : Eighteen inches?
CK : I mean it would be interesting to see. That might be too big of a move. It might change the game too much, but it seems as though it would…guys shoot from there anyway so it would just spread the floor more. I mean it would…we kinda got off this subject but - and we were talking about the NCAA Tournament - but there’s a lot of people now, because college basketball has kinda struggled the last couple years, that don’t really watch the regular season much and they only watch the tournament. And I think when those people watch the tournament this year and see how much the flow of the game has improved with those rule changes - there’s gonna be like this college basketball renaissance where people are really gonna be excited about it. Because the game is much better. The changes they made really helped and I wonder if moving the three point line out a little bit in the NBA might have the same effect - less guys shooting from deep and more guys going to the basket.
BS : What’s been worse for you this last ten years - ten years of the Kardashians or ten years of Roger Goodall?
CK : Well the Kardashians have had no impact on my life. Roger Goodall has been a troubling commissioner and yet the NFL now is turned into something to follow even when there aren’t games on
BS : He’s turned it into a 12-month sport.
CK : Yeah, and there’s just always something happening. It’s…the Kardashians…I guess I know a little bit of what’s going on in their life because of who their dating. Kind of a push.
BS : A push, okay. Every single baseball player walks into your favorite bar one at a time over the course of 24 hours. How many can you recognize.
CK : Oh man.
BS : Under twenty?
CK : Yes, under twenty. It might be under ten. I think it would be under ten. I mean, okay, there’s the guys from the Yankees and the Mets who I see on the covers of tabloids around here sometimes so I might recognize them a bit. But I don’t know if I would - there are whole teams where I wouldn’t recognize any of the guys. Although I did…I know we’re in the middle of the speed round but I wanted to ask you a little bit about this Bryce Harper stuff. Is that possible?
BS : You want to pause the speed round for a second?
CK : Yeah, just hit the pause button. Okay.
BS : Alright, pause button.
CK : So for people that don’t know about this, there was a story in ESPN The Magazine where I think Bryce Harper was saying things like “baseball’s tired and it’s a tired sport because you can’t express yourself”. I’m reading this off the internet. “You can’t do what people in other sports do. I’m not saying baseball is, you know, boring or anything like that, but it’s the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair.” What did you think about that? I firstly want to get your take on that.
BS : I thought that what Chris Rock said when he did that great monologue on Real Sports like a year ago. I thought he made some good points about baseball is a sport that is trying to keep into place all these rules and traditions that existed 50 to 100 years ago, and maybe that’s why it skews towards more - an older, white audience. My point is what’s fun about baseball if I’m a kid? Like, if…I don’t know. I would just gravitate towards other sports unless I played baseball. Like, I watch baseball party because I wanted to hang out with my dad and we had ten channels. And my dad watched the Red Sox so I was like, “well I’m gonna watch the Red Sox.” That’s how I started watching the Red Sox. My son is like, “I”m gonna go on my iPad and watch a hundred John Cena videos on Youtube and would never watch a baseball game with me.”
CK : Yeah, I don’t watch baseball either. I agree with the idea that it does feel tired. But I do feel like Bryce Harper is conflating something. He’s conflating personal expression with intensity. I think baseball’s problem is that it’s not intense enough. I don’t think it’s problem is that guys aren’t allowed to celebrate enough. I mean, okay, we were talking about - like we so often do - talking about baseball from the 80’s or whatever. I mean, Robert Parrish didn’t celebrate. He was intense. Nobody ever complained about that. Ron Artest didn’t celebrate a lot when he played but he was very intense. I feel like what he’s saying somehow - and I feel like there’s a lot of people that feel this way now, is that they seem to think being demonstrative and sort of doing something that seems to - has the appearance of being edgy - is somehow the same as being intense. And I don’t think that’s the case. I mean, the reason people get annoyed by, say touchdown celebrations, is that they seem very orchestrated. You get the sense that the guy thought of this for a week and waited for the opportunity to use it and then he did. Of course people don’t like that. It makes it seem like you’re watching, you know, the circus or pro wrestling or something. But no one seems to care if somebody celebrates as an actual extension of how they feel in that moment or what’s going on. And I think that the problem is that there’s been a decrease in the intensity in sports - certainly in baseball and I think to a certain degree in basketball. Football I’m not so sure about. But even this, it kinda ties back to some of that Oscar Robertson stuff. It’s like even - I wonder what they’re really complaining about. It’s not actually what they’re seeing, but what they’re feeling from the players. If they see the players seem to be great friends both before and immediately after the game. And you talk about Ben Simmons’ passivity and the idea of getting beat by Texas A&M doesn’t matter that much. Isn’t that more the problem? And that’s really an extension of the fact that there’s so much money in these sports now that there’s no reason that these guys would be that personally invested. Because it’s such a good job, you know?
BS : Doesn’t that go to everything we’ve seen with Kobe’s hilarious farewell tour? All these people paying homage to him before and after the games? Kobe was famously not a friend to anyone and just wanted to destroy everyone and didn’t try to help anyone. And now it’s like he’s having these emotional moments at mid court with whoever.
CK : It’s a weird thing to say but it’s kind of disappointing.
BS : Oh I think it’s super disappointing.
CK : It just completely contradicts the quality about him that, for better or worse - very often for worse but sometimes for better - that made him such a, sort of a unique dynamic person. And now it just - I mean it seems like he’s already retired.
BS : He’s on this…it seems like it’s been a three year campaign to prove to everybody that he was a normal person all along. And unfortunately I watched him play basketball from like 1996-2012 and he just wasn’t this person that he’s now portraying himself as. I think he had a really good career. I think he’s one of the ten best players ever. But I don’t think he was somebody that affected all these different peoples’ lives in the league. I think that they respected him and they wanted to beat him and they probably learned stuff from him. But do you think, you know, Durant and Westbrook, that he had this profound impact on their lives? I’m so confused by all this. I guess maybe this is what happens when people retire. Over and over again it’s just kinda the same recipe.
CK : Yeah, as far as impact, I’m not so sure about that. It’s, you know…maybe, I mean, you look at a guy like Durant…when Durant was 16, Kobe what? Kobe was in the league obviously, right? And so you never know how much it matters to a 16 or a 15 year old kid. If player X is his favorite player.
BS : Yeah they dream about playing against whoever.
CK : Yeah or when they’re playing by themselves, you know, and it’s just a boy and a ball and a hoop, and you believe you are him for a second or whatever the case may be. Maybe that has some influence. I don’t know. I’m just saying that I’m not really looking at this. I’m looking at this from…I have come to the conclusion that Kobe Bryant finally was sort of being honest about his nature and now it seems like either he’s went all the way through this door of reality or whatever and now he’s just a different person - he’s changed, or he’s still changing. Or, I mean I hate to say this, but part of me is sort of like, he wouldn’t be doing this this way if he was still great. Like if he was still going out and really beating people, I wonder if he would still be affable to them after the game. But it’s almost as if he recognizes that this is - that he’s hung on maybe a year too long.
BS : So maybe he got humbled a little bit and maybe that made him more of a normal person. ‘Cause I don’t think - especially the guy from the 2000’s, the last decade - had no interest in any sort of interactions of any sort that weren’t just like, you know, quick. He didn’t…wasn’t really a great teammate. I don’t think, you know, I don’t think he was a bad teammate because his teams won so I don’t think it was a situation like what people would say about Boogie Cousins. But I think he was pretty withering to teammates that kinda didn’t meet his standards almost to a fault. You could’ve said the same thing about Jordan. I don’t…the thing that was interesting to me is a guy like Gasol, who a lot of times seemed like a prisoner in the situation. Like, you know, he was sort of trapped in that situation. The life would just get sucked out of him every so often. To now see him talk so glowingly about Kobe like they were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid…I felt like I was there for all those games. Did you ever feel like those guys were, you know, like a buddy cop movie? I never got that sense.
CK : Not really but you know, Gasol’s a guy raised in Spain, was gonna be a doctor. I assume is a pretty intellectual guy. I assume he could talk about the idea of Kobe as fluently as, you know, guys that make a living talking about Kobe do. Maybe he has a little more mature perspective on this and, you know, I would…I often think that guys raised in different countries just have a much different view of the sport they played and people from America who play the same sport.
BS : Well the one thing we know is bullshit is when Shaq and Kobe try to pretend that they didn’t hate each other’s guts when they were on the Lakers. That’s what makes me suspicious of all the other stuff when Kobe…when they’re like, “No, no man, now we’re in a great place.” Like, those guys hate each other. Flat out. I still don’t believe that they like each other.
CK : The fact that Shaq is on TV now, though, and…
BS : Yeah, I think they have to pretend to like each other.
CK : Well, also, I think that maybe Shaq is of the opinion that this is all kinda show. This is all show. Us liking each other is show. Us hating each other is show. It’s all just a show.
BS : It’s like when they have, like, a David O’Russel movie released and all the actors have to pretend they’re really close on the set. That’s kinda what sports has turned into. But to go back to your question and then we have to go. The baseball…when you look at basketball and how the guys kinda market themselves and just how fun the NBA has become from an internet standpoint. And let’s face it, for people under 30, under 25 - Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat are a huge way of how everyone communicates in those two generations. You know, 18-25 and 9-18. And the NBA fits into that. And I don’t know how baseball fits into that. Especially, you know, you don’t see baseball players, you know, instagramming from the dugout and snapchat and watch it. It just feels like it’s from another era and I think that’s their biggest obstacle. How do you make baseball more fun for people under 25? I don’t know how you do it. It’s too slow. They seem to frown upon expression.
CK : But I feel like they have a pretty loyal fanbase. I feel like the guys who like baseball like it more than anything else. Do they have to be as big as football and as big as the NBA to succeed? I don’t think so. I mean, why can’t they sort of occupy the space and the culture that they do? Why is that not enough? I don’t get it.
BS : Well the fundamental problem…I keep saying “fundamental problem” for some reason…is that you have all these under-25 people who are now going to eventually be the people who buy tickets and buy League Pass and do all the things that baseball’s gonna need to stay at the level it’s at and I don’t know if they’re developing those fans. And the other problem is that you have 81 baseball games a year for the home team and now it’s so easy to get tickets…and everybody has nicer TV”s and…like 15 years ago my dream in my life was to have Red Sox season tickets. I couldn’t have imagined anything better - like, “Oh my god I go to 81 Red Sox games…I’ll go to 70 of those.” I would never want to go to 81 baseball games now. I don’t think anyone would. It’s too slow. It’s too hard to park. Your whole night. It’s much more fun a lot of times just to be home. So I don’t know how they fix that. You know? Would you want to go to 81 baseball games?
CK : Well no, I wouldn’t.
BS : Do you know anyone who would want to go to 81 baseball games?
CK : But is baseball actually struggling though?
BS : Hold on, let’s turn on Tate’s mic. Tate, you can turn your mic on. Tate’s 22? Did you just turn 22?
Tate : Just turned 23.
BS : 23. Happy birthday, Tate-Tate. In your circle, how many people care about baseball? Small sample size.
Tate : Uhhh, well there’s no team in North Carolina so it’s the Braves. You know…probably three out of ten. 30%.
BS : Do you feel like under-25 people…is baseball anywhere close to basketball?
Tate : No. It’s probably football, basketball.
BS : Alright, thanks Tate. And that’s the thing with baseball. It used to be the three of them together. And now it feels like baseball’s falling off.
CK : It’s definitely the third sport now, there’s no question about that. I guess is the…is the motive of any sport to be a dominant American sport?
BS : Well in this case it’s America’s past time.
CK : You’re the commissioner of baseball, you know, is that supposed to be your goal? To make baseball the central part of…you know, I’ve talked about this and maybe we have…the fact that football has expanded it’s magnitude so much is really central to a lot of the problems it’s having. Like it’s gotten too big. It’s now involving casual people who are really bothered by what they’re seeing and what they’re experiencing because they sort of though, “Oh, everyone does this on Sunday so I’m gonna do it to.” You don’t see NASCAR fans or bull riding fans or anything freaking out about the dangers of their sport because it’s a niche audience and they’re aware of what they’re getting. They realize…like everybody who follows NASCAR knows that if you drive a car into a brick wall you will die and they’re not shocked when that happens. Football now has got this huge audience of people who have never really thought about - they’ve never really thought about any of this stuff. It’s just that now, all of a sudden they’re hearing about CTE and all these things and it’s like oh, they’re all disturbed because you’ve got…they’ve got too back. I think baseball might be well served to stay at the size it’s at.
BS : What’s interesting to me about baseball is that it’s almost turned into a TV sport like football did in this way. Like you look at…it’s 162 games plus all the spring training. And it is become one of the great commodities for these local cable stations, and you see these TV deals and they’re just so gigantic and that’s why baseball players get paid so much money. It’s the TV deals are just out of control because everybody looks at it and goes - wow that’s a thousand hours of television that we can put on over the course of 7 months. We don’t have to worry about any other programming. This is great. And we know who we’re getting. And we just gotta…and, and, that’s why in a weird way baseball’s as strong as it’s ever been. Because you look at these TV deals and it’s like, yeah, baseball’s not going anywhere. I just worry from a relevancy standpoint with the younger generation. Is it just keep getting worse? Especially if like, Bryce Harper, Trout, all these guys really, if they’re in as good shape from a talent standpoint as the NBA is with Curry, Durant, and Westbrook. I mean, you look at baseball the under-28 guys are just as loaded. But you wouldn’t recognize most of them if they walked into your bar. That’s just weird.
CK : It is weird. I think for awhile now we’ve had this conversation. Well over ten years.
BS : We have. We have.
CK : And also the idea of baseball sort of losing its relationship with young people - that’s an old argument, too. I mean that was definitely happening in the 90’s.
BS : It was, no question. Once they postponed the World Series games and all of a sudden they’re ending at midnight. I think that became a problem. But you know, I think baseball’s weirdly fine, you know. Between the local TV and the late-September through October, I felt like baseball was as relevant as it’s ever been in the post-season last year. Lot of people were talking ‘cause those games were really exciting.
CK : Well when baseball’s dramatic, it’s more dramatic than the other sports. I mean, golf is kind of the same way because it’s so god damn slow, that when meaningful things are happening, it’s just crazy. You feel like it’s just real palpable events of drama. So there’s always the chance that that can happen in the playoffs and the World Series and all these things. So I…I don’t know. My main point was that I think that if there is a main issue with baseball it’s the lack of intensity. It’s not the lack of guys being able to express themselves. I think a lot of times expression seems like theatrics.
BS : Interesting. And the pace…I guess that’s the same argument. The pace, the intensity. It’s just slow.
CK : But again the thing is you need the slow pace in order to have the high drama. They’re kinda tied together. It’s just that what’s boring as fuck in August is great in October.
BS : Really it should be a 145 game season and they’ll never do that because they’ll never lose it. But it should move a little faster. I think 162 games is a little high. I don’t know if we need that many. We have to go. When’s your book coming out?
CK : June 7th.
BS : Alright, and we’ll follow you on Twitter during the tournament. Are you gonna tweet during the tournament or you’re too busy?
CK : We’ll see. I may if I have something to say.
BS : Alright, a pleasure as always. Thank you.
CK : Bye bye.
{PICTURE ME ROLLIN’}
BS : We’re gonna call John Abrams real fast ‘cause his book’s coming out today. If you’re in a March Madness pool, which I’m guessing you are, you’re not just forking over the entry fee for the hell of it, right? You’re investing. Oh yeah. Well, investing in the safety of your home is no different. That’s why I want to talk to you about home security. Researchers from leading universities like Rutgers and UNC-Charlotte have proven security systems deter burglars. We’re talking a deterrence rate of almost 90%. So if you’re trying to find a system that’s right for your home, I have a suggestion. SimplySafe home security. SimplySafe not only protects your home but saves you hundreds of dollars. No hidden fees. No complicated installations. And since there’s no middle man the savings goes straight to your pockets. You get 24/7 professional protection for just $14.99 a month. You could start or cancel service any time. Go to SimplySafeBill.com to start protecting your home. Once again SimplySafeBill.com. Okay, we’re calling John Abrams as promised. My dude Jonathan Abrams wrote a book. He started working on it when we were at Grantland together. He finished it. They made many pages. They put them into book-size things with covers. And now it’s out. It’s out today. It’s called Boys Among Men and it is about the high-school-to-pro phenomenon which actually started way back with with Bill Willoughby who you talked to right, Abrams?
John Abrams (JA) : Right, Bill, uhh, Bill Abrams got into a couple fights with a couple cops a few weeks ago.
BS : Oh, no. It wasn’t at your book signing.
JA : No, luckily not.
BS : So you talked to basically everybody since 1975? That came out right from high-school?
JA : Yeah, Moses was the first one that came out in ’75 and there was a big lull for two decades and then Kevin Garnett opened that door up again in 1995.
BS : Yeah, I remember. The Kevin - a lot of that stuff is on Youtube which I’m sure you watched. The…it’s so funny now to hear people try to talk themselves out of Kevin Garnett before that draft. “He’s not ready! He’s too skinny!” All that stuff, and then he turned into Kevin Garnett. Do you feel like, working on that book, obviously there’s a lot of high-profile failures, but we also had Kevin Garnett and Kobe in back-to-back years. Is that almost a historical fluke?
JA : Yeah, and I think, you know, what’s really interesting about it is how much the NBA shifted in that timespan because back then the Bullets, who obviously became the Wizards, wouldn’t take Kevin Garnett just because he was a high-school player off of principle alone and their owner Abe Pollin, a few years later, was talked into drafting Kwame Brown #1 overall. So the NBA just shifted so much in five or six years.
BS : Right. Well, the Celtics had ’98 when we didn’t get Tim Duncan. We ended up with the third pick and the sixth pick, and they passed on Tracy McGrady twice. So even after Kobe and KG, the draft after that teams were still not seeing it, you know. I don’t think people really saw it until…what was the draft that had Chandler, Kwame, and Curry? That was 2001 right? Or 2002?
JA : Yeah that was 2001.
BS : 2001. That was when everybody was like, “Oh, so if we get these guys, you’re basically developing them for four years and it’s great. It’s a huge advantage.” And it kinda went haywire in a bad way.
JA : Yeah well, your guys worked out Kobe. You know that, right? You had a chance to take Kobe because he shut out all the workouts after the Lakers were interested in him but the Celtics were one of the few teams he worked out for.
BS : Oh, I’m aware of this whole story. Here’s the thing. The Antwan pick was totally defensible. Like, I was super-duper excited that they got him. He was only 19. He had only been at Kentucky for a couple, for a year. He was…almost won Rookie of the Year, and had a good career, and I’m not against him. It gets a lot less defensible when you go through the 7, 8, 9, 12…I mean, the Nets are really the team that should’ve taken him, right?
JA : Yeah when you go back and look at Vitaly Potapenko and Todd Fuller got taken before Kobe Bryant, you just scratch your head.
BS : I know. Well, that’s the draft. These guys…I mean, Minnesota passed on Steph Curry twice. I think that’s my favorite of all time now. ‘Cause it was insane when it happened and now it’s become a hundred thousand times more insane. So what’s your favorite chapter in the book?
JA : I think it was just looking through that ’96 draft and kinda dissecting what every team was thinking at the time they did pass up on Kobe Bryant and talking about, you know, the Hornets at the time who drafted Kobe and then traded him.
BS : So I’m going through that draft now. Iverson, 1. Camby, 2. Sharif went 3. These are all defensible at the time. Marbury, 4. Ray Allen, 5. And Antwan 6. I think all these are still defensible. But here’s where it gets less defensible. Lorenzen Wright to the Clippers. God, the Clippers could’ve had Kobe. I totally forgot that.
JA : He worked out for them, too.
BS : Kittles to the Nets, who had a good career until he got hurt. Samaki Walker to Dallas. Dampier to the Pacers. Todd Fuller to Golden State. Potapenko to the Cavs. And then Kobe, 13. And Charlotte trades it. They didn’t just keep him. They traded it for Divac. So it was like a double-whammy.
JA : You know, what was funny was that the Hornets, they got better after that. I think Bob Bass got Executive of the Year for that trade, because the Hornets won like 50 games that year.
BS : Yeah they actually, the late-90’s Hornets weren’t bad. Vlade had a lot left in the tank, and then he went to Sacramento. It was a defensible trade except for the part where Kobe became one of the ten best players of all time. So you think the T-Mac thing for some reason is not as big of a deal? Where did he go? Seventh? Eighth?
JA : He went eighth I think to the Raptors. He was good because that brought about a whole big negotiation between Nike and ADIDAS and it was the first time one of these high-school guys had created a shoe bidding war with Sonny Vaccaro - ADIDAS and Nike.
BS : Yeah, and who, I forget…ADIDAS won that one?
JA : Yeah, they paid him 12 million dollars and all the veteran players were jealous. They hadn’t gotten a shoe contract like that. And it just setup a whole generation of these guys trying to make that jump afterwards.
BS : After you finish this book, do you feel like guys should be able to come right out of high-school or no?
JA : I think so. Obviously there’s a lot of grey in this issue but, by and large, most of these guys were successful. There’s a lot more successful guys like Tracy and Kobe and Lebron than there are in the busts like Korleone Young and Leon Smith and those guys.
BS : Right. I mean it would’ve been better for Ben Simmons to just of come out now. I mean, to come right out a year ago versus just going to LSU and just having four unsatisfying months there. I don’t know how that helped him in any way. And it does seem like the league is so much smarter now about protecting younger players and putting them in a position to think about choices they make and all that stuff. It just seems like…I don’t know. I’m of the belief that it should be - I’ve said this before but I really think it’s one of my best ideas. The rookie contract length should depend on when you came out. So if you stay in school for two years, and you come out, it’s a four year rookie contract. If you come out right out of high-school, it’s a six year contract. If you come out after your freshman year, it’s a five year rookie contract. I really think that’s the best solution.
JA : I like it.
BS : Yeah because now, if a guy comes right out, all of a sudden he’s not getting paid when he’s like 22. And the team really gets to keep them under control. And try to groom him. And there’s no rush. A lot of these issues were just sometimes just guys getting money too soon. I mean, that was Antwan’s biggest thing. Antwan was making, I think he signed for 71 or 81 million bucks after his third year in the NBA. He was 22. That’s not good, you know. What do you think…what was the biggest reason Kwame failed?
JA : Oh, there was the big combination of I don’t think he loved the game. He declared for the NBA because of family pressure and to lift his family out of poverty. He just came from a terrible situation. One of the quotes from the book that stood out to me was Billy Donovan who got to thinking Kwame didn’t really wanna go pro in the least bit because he had originally committed to the University of Florida when Donovan was there. And also the pressure of playing for Micheal Jordan at that time. Michael Jordan only had one or two years left in him at the Wizards and needed Kwame to be a superstar fast and that just wasn’t gonna happen.
BS : Was there a guy that, as you worked on the book, you changed your opinion?
JA : You know, it was interesting seeing Tracy McGrady’s progress because I didn’t know all that much about his back history and it just seemed like he almost lucked into basketball to begin with as well. He was a big baseball guy growing up.
BS : Yeah, he’s a good example of how they changed the rules to make the rookie contracts longer and after, you know, his generation you could leave after three years. And he left Toronto. He goes to Orlando. Grant Hill gets hurt and he just, you know, wastes a good chunk of his career on teams that aren’t very good. And had the contracts been longer, him and Vince Carter are together and all of a sudden that has a chance to be something really special. I always felt like, if he’d come along five years later in the same situation his career is different.
JA : One of the other big things with Tracy as well was, he was really close to signing with the Bulls after that Toronto contract but Jordan basically nixed it because they’d have to give up Pippen at the time.
BS : Right. Yeah I remember that. Alright well I’m excited for people to read this book. You sent me an early copy. I enjoyed it. I enjoy all basketball books but I really enjoyed yours. Can you talk about your next project yet or no?
JA : No. I hope to have it out soon but…I’m excited.
BS : Yeah, you’re next project is gonna be super-duper exciting. Hey, you’re in Charlotte now, right?
JA : I am.
BS : Have you gotten sucked in by the Hornets? By college hoops? Anything? How’s your basketball life changed?
JA : I got a two-year old that I’m trying to groom into the next Steph Curry. That’s why we got out here.
BS : That’s smart. Get a Davidson #30 jersey on him! Have you gone to a Hornets game yet?
JA : I’ve been to a couple, but I’m friends with a woman whose daughter goes to Steph’s high-school and plays basketball there so I’ve been to Steph’s high-school gym a few times and it’s just this tiny, tiny place and I just can’t imagine Steph ever playing there.
BS : I know. That’s probably where he started making 40 footers routinely and starting wondering, “hmm, I wonder if this’ll work in a game.” And he was right.
JA : There’s like two stands, two rows of stands on each side of the court. If he had been a bigger prospect in high-school, they would not have been able to play in that gym.
BS : No. Okay, so your books out today. Shay Sorrano (?) did some cool covers for you but those are all sold out, right?
------END - Simmons plugs his book one more time and thanks his guests. Maybe tries to sell another ad. ---------
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