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

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Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit com. [01:01]. [01:06] The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you. [01:09] By PayPal, we are also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. [01:13] network where I did a rewatchables last week. We did Ali. [01:18] If you missed it, it was our ninth Michael Mann movie, and the one we have coming up [01:21] on Monday. It's a movie that's also on Netflix, by the way.

She's the one. [01:25] 30th anniversary. [01:27] Very important Gen X movie. We're going to explain all the reasons you should care about this movie. Um, [01:32] It's an interesting one to discuss 30 years later. So we have that and then we have Hitch with Will Smith and Eva Mendez. That is going to be the week after. So that is the plan. [01:44] Coming up is... [01:46] A long conversation I had with Chuck Colsterman over the weekend, um, and, um, and, um, and, [01:50] It goes in all the directions. It always goes with Chuck and I, sports, culture, all kinds of things.

And it's a really good one. So if you haven't heard me and Chuck, we've been doing these – [02:01] Shit, since I got my podcast at ESPN in 07, so... [02:05] I don't remember when he started coming on, but we do these a bunch. And this was a rollicking. [02:10] rollicking effort. So it is all coming up next. We're gonna take a break. Pearl Jam and then Chuck. [02:16] This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by PayPal. You know a clutch move when you see one? A no-look pass, a buzzer beater, a big steal?

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[03:28] So there's going to be some World Cup stuff this weekend. Hopefully nothing too crazy. Have you been into the World Cup, Chuck? [03:36] Not really. [03:39] I haven't watched much of it. It can never suck you in. You know, now... [03:43] Now you've, [03:44] You don't even have to try to follow things. Things just come to you. So, of course, I hear questions. [03:49] non-stop conversation around it. I know that the game's [03:54] For the United States, they're supposed to be like a good times now, but the times have not worked out perfectly for me.

[03:59] So I've seen here and there, I've seen some of it. [04:02] - Do you feel like we're in a loop with US soccer, where every four years everybody decides this is the time? I feel like you and I have talked about this for 20 years. [04:12] And it just becomes Groundhog Day every four years where they build our hopes up and then people get disappointed. And then everyone says how soccer is taking off. And I feel like we've been doing this since the 2000s. [04:23] There is some similarities with the conversations, although I will say every time this happens, the conversations become a little more serious.

[04:33] Like, you know, in the 90s or whatever, it would almost be sort of, you know, people would make more jokes about people are less willing to joke about soccer now in the same way they're kind of less willing to joke about everything. [04:45] What is, of course, I think. [04:47] to me, always fascinating is then the, the, as soon as the, the U S gets eliminated, the, [04:52] There's the immediate conversation about why don't we dominate soccer? Why aren't we more dominant? What do we need to do? Do we need to have our best athletes not play football and basketball?

Is it that we have to change youth sports? Is it the financial structure? It's very interesting. I kind of have my own theory about this. But I'm wondering, first of all, what you would say if you were – [05:15] tasked with this idea that everybody seems to want, that we need to have like a national team that's as good as anybody in the world. What do you think would need to happen? [05:25] Well, I want to hear your theory first. You said you had a theory. What's your theory? Well, sort of, I do.

Okay, so... [05:31] *sigh* [05:32] Okay, it's kind of seem meandering. [05:36] So, like, after... [05:38] The communist revolution in China. Okay. Okay. China's this sort of what's a once like this mostly agrarian country. You know, now it's, it's, it's, it's poor. Uh, the, the, the, the, the entire country has been sort of thrown into chaos, but they need, they want to become a world power in every context. [05:56] They want to sort of be, you know, not just in economically, but also like in things like sports and arts. [06:04] So, you know, they made...

[06:07] A very conscious decision. [06:09] They looked at the world of sports and they said, what is a sport that is not emphasized anywhere else and that there is no sort of problem with the physicality and the size of our athletes? And what they came to the conclusion, one of these things was like table tennis, like ping pong. [06:29] We can dominate. They made a choice to become a ping pong power. And that happened. It was like they saw this. [06:36] vacuum, right? They saw this empty space that if we want to be a dominant, you know, and they did this with lots of things like the manufacturing of very small, cheap plastic toys, you know, like the kind of toys that are like, you know, 99 cents or whatever.

They're like, well, no one's really thinking to themselves, we need to build an industry around this. They did all these things. They made all these choices based on sort of seeing things. [06:57] What wasn't there? And then like kind of filling that vacuum. [07:01] I don't think that can be done with a sport that is basically the most popular sport in the world. All these other countries are obsessed with soccer and have this big head start. And I like I'm not sure what could be done. It might be that you just can't decide we're going to be great at something, have it happen.

And like maybe that shouldn't even be a demand. Yeah. [07:24] I have a friend of mine, David Diamond, sent me this long text after the World Cup, after we lost. [07:30] talking about [07:32] Just everyone was like, oh, see, we weren't as good. This is all Mirage. And his take was we actually – [07:38] did have a lot of talent. [07:39] And the difference with our team compared to, you know, some of the other teams that you see out there is like the experience, kind of the nastiness, like the edge, which I mentioned on the pod the other day, Berhalter came in at one point and, you know, he's [07:53] you know, it was like energy guy and, and they actually felt like they had some cohesion.

[07:58] And his question was, it's not a question of how do we get [08:02] more athletes. It's how do we get the type of athletes that seem to succeed in the World Cup [08:06] who are all these guys that have these edges, right? And we have this in the NBA, we have the NFL, all these other ones, and in soccer, it seems like our teams are always too nice. Like the best, the most successful team we ever had was the O2 team. That was the team that beat Mexico, [08:22] And then probably should have beaten Germany.

And there was the handball and the net. That would have been a big deal if that happened now. But that team was just feistier. And I wonder if I'm trying to do the blame pie for all the different reasons, we can never get over the hump. [08:37] the athletes thing's a piece of it, the youth soccer is a piece of it, but I also wonder, like, is there some sort of [08:44] mentality, personality thing. [08:46] that we're just never going to have. [08:49] It's basically a sunk cost. There's no way we're going to have it compared to what some of these other countries have, where they know all the tricks and pulling jerseys and...

[08:58] And there's a nastiness. [09:00] to even the best players, right? And I always feel like over and over again, we don't have it. [09:06] So why don't we have it? Well, I mean, that would suggest, though, that there's like these kind of intangible secrets to soccer that somehow we can watch and not. I mean, that shouldn't be the case, right? I mean, but that's it. How do we? [09:19] How do we copy... [09:21] How do we build on these intangible secrets that we apparently just don't have? [09:25] And I guess the other question would be, why don't we have it?

[09:28] Is it something about the structure we have [09:32] that building from youth soccer, the culture of it, [09:35] is there some sort of weird toughness that, [09:39] we seem to be missing. Because the weird thing about the Belgium game was they really pulled our pants down. [09:45] That was like one of those football playoff games you watch in round one where one team just gets blown off the field and embarrassed and knocked around, and they just don't seem... [09:56] tough or gritty or anything at all. [09:58] I just, I don't know how we get those people because it feels like those are the type of athletes that drift to the other sports.

So to me, it's less like athletic talent. [10:06] and more like all the other stuff that comes with being great. Like somebody sent me a great email about, [10:12] Anthony Edwards, how he just carries himself in a basketball game. And did you see anybody in America who carried themselves like that? [10:21] right? That [10:22] And you watch these other countries and you see somebody like Mbappe, and he's not the biggest, most intimidating guy. [10:29] But he's got like some oomph to him. [10:33] You know, and that's what we seem to, and it's a weird thing to be like, oh, how do we develop that?

But I don't know how we do. [10:39] But I like, okay, I'm, [10:41] There are more... [10:42] people in the United States playing soccer than there are in Belgium. [10:46] We have a larger way more. [10:48] We have a larger pool to choose. That's why this idea that it's like, well, if all our best athletes played soccer, I'll be different. I'm not sure that would necessarily be the case. [11:00] It's just, I mean, I don't know. You can use Anthony Edwards as an example. So let's say we lived in Norway, and we were like, well— [11:10] We want to challenge the world at basketball.

So we look at our basketball players, and then they look at the Norwegian basketball players, and they're like, why don't you guys carry yourself like Anthony Edwards? I don't like, how does that? I'm just saying that's a piece of it. So Norway's a good example, right? They have Holland. [11:26] Mm-hmm. [11:28] carries himself like a cross between [11:30] Rob Gronkowski and Ray Lewis. [11:33] and he just moves around the field like a shark. But that's somebody who, his dad was a really successful soccer player. They have a whole infrastructure in place that if they have somebody like that, they can develop them differently.

Everyone's talked about this youth soccer stuff, which I have some experience with, because we're in California, and my daughter went through the whole thing. [11:54] It is expensive. [11:56] It is one of those things where the coaches put a lot of pressure on people to only play soccer and do nothing else and not play multi-sports, which I've talked about on past podcasts. That seems to be really dangerous. [12:06] when you're specializing in something from like age... [12:09] 7, 8 on. Um... [12:12] But I don't... [12:14] I don't think there's some grand solution.

I just feel like this is going to be the way it is for the rest of my life. [12:19] Thank you. [12:20] We're going to be solid, but never great. In the course of your life, they have gotten better. So maybe they'll continue this in the... [12:29] you know, same sort of general up. I mean, I would think overall the trajectory is upward, right? [12:35] Maybe. We were really good in 2002. We were good in 1994. I would say all the countries got better because there's just more people playing soccer and probably a better infrastructure for it.

[12:48] Now, the people like the diehard soccer fans that I know, and we've had some of them on the pod, are saying we have the most... [12:55] players playing abroad on good teams that we've ever had. So that seems like a bonus. But then you go against a team like Belgium and they have – [13:03] people all over the place that are playing key roles for the best teams. And that's where... [13:09] I don't know how we get over the hump with that. I mean, it also might be that you might have to do more Balogun stuff where you're just basically getting people to switch citizenship and come here.

How good should they be? [13:22] This is, I think, a question that is kind of the unasked thing here. It's like what people keep thinking that we should be able to challenge for the World Cup. We should be a consistent world champion or world power. [13:35] I'm not, you know, the biggest... [13:38] country in the world is China. [13:40] Most popular sport there now is basketball. They're not a World Cup power. Second big country is India. India. [13:48] Most popular sport there is cricket. [13:50] Third biggest country in the United States.

So soccer is the most popular sport in the world, except in the three biggest countries. [13:57] It's this separate thing. So, I mean, maybe this is just maybe the natural way these things kind of work out. I mean, it's like that that there has to be sort of a distribution of. [14:10] of sports excellence or whatever. And the United States is not in position to have that role in soccer. You know, I, it almost seems like people are saying like, well, we've got to be good at the world cup. Otherwise soccer will never be popular here.

But it is popular here. The thing is, I think soccer has gotten more popular here. [14:30] Over the last 25 years. There's no question. And I think even you see some of the stars that are in this World Cup where people we have real familiarity with now that we've been watching. [14:39] on all these different channels and streamers for 20 years. There's one piece that, [14:44] I don't know how we fix this, but like, you know, if you're in England, you're [14:49] growing up in like manchester [14:51] The moment you're like three years old, they're putting the soccer jerseys on you.

And if you have any talent at all, you're playing and you're just dreaming like someday I'll be on the. [15:01] World Cup team in England. [15:03] What do kids dream about here? It's all kinds of things, right? Like if I'm in Florida, [15:08] and I'm growing up and I'm a good athlete, maybe I'm dreaming of playing for University of Miami football someday, or whatever. [15:15] Florida State or... [15:17] If I'm in Alabama, maybe my dream is to... [15:21] Play for Alabama someday from the moment I'm four. [15:24] Whereas like in some of these other countries, the dream is to just be [15:28] playing soccer for [15:29] the best possible teams and for the country, and that's it.

So all those... [15:35] Young, like fledgling athletes are just thinking about that. But here they think about all kinds of sports. [15:40] That might be a piece of it. [15:42] I guess it depends if, you know... [15:46] you [15:46] What you're saying is the dream sort of manifests itself as reality. [15:51] And that if kids here dream of winning the World Cup, eventually that will happen. They will almost sort of like wish cast it into... [15:58] - Yeah, it's like you take somebody who has awesome genes and athletic ability, and at age four they've just decided [16:05] I love Messi.

That's my guy. I want to be the next Messi. Like a good example is what happens in Canada, right? [16:11] Canada has been pumping out hockey players forever, and they have this whole system [16:17] And when you think about even like, like we finally, I think caught up. [16:21] to them. You can see from the Olympics, our best 30 guys are probably pretty even with Canada's best 30 guys. [16:29] But if you talked about the percentage of Canadian athletes who are like, [16:32] four years old, like someday, [16:35] I want to do blank.

The hockey is going to be way, way higher there than it would be here. [16:39] I mean, what you're basically saying is this is a cultural thing. [16:43] Yes. OK, so if that is true, if that is the case, and that's a very good argument, let's say if it's the culture, well, then it's not just the culture directly around the sport. Like the reason that we produce great football and basketball players here is not just the culture of football or the culture of basketball. It's sort of the culture of everything in Canada, for example.

You're saying, well, why is what makes that different? Well, it's not just their interest in hockey. [17:10] It's not just them getting kids on the ice young. It's not just them worrying about what month their kid is born or whatever. It's everything about living in Canada. [17:18] You know, so if that is what does if it is the totality of these cultures, you know, [17:24] Then it's got to be everything about the United States has got to, in a way, change. And I think some people think it kind of is.

I think there's a lot of people who feel like the culture of the United States is changing. But I don't know if it's necessarily changing in a way that's going to produce more soccer players. Like these these questions might be too big to solve. There's nothing that can be done. Now, somebody would say like the people in Norway would say, well, you know, 40 years ago, we changed youth sports. They all became free. [17:54] And now look what's happened 40 years later. This is, you know, this is the result. Maybe that's true.

I mean, it would be really, I think, wonderful if the United States decided all youth sports were going to be free for everyone. It's something that they could do, but they never will. That's never going to happen. But if that did happen, I wonder if that would change a lot of things, you know. I mean, it would change the kind of kid who... [18:21] It would become something that if it was free, that some parents would be like, you're playing football this year, you're playing soccer, you're playing tennis, because it would be like a free summer camp.

[18:33] There's probably some kids we miss sometimes. [18:36] do to that. They just have no chance to be involved, so we never know if they could potentially be involved. Once you get to the travel club soccer level, it's legitimately expensive. For some people, it becomes prohibitive unless there's scholarships or [18:49] Teams raising money to pay for a couple extra kids, things like that. There's one other piece that we didn't mention. [18:56] We've never had... [18:58] the transcendent, [19:00] soccer player here. [19:03] that would become like the hero for somebody else.

[19:07] You know, like for instance, Caitlin Clark dating back to the last two Iowa seasons and then going to the WNBA had a profound impact on girls who play basketball. Like, it's just a fact. [19:21] People watched her, they were like, "I want to be like her. I want to shoot like her." We saw this with Steph Curry too with three-point shooting in America. [19:28] where Steph started having that [19:30] Basically, it started at Davidson, but when it really started to happen with the Warriors, [19:34] You just saw the sport transform and all these people all over the place were like, I want to shoot.

[19:39] like Steph does. [19:41] We've never had a soccer player like that here. [19:43] We've never had an American messy. We may never will, but [19:50] Um, [19:51] But I do wonder if we had somebody like that, how different it would be. Like how many people did Tiger Woods affect when – [19:57] he made his golf run in the late 90s. Did he cause more people to play golf? I would argue that he did. [20:03] Did golf in the United States improve in the wake of Tiger Woods? [20:09] I think more people played.

I do think he had an impact. [20:13] I don't have a research paper handy, but... [20:17] It... [20:18] I mean, it's actually, in a way, starting to seem like... [20:23] Tiger Woods impact is slightly less than we thought it was going to be. If we'd had this conversation in, say, 2003, [20:33] Talk about minority golfers. I think we would have imagined a world of golf now that would have been like many guys who look like Tiger Woods and different. And like and and and golf has changed. [20:48] But I think that not as much as we thought it would.

Well, it's another sport that you need money to get really good at. [20:55] which sure but I mean that's you know it's like a uh it's not like there's just not not there's not money here [21:02] There's enough money in the United States for enough people to play golf. I mean, it's like, I don't, it's, [21:09] I like this question. I don't follow soccer. I'm not watching these games. But I find this concept real interesting. Because one, it's just this... [21:20] belief that as the United States, anything that we want to be good at, we should be able to be great at.

You know? And it's like, we should be able, we should just be able to do it. Like, we have the resources, we have the people, but it kind of is proof that, like, [21:34] there's just a different way of thinking, you know? I had mentioned that thing about, you know, after like the Chinese, you know, [21:44] Have you ever seen the documentary on General Zoe's chicken? [21:51] No. Okay. [21:53] It's fascinating for a ton of different reasons, but particularly for one. So. [21:59] It's also kind of like a history of Chinese food in the United States.

So after the railroads were built, there were all these Asian people in California. And they made up this draconian law where it was like if you were – [22:18] of Chinese origin. You could only operate a restaurant or a laundromat. They changed the laws of who could own these businesses. And so the people there did something that's just incredible to me. It's like they got all the people, all the Chinese people into essentially a big meeting or whatever. And they said, look, if we all open restaurants here in San Francisco or whatever, we're going to kill each other.

We won't be able to survive. So here's what's going [22:48] Nebraska, you're going to open a Chinese restaurant. [22:50] You and your family, you're going to go to Stillwater, Oklahoma. You're going to open a Chinese restaurant. And they just sent these families to these places where there was no one else like them and said, you know, open a Chinese restaurant. And that's why sometimes you drive through a town, like a small town in the middle of the country. And like they have like a subway station. [23:08] a grocery store, but there's a Chinese restaurant there.

It really worked, okay? That's the kind of mentality that I don't think [23:17] It's not a very American way of doing it. It would be really hard to do that, to take Americans, put it together and go like, look, I'm going to send you someplace you don't want to live. [23:26] You're not going to know anybody, but you're going to start a business because it'll be better for all of us if we do that. You know, it's just I don't know if the way that the like the if the US mentality, like the things that we're good at, maybe create problems that make it very difficult for us to improve at things that don't naturally come.

You know what I'm saying? [23:47] That was really interesting. Did they figure out who came up with the general Gao or Sao? Here's the deal. There is no general Zhao. There used to always be this idea. There used to be all these. OK, they basically took a Chinese food and they were like, we've got to make this palatable to Americans. Yeah. But what's it? What's it? You know, there's going to be people who have never seen Chinese. You know, this is the past. People have never seen Chinese food before. They're going to be freaked out.

So we're going to use chicken and we're going to make a sauce. It's kind of sweet and kind of crispy. [24:17] Then... [24:18] There were all these kind of myths about it. Oh, General Zoe was a general, and when he would win battles, he would reward his troops with his food. Or General Zoe, when he was fighting battles, needed an easy food to make to feed his troops, you know, so that's what they ate when they were, you know, sort of out in the wild. None of this is true. And then...

[24:39] Even though General Tso's chicken is a completely constructed Americanized food, [24:44] There's now sort of an issue over its authenticity. [24:49] Can you use white meat in it? People say no. Traditionalists say no. How spicy or sweet is the sauce supposed to be? Like, even though this thing was a completely manufactured concept, there's now a debate over whether or not it's real. And what's great about this documentary is it really does show like this is how culture actually works. [25:19] there's some puppet master. And it's kind of a weird hybrid of those two things where it's like you can't control how people feel about things.

We can't really control how people feel about soccer. [25:32] Every four years, [25:34] They try. [25:35] Like the soccer community in the media tries to do this every time the World Cup happens. They try to convince people that both soccer is going to become more popular and that it's actually more popular than you realize, that people actually already like it. And. [25:50] You're just not going to talk people like they got to actually feel that way, which I think is what's happened in the last 15 years. [25:57] 15 years or so, I actually feel like more people do like soccer.

They do. There's no question about it. But in the 2000s, it did feel like they were... [26:07] that community was trying to sell us on it. [26:10] Versus it actually being the reality. [26:12] It's also unique in that it has a different meaning in the United States than in other countries. The idea of liking soccer. [26:21] Like the idea of liking, you know, when you think about, say, in the UK or whatever, like, you know, like the book, like Among the Thugs or whatever, like it's like that was the world for people who were cut out of everything else.

Yeah. It's like they don't have a relationship to art. They don't have a relationship to making a lot of money in entrepreneurship, but they have this thing. Soccer is for like the kind of person who has, you know, that's what their union. In the United States, it's the opposite. Right. [26:48] That if you're really into soccer, it tends to mean like, well, you kind of have a globalist mentality in it. [26:53] You're not like some SEC football fan or whatever. Like, you know, they call it, like, the beautiful game or whatever.

And they read, like, how soccer explains the world and these things. So I think that the... [27:06] that the rise in [27:08] popularity of soccer in the United States is also the rise of a certain kind of person, that there's a certain kind of person who likes to see themselves as a sports fan who is not like a retrograde thing. It's like that they're that they're sophisticated, that they're that by and you really see this on like on social media, like there's there every time the World Cup happens, there's these people who want to like suddenly become like soccer tacticians and want

[27:38] watching baseball or whatever, but we know this is how it is. But you're right. It is more popular, for sure. There's no question. When I wrote about soccer back in the 90s, I was wrong about that. Soccer is going to become one of [27:58] the major S. sports, if it isn't already. But it doesn't necessarily mean we're going to do well in the World Cup. Well, there's history with it, too, because people have teams that they picked [28:08] When this was happening in 2000, I wrote that piece about picking a Premier League team and [28:14] Oh, seven, I think.

And I, at that point I was in my mid thirties. Um, what you're seeing now is people are picking their team when they're eight or nine, like they become an art. And now those people are in their twenties. So they have like the same way you would pick any team. It's not like they jumped in late. That's been part of their lives. And I think that's [28:32] That's what's probably changed the most. But I still feel like, you know, big picture with the soccer stuff. [28:38] Um, like we, basically what we've been certainly around is the concept of the sports star, [28:43] And...

[28:44] which I've joked about for 25 years. But we actually saw a glimpse of it when Trump... [28:51] did the red card thing and got it lifted for Balgan, the striker of the American team. And there was some wheeling dealing going on [29:01] And I was thinking about [29:02] This is the first summer I'm like, we actually might need... [29:06] somebody whose job that is for real. And I've made the cases in the past, but even like with this Kauai situation right now, [29:13] It's essentially supposed to be the commissioner of a league, right?

[29:17] But it almost feels like we need somebody who has more oversight than that, who can be like, yo, what's going on with this aspiration thing? Like, we have to... [29:25] We have to come up with a decision. Somebody who could float around who has... [29:30] I don't know, a little bit of authority. [29:32] And I don't know why that's not a job. Like we have a department of transportation. We have all these different parts. What... [29:39] What part of America generates like... [29:43] more... [29:45] more money from an entertainment value than sports.

[29:49] And why wouldn't we have more oversight over it? [29:51] When you first mentioned the sports czar thing back when we first started doing the podcast, it was more like a joke. I will admit it doesn't seem insane now. We're just talking about youth sports. If I was sports czar, before I would deal with anything, [30:10] with pro sports or college sports, I would first get involved with youth sports. That is the place where it really does need, it seems like somebody could have enough oversight to say like, look, this way, this isn't good for anyone.

[30:23] It's not good for the parents. Well, it's the same thing with the NIL and the college conferences where it's like, all right, we've now drifted to this place that I think everybody feels like is – [30:33] Pretty rocky. This could maybe be not sustainable in 10 years. [30:39] So how are we going to fix this? And nobody seems to care. Well, like the situation, like with the Texas Tech quarterback and the gambling stuff, it's like there was a point where it was like, this seems crazy. But what can we do?

Like, what can really be done? Like, there is there isn't anything can really like it's not really made up that way. It's as crazy as this is, it's like pro sports are actually probably, you know, a little more stable than all the things below it. I mean, it's like there's just. [31:05] Right. At least Pro Sports has commissioners and billionaires and... [31:10] Well, the thing is, though, it's like the commissioner's tough because he's working for the owners. So, of course, it always seems like the commissioner is not doing what they should be.

You know, and if there was this next level, if there was this next political level. [31:22] I mean, the problem, of course, is that like people... [31:27] Do not like the intersection of sports and politics. [31:31] And you'll go like, well, people don't like it when it's against them. It's like, well, that's going to happen half the time. It's like it's not, you know, you still look at the World Cup or whatever, like, you know, Mandami coming out and he's like, I'm looking forward to like Morocco upsetting France or whatever.

And it's like, that's a weird thing to say, kind of. I mean, it's like I understand why he wants that. I understand his feeling, but it's like that that. [31:53] is it's not really... [31:56] it's not really necessary to, like, I don't, I don't like when this happens. Well, we, I was having a debate about this with some people over text just yesterday. Kind of it's, it's, it's, [32:08] Whenever a political figure uses sports in any way, it seems to make things less comfortable for everyone. Well, we saw it twice with Trump, right?

We saw it when he went to game three of the finals. [32:22] In the Knicks loss. And then the red card... [32:26] which, um, [32:28] just made people crazy that he got involved. Right. Especially since so many people who love soccer, hate Trump. So they didn't know how to feel about this. It was like the most complex day of their life. It's like the person I hate most has done this thing. I need more than anything. It's like, you know, right. Yeah. And also like, [32:46] Technically, you're [32:48] The red card was kind of ridiculous, and it's weird that that act would cost somebody a game and a half.

But this goes back to like... [32:54] even the concept of a sports hour. Like, hey, what's up with this red card situation? [32:59] So you're basically out, like in the NBA where they have a commissioner, you're [33:04] Wemby, when he elbowed Nas Reid, and he got kicked out of that game, [33:09] by World Cup rules, he would have also had to miss the next game. And Adam Silver looked at that and said, all right, that's... [33:15] That's kind of dumb. He's not going to lose two games for that, so he brings him back.

There was common sense prevailing, which I'm not sure we always have. We've got to take a break. A sports czar can't be a world sports czar, though. So it's like, how could they affect him? No, it would have to be an American sports czar. So it's like they couldn't end up. [33:32] Wait, we had to take a break. I want to talk commissioners with you for a second. [33:37] This episode is brought to you by TikTok. [33:40] Did you know you can use TikTok to connect even more to the sports you love?

I love a lot of sports. It's not just highlights. It's everything around the game, including the sports community. [33:50] You can find breakdowns at classic basketball plays. I love that. Deep dives on baseball stats, even videos on how athletes train sports. [33:58] and recover. I guess they don't have podcasters. There are people teaching strategy, sports history, and ways to improve your own jump shot. Mine doesn't need improving, it's a great 18 footer. It's kinda like the biggest locker room ever. [34:11] And everyone is sharing what they know on TikTok. Join the fun.

[34:16] Download TikTok today. [34:19] So we're talking about [34:21] how leagues and World Cup, all these different things, youth sports, all these different things could run and do any other sports hour. But then the commissioners... [34:29] of these different leagues that we've had forever. [34:32] Going back to [34:34] I don't even remember what the first NFL commissioner was in baseball. We had [34:39] You know, but most famously when a commissioner used his power in the 1900s, it was the Black Sox scandal. Yeah. That was the first time where a commissioner was like, I actually need to take over.

[34:51] and take control of a situation that got really bad, and I have the authority to do so from the owners. And I was thinking about Adam Silver, [34:59] and just in general commissioners, because we've seen this with Goodell, when a commissioner takes over a league, [35:08] They come in initially, [35:11] And they care about the sport. [35:13] The sport itself and the good things that they can... [35:19] effect in the sport. [35:20] But then also the owners and the business side of the owners and making everybody more money and making the – [35:26] making the league healthy and sustainable, right?

So you have these two separate things. And what's interesting is, [35:32] the commissioner will come in with the, you know, a little more idealistic, right? And then as the years pass, [35:39] They basically become Michael Corleone Godfather 2. It's all about the business. [35:44] And we see this over and over again with everybody. And I don't really know why it happens. [35:50] But I feel like we're seeing it right now at the NBA. And I think Silver, for the most part, has done a good job. But some of the things that are happening with the league, [35:58] The second apron thing they did, the CBA that they negotiated with the players to put in basically a hard cap.

[36:05] is having so many bad ramifications already for team building, for players staying in the same place. [36:11] And they did this to basically protect the owners, so everybody could make more money. Now they're going to do expansion, which I think is, I personally think that hurts the league and I would much rather see them relocate. They're also doing this NBA Europe thing. And all these things are really smart. [36:27] financial moves. [36:30] But I don't think any of them have made the NBA better. I think the NBA is in a worse place than it was four or five years ago because they're making business decisions and not league decisions.

And when I say that, [36:42] Everyone in the league gets mad at me. [36:44] And then it's like, well, why, you know, why are you so hard on Adam? And, and, and I, it's, to me, that's not the question. The question is, [36:51] Is his job to elevate the league or just make money? [36:55] And they would argue, well, both. [36:57] But have you elevated the league this decade? [37:01] And I don't know if the answer is yes. And even I look back to the COVID thing and when they had [37:07] The COVID, they come back, they play the bubble playoffs, they start the next season, they have to do 72 games or whatever they ended up.

[37:14] 71, whatever. [37:16] And there was that grind and then playoffs. And then the next season, there's basically no off seasons for two years. They basically... [37:22] played almost three seasons in two. [37:25] to try to keep all the money the same. And I think it had real damage to it. [37:29] to the players and to the teams and the competitiveness of the league. And it was just kind of like, well, we had to do it that way. Everybody can't lose money. [37:38] I'm concerned about the intentions of the league.

[37:42] And even... [37:44] Some of the owners they've let in, like this Portland owner, [37:47] Some of the stuff he's done. Yeah, it's weird. [37:50] You know, and they greenlit this Dallas owner. [37:56] I still don't know what Mark Cuban sold. [37:58] Um, [38:00] But just in general, I just think the league's in a weird place. So what's your take? Okay, like the thing you said about how they begin sort of with the good of the league, what's good for the sport, how can we grow this over time? [38:12] And then eventually it becomes this thing where they're just kind of like the owner puppet.

Well, I mean, the first part is like how you get the job. It's like they're trying to pick a new commissioners. They talk to guys about basketball and about the meaning of basketball or its place in the world and all these things. But then as soon as they're actually doing it. [38:31] Then it's like, well, okay, but remember, you work for us. [38:35] We need to make money. I'm glad you have those ideas. Try to implement those ideas while also doing exactly what we want. [38:45] The amount of money is part of it.

I mean, it's just the sheer mass of money, the expansion, right? You can make a lot of arguments over why expansion is just going to water the league down. There's already too many teams tanking. There's already too many games where you turn on and no one's playing. [39:05] You can't really make the argument for it, except that the buy-in, [39:09] is now, you know, in the, so every, every owner gets what if this one, I think you know the number. So it's like, so if they get, [39:18] Let's say they get $7.5 billion for each team.

It's $15 billion for the combo. [39:23] There's 30 teams. [39:25] They would all get a check for $500 million that they wouldn't have to share with the players, by the way. So if that check is like... [39:35] you know, $80 million. It's possible somebody can go like, well, though, it's like, this could hurt the league. Maybe in the long run, it could cost me money, you know, but when the number is 500 million, it's just too big. It's like the expansion. They're going to expand the NCAA basketball tournament again to like 76 teams now.

Is that the number next year? 76? They're going to expand World Cup too, to probably, they'll probably go to 48. I do not know. Or 64, I forget. [40:05] person who's like, I think the NCAA tournament needs more teams. I think it'll be better if they do that. Yeah, but here's the difference of the NCAA. [40:13] it's completely rudderless and lawless right now, right? Who's in charge? Nobody even knows. And people just do whatever they want, and they're afraid of all the big universities, and people can just form new conferences and super conferences, and we're in this situation, we're in now, where,

[40:28] you have UCLA who's flying around to all these different parts of the country, which makes sense if it's the football team, but not if it's like, [40:37] the cross country team or the women's soccer team just flying all these things. [40:43] These alleged college athletes are just flying around because we just let college sports go to shit. [40:49] I think the NBA is a little different because they have actual control over – [40:53] what they should be doing, where the team should be, how many should they have, what should the salary cap be that could be [41:00] I just think when we get to the point when...

[41:04] And there's a lot of reasons why Brown and Tatum couldn't have stayed together. But when it makes no sense for them to stay together financially – [41:11] That's not good. Yeah. Because if you go back to the league that we loved and we grew up with, you're basically saying, all right, I loved watching the 80s Lakers and Celtics. And it was really fun when MJ and Pippen were together. Well, I don't know if Pippen, they have to do that Pippen, the famous Pippen trade now in 94. [41:31] We don't get those other three titles with MJ and Pippen because Pippen's on Seattle.

[41:36] Kevin McHale's not on the Celtics in the mid '80s, 'cause they absolutely would have had to trade him in 1985, 'cause they couldn't have afforded max contracts for Byrd and McHale. [41:46] And honestly, I think this is what the league wants. I think they want complete parity like NFL. I don't think they want teams to be good for more than three or four years. [41:54] Well, one thing I think, and this kind of happened this year, to be honest, is, you know, [42:00] I felt that [42:02] from a consumer perspective, this was a real troubling NBA season.

Like, it's, you know, I've mentioned this so many times, but I just, I can't count how often I tried to watch, you know, look forward to a basketball game and realized a bunch of guys weren't playing suddenly. Or it just seemed like, but... [42:20] They're always like, when the playoffs happen and the playoffs, yeah, we're great. Bailed out at the end. And that kind of happened. We had this great sort of Western Conference final. [42:30] Where this guy suddenly is like, oh, this is the new Will Chamberlain or whatever. Then he goes and plays the Knicks.

[42:36] becomes the villain. It's like, if you're trying to write it, if the NBA trying to write this narrative, it can't be any better than this. Plus, they lose to the Knicks, one of the most likable teams, I can remember in a very long time, but also from New York, it's just like this contradiction. It all kind of works out at the end. I think that's kind of how the NBA sort of looks at this. Right. And then they had a great draft with a whole bunch of great players that came in.

If you have all these problems, people will forget. Yeah. [43:03] People will forget when they see these amazing games, they'll just sort of be like, oh, yeah, I still, you know, you know, fantastic or whatever. Right. I wanted to ask you something about Jalen Brown, though, and not really about him. [43:15] but sort of about kind of the debate going on around him. And I'm sure you probably talked about this already, but maybe not in this specific way. So, you know, if you, I listen to like Bob Meyer talking, or maybe it was Wynnehurst.

It was kind of, it was a rational guy, right? It was a rational guy talking about analytics. And what do you think they said about the use of analytics? What's the rational take about analytics in basketball? What are you supposed to say if you're like not a crazy person? [43:42] You're supposed to say it's part of the puzzle for evaluating a player in a team. Exactly. It's not the part, but it's part of the process. Okay. [43:54] Thank you. [43:55] But can that be like, can it, if you know, like one of the, the, the, the stats that was really hurting, you know, Jalen Brown was, I think was, it was one where it was like, Jokic was number one.

And then he went down a little bit in the, it was the one that can't, yes. Yeah. Okay. Him and DeRozan were the ones to buy. Yeah. And when you look at all the other guys, [44:16] It actually did seem pretty accurate. It was like Jokic was the best player, but he didn't play as well in the playoffs. So it went down like he kind of went down the list. It kind of made sense. Yeah. [44:26] Like, [44:28] Yes. [44:28] If the idea is that analytics watch every game, that the human eye sees one, but analytics sees them all, [44:37] Can you actually say we need a hybrid of these two things?

[44:41] I mean, it doesn't work that way in chemistry. [44:43] If we're doing chemistry experiments, we can't be like, we got to measure everything out. [44:49] Except when we use, you know, a radioactive material. Then we're just going to eyeball that. Because that's like, if something has kind of a numeric underpinning, [45:01] It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Either you have to say that we're not going to look at this because this is a good point. I don't know if it can be both. I mean, you know what I'm saying?

It seems counterintuitive. It seems like it should be a reasonable person to be like, well, of course you consider this, but you also got to consider the old stuff. But if it's numbers... [45:23] And it's math. [45:25] Don't you have to sort of accept it in totality if you accept it? [45:30] Yeah, House and I talked about this a little yesterday because I went back and I looked at, there was 85 guys ever who had a usage rate of 30% or more. [45:40] and then averaged at least 28 points a game.

There's 85 guys ever in the history of the league. And then if you... [45:47] rank those guys by like wind shares and BORP and some of, you know, some of the better advanced metric stuff that we can understand. [45:55] Jalen was like the worst or one of the worst on every list. [45:58] And the best guys in the league that you would think would be the best guys were the best guys in the list. [46:04] So then the question becomes, [46:06] Can you have outliers with numbers like this? Or, or, [46:12] Is this telling you like, [46:14] Yeah, the eye test is actually fooling you.

It's a tough one for me, and I tried to explain it. [46:20] when I talked to House about it. Because I obviously watch more Celtics. I watch the Celtics the most out of... [46:27] Any team I watch, I have the most opinions on them. I have the most thoughts. I have the most memory of year after year. [46:34] And I just thought he was really good last year. And it was one of the only times, like, what I saw with my eyes did not match... [46:41] the stats. Usually I'm like, [46:44] Oh, I see that, but I can see this too.

This one, I'm like, I'm seeing this. [46:49] And you're telling me this instead. But the good news is they did win 56 games. And maybe that's the ultimate advanced metric. [46:56] And you could argue like, well, how'd they do that? But so it's possible you can just have outliers with stats, right? It's not a massive sample size. [47:05] How can that be? [47:07] I'm not even disagreeing with you, but I'm saying how can there be... Well, here's a good example. If numbers are in a sequence, there isn't sometimes where a number actually is larger than it seems.

That actually six items is more than eight items sometimes. If we're using these, if they're actually doing what they're saying they're doing, the idea of the outlier doesn't really... I mean, it's granted these are still humans. [47:37] 2001 Sixers, where Iverson was a pretty flawed player by the stats year after year because he was a good three-point shooter. He needed the ball a lot. [47:45] defensively, even though I loved Iverson, but he was 5'10", so you could take advantage of him. And you really needed to build the right kind of team around him to protect him.

[47:55] right? And you couldn't have, like, he played with Jerry Stackhouse, it didn't work. You know, he needed people like Eric Snow, Aaron McKee, [48:03] Theo Ratliff, these, Keith Van Horn, these people that filled specific roles. [48:10] trying to build the right kind of team to make Iverson succeed, right? [48:14] So if he comes out of the lineup from that and the team's built around him specifically, it's going to be weird, right? So maybe the on-off stuff will look better with him. [48:23] But it doesn't change the fact that they built this specific team for him that really only succeeded once.

Like, he lost in the playoffs every year except for 0-1. And you could argue in 0-1, like, [48:34] Toronto took them to seven. [48:36] Milwaukee, the next series, is one of the most rigged playoff series we've ever had. Ask any Bucs fan about that series. [48:43] So he didn't have as much success as it seemed. And then every other year he had no success. [48:49] So people revere Iverson. Is Iverson an argument for or against analytics? You're saying it's an argument for analytics. I think, but that's the thing. I think he's an argument for and against because they succeeded and made the finals in 2001.

And the analytics are actually a little bit more favorable to them that year than the other years. [49:06] But he's basically playing the same style every year. [49:08] So it feels like the team they put around him affected his numbers in the right ways. So last year with Jalen, [49:15] The Celtics were supposed to be a 500 team. The only way they were going to do better than that is if you played – [49:21] 90% of the games... [49:23] had this huge burden scoring-wise, right, and had to guard the other guy's best player and do all this stuff that nobody thought he could do, and he did.

[49:32] And they won more games than they thought, but then the analytics said, well... [49:36] Okay. I don't know. You said they were supposed to win 50 games, you said. No, they're supposed to win 41. Okay. Why are they supposed to win 41? [49:43] Because they didn't have Jason Tatum. Yeah, but who said they were supposed to win 41? What was the thing that said if you remove Tatum, this is a 41? Well, you also removed Porzingis and you removed Drew Howard. So they lost three and Al Horford. So they lost four of their best seven guys.

[49:59] including their best guy. [50:01] And Vegas looked at that and all the advance. Everybody who runs numbers is like, yeah, that's a 500 team. So do you suspect that the 41 number was mostly an analytic number? [50:13] Conclusion? Or was that a conclusion of this hybrid? [50:16] where they were using analytics. It's tough because I think it was kind of people throwing that number in the middle because they didn't know if the Celtics were in a tank. [50:24] So it's almost like that's the safe number. And if they tank, you don't get killed.

And if they don't tank, you don't get killed either. [50:30] But I never thought a million years did win 56 games. [50:35] So that's where it's like – and that's where the eye touch just didn't match – [50:40] the analytics in that case. Here's the difference though. [50:43] baseball, which we've discussed in the past, like, [50:46] That is a math sport. In basketball, the teammates and who you put around people and your bench can affect on-off stuff. If your bench is awesome... [50:55] Your on-off stuff is going to look worse than it is.

Somebody like Denver, who's had no bench the last few years, Jokic comes out, they crater. You could see with Wemby in the San Antonio games, when he came out, they were crater, so his on-off would be better. But baseball is just math. And as we've discussed in the past, it's made it less fun to argue about because the argument is solved by math every time. [51:18] That's it. You're just like, oh, here... [51:20] Here's the evidence. Then the argument's over. I'm not because what I'm expressing when I'm asking these questions, I don't want to seem like I really unsure about this.

But like, does it not seem possible? [51:33] That, you know, there's been all these discussions about why the Celtics would have done this. And what no one seems to be saying is this possibility.