Explaining the NBA in Tech Terms!

21:04He has a very long wingspan which is how far your arms go. He's also great at defense. Very similar to OG Ananobi. I'm going to say I think maybe he would be I had to look this up. I'm not going to lie. Sabi Khan, Chief Operating Officer. I knew the position I wanted to give him. I didn't know who it was at Apple. But I think Mikael Bridges is a chief operating officer because he is extremely well-liked. He's a good vibes guy. He doesn't necessarily always make the biggest impact on the game, but he's keeping everybody in line. He's keeping operations going. And we learned that after they won the championship, all the Knicks players talk so highly of him.

21:44Really? And his impact on the locker room and everything. What did he do in the game? He bought them Rolexes. Oh. What did he do in the games that was like a big deal? In the finals or in other games? In the finals. In the finals, he played really good defense. He had a couple games. Actually, technically, the game where Brunson scored almost 50, the final game, he was the second leading scorer with a whole 14 points. Oh, God. Shook it. He's like, you got the chips of products? So he was the second leading scorer. Yeah. He does similar things to O.G. Ananobi. He plays really good defense. and he actually, he does handle the ball a decent amount so he did a decent amount of passing, some testing, you know, whatever our analogy is.

22:24Marques Brownlee:It's like the executive that like gets in the testing and actually does some coding once in a while. Yes. He can do a little bit of everything. But isn't really on stage. He also never misses a game. He has not missed a game his entire NBA career. What? Yeah. What a jinx that one. That's crazy. No, I mean he... It's out there. It's been a thing. It's out there. There's no jinx again at this point. That's wild. Okay. Yeah. So there is obviously some puzzle piece nature to it. You got to have pieces that fit together. Not everyone can have overlapping roles. If you have a bunch of Jalen Brunson's, it sounds great, but you're going to be missing some parts of the game.

22:55Marques Brownlee:So you have these complementing pieces, kind of like different parts of an executive team on a tech company. And they all combine together to do the thing, ship lots of products, stop other companies from shipping products, take competitive wins, give other teams losses. That's it. Can we talk about the positions? like yeah yeah i guess the positions yeah we kind of tried to i mean so chief operating officer being like the small forward who's kind of just in the middle of a whole bunch of things called the captain is often point guard doing most of what is a visible yeah so the point guard in basketball yeah these are fair questions yeah it is never understood these except for center should i just list these real quick yeah okay i'll list them and i'll just give the basketball x but then we can start relating okay you have five positions yeah uh and these positions become more and more uh fluid over time like i feel like the the these used to be more hard and fast you know like each position did a specific role yeah now you're having people have to be way more multifaceted and how they play yeah so they general it's a one through five and the golden state warriors who a lot of tech people maybe are familiar with because of their silicon valley roots.

24:07Let's compare them to Dota. Dota also has five different roles. It actually probably is pretty similar. Wait, I'm going to try and help and we're going to get these as mobile lanes. You're not going to understand. We're just going to explain a niche thing in terms of an even more niche thing. What do you think they know mobile lanes more than? So the five positions. Point guard, traditionally is the smallest player on the team. They're guarding the points from the other team. No, they're running the point. They're running point, right? That's a common term. So they're running point, which is to say that they are the one bringing the ball down the floor and starting what your team does.

24:42So they have the ball in their hands the most. They're setting everybody up. Orchestrating. Orchestrating. I'm kind of surprised that they even have a guy that's supposed to do that every time instead of just everybody. Teams that don't have that struggle mightily. It's like an IGL. Not having a good point guard. The Knicks for a long time did not have a good point guard, which is why we all love Jalen Brunson so much. So the point guard is the guy who brings the ball down the floor, sets everything up for everyone. The shooting guard is the second position. There are two guards. So the shooting guard also generally a little on the smaller end for a basketball player.

25:17But slightly bigger. Yeah, which is to say 6 '5". I'm 5 '9", baby. Point guard. That player typically high-level athlete, good shooter, scores the basketball a lot, delivers lots of products, right? small forward. So there are two forwards. One of them is called the small forward.

25:36Marques Brownlee:The first one was the one point guard. The second one is the two, the shooting guard. Now we're on the three, even bigger. The small forward. Are they always shorter? I mean, you know, Kevin Durant is considered a small forward, but he's like seven feet tall. We're roughly going in order of size. The one is the point guard. The shooting guard is a little bigger. The small forward is a little bigger. Everybody keeps getting a little taller, traditionally. the further you go down the numbers. So the three is a guy who's maybe six foot seven, six, seven. Six, seven. You know? Yeah. And will be a versatile player, defensive minded usually, plays good defense, can shoot well, that sort of thing.

26:17And then you have your power forward. Four. Big, powerful. Now we're getting to the biggest guys. Right. Tank. OG Onanobi on the Knicks is the four. Big strong man, big broad shoulders. Okay. You know, typically like six, 6 '10", 6 '11", 6 '9", maybe, something like that. And then you have the center, which is the biggest player, the five, and otherwise known as the pivot because they pivot in the post and they score down low. They bang elbows and they get rebounds. That's not Jalen Brunson? No. I feel like he does that. Do they generally score the least amount of times? Depending on the center, some of the most prolific scores in NBA history have been centers, like Wilt Chamberlain, who we'll talk about later.

26:56Wilt Chamberlain. We'll talk about him later. But in the modern game, yes, I would say centers generally score the least of the players on the team, for the most part. It feels like Jalen Brunson, because he's shorter, he's kind of shoving people, getting in there, really shoving his way in, and then doing the twos. That's because Jalen Brunson is a dog. That's another basketball term. With a W, right? Yeah, and that's why you sing Who Let the Dogs Out, like the Knicks head coach does. Didn't he say, stop that? at the he did I think Brunson said that I asked you to stop doing that I think Brunson did that or yeah it's hilarious I think yeah that's pretty good okay wait I have so my terms are from League of Legends but I think it should be pretty close to what are the five

27:40Marques Brownlee:League of Legends positions okay so I have point guard is mid mid carry don't call Brunson mid no no mid is like mid is like the most important lane they're the ones who can make it to both lanes they usually have the most kills in a game like they are they're solo dominant. It seems mid is the same in Dota and League. Yeah, and they can win a game. If you are a really good mid laner, you can win a game. That's true, yes. I have Shooting Guard. We call them ADC. I don't know what that means. AD is... Are they the ones that... We have it as a bot lane carry that generally brings a support with them.

28:16They're farming a lot. In League, it's generally attack damage versus attack... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just called carry in Dota. Okay, so carry. So that's like bot carry. Also can have a lot of kills, but has a little more support with them and kind of is a damage whereas the point guard's scoring all the points. So maybe ADC bot carry is getting attack damage carry. Oh, okay. Small forward I have is jungle. We don't have a jungle lane in Dota. There's no jungle in Dota? There is jungle but they kind of push you out of the meta. I could feel my eyes glazing over. Is this what people feel like when I explain sports to them?

28:54Have you? See us the last 20 minutes? Yeah. I get it now. Oh my god, I understand so much about myself and others now. Okay, imagine old jungle then. Well, there was never a dedicated jungle lane. Okay. Well, it's not a lane, but it's a position. In Doty of mid, carry, you have tank, which is called off lane. I know that one. I know that one. This is like when you know one basketball thing. I know tank. I know tank. Yeah, but they don't call it tank in Doty. It's called off lane. whatever yeah and then there's two supports there's hard support which is like the weakest support that supports the hard carry okay and then there's a soft support which supports the tank slash i don't want to say this out loud because i'm going to get destroyed by the dota fans that have made it this far into the basketball con that's right i have a feeling jungle and soft carry or soft support are probably pretty similar like jungle in league is they're just farming the middle and not taking farm from everyone else and then they're supporting all the other lanes by jumping into them and getting them.

29:52Yeah, sort of like soft support. Sorry, what is farm? Is this farmville? In these games, in order to get money to get more items, there's also non-playable creeps. And if you hit them last, you get money. So you are fighting each other and fighting to get money at the same time. What did the creeps do to get categorized as creeps? Were they - Not for this podcast. They work for the wrong people. They're kind of creepy, to be honest. They're creepy looking. Okay, so then I have power forward as top, which for you - Power forward? Power 4 is the basketball term. I've never heard that in Dota before.

30:26I have it as top lane, which for you is off lane. It sounds like they're very similar. And then just main support. Did you call it main support? Hard support. Hard support. Hard support, bot lane support is center. Center. What is the center one in basketball?

30:42Marques Brownlee:Big boy. He's the guy in the middle. Big boy in the middle. Big dude in the middle. He's gobbling up rebounds and kicking it back out. I feel like that would be off lane. who's the last line of defense in does power forwards score more than center traditionally traditionally I'd say a top lane generally so the off lane is usually the initiator so I feel like the initiator has gotta be the point guard okay maybe the no no point guard should definitely be mid lane they're the carry they're getting all the kills they're scoring all the points maybe that could be variable in basketball could be the point guard could be the point guard whoever your best player is Jalen Brunson's a mid laner.

31:21He definitely is. For sure.

31:22Marques Brownlee:Here's the thing. And this might be true about Dota too. There's the roles and the play style from the one through the five, but different teams have a different member of that team being the best player. That's super true. So if your best player is your one, then you build your team around that. If your best player is your three, then you build your team around that. If your best player is a five, you build your team around that. I don't think how much you compared them perfectly. That makes this argument even stronger. like yeah a top lane can carry as an unkillable tank like sometimes and all sports are the same yeah that's what we're saying even esports even esports even esports can you guys so i play cs and valorant can you explain oh my god and how about candy crush wait so really the basketball players are like the different angry birds no no i mean you're not wrong honestly i could do that i'm a big angry birds guy so i could do that let's let's continue with the basketball tech stuff because we are a tech podcast yeah so allegedly what's so far what's next on your on your we talk about types of shots yeah well so sure that's because david did ask what a layup is yeah yeah so the basket you know the basket looks like and you know what it means to score a basket the ball goes through the basket right yeah yeah so further away from the basket the harder is shot yeah right right next to the basket if you're just laying it off the glass and in that's called a layup you just literally go lay up right next to the basket if you actually jump up and slam it through the basket that's a slam dunk slam dunk you've heard of that term i've heard dunk yeah you've heard of a slam dunk product like yeah something is a slam dunk it's like the easiest bam guarantee it's gonna be a winner for sure like that's apple made a fitness band slam dunk apple added usbc to airpods max slam dunk exactly i don't know about that as you get further away all of these all these shots by the way are worth two points yeah Yeah, unless you're far enough away.

33:15Marques Brownlee:If you get far enough away, there's a line, an arc around the basket. It's a three-point line. If you shoot from behind the three-point line and score, it's worth three points. You can imagine the distribution being the easiest shots are right next to the basket. They're worth two points. Unless you're Steph Curry. We'll get to him. He makes it look really easy. He makes it look really easy. Analytically, the next easiest shot is slightly further away and slightly further away. but you get to a point where if you're at the longest possible two-pointer okay you might as well step back and make it a three-pointer because it's not much harder but it's worth 50 percent more points okay a lot of teams study this and they realize wow if we want to ship a lot of products it would be more efficient for us to ship a lot of three-pointers right even though they're a little bit harder they're worth a lot more points every ev startup ever who's like we'd rather ship the really expensive ones right now.

34:08Oh. Before the cheap ones.

34:10Marques Brownlee:The ones that feel like they're slightly harder to ship but that you know you will ship way more of. Right. That's the stuff that they're optimizing for. Which is like Apple's strategy, right? Like Samsung ships like a bazillion SKUs of their phones and so does Evo and Oppo. But Apple's just like we only make five products but every single one of them is going to sell a bazillion. That's a really good, yeah. So certain companies like Samsung who ship a ton of stuff they're like, I'm trying to think of a team that just shoots whatever. The Hornets. The Brooklyn Nets a few years ago. Is that going to say the Hornets?

34:37Marques Brownlee:The Hornets. Yeah. They'll just shoot their shot chart, which is like the graph on the court of where they shoot from, is all over the place. Yeah. And it's fine because they're equally good at everything. And they score a lot of points. They score a lot of points. So they take a lot of weird shots, but they hit a lot of them. But you might have heard of the Golden State Warriors, who are maybe closer to Apple, conveniently because they're a California team, but they have a slightly more selective shot chart, meaning they're really good at three-pointers and layups and dunks. Yeah. And why bother with the mid-range stuff?

35:07Marques Brownlee:Like Apple could add stuff to their plate and ship more products, but iPhones, Macs, that's all they really have to ship. Unless you're Steph Curry and you shoot from half core, and that's like if the Vision Pro was successful. Yeah, you've probably heard. Yeah, there's terms like a Hail Mary or like a deep buzzer beater. Yeah, yeah. That would be like a Vision Pro. Deep three, yeah. Okay. So, yeah, three-pointers. Steph Curry is really good at three-pointers. that's like Apple being really good at iPhones. They ship a ton of them and there's not many who can stop it. And why do anything else at this point?

35:45Adam and I actually related that when we were cooking up this episode to like a software feature that initially you didn't think you needed, but that then you get it and then you never want to live without it again. It's like it was, the three point shot was disregarded for a long time as just sort of a luxury. Oh, wireless charging. Right. And then it became... I love three-pointers. Yeah. And then suddenly teams came around on it and they said, wait, three is greater than two. Why don't we shoot more of these? It's not long to figure that out. No wire is better than wire. I don't get how people can't figure that out.

36:22Right. And then teams just became... Now it's like you can't live without it. It's the feature you can't live without. NFC, wireless charging. Yeah. Oh. Are you still going to talk about points? Because I have two questions about points. Do you want me to give the nerdy math that has defined the NBA for the last 10 years? Yeah. I want to make your guys' eyes glaze over real quick. I'm ready. Oh, okay. All right. Accomplish, glaze. All right. So the three-point shot used to be a luxury in the NBA. It was introduced in the 1979 to 80 season, where before that, any shot on the court was worth only two points.

36:56What? Yeah, they used to not. There was no extra line. That's crazy. Yeah. Wow. The 80s. So we're 40 years away. This has already gone off the rails. This is not going to be a cutaway now. I'm blown away by that. Sorry, sorry, sorry. So when I was watching the NBA in the 90s. There was a three point. There was already a three point. Did you hear when I said it? They introduced it 79, 80 seasons. Yeah, that's crazy. That's so wild. Okay. Okay. So I'll start from the top. No, no. All right. All right. Come on. So the three point shot is longer than a two point shot. There's a line that defines where you do it.

37:26And it's worth, as the name implies, three points instead of two points. Right. So teams for decades still ran most of their offense inside the three-point line because that was previously what was considered real basketball or whatever. And that's just what teams were used to. But around 2014-15, Steph Curry's rise with the Warriors and they're getting Steve Kerr as head coach, teams finally did some math and realized that three is greater than two. So explain how this works percentages-wise. Right. So the nerdy math that has basically defined the NBA for the last decade is this. Every possession in the NBA is dictated by the amount of points you can get per possession.

38:08Right. So what is a possession? So possession each time you hold the ball and bring it down the floor and try to score. Right. A good point per possession number is generally anything over one. If you're scoring 50 percent of the time on a two point shot, that's one point per possession. Right. So shooting 60 percent on two point shots has generally been kind of the line considered good for shooting a two point shot. If you shoot 60 percent of the time you make it, that's considered good. That's one point two points per possession. OK. However, teams finally figured out, wait, if we shoot 40 percent from three.

38:47Right. That's the same as shooting 60 percent from two. It's all one point two points per possession. And therefore, teams put a huge emphasis on shooting threes about 10 years ago. And it has completely changed the entire game of basketball and made it more focused on shooting threes instead of twos. Would you say that threes are also harder to guard? To an extent. It's also changed how defense is.

39:14Marques Brownlee:I think the idea is it's easier to get above 40 % from three than it is to get above 60 % from two. Right. So people are, if you can get a layup or an easy two, that's great. But those mid-range shots that are like a jump shot and someone's guarding you, you might as well step back behind the three-point line and make 40 % of those instead of taking a long two and trying to make 60 % of those. Do you need an explanation of what a jump shot is, by the way? You jump and then you shoot it? Yeah. Okay. It's pretty self-explanatory, but I wanted to make sure. I didn't even have a name for that. Thank you.

39:47Because you could take a set. Because a layup, you don't have to jump. You can also take a set shot. You can take a shot without jumping. right next to the basket you just sort of lay it up that's what layup is also the jumping is part of strategy early on you used to have your feet set when you shot but then people discovered that if you jump and then shoot you can get your shot even higher up so nobody can block it how long did it take for them to realize that basketball seems like they're just discovering the simplest thing ever it's not new Closer to basket. This is all in the 60s, like at the beginning.

40:23I think the jump shot came about in like the 50s. Wait, when did basketball start? 1930-something. Okay. With a peach basket. What is that? James Nason. A basket that you would collect peaches. Oh, that's good. Put a basket on a pole and threw a ball into it. Oh, 1891. Man, I thought it was... 1891? The first game was in 1891. And it took them until the 50s to figure out if you jump, it goes higher? I'm approximating. And that three is more than two?

40:49Marques Brownlee:it's not that it took them that long to figure it out but it's like you the whole point of like scoring points is you want to be consistent and make it easy and if you're jumping that introduces a variable of like well if i jump a different height i got to compensate for that and it's difficult and so a lot of training and a lot of people doing it eventually they figured out how to jump consistently and make shots it's the same as the three-point line like that existed for many many years it's not like nobody realized it was worth three but teams finally got good enough at making that very long 25-foot shot that it finally became worth it.

41:20Marques Brownlee:We can finally shoot 40 % from three. So the evolution of the game has pushed slowly, slowly, slowly, incrementally better and better, kind of like the chip getting slightly faster on the iPhone. It's not like we didn't know the faster chip could eventually play this game, but we've been working towards this slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, generation after generation until it's gotten to where it is today. Okay. Okay, two questions about points. Yes. Points. Points. Do you want the short one or the long one first? Either. I guess both. Both at the same time. One, basketball players, why do they miss free throws?

41:51Why do they miss? I can answer this. They get so much money. Why? I can answer this. It's literally the same thing every time. It's called free. It's true. It should always work. It should be a free point. Fantastic question.

42:04Marques Brownlee:I mean, do you hit three throws? So, here's the real answer. I'm not getting paid millions of dollars. Here's the real answer. If you watch an NBA player in an empty gym, they basically make every shot they take. I've never seen Karen Clark miss. It's kind of terrifying. Like they make basically every shot, right? When you introduce the variable of the real world, stuff gets a little weird sometimes. There's a crowd behind the basket. They're cheering. There's pressure. There's a score. There's people who are like hoping, you know, there's a whole bunch more to it. This is like shipping software with bugs.

42:36Marques Brownlee:Yeah, I was literally about to say bugs, dude. In theory, it should work 100 % of the time. I'm just pressing the button and the software is supposed to do the thing. of course it should work every single time. It should be a free, it should be a layup for these companies. It should work every time. That's a really good analogy. But for some reason, you put it in the real world and then people get their hands on it and it's doing stuff that you didn't expect and it's odd. And it's not so much, yeah, obviously some of it is a skill issue, but it is just the fact that the real world variables sometimes throws you off.

43:06Marques Brownlee:It throws some off more than it throws others off. It's like why did the screenshot tool in iOS 27 just not crop things anymore? Like they couldn't have changed the code where they're like, we're changing the way screenshots work completely. They didn't do that. It's the same as before, but now it just doesn't work. What happened? What happened? And that's like changing your shooting form. Sometimes players, they go, I don't think the way I'm shooting is proper. And then they change how they shoot and then it ruins it. They drag their liquid glass slider. That's crazy. Okay. Okay. I really like the bug analogy.

43:38My second question. When do I cheer for a point? Because there are so many of them. yeah i listen if you have to cheer 50 times a game you're not cheering as loud as you shouldn't no that's a good that's a bad no i think this is a super because andrew comes from a sport where

43:51Marques Brownlee:they score once or twice so you can't a little more so this ain't soccer the general rule of basketball is you wait the most important times of the game are the final two minutes of each half so why wouldn't you only show up for the final two minutes because you're a real fan so there's a storyline there's a storyline okay so it all adds up there are some more important baskets than others. So obviously if you're shipping 100 products in four quarters not every product is going to get a standing ovation. We could do an Apple analogy for this. The bucket that they make in the middle of the third quarter is the polishing cloth.

44:27Marques Brownlee:Nobody needs to cheer. There might be a dunk. It's a really good cloth. There's going to be some fans that are going to cheer for that. That's fine. The buzzer beater at the end of the fourth quarter that wins you the game is the iPhone. Yeah. You know, it's... They're going to ship this iPhone and it's going to push them over the edge and the fans will go, ah, now we're the best. They cheer a lot of people. I have another analogy here. Yeah. So staying for all of the points is kind of like going to see these developer conferences at IO. So you can see what's coming down. Like if you're there in the middle of a game and your team makes a bucket that is like they haven't scored in so long, but then they finally make a bucket, you can feel the momentum shift and you can be like, oh, okay, this team is now going to, from this point forward, do well.

45:14And that's kind of like these developer conferences. You go to the developer conference and you can see where the company's vision is going. And you're like, okay, wait, they're on to something here. And those are the points in the middle that don't really matter, quote unquote. That's like the filler episodes in anime. Sure. It means something to the story, but you can probably just watch the important ones. It's like the bonus episodes on the Waveform podcast. That's what I was going to say. Oh my god, this is like Inception now. We're on a bonus episode. I just felt the momentum shift, I think.

45:47You know how on the Waveform podcast when they do the bonus episodes, they're not really that important to the story, but... But the fans stay. And the fans stay. And you know where we're going as a filler episode. This is the most anime filler episode of all Waveform episodes. This is our crossover, dude. This is the baseball episode of Dragon Ball Super right now.

46:07Marques Brownlee:I like the draft, because this is a really interesting one. that's the it's unique basketball draft the draft yes it's unique to sports there is no equivalent for this in the tech world so i'm gonna i'm gonna give you a what if okay that might keep it interesting because we have we have these tech companies operating competing against each other and you know capitalism is supposed to say that the best products and the best ones win in sports if we leave it like that for too long you're gonna get teams that are just so far ahead of other teams that the other especially newer franchises will never get any chance to catch up.

46:36Marques Brownlee:So here's what we do. After every year, every season, we have a draft. And the team that was the worst this past year gets the first pick in the draft, roughly. This is an exact science. But they get the highest picks in the draft. And the teams that were really, really, really good, okay, you don't need a bunch more talent. So you get the last picks in the draft. And the draft is drafting among this brand new upcoming talent from college, similar to tech companies. When they hit 18, right? Basically. So here's a what if for you. Imagine if the least successful tech companies the last year got the most, the highest picks of all the best college talent going to them.

47:17Marques Brownlee:And the most successful teams, the best tech companies in the world, didn't get any of that talent. Yeah. They have to pick the scraps from who's left over. Just pretend for a minute that money doesn't exist. Yeah. It's almost the exact opposite of what tech does. because when you graduate college at like top of your class, you're probably going to be poached by the biggest and you're going to want to pick the biggest company because you'll make the most money and go to the thing that's already doing really well. So it's the opposite. I guess if college players didn't have a draft, they would leave college and be like, oh, the team that just won the championship wants me.

47:50I'm going to want to play for the team that won the championship. Maybe this is how we bust up big tech. We institute a draft. And then the lesser companies will become better.

48:00Marques Brownlee:It makes it's more easy to see in sports because the teams are smaller and one high talent can have a big impact on winning. But if you imagine essentially the draft from college upcoming talent in that way in tech, it would be like if the best companies who are the most successful made the most money do not have access to the best talent. They have to do it again next year. Yeah. With their same talent. Like best guy out of Stanford's like, I have to go work for Humane. Ouch. But sometimes what happens is all of that talent goes to Humane and then Humane has a great... And then Humane figures it out.

48:35And then HP makes a printer that can work.

48:37Marques Brownlee:And you're like, wow. It's crazy. See, we have all this competition. It's an even playing field again. So people like that. In the sports world, we really like that it keeps it even and interesting. The worst teams get way better. Yeah, I mean, it would be cool if like, you know, instead of Apple having 40 % of the RAM supply every single year, if suddenly that went to like an up and coming company. Oh, man. Yeah, maybe that's the way we do the draft. we make it RAM supply that almost feels like Formula 1 in terms of like wind tunnel time where like the worst teams get more tunnel time yeah to like develop their cards I mean it's sports still but yeah exactly okay I like what do they call that in Dota that's a balance patch basically oh a balance balance patch man if tech had balance patches you know the you know the physics I don't know how real this is but you know the like video game slingshot physics where if you're in last place in Mario Kart you get all the better power ups yeah yeah socialism it's like that yeah okay yeah socialism yeah Yeah.

49:27Marques Brownlee:So if the team, if you're in last place, here's a weird thing. Okay. And this is kind of a problem in the NBA and in sports. Sometimes someone will intentionally go to last place in Mario Kart to get the better power-ups because they know that that's going to get them back to practice. Wow. Totally. I don't know why right there you really sounded like you were explaining it to your child. Do they do this in basketball? Yeah, they do this in basketball. They will intentionally. They'll do what's called tanking. Yeah. You tank your season. Shouldn't that be against the rules? It should, and they just instituted new rules to stop it.

50:00Wait, what is it? The PWHL has an awesome rule for this. So, okay, without getting too into the weeds on it, basically what the – so the NBA has a lottery at the end of the season. Typically, if you're worse, you get a higher chance of getting the number one overall pick. What they're now doing is they're flattening those odds. So they're making it so that the worst teams actually only get like – instead of it used to be like a 25 % chance of getting the number one pick, But now you have only like a 10 % chance. And then the teams in the middle get a slightly better amount. And then the teams actually that barely missed the playoffs now get like an 8 % chance of getting the number one pick.

50:34Marques Brownlee:So what's that power up in Mario Kart where you just get like the black thing, the bullet thing, and you just soar across everything? That's like the number one pick in the draft. It's not a guarantee, but the number one pick in the draft is going to be immensely talented and push you at least to the middle. To the middle of the draft. To the middle, at least to like 30. So there will be a team slash Mario Kart player with more than enough talent and skill to come in second or third place. But they see that they're not going to win. So they just hit the brakes and go all the way to last place.

51:04Marques Brownlee:They pick up the bullet and then they go all the way back to second or first. And you're like, that's just so long. Your reaction is the general public's reaction to tanking in the NBA. So you nailed it. It took them this many years to make that against the rules? They tried to. it's actually hard to force so initially it was literally like if you are the last place team you are the first pick in the draft then it was like okay I will literally lose all of my games because I want to be the first pick of the draft they're like okay okay okay okay if you are in the bottom five then we'll have this little lottery system and you'll get more of a chance of last of first pick but you're not gonna guarantee first pick and it's still a pretty good chance of first pick if you're in last place so the teams are still trying to get last place so they're like alright There ever been a circumstance where multiple teams were trying to tank at the same time?

51:53Literally this year. And nobody could win because everyone was trying to lose? Yeah. Is that what the Sixers did? They did last year, yeah. The Sixers tanked last year. And Ellis is a fan of these? Yeah. Wow.

52:04Marques Brownlee:He's watching this. You know. Ellis is on his plane back from vacation listening to this. It's kind of funny because kind of like in tech and in a lot of other things, the worst thing to do is be like in purgatory in the mid. Yeah. You want to be winning franchise, top of your game, in your prime, like unbeatable. Or just bankrupt, wipe it, start it over, right? Because if you're in purgatory, like teetering, and you can't really do anything about it. Like one plus. The draft is like a government bailout. Like you don't want to be a mid-team forever. So a good draft pick could finally change that for you.

52:42Marques Brownlee:So a mid-team will tank to try to get a good draft pick. they penalize you if you if they catch you tanking allegedly allegedly but it's yeah it's like hey billionaire owner that wasn't great it was a fifty thousand dollar fight it's like oh okay whatever this might be we're going further from tech but i just want to explain to you guys what the women's hockey league is doing they do something called the gold plan well once you are mathematically eliminated then your wins start accumulating points towards the draft pick So every time a team gets eliminated, every win they get after that gets them closer.

53:19That's so smart. So it incentivizes you to win. Why don't they do that in basketball?

53:24Marques Brownlee:Take no Adam Silver. Come on, man. Specifically good because a lot of late season games are mathematically irrelevant. It'll be like, oh, we've scheduled this out from the beginning of the season. But it turns out this Charlotte Hornets versus Chicago Bulls game is two teams that are already mathematically eliminated and have no reason to win. and so they sit all of their best players and people will go to the game and pay and show up and get to watch horrible basketball. Or not show up at all and the arena's empty. Yeah, and it's just a pain. So that would make those games interesting to watch because those are useful.

53:57Marques Brownlee:Yeah, because then they might get a draft pick. And all the statisticians show up. That's a really good idea. Shout out to that league. That's awesome. Yeah, cool. Cool. Okay, should we take a break? We've gone way into the routes. I assumed you were putting a break in there somewhere. I forgot. Here is a natural spot for a break. Okay. We'll be right back.

54:41Marques Brownlee:like that. I filed a claim in under two minutes on the Geico app, and they handled it from there. It was taken care of almost as quickly as it happened. It feels good to get help quick. It feels good to Geico. Whoa. Okay. This one says you get a free phone if you switch. Hey, this one also says you get a free phone if you switch. Yeah, they all do one. The T-Mobile one says their customers had the lowest wireless bills versus the other big guys over the past five years. And their latest experience plans have Netflix included, plus a year of DashPass by DoorDash. Hang on, let me see that. Oh yeah, we're switching.

55:16Marques Brownlee:That's what I'm talking about. Do we clap now or? And T-Mobile gets savings that keep stacking up. That's value you can feel every day. And right now, bring your phone to T-Mobile and we'll give you$400 when you switch. Savings based on Harris X billing snapshots from Q3 2021 to Q4 2025 compared to average AT &T and Verizon bills. Comparison includes discounts, credits, and Optional charges$400 with new account on qualifying line. Unlock device credit. Boarded 90 plus days with device and carrier. Tidally redemption required. Virtual mastercard typically takes 14 weeks. No cash access and expires in six months.

55:47Card issue by Sunrise Banks and a member FDIC. Visit T-Mobile.com.

55:51Marques Brownlee:One, two, three. I'm stand-up comedian, John Marco Cerezi. And I'm actor, penis model, Russell Daniels. The downside is our podcast where we bring on guests to talk about how miserable their lives are. Because let's face it, things are not getting better. Every episode, we talk about what's wrong with our lives, our guests' lives, the world, but in a fun way. Bottom line is you're going to walk away feeling better about your life. We've had so many cool guests. Caleb Huron. Busy Phillips. Stavros Halkias. Laverne Cox. Hassan Piker. Alana Glazer. I promise you're going to have a good time. Now on the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is The Downside.

56:34Welcome back. I have a question. What does the coach do?

56:38Marques Brownlee:Yes. So like, you know, Mike Brown, you know, he's the Knicks coach. He coached the Sacramento Kings before this. Yes. Got booted off the Sacramento Kings. Wow. Ball. Ball knowledge. Just saying. You know how many teams he's been fired from? Like half a dozen. It's crazy. And it's because coaching and pros were so stupid. I think there's a technology for that, too. The top teams like trade. That's just every employee of a major tech company. Look at their LinkedIn. They look like a coach in the NBA. That goes somewhere else. Yeah. Tesla, Apple, Google. Because my question about the coach is like, you know, they like call timeouts and then they talk to the players.

57:16But like, what are they talking to them about? Like, how does this work?

57:18Marques Brownlee:Yeah. So the coach knows the range of talents of the players really well. And before every game, they do the hard work of looking at what the other team is really good at and how their team compares. and what they should do to beat the other team. So the players, they come to the table with their skills, and they're like, yeah, I'm going to dunk it. And they're like, all right, you're good at dunking it. I'm going to put you in positions where you get a lot of dunks. But if you're playing against a team that's really good at defending dunks, they're like, all right, you're going to get rebounds and pass it out to the shooter because they're bad at defending shooters.

57:49Marques Brownlee:So they're the brains orchestrating what the players are doing in theory. Yeah, I mean, if we're talking about like a technology, If we go to the hardware side, they're like the logic board or whatever. It is you with a bunch of agents. You are the orchestrator. All the players think they're building this incredible thing, but they need the person from outside to wrangle them back in. Snapchat could have used a coach to tell them those glasses are ridiculous. Okay, so the Snapchat CEO in this analogy, who clearly is the one that thought those were a good idea. Well, I don't know about that. You have to wear them.

58:26It seems like it. I don't know. But so whoever the person was that was pushing for the Snapchat spectacles the most. Yeah. Specs. The specs. That person is like a basketball player that needs to be wrangled in and needs to be told you're shooting too much and you're not making your shots. Yeah. So we're going to bench you. Okay. So that's the purpose of a coach. So that's like the board? Sure. Maybe. Because the board can like switch out. Can kibosh it. could switch out the CEO if they're not doing a good job. Yeah, kind of. This is not a pure one-to-one because there's also some way to say that the coach and the assistant coaches could be like a CEO, COO, CMO, that sort of thing.

59:10There's an assistant coach too. There's like multiple assistants. A bunch. So Mike Brown famously this year was very collaborative. That was part of why they hired him. He was very open to listening to his assistant coaches that focus on different areas of the game. So in pure basketball terms, the Knicks had like an assistant that was more focused on the offense. They had an assistant that was more focused on the defense. They had another guy that would sit on the second row that literally his whole job was, should we review this play or not? Because you get to challenge plays if you think that the referees got the call wrong.

59:45And the Knicks had a super high conversion rate on successful challenges of bad calls. Oh, interesting. Like the legal team. That's like their legal team. Should we appeal this lawsuit? Yeah. it's like is the lawsuit worth pursuing yes or no that's basically they have an assistant that's like that that's like their legal counsel yeah okay um yeah but yeah the coach makes decisions that it leads to the overall success and cycles people in and out so a board is probably a good thing you know brings in turnover has some churn you know to make sure that things stay fresh

1:00:18Marques Brownlee:manages egos players doing pretty well but kind of getting tired hey i know you're good but you're getting tired let me put the bench player on okay they also set the roadmap in a way because so for example the knicks this year played a style of defense under their old coach where you would try to force people to the perimeter to try to get them away from the inside of the so that they could get more two-pointers because jalen brunson's good at two-pointers well so this i'm talking about what they would do on defense so the knicks would try to make the other team not get to the inside for easy shots right right oh and then the knicks during their worst stretch this year tried something new and said, what if we defended the perimeter a lot, the three-point shot, and let teams get to the inside?

1:00:57And then teams were just getting layups left and right, and it was not pretty. So then they switched their scheme back. Okay. They didn't have like a Wemby. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Alex just broke a little bit. The Spurs. They didn't have anyone to flagrant foul the other team. Yeah.

1:01:13Marques Brownlee:The Spurs, you might know, have a player who's seven foot six with really long arms called Victor Wembenyama. Defensive player of the year. Defensive player of the year. And so their entire defensive strategy, if you were smart, the coaches would go, hey, really close out on anyone trying to shoot a three pointer. Make them stop pump fake and try to dribble and drive for a two because we've got an alien in there who will just block everything. Is it pump fake where you pretend to shoot and then you don't? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Steph Curry does that a lot. Yes. He's very good at it. It's like when you're about to ship a product and then you don't.

1:01:43Marques Brownlee:Like air power. It's like head fake. It's like the Streetlight Manifesto album. We're releasing. Just kidding. Let's go. Oh, you got pump fakes, bro. Yeah. David just broke inside. Okay, speaking of GTA. GTA.

1:02:05Rockstar, they are the best at pump fakes. That's true. Look at this trailer. Look at this trailer. You mentioned the ref. Yes. So I went to a basketball game with you. Yeah. Well, no, we watched it. We watched it on TV. On TV. I yelled at the refs a lot. I lost my voice. So there were multiple points in the game where the ref would come out and he would talk about the type of foul. So can you explain the types of fouls that exist? Yeah. Wow, it's so good. That's literally the next thing on the document. Are you sure you didn't read this? I'm not on the document. That's crazy.

1:02:35Marques Brownlee:There's two types of fouls. All right. So there's different types of fouls and violations. Yeah. So we'll start with just a foul. Okay. So a foul is when a player prevents another player from taking and or making a shot. Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Well, we should start with the fact that basketball is a, quote, non-contact sport. Oh. So in the basic sense, you can guard, but you can't make too much contact, and that would be a foul. Unless you're Victor Wembeoma. Yes, pretty much. If you make too much contact, it's a foul. Unless you're Victor Wembeoma. The referees are the ones who decide how much contact is too much contact.

1:03:10And the thing is, especially with shooting, you're allowed to affect them however you can without touching their body while they're shooting. Unless you're Victor Wambiyama. Unless you're Victor Wambiyama. Yeah, so unless you're Victor Wambiyama. Anyway, but so the basic rule of fouling is if someone is trying to shoot, you can do whatever you can without touching their arms. Okay. You can also touch the ball. That's legal. If you just touch the ball, that's called all ball. You hit the ball, that's a block. All ball. Nice block. Yes. Nice block. It's a block. Right. But if you hit their arm, then you're affecting their ability to shoot, and that's a foul.

1:03:45Okay. Right? I feel like it's got to be more than just your arms, because if I just punch someone in the gut. I'm trying to make it as simple as I can, but yes, if you do anything, that's a Wemby foul.

1:03:55Marques Brownlee:It's any level of contact with the player. Yeah. Like breaking their ACL. While they're shooting, while they're dribbling, anything. It's obviously more important to not foul when they're shooting, because if you foul someone while they're shooting, then they go to the free throw line to make up for it. So if I go to take a shot and you don't foul and I make it, great. If I miss, oh well. But if I go to take a shot and you foul me, now I can go take those two free throws because I probably would have made it if you didn't foul me. So if you think someone's got a lot of bugs, foul them because they suck at free throws.

1:04:27You can also think of this a bit like a data breach where a company goes, whoopsie, we accidentally gave your credit card information away. You can join a class action suit and get$5 from us now, and that's your free throw. That's why it's only one point. Yeah, right. One point, yeah. One point. Okay, yeah,$5, one point. Yeah,$5, one point. Each point in the NBA is worth$5.

1:04:49Marques Brownlee:Now, the thing that you're talking about, which is the referee going to the table and figuring out what type of foul it is, is if you foul someone so hard and so egregiously, you break the rule so hard, it is more than a normal foul, then they'll penalize you even more than just free throws. So if someone goes to shoot or whatever and I punch you in the chest or whatever Andrew said. if you do what Wemmy would do. That would be called not just a common foul, but that's a flagrant foul. And there's actually flagrant foul level one or level two. There's two levels of flagrant foul? The penalty is worse.

1:05:23Marques Brownlee:A flagrant foul level one is free throws and you get the ball again. Oh, you get to start with the ball after. And a flagrant foul level two is free throws and the ball again and the player that committed it gets immediately tossed from the game. For the rest of the game? For the rest of the game. It's a red card, baby. It's a red card. But you're allowed to have a player sub in for them, right? On the court. Yeah. Red cards, you lose. Red card, you lose the player's spot. Wait, Adam, have you ever watched soccer before? That's weird. It's called football, actually. Footy. Wait, so what do you have to do to get a red card?

1:05:57That would be the flagrant level two. Flagrant level two. So sometimes. You just have one less player the whole game? No, no, no. Not in basketball.

1:06:02Marques Brownlee:That's only for soccer. Oh, okay. Soccer, you do lose a player for the whole rest of the game. Right. So sometimes there's some super heavy level of contact, and the player falls over. It looks like he's hurt. and they called it a regular foul, but they're like, well, actually, maybe that was a lot. So they'll go and review it, look at the replay, and decide we're going to upgrade that or not to a flagrant. A large part of flagrant fouling, too, is that they determined that it was not a basketball play, that it was just with the intent of hurting someone, basically. So the tech equivalent would be like, see, it's a little different in tech again, but there are rules.

1:06:36Marques Brownlee:There are laws. There are laws. There are laws. There you go. And these companies are supposed to follow these laws, but sometimes they will do things that are against the rules and they should be penalized for it. And that will come in the form of like, you broke the law. Now we're going to sue you. You'll get sued. Yeah. BMW cheating on gas emissions. For example. Yeah. That might even be considered a flagrant foul. Sometimes the things that they do are so obviously cheating and so obviously against the rules that they get penalized above and beyond, almost to make an example of them. This happens all the time in tech with companies.

1:07:15Marques Brownlee:That would be like a flagrant foul. Yeah, okay. It should really affect you. So physically, what's the difference between flagrant foul level one and level two? Often it's just intent or follow through. They'll say things like wind up impact and follow through or excessive. it actually carries sort of a similar thing to like manslaughter versus murder it's like were you just reckless or did you have malice at forethought about what you were going to do did you put a was there a bug in the software or did you put a tracker in the software when Motorola had the yeah right was that a whoopsie or was that a we're trying to make a lot of money exactly okay so that is the tech equivalent so in theory the team's played by the rules the whole time but it's competition.

1:08:00Marques Brownlee:They're going to be pushing the rules. They're going to be pushing the limits all the time. Fouls are expected to happen. We would hope that the referees accurately set the line in the same place every time so that the players know exactly how aggressive they can be. Sometimes they don't. And then refs, you suck, is one of the chants that sports fans will say because they don't get it right every time. Am I correct that if you get three flagrant fouls in a season, you get kicked off for the rest of the season? No. There's a couple of rules around fouls. If one player fouls six times in one game.

1:08:34Marques Brownlee:Regular foul. Regular foul. Six regular fouls in one game, they're out for the rest of the game. Okay. That's the limit for regular fouls. Okay. If one player has two flagrant penalty ones, they're ejected for the rest of the game. For the rest of the game. If a player has a single flagrant penalty two, they're ejected for the rest of the game. But the other thing that I was explaining, I know why you're asking this because I explained this to you. the other day. But basically, in the postseason especially, you get a certain number of points. What's the postseason? The postseason is the playoffs.

1:09:07Marques Brownlee:That's like September, October. After the regular season is done, then you play for the championship. That's called the postseason. You're going to have to explain those things. That's busy season. Yeah, it's busy season. When we have our iPhone events, our pixel events. That's our playoffs. Our playoffs, which is our analogy from Yiddel, watch Yiddel. But yeah, so basically, in the postseason during the most important games during the playoffs so the postseason is the playoffs is the playoffs it's those are yeah the playoffs are when the eastern conference or the western conference compete against each other and then the winner of each conference faces each other in the finals but which is why the knicks just faced the spurs and all the points you get in the regular season only some teams make it to the play yes so in the regular season you're trying to make it to the playoffs then matching happens and then you're slowly working yeah and then you all play each other and then figure out who the true best team is.

1:09:57Wait for him!

1:10:02So, as it relates to fouls in the postseason, the playoffs, synonyms, if you get a certain number of flagrant fouls in the postseason, then you get suspended for an additional game. So, Wemby should have been suspended for an additional game against the Knicks because he committed numerous flagrant fouls. But we'll call him like open AI. They get to steal your data, train their models on stuff illegally. And yet, somehow there's just a government blind eye to it, and they never really get penalized. Get over the number of flagrant fouls. Well, he should have. He should have had a number of more flagrant fouls.

1:10:37It was like, open AI, did you flagrant foul steal all those videos from you? So the play where he shoved Brunton into the ground was a basketball play, is what you're telling me.

1:10:47Marques Brownlee:This was a referee issue that you had. Yes, it's a regulatory issue. If you are, this is, and we'll get into fandoms in a second. If you are a fan of one of these tech companies slash teams, then you may interpret. Maybe saying you guys next to each other was a bad idea. You may interpret the lawsuits that hit them a little bit differently than if you are not. Oh, I see. All I'm saying is your dad and I are fans of the same tech company in this analogy. So speak carefully, pal. I'm just saying. But if there are a lot of people who are especially like I try to consider myself neutral. I don't have a horse in the race.

1:11:23Marques Brownlee:I've seen lots of fouls that I would think are flagrants that don't get calls from both teams. But that's up to the refs. So the referees are humans instead of machines. And so they almost act like a hand on the scale a little bit sometimes where it can feel like they're being certain referees are are almost like only judging one way. They're only enforcing the rules for one company and not the other. Yeah, like that whole series. Yeah. It feels kind of weird. There's famously a couple. David has been Knicks-pilled so long. Dude, there's famously a referee. David's a bigger Knicks fan than me at this point.

1:11:57Marques Brownlee:It's crazy. There's famously a referee. I'm trying to remember the stat, but Chris Paul is like 0 for 12 against Scott Foster in the playoffs or something. Like every time this one referee has refereed this one player in a playoffs game, he has lost. similar to every time this one judge judges this one company in a lawsuit they lose every time and it's like okay they're a judge they're supposed to be impartial but they're not and every case should be unique but damn oh and 12 against this judge this seems kind of like a vendetta at this have they ever charged any of the refs for like they're oh famously a ref in the 2000s was busted for betting on games and fixing games that's probably happened more now right it's gonna probably start happening way more actually in coffee zeal it's not refs but yeah players are like doing stuff like this because they were players that were like talking about betting websites yeah there was promote there's some who are like i'm gonna go out in the first quarter with like a foot injury so yeah bet that i'm that happened there was an nba player within the last couple years that got banned for life for doing that he was a very low level player and he would he would he had a discord group all things and would put he would be like guys bet the under on my rebounds today.

1:13:09He's like, I'm going to check in for 30 seconds and then say my tummy hurts and sell myself out. That's insane. He put that in writing? Yeah. That's a good coffee zone. In a Discord, dude. Stupid. It's crazy. That is wild, but it's so stupid.

1:13:21Marques Brownlee:So anyway, yeah, we hope for the refs to be, just like judges, impartial, but they're not. That is interpreted very much based on where you are. If you're maybe working for a company. Exactly. I do feel like we should, this is going so long already, I feel like we should start moving, but I have one other violation I want to highlight because I'm so proud of my analogy. Okay, so there's a thing called a shot clock violation. Okay. Have you noticed when you're watching basketball, David, since you're a huge basketball fan now, that every time the team gets the ball, there's 24 seconds that starts counting down.

1:13:53I didn't know it was 24, but I've seen the clock go down. So when you get the ball, when you're on offense, when you're trying to score the ball, you have 24 seconds to take a shot that at minimum hits the rim, right? That's what resets the shot clock each time. That's a shot. Resets it to 24? To 24. Or if you get your rebound and resets it to 14. So you have 24 seconds every time you have the ball to try to hit it. For simplicity, yes. For simplicity, yes. And it's four if you're ahead so you don't just keep playing keep away? Four seconds? No, no, no. Like if you're the team that is winning, then you can't just play keep away.

1:14:23Yeah, you can't just hold the ball forever. And if you don't do it, they just give it to the other team? Yes. So you nailed it. That's what I was about to explain. So if you go 24 seconds and you don't shoot, then you give the ball to the other team. You've turned the ball over. that's called the turnover so my analogy for this that I'm I think looking through this is my favorite one Apple has committed a 24 second violation with Apple intelligence they said they were going to release it and they took way too long to release it and now they have been forced to hand the ball over to Google Gemini that's good shock lock violation on Apple because it yeah Streetlight needs a shot clock Rockstar Rockstar I've committed numerous 24 second violations I could do the Rockstar one and our audience would love it Streetlight hurts David more There have been at least two comments about my Streetlight Manifesto Well those two people if they made it this far are very upset Streetlight Manifesto hurts David more

1:15:24Marques Brownlee:What's the shot clock violation on the road sir That's also a shot clock Tesla has committed a shot clock violation I think they've committed about five in a row Yeah. Okay, I have one question. Yes. At least. So, you know, there were a couple instances during this series where the ball was like over the hoop and then a guy knocked it over and he got in trouble for knocking it off. I know. Why did he get in trouble for that? I know the term. Explain. Goaltending. Correct. Yes. Goaltending. Is it once the ball is on the trajectory down, you are then not allowed to stop the ball? Yeah. Why? Because players could just reach over the net every time.

1:16:02Because they're so tall, they could just jump up and knock it away. So you could just... Okay, is that considered like a foul type thing? It counts as a made shot.

1:16:10Marques Brownlee:It's breaking the rule. Oh, it counts as a made shot. Yeah. So if a player goes to shoot it and it goes up and starts coming down towards the basket and you reach up and hit it when it's supposed to give it a chance to go in, that is a breaking the rules violation. They will count that as a made shot. They'll count that as a shipping product. Oh, they give them the point? You get the full two points or three points. So you really don't want to commit that violation because you just give them a shift product. But if you hit it out of the way while it's heading towards the apex of the parabola, then it's okay.

1:16:39Marques Brownlee:Then that's fine. That's a block. That's cool. Yeah. Similarly, if the ball, this is NBA specific, bounces off the rim and is still over the rim, like in the cylinder of the rim, you're not allowed to touch it until it leaves the cylinder. And actually, in international basketball, you are allowed to, which is interesting. That's a weird... It's such a weird discrepancy of how basketball is played around the world. Yeah, that's the EU. Oh, my God. That's USB-C on iPhones. It's being able to hit it off. But then sometimes the rules from international come back to the NBA. They have not adjusted it.

1:17:15Marques Brownlee:I think it's more like in the EU there's different power plugs. So like every power plug here in the U.S. we kind of know is basically the two-prong or the three-prong. And then you go to Europe and it's like, oh, that's kind of still a two-prong, but it's a little different. They have a slightly different rule set, but it's mostly the same. And there is, we're not even really getting into this, but there's robust other forms of basketball in college basketball, international basketball, multiple international leagues around the world. And in many of the leagues, it's played so slightly different.

1:17:43Marques Brownlee:We're mostly doing NBA rules here. But NBA rules is where we're sticking to. That is goaltending that you speak of. Goaltending. Yeah. I don't know if there's a tech equivalent of goaltending. Like the 24-second violation is pretty obvious, but fouls are pretty obvious. But I think goaltending is just another breaking the rules thing where it's pretty clear. The referee can see it. You will get sued. Is there anything else small like that that you're not allowed to do? Yeah, there's little things. You're not allowed to kick the ball. If your foot makes contact with the ball, it's a kickball violation.

1:18:12You're not allowed to stop dribbling and then start dribbling again or move without dribbling. That's either travel or a double dribble. Unless you're OG Ananobi. Yeah. De 'Aaron Fox got to double dribble right in the middle of a finals game and they didn't call it for some reason.

1:18:25Marques Brownlee:You see on the Spurs. All right, now you guys understand the game. We'll talk about some lore after the break. We'll be right back.

1:18:42I'm Seth Matlins. My new show, Create or Destroy, Reimagining Marketing, explores how every decision a company makes, not just the marketing ones, but the HR, IR, pricing, org design, and planning ones, and ones most don't consider marketing at all, contribute to either creating value or destroying it. Each week I sit down with CMOs, CEOs, founders, cultural thinkers, the people building, breaking, and reimagining how businesses grow or don't for conversations about what creates value and what destroys it. It's a business show. It's a marketing show. The creator destroys the show that argues. They've always been the same thing.

1:19:16From the Vox Media Podcast Network and the Wisdomist Company. New episodes drop weekly on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

1:19:25Marques Brownlee:All right, welcome back. I think now we've basically covered the rules and violations of the game enough that the last thing we should do is fill you in on some of the lore that got us to this point in the modern NBA. And there's so many things we could talk about, but I think the ones that have the best tech equivalents are the ones that we should give you guys. I'm going to start with one of my favorite. LeBron James. Have you heard of LeBron James? I know that guy, yeah. Great. They call him the king. Do you know how old he is? 45. He's over 40. More or less. He's over 40. You nailed it. He is still, to this day, at 41, one of the top 20 best players on the planet, I would say.

1:20:04Marques Brownlee:That is crazy because he came in as a rookie in, I'm going to get this wrong, 2007? 2003. 2003? 2003. He was drafted first pick of the 2003 NBA draft. So LeBron James. Straight from high school. I was in seventh grade. With the longevity of his career and being one of the best is essentially like the iPhone. Came out a really long time ago, was one of the best. And many others competitively have come and gone since then. And maybe at certain peaks could have been considered slightly better than him, but he was always one of the best. And here we are two decades later, still one of the best. A lot of his competition, bankrupt, totally gone.

1:20:42Marques Brownlee:LG, HTC, Essential, come and gone. iPhone, still around. No, he's gone and come back and probably gone again. Blackberry, bro. Blackberries were big. So why didn't he win the championship? So he is, I mean, it's a team sport, so you can't win every year by yourself. But he is from an era where when he first came around, there were like these big dynasties of teams of the past. Almost all of the players that were actually, sorry, every single player that was active when he was drafted has retired. Okay. Every single one. Has Yao Ming retired? Yao Ming has retired. Long time ago. I loved Yao Ming though.

1:21:21Marques Brownlee:And there's, and you know, when you look at that time in the past, it was like, oh, BlackBerry was really big. NoKey was really big. Samsung was kind of starting to get big. And you look at all the waves of all the things that have happened since then. And now he's part of the modern NBA and the landscape is totally different. And he's still one of the best. It's kind of insane, his longevity. Yeah, okay. Some people call him a goat. There will always be debates about it, just like the iPhone. But that is LeBron James' career. Do you want to know a fun fact? Sure. LeBron James has been playing elite level NBA basketball four years longer than the iPhone has existed.

1:21:54Marques Brownlee:That's insane. That's crazy. He's got to be tired by now. He literally has been around longer than the iPhone. Taco Tuesday keeping him going. Taco Tuesday. Isn't that like he's played against 40 % of the NBA ever or something? What? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like 40 % of all NBA players that have ever played, he's played against. What? He's so good. I imagine if he had kids, they'd probably be really good in the NBA. He has one. And he has a second one who maybe will make the NBA. I don't know. Yeah, is there a tech equivalent of that? If, like, Apple had, like, a sub-brand that spun off and, like, became another smartphone company?

1:22:30Marques Brownlee:Well, there's nothing in CMF. I was thinking nothing in CMF, yeah. But nothing isn't, like, LeBron level. We always put, who's the CMF phone pro to? Oh, was that CJ McCollum? CJ, yeah. There's also like Oppo and Realme and like Vivo. Yeah, you know, that's a bad analogy. Subbrands are way too easy to make in tech. It's impossible to have a son in the NBA. Is it really? He's done it. It's insane. Wait, what about... Hey, Jalen Brunson. Jalen Brunson. Sorry, it's impossible to have a son in the NBA while you were still in the NBA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was the only one to ever do that, I think. Jalen Brunson did that?

1:23:07No, no, no, no. LeBron playing with his own son in the NBA. Playing with his own son in the NBA.

1:23:12Marques Brownlee:On the same team. They're on the same team. Really cool. threw him an alley-oop. I was about to say, LeBron has thrown an alley-oop to his son. To his son. In a real NBA game? Yeah. That's unbelievable. I'll show you the clip after this. That's so cool. It's crazy. Wow. There's also, wait, can you turn your computer towards him? My favorite NBA photo ever is LeBron recording the All-Star game on a Nextel phone back in the day. That was LeBron. That doesn't even look like him. His rookie year. That's how long he's been. That's him as a child. Before his facial hair. Yeah. Damn. Yep. That's great.

1:23:41So, yeah, good stuff. Okay. So if we want to jump more to the current NBA. We're going to have a lore drop? Yeah, but this is where I get to speak the praises of the New York Knicks. Is there any lore about Mike Bibby? It hasn't happened yet. This is where it starts. Is there any lore about Mike Bibby? I didn't write any down. Take something up. Wait, Mike Bibby is awesome. Are you aware of what Mike Bibby is up to these days? Don't. Is he a crypto scammer? No. He retired as a very lithe NBA fan. point guard and then randomly just decided to get mega jacked. Dude, wait. You're Mike Bivy. You're jacked.

1:24:23The last time I saw Mike Bivy he was really, really lanky. Look up a picture of Mike Bivy in the current day. He randomly just decided to get mega jacked, dude. Okay, I also need to know about the guy that did the palm phone. Steph Curry. Steph Curry. Yeah. What about him? I just need to know his lore because I feel like he's legendary.

1:24:45Marques Brownlee:Oh, is he as a tech product? Did I put Steph Curry down? Steph Curry has changed the game, and I do want to think of a good product that has changed the game in the way that Steph Curry has changed it. Let's brainstorm it. So what's a product that existed for a long time, and then someone came along and redid it a little bit and completely changed it for the future? The iPhone. Or Apple Silicon is another interesting one. Apple Silicon. Or electric cars. I was just saying Hyundai specifically were like, Hyundai. They're doing decent, but they weren't. And then they kind of made a pivot with their EVs.

1:25:15Yeah, I like Tesla Model S.

1:25:18Marques Brownlee:So we had cars for forever. Everybody could make cars. We had a whole competitive landscape, lots of lore, lots of cars. Somebody comes along and makes an electric car that's actually effective. Because electric cars' reputation before wasn't all that. But then the Tesla Model S comes along. And then you look at post-Tesla Model S, and there is a vibrant landscape of electric cars. Everyone is doing an electric car. True, okay. That is Steph Curry. Before Steph Curry, there were some threes. There were some teams that had sharpshooters. Peja Stojakovic. You might have heard that name before. Stojakovic.

1:25:48Marques Brownlee:There's a guy who shot some threes. Exactly. I'm just saying that because you've said that before. That's Stojakovic. But you look at post-Step Curry, entire teams build their entire strategy around multiple people being as good at three-point shooting as possible on their team. It is just a different landscape now that he's done. It's actually, it really works with the Tesla thing too because the Tesla Model S, I don't know if anyone would ever say like this is the greatest car of all time, but they might say that this is the most influential car of all time. And I think Steph doesn't often get talked about as the greatest basketball player of all time.

1:26:23But I think most hardcore basketball fans would say that he's the most influential basketball player of all time. Of all time. Yes. Wow. Because he completely, by his mastery of three-point shooting, changed how the entire league plays basketball.

1:26:35Marques Brownlee:But the Knicks don't really focus on threes as much. They do. Every single team now shoots way more threes than they did before. I felt like the Knicks missed almost every three they shot. Well, the good thing was that the Knicks were adaptable, but they set a lot of team three-point records. They set some playoff three-point records in the earlier rounds and stuff. They shot a lot of threes this year. The Spurs set a first-half three-point record in the game that they lost to the Knicks because they stopped making threes. Back in the day, teams would have one or two players that can shoot threes.

1:27:07so you would have like a whole team of people that just played regularly and then one guy that shot the three and now it's like the whole team is built around people that can shoot threes

1:27:15Marques Brownlee:and even another thing that's interesting about this is that now gets you to a lot of the comparisons between old NBA and new NBA where it almost feels like a totally different sport like when you look at cars today and how crazy they are versus like the record setting cars of the past were goaded for their time but it's hard to compare them with modern cars Because they're so different. Exactly. That's kind of what the record books look like today. You've heard of Michael Jordan. A lot of people consider him the greatest player of all time. He didn't shoot threes very much and wasn't very good at them.

1:27:48Marques Brownlee:And so a lot of people would argue if you put Michael Jordan in today's NBA, he wouldn't be one of the best players. A lot of other people argue, well, he was all mental. He would have figured out a way to be good at threes. What was he good at specifically? He did add threes to his bag late in his career. Very, very late. Not like modern NBA. Yeah, actually. for the second three-peat. He was a much better three-point shooter. Michael Jordan was freakishly athletic and basically made every two-pointer he looked at. And was also the most psychotically driven athlete of all time, probably. He famously would make up narratives against him.

1:28:26Steve Jobs. Yeah, he is sort of Steve Jobs because he would be like, he would be like, this guy said that I'm trash and that he can guard me and whatever. And it would be like one passing comment that a guy made five years prior that was like, yeah, I think I could try to guard Michael Jordan. He'd be like, he thinks he can stop me. He thinks he can stop me and he can't. So he would just create motivational energy for himself. Like there's, if you watch the documentary, The Last Dance, they talk about this a lot with Michael Jordan making up fake narratives against himself. And I took that personally?

1:28:57Yeah, yeah. Literally the meme and I took that personally. That's a Michael Jordan meme? Yes. Okay. That was just him all the time. Okay, okay, okay. Now he owns a NASCAR team, right? Yeah, his post-NBA career is a whole lot. He owned a basketball team at one point, too. He owned the Hornets for a minute. He was real bad at that.

1:29:14Marques Brownlee:No crypto stamps as far as we know. He sells sneakers. I do think Steve Jobs is a really good... Because a lot of the upside is like savant, possibly the goat. Nobody could do what he did. But also some of his shortcomings were kind of insane. And maybe this is like post-career Michael Jordan, but like one of the worst owners. Probably because he's bad at judging talent. He's just like, hey, why can't you jump over the other guy like I did? Just be better. So he's a bad owner. That sounds like Steve Jobs to me. Yeah, honestly. I know this is physically impossible, but just do it. Just be better.

1:29:47Just be better. And that's what MJ asked of everyone around him at all times. And that's why teammates did not love him. They talk about him now with reverence because they won championships, but they hated playing with him at the time. Just like everyone that worked with Steve Jobs. Just like with Steve Jobs, yeah.

1:30:02Marques Brownlee:I have another one I want to make an analogy. technology i don't have this fully fleshed out but this one right here oh we were trying to figure this out and we wanted your opinion okay i want to try try something yeah okay uh the goal is to ship products as many products as possible sure there are record books for the most products anyone has ever shipped in a single day aka the most points any player has ever scored in a single game okay yeah didn't we talk about this on the pod i think we did because okay famously uh-huh You know, NBA teams today are scoring roughly 100 to 120 points a game.

1:30:35Marques Brownlee:I was going to ask if that's gone up over time. Yes, with the three-point revolution, higher scoring. And the shot clock era, et cetera. The most points any one player has ever scored in a single game was back in the day, this man named Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points by himself in a single game. Against? Against the New York Knicks. Yeah, it's against the Knicks. Now, there's a lot of lore around this because, one, there's no video of this but there is tons of eyewitness accounts and radio and it's it's definitely happened it's just a bit of a mythological performance oh interesting and there's a little bit of conspiracy about fudging the scorekeeping to get him to 100 but yeah but the idea is this was one of the most dominant players of all time but it's the 1960s so what equivalent it's kind of like uh in tech it would be like the fastest car of that time it'd be like jesse owens or something yeah and you're like that's not tech but that's like a different sport but the fastest thing of that time the fastest computer of that time yeah was so much faster than every other computer it's like wow that clearly is record beating etc it's like a computer the size of a house with one megabyte of ram let's say like the first time they hit one gigahertz yeah because they yeah i think the u.s government put like a sanction on like an export sanction on the first computer that hit one gigahertz because they were so scared of it like going to china or whatever that sounds about like wilt chamberlain in the 60s that's like mythos right now that's basically yeah nobody has gotten anywhere near 100 points in a game and if you look at the record books most of the top 50 performances for most points ever in a game are also wilt chamberlain he also had like 70 something he had a season where he averaged over 50 yes which is impossible in today's NBA.

1:32:22Marques Brownlee:So this really is like this record book is like filled with this one guy from the 60s. And today, this year, there was a player who got 83. Whoa. Which is the second most anyone has ever scored in a game. And it's the closest anyone's gotten in a while. And so it was technically a legendary performance, but it was just by this one guy. Was that Luka? No, it's a guy who doesn't really have any other records. You might not even have heard of him. His name is Bam. Adebayo. Bam Adebayo. you've said that we talked about it i think we did it explaining that in tech terms as a segment right okay and so when we explained it as if it was like uh i forgot what we said but it would be like if the if the lg wing shipped like 50 million phones or something it's just like this crazy you're like what this doesn't seem right but i guess it is record-breaking so congrats um Yeah, it was an anomaly, and his team, once he got to like 65, 70, 75, was like, just give him the ball.

1:33:21Marques Brownlee:We got to try to get this record, and that was the closest anyone's ever gotten. Was the other team trying to stop him at that point, or were they just kind of... So anytime anyone is near setting a record, everyone is trying to stop you from setting the record against you. He also got a little bit of help from the referees. He shot about 40 free throws in that game. What? Yeah. That's crazy. They're free. Take them. If you get fouled a lot, you got to make the free throw. Yeah. You don't just get - And I think he made about 30 free throws on his way to 83 points. All right. Yeah. All right. So, yeah, it's hard to come up with a tech analogy for that, but the third most points of all time was Kobe.

1:33:56Marques Brownlee:81. Another legend. Everybody respects 81. 81. Wow. In one game. In one single game. That's a lot. Which is crazy. There's a lot of career highs right around the 70 mark, but those are the legendary, iconic performances. Wilt, Bam, Kobe. What was Kobe specifically good at that made him so legendary? Kobe was Michael Jordan. He was like a Michael Jordan clone with all the sliders set to like 90%. Okay. 96. 96%. Yeah. Depending on the day. 90 to 96 % depending on the day. But he basically modeled his entire game, personality, everything after Jordan. Okay. Is there a Steve Jobs equivalent to that?

1:34:35Marques Brownlee:Is there like a 96 % Steve Jobs, like also a psycho, but just a little bit less? Sam Altman. like in the current era Sam Altman really? okay I mean I don't know but I mean who else is like ruthless like I think Sam Altman is pretty ruthless because he just lies about everything but also like gets to the point of like everyone outside thinks you're a savant and sees all of the massive changes I don't think anyone thinks that of Sam Altman because Kobe Kobe has a much better basketball reputation than Sam Altman has a tech reputation yeah I would say so too so yeah maybe like I guess I guess we don't really know until Sam Altman's done though because the same thing with Steve Jobs where it was like people at the time didn't necessarily love working with him but now will idolize him.

1:35:16What about like Linus Torvald?

1:35:19Marques Brownlee:That's a little more niche but yeah. Like very positive reputation. Yeah, generally but he's like can be mean. I think the Michael Jordan Steve Jobs thing is perfect because in the moment he was like levitating. Like everybody understood that what this guy was doing was only something he could do and then it would come out to people who know more ball and were like it's kind of hard to work with this guy but he will ruthlessly get you across the finish line because he's a psycho right and you're like all right yeah it worked so it's like a ceo that they pull in when the current ceo is not working just to like get you across the finish line maybe what i don't know if that's a tech thing yeah like sometimes like an interim ceo yeah like an interim oh interesting yeah but yeah i don't know if there's a kobe equivalent in i don't know if there is but okay that was what kobe was so if If you could find a tech CEO that's like 90 % to 95%.

1:36:09Steve Jobs. I have a bad one. Yeah. Elon. Oh. Maybe old Elon. Yeah. Yeah. Almost as new.

1:36:17Marques Brownlee:New Elon is not. It's kind of even hard to compare. He's not winning in the way that Steve Jobs. Right. He's winning in a different way. 2015 Elon with Tesla maybe. Just Tesla Elon maybe is Kobe. When people kind of saw him as a safari. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. What's the next legend? I was going to talk about the current New York Knicks real quick. I think I have a pretty good analogy that matches up. Actually, exactly with a tech thing. Okay. So let's wrap up, talk about the best and worst teams of each conference right now. All right. So we'll talk about the New York Knicks first. I think I'm uniquely qualified to talk about this.

1:36:55Let's go Knicks, Knicks in five. Let's talk about Apple Silicon. Okay. Right. Apple Silicon comes out in 2020. Yeah. Apple decides to put everything in their own hands. They're going to make their own system on a chip. They're not going to rely on Intel anymore. Right? Yeah. Entire system on a chip. It works with Apple hardware. And then all of a sudden, now it has completely redefined what computers are capable of. Yeah. Honestly. Like, not to praise Apple too much and get accused of being a fanboy. It's true, though. It's true. It is true. It removed all the fragmentation, made everything. They are designing their entire system from the ground up.

1:37:30Yeah. another thing that happened in 2020 the New York Knicks hired Leon Rose to be their president of basketball operations so while they were way worse than Apple in years prior to that and way worse than Intel Macs because Intel Macs were still good computers the Knicks were not a good basketball the i9 one was kind of yeah I guess kind of like right before the Knicks hired Leon they were like the butterfly keyboard i9 MacBook putting in the in the freezer to cool it yeah not not great yeah so they were not doing great things were fragmented things were not working well sure they hire leon rose and he made his mission to build a cohesive team like an m chip okay uh he prioritized first team teammates that play for each other guys that are interested in working together being collaborative our friendship?

1:38:26The power of friendship with Jalen Brunson, Mikael Bridges, Josh Hart, college teammates, all that. So they were college teammates? They were. I already knew this, but I'm just for the audience. Yes, they were college teammates. Wow. UC Santa Cruz. No. Villanova. Villanova. Where the heck is that? The Novinics. Philly. It's a pretty big school. It's a very big school. I'm from California. Anyway, so the Knicks make it back to the playoffs. In 2021, for the first time in almost a decade, they signed Jalen Brunson in 2022. Eventually, he brings in a ton of cohesive players, builds them around Jalen Brunson, and makes a perfect team that plays for each other and wins through the power of friendship, much like Apple System on a Chip.

1:39:12So there's a different guy that does the team organizations that's not the coach? Yes. He's called the president of basketball operations. Okay. Is he a general manager? There's also a general manager. in basketball it depends on how you want your team to run some teams their highest guy is the general manager other teams they go well we want someone above the general manager so we'll have the president of basketball operations and a general manager and whatever the Knicks have a general manager basically the Knicks have president of basketball operations sounds like a title you make up as a six year old when they ask you what you want to do I want to be the president of the Knicks someday yeah that's me but anyway now the New York Knicks are NBA champions before Joel Embiid has ever made a conference finals so they all played basketball together in college not all the Knicks but three of them three of the starting five that's pretty storybook

1:40:08Marques Brownlee:yeah it is that's pretty cool yeah I like that that makes them the best team in the east the best team in the west was the San Antonio team the worst team in the east is Sacramento Kings the Washington The Washington Wizards. In the East. In the East. And the worst team in the West? Was the Sacramento Kings. No, really? I don't know if that was actually true, but they were pretty bad this year. I don't think they could have been that bad. When I was there in December, they shot the Laser, which they only do when they win. The Beam. They call it the Beam. They played 80 games. They were tied for the worst.

1:40:41No way. With the Utah Jazz. Yeah. Wasn't Michael Jordan on the Jazz? No, he famously stole their soul year after year. I was on the Wizards.

1:40:53Marques Brownlee:But yeah, the Wizards. Turn it into the Blues. Okay. Also, I will say that there's probably a tech equivalent to this. The Pacers. Okay. The Pacers were the best team in the East last season. They lost one player and were now the second worst team in the entire East this year. That sounds like the Devils the last couple of years. Is there it? Our player got his hand cut at dinner, and then we just fell apart. How did he cut his hand? He leaned on a piece of glass. Did he mistake his hand for a steak? No idea. It was a steakhouse, but it absolutely destroyed our team. Damn, Golden State did pretty bad this year.

1:41:36Marques Brownlee:Is it a tech equivalent to being one of the biggest, most successful companies, losing a single person, and then being one of the worst? Steve Jobs, when he left Apple, and then they basically tanked, and then they brought him back. All right. Tyrese Halliburton. We heard it here first. And then Halliburton will come back and hopefully they'll be better, I guess. The Knicks need a little bit of competition next year, so I would love if the Pacers could come back better because the rest of the East doesn't compare. They're essentially the same exact team, I understand. When do you want them to have a competition?

1:42:03Marques Brownlee:Because it's more fun. Honestly, it felt too easy this year. Actually, that's a perfect place to end this. Perfect place to end this. Nick's missing the playoffs next year. We've been using this entire podcast to try to explain sports, specifically NBA basketball, in tech terms. and I think the number one overlap, the most obvious similarity between the two is fanboyisms. In sports, you pick a team and you ride or die with this team, rationality be damned. They might be the best team, you get to cheer for them. They might be one of the best teams, you call them the best team. They might be kind of mid, you call them the best team but as soon as they start to get a little bit bad, you ruthlessly rag on them until you get them back good again.

1:42:44Marques Brownlee:But you're mean to your own guys? You're mean to your own guys. we gotta get them better. This is unacceptable. They have to be the best. They have to be the best. Knicks fans famously during bad years will boo their own team to tell them that they suck. To tell them that they suck. But it's the same thing in tech where, I mean, the fanboyisms of like iPhone versus Android, of like all these different companies, Macs versus PCs. Like this is a tale as old as time. I feel like it's even similar in the sense of like in tech, let's say like the our android subreddit is insane yeah because it's so many different company fanboys in one place where if you went to the google subreddit they would be like i can't believe google's screwing us again i can't believe it's only yes uh 100 booing their own yeah yeah but then in the android subreddit if someone says something bad about google that same person who's like how dare you we are the best you're terrible i don't care what's your problem you're an idiot And that is a one-to-one perfect replica of what happens in sports.

1:43:49It's like, I'm allowed to say that. You're not allowed to say that. I'm allowed to say that about my team. You can't say that about my team. And your team is even worse. And you're not allowed to like your team. You're an idiot for liking your team. That's what Knicks fans were told for years.

1:44:00Marques Brownlee:Yeah. So I would like to give you guys an opportunity to pick an NBA team now to ride or die with and to defend them and to live with them the exact same way. Till death do you part. For a tech team. Wait, until you, because I feel like you should just root for wherever you live. So that's the easy version of this. We're also conveniently located in a desert where there used to be an NBA team, RIP New Jersey Nets. You can pick the New York team. You will, just warning you. I live in New York. I'm just warning you, you will get accused of bandwagoning. That's okay. But I live there. You can. That's okay.

1:44:35Marques Brownlee:David's valid. Hey, if you watch for 15 days before they watch. I've given David the pass already. Many people do. and the people who are already fans will give you a pass but the people who are not fans will call you bandwagon and that's fine there were some very dark years as a Knicks fan so we're in a high era now we're past that, we'll never go back there again as long as you sort of acknowledge them he can just move and get a new team David's from Brooklyn so you should be with the Nets no that's true, you live in Brooklyn you live in Brooklyn no it doesn't matter closer to Queens to be honest the Nets aren't a real team you don't need to root for them so this is the thing I grew up in New Jersey and when I first started watching NBA basketball coincidentally the New Jersey Nets were an incredible team I remember I went to this basketball camp randomly as a kid and got to meet some of the players I remember bald Richard Jefferson prime Richard Jefferson comes over and rustles my hair and is like what's up kid and I'm like, oh my God, Richard Jefferson.

1:45:40Marques Brownlee:That moment I'll have forever. Kenyon Martin, Kerry Kittles, Jason Kidd. You got to meet all of them? This was a team that went to the finals. That was an incredible team. They have not been the same since. They have thus moved to Brooklyn and have been one of the stinkers who's been tanking and just horrible to watch. That's what happens to a lot of people that move to Brooklyn. Come a real stinker. I come from, you know, that's the team I used to root for, but I'm not a diehard. They left me. I don't have a team anymore. So I kind of just root for players. You know what's hilarious about that whole situation?

1:46:16Maybe there's a technology here. Jay-Z was a 5 % stockholder or whatever in the Nets. Right. They do this whole thing to move to Brooklyn for Jay-Z because they're like, yo, we're moving with Hope. We're moving to Brooklyn, whatever. Jay-Z, like one year after they move, starts a sports agency and has to immediately divest from the company and leaves them high and dry and now is back to like cheering for the Knicks again so okay here's the thing I feel like you should for life have to uh cheer for like the closest team to where you were born okay the problem with that for me specifically is that the Kings have not won since 1951 yeah they're bad and they were called a different name this is you're the Royals

1:46:57Marques Brownlee:back then yeah yeah this is your opportunity to get on on your Knicks like this is the feeling that Knicks fans have had for 50 years. All my life. Which is they've been bad for your entire conscious lifetime and they're finally good. David, plant your flag right now. You can plant your King's flag now. No, no, no, not your King's flag. If you, no, if you, I mean, you can. You have the baby bobblehead. By low. So if they do win, then I have like some Odie. You can't f*** the baby bobblehead. That's true. I think that's a more credible, deeply rooted, like you could celebrate with tears if the Kings win.

1:47:29Here, I'll give you this also. people are less mad if you have two teams you really like when they're in different conferences. Yeah, so if you have like the Knicks are my Eastern Conference team and the Kings are my Western Conference that's alright. It's my flag. I've kind of always had like a Western Conference team that I like. Who's your team? Which is? The Spurs. Oh, I mean, it's varied. No, absolutely not. It's actually varied for me but like for a long time I liked the Sonics when Ray Allen was there. Where's that? Seattle. They're no longer there anymore and hopefully we'll be coming back in the next couple years.

1:48:00But then I liked when Tracy McGrady was on the Houston Rockets with Yao Ming. I was a fan of that.

1:48:04Marques Brownlee:So you're doing what I do, which is like I follow a player for a while that I really like. I wanted to bring this up. And when they're a West Coast team, it's tough because I can't watch many games because they start their games. See, I like that because I'm a night owl. So I like having a West Coast team that I mess with. And at like 1 a.m. So I've been a Chris Paul fan for basically his entire prime. And he's bounced around a bunch of West Coast teams. And all of those teams have had heartbreaking, disastrous losses, by the way. So it's been tough. Yeah. But I'm trying to watch more East Coast.

1:48:33I also don't really have a Western Conference team right now because that was always a coping mechanism for me when the Knicks were terrible. It was like, oh, what other team can I like just while the Knicks are terrible? Andrew, what are your teams? I was going to kind of bring that up. I feel like I have to be a Knicks fan, one, because Alex then roots for the Devils with me when he watches hockey, and he's not. So I have so many friends that are Knicks fans. Friendship. Watching them throughout this was very funny. I mean, in Game 4 when they were down, my friend was like, that's it. We lost the series.

1:49:02We're losing 2-4. And I was like, that's the Knicks fans I know. They were already up 2-0. I was like, they're going to win because that's the dejected nature that I'm used to. But then I was going to say in basketball, working with Marquez for something, I've never seen a sport where people follow players as much rather than teams. So Darius Garland, who does he play for? He now plays for the Clippers. I'm a Clippers fan. That's my West Coast team. Darius Garland all the way. the reason for that by the way this well maybe maybe we can relate this to tech NBA players are more marketable they're marketable because you see their face all the time 100 % and then also an NBA player a single NBA player can influence the entire fate of a team more than a single player in any other sport any other team sport it's like if you were a quarterback that didn't have to wear a helmet and you could see their face on it but even a quarterback like with a bad offensive line still a bad team yeah but it's still like they're still the guy yeah yeah like it's hard to be the guy in a lot of things unless you're Connor McDade.

1:49:58I have a question I should have asked earlier, but it's related to the players. What exactly does it mean to be a free agent? Yeah. So basically the way that basketball works is you sign... Actually, this relates to... We didn't really talk about this. Contract employees in tech, right? A lot of tech companies have contract employees. Yeah. All of basketball are contract employees. They have no competes. Yeah. They have non-competes. Non-competes. Until they become a free agent, at which point they can sign with whatever team they want. so they have to stay with one team for the length of their contract if tech could trade that would be really funny they kind of do

1:50:35Marques Brownlee:but in a different way actually tech is kind of like Premier League soccer because they allow buyouts Premier League soccer, I'm learning about this I'm learning a new sport you can pay a transfer fee so if you see a player on another team that you really like you can be like, hey I want Erling Haaland or whatever who's a player on Manchester City. But he's really good, so the team doesn't want to give him up. So they say, fine, if you want to even negotiate with him, you have to pay us$200 million. And then the team might be like, okay, here's$200 million, and we're going to also negotiate a contract with him to pay him hundreds of millions of dollars too.

1:51:11Holy crap. But that's kind of like tech where you can have people get buyouts and whatever. Is there a certain number of years that have to go by before you become a free agent? It varies by contract. Negotiate it, yeah.

1:51:24Marques Brownlee:Just based on your contract. So typically, three, four, five-year contracts. There's a max in the NBA, right? Yeah. Once you get to the end of that contract, then you're a free agent. Like Nixon. Okay. So when you first start out of college, you are automatically in a contract, and then after that, you're a free agent. Yeah. Or do you start as a free agent when you're right out of college? You get drafted, and then you sign maybe a rookie contract for that one year with that team. Okay. Then you maybe have your free agent again. You might sign another one or two-year contract. As you get to your prime and you're more desirable, teams want to lock you down for longer.

1:51:54Marques Brownlee:that you might sign a three, four, five-year contract where you're there for a long time. But once that contract ends again, you're technically a free agent. But then teams can also arbitrarily decide to trade you. Got it. And be like, oh, actually, you're not as good as we thought, so we're going to trade you to another team. So you have to go live where they want you to live. Yeah, yeah. Players don't like it. I don't like that either. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, they're making millions of dollars to do it, so they deal with it. Yeah, I guess I can like that enough. Okay. Well, I feel like I know Ball now.

1:52:20Marques Brownlee:Yeah. I think this is a great place to wrap it up. But ideally now when we do our smartphone awards at the end of the year, we can have like a sports equivalent. Like you guys will know. Like when I give an MVP award to a phone, you'll now have that much more lore and context to understand. Should be the Jalen Brunson Award. This exact. Can we call it the Jalen Brunson Memorial Smartphone of the Year this year? He didn't die. Memorializing his season. Yeah. You'll now be able to draw the equivalent. You'll be like, I can see how that phone is Jalen Brunson. The JVP, the Jalen VP. Jalen Brunson.

1:52:53Yeah. Valuable.

1:52:54Marques Brownlee:player yeah there's a million more strings that we didn't tie in this episode i'm sure the comment section will help us out with that there's many more crossover things between tech and sports but what do you think the percentages of usual waveform listeners have made to this point in the episode i think we'll find out because zero zero spurs fans i know that if you made it this far comment nicks in six nicks in five that's how we'll know all right all right everyone is say Nixon 4. But then everyone who comes in needs to be like, oh, waveforms talking about basketball. Look at the comments and be like, they obviously didn't do a very good job.

1:53:29Wait, what if you do Nixon 4? That's like another cut because they did 4 in every other. Oh, Nixon 4. So we say Nixon 4.

1:53:35Marques Brownlee:All right, that's your comment. That's how we'll know you made it to the end of the episode. Nixon 4. And now we'll know if you made it to that part of the episode but not this part of the episode. There's going to be so many. Nixon 6. Wait, no, Nixon 5. Wait, Nixon Ford So that's been it It's a hundred degrees in this room right now It's so hot Just know that when the Sacramento Kings win I'm going to be there I'm going to be there with my Mike Baby Bubblehead I'll be there with you On your bubble bar You will have really earned that one Catch you guys in the next one Peace Waveform is produced by Adam Alina and Rufus Mulhoff We are partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network And our interaction music was created by Vain Sill Bingo Let's go.

1:54:18Nixon 5. Nixon 5.

1:54:27When I got a new car, I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account. Like if Fatween won the lottery. I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bomb. But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is going to be all trampoline, bro. With the helipad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound. They're just being babies. But switching to Geico saved me hundreds, so my bank account is safe. It feels good to save some hard-earned cash. It feels good to Geico.