Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Boomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.
Speaker 1: His name is Ben Cohen, and if that name silence
Speaker 1: slightly familiar. He is the sports reporter covering the NBA
Speaker 1: for the Wall Street Journal and the author of a
Speaker 1: new book, The Hot Hand, The Mystery and Science of Streaks.
Speaker 1: If you're interested in things like statistics and analytics of sports,
Speaker 1: how the bastball game is changing, who is driving these changes,
Speaker 1: what is happening in the world of sports, and why
Speaker 1: the old days of just hiring a superstar and hoping
Speaker 1: he can drag a team over over the line is
Speaker 1: pretty much over. I really found his book to be
Speaker 1: quite fascinating, and I think it's something that if you're
Speaker 1: either a math or a sports geek, you're gonna find
Speaker 1: really intriguing. So, with no further ado, my conversation with
Speaker 1: Ben Cohn. This is Master's in Business with Barry Ridholts
Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest this week is Ben Cohen.
Speaker 1: He is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where
Speaker 1: he was the first person to exclusively cover the NBA
Speaker 1: nationally for the Journal. In he was named a News
Speaker 1: Media Alliance Rising Star. He has a new book out
Speaker 1: and it's called The Hot Hands, The Mystery and Science
Speaker 1: of Streaks. Ben Cowen, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. It's a real pleasure to be on the show.
Speaker 1: Because so much of this book is actually based on
Speaker 1: past episodes of your show, so it treats for me.
Speaker 1: I have to tell I have to reveal this. I'm
Speaker 1: reading the book on vacation in Puerto Rico, and because
Speaker 1: I'm an information junkie, I go to the sources and acknowledgements.
Speaker 1: At the end, nobody reads that, and lo and behold,
Speaker 1: there's my name and masters in business because of the
Speaker 1: Tom Gilovich um reference. But what I thought was so
Speaker 1: hilarious this was as I'm reading the book, I'm like,
Speaker 1: guest Guest had him, had him. It's just cracked. Oh
Speaker 1: that's an interesting name. I should get him. It was
Speaker 1: really fun going through all these people who I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, you spend ninety minutes or longer in a
Speaker 1: room with someone, you kind of get to know them
Speaker 1: a little bit. So let's get to know you a
Speaker 1: little bit. You're an undergraded duke. How do you end
Speaker 1: up at the Wall Street Journal. Bribery. Bribery is always
Speaker 1: a good thing. Now, I I worked really hard at Duke.
Speaker 1: I I've always known that I wanted to be a journalist,
Speaker 1: and specifically a sports journalist. There it's a deeply uncool
Speaker 1: thing to say, right, Like, there's some people who grow
Speaker 1: up dreaming to be astronauts and flying to the moon.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to like cover Rutgers for the Star
Speaker 1: Ledger New Jersey, right. Um. So I went to Duke
Speaker 1: like most kids who like sports in New Jersey, and
Speaker 1: I was the sports editor of the Chronicle, which was
Speaker 1: the student newspaper at Duke. And and and a Duke that's
Speaker 1: a real position. It's not like most schools. It's it's
Speaker 1: a real position. And and the paper itself is a
Speaker 1: real newspaper. I mean it's a daily paper. I I
Speaker 1: definitely spent more time in the newspaper office than I
Speaker 1: did in any classroom. I mean we were working the
Speaker 1: top editors of the paper. Their work like sixty seventy
Speaker 1: hours a week. It's a crazy job. And so um,
Speaker 1: when you're covering Duke basketball, you're really competing with like
Speaker 1: everybody on the planet, right um. And so that really
Speaker 1: gave me great grounding, and UM, I got lucky a
Speaker 1: few times along the way with some internships and some
Speaker 1: other opportunities, and um, when I graduated, a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks before graduation, the journal was looking for a sports intern.
Speaker 1: They had just started a sports page and the person
Speaker 1: they had hired to be the intern had taken a
Speaker 1: job elsewhere, And so literally two weeks before graduation, the
Speaker 1: sports editor of the paper emailed me. We had talked
Speaker 1: in the past about a potential internship, and he offered
Speaker 1: me an internship, and I kind of kept my foot
Speaker 1: in the door and didn't let it close them and
Speaker 1: didn't let them close it on me. And I've sort
Speaker 1: of been there ever since. The role you now have
Speaker 1: is NBA reporter for the Journal. That was not a
Speaker 1: role before you got there. It was it. We did
Speaker 1: not really have any rules in sports before I got there.
Speaker 1: We started a sports page around the same time that
Speaker 1: I was hired. So two thousand nine, Murdoch buys the
Speaker 1: paper in like oh seven, and we get that kid
Speaker 1: Cohen and here to start a sports page. Fort Rupert
Speaker 1: and I go way back, and uh so, for the
Speaker 1: first few years I was at the Journal, I covered
Speaker 1: college sports, and we didn't have a national full time
Speaker 1: NBA reporter, And I still think one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why I did get this job was that it was
Speaker 1: like July and our sports editor, this brilliant guy named
Speaker 1: Sam Walker, looked around and said, oh my god, Lebron
Speaker 1: James is about to choose his next team, and we
Speaker 1: don't have someone to write the story. And he sort
Speaker 1: of pulled me into his office and said, I think
Speaker 1: that you should cover the NBA for us. And I said, Sam,
Speaker 1: you're just saying this because we you need someone to
Speaker 1: write about Lebron going back to Cleveland and loan Behold,
Speaker 1: the next day he goes back to Cleveland. I write
Speaker 1: this story. But it turned out to be this incredible
Speaker 1: stroke of fortune because at the time, the NBA was
Speaker 1: about to enter this like real Golden Age. So I
Speaker 1: still have never covered an NBA finals that the Golden
Speaker 1: State Warriors were not playing in. So it's been five
Speaker 1: years in a row. Perhaps this is the year. I
Speaker 1: have a feeling that this will be the year that
Speaker 1: the Warriors don't make the finals. So now let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about how I first found you, which
Speaker 1: was the article about Josh Miller and Adam said, Joe's
Speaker 1: paper on the hot hand tell us what the hot
Speaker 1: hand is. So the hot hand, there's really no singular definition,
Speaker 1: but I like to think of it as when success
Speaker 1: leads to more success. Now, in basketball, for example, the
Speaker 1: hotting has always been studied through basketball, which is one
Speaker 1: of the things I sort of found irresistible about the
Speaker 1: whole phenomenon in basketball. It's when you make one shot
Speaker 1: and then another shot, and then another shot, and you
Speaker 1: feel more likely to make your next shot. He's on fire.
Speaker 1: You're on fire, but it's not he's unconscious. But it's
Speaker 1: really not just about basketball. I I think of this
Speaker 1: as about human behavior. I think we are all familiar
Speaker 1: with this feeling of the hot hand, and what I've
Speaker 1: learned is that if we take advantage, it can really
Speaker 1: change our lives. So this book really started with two
Speaker 1: stories in the Wall Street Journal, in both calling it
Speaker 1: to question this seminal classic paper about the hot hand.
Speaker 1: One was by this team of Harvard undergraduates, so not
Speaker 1: grad students or PhD students or professors, but kids in
Speaker 1: their college dorm. And one was by Josh Miller and
Speaker 1: Adam san Hero, who who did this thing where they
Speaker 1: looked at this very old problem in a new way
Speaker 1: and they found something that nobody had seen before. And
Speaker 1: usually what happens, I have to say after I spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time thinking about a story and writing
Speaker 1: a story, is that I don't want to think about
Speaker 1: that story anymore. I'm sick of it. The opposite really
Speaker 1: happened here. I couldn't get the hot Hand out of
Speaker 1: my head, and I just thought that there was something
Speaker 1: bigger here that I wanted to explore. And that's how
Speaker 1: you know, I end up spending three years writing a
Speaker 1: book about it. So let's let's step back a second,
Speaker 1: and um, Tom Gilovich is now professor Cornell. At the time,
Speaker 1: I believe was at Stanford on the ground or Berkeley
Speaker 1: on the ground. There were grad students. Tom Gilovich and
Speaker 1: Bob Balone were grad students at Stanford, and a professor
Speaker 1: Tversky the Great Amostversek was a brilliant professor there, and
Speaker 1: they looked at the hot Hand because they thought that
Speaker 1: it was this beautiful way to illustrate this phenomenon of
Speaker 1: seeing patterns in randomness. And it still is right. Like
Speaker 1: I do want to stress that, like I find that
Speaker 1: paper hugely admirable. It's a brilliant paper, right, because it
Speaker 1: uses this thing that we all know, this very accessible,
Speaker 1: digestible example of a cognitive bias. Um. They end up
Speaker 1: publishing this paper. It's in the canon of behavioral economics. Right,
Speaker 1: it's one of the most famous papers ever written. It's
Speaker 1: really easy to understand, like, there's nothing really obtuse about it.
Speaker 1: It's a great paper. It really holds up um with
Speaker 1: one small exception, sure if yeah, exactly, But Um, something
Speaker 1: amazing happened when this paper came out, which is that
Speaker 1: it was so unbelievable that people just simply refused to
Speaker 1: believe it. We had all felt the hot hand and
Speaker 1: seeing the hot hand, and now these professors were coming
Speaker 1: along telling us there was no such thing, and that
Speaker 1: was really hard for us to wrap our minds around,
Speaker 1: in the same way that it's very hard for us
Speaker 1: to wrap our minds around randomness. So I love the
Speaker 1: image of red or back cigar unlit cigar kind of
Speaker 1: hanging out of his mouth. I don't care what these
Speaker 1: professors say. Of course, it's a hot hand, and there's
Speaker 1: nothing that could have delighted professors more. Right, like this
Speaker 1: just believing in the hot hand doesn't make it anymore true.
Speaker 1: And Amos Tversky used to love to tell this story
Speaker 1: when he taught the Hot hand. He would tell the
Speaker 1: story of right hour Back because he loved the Boston Celtics,
Speaker 1: And like, what better way to illustrate this idea that
Speaker 1: people refused to believe than Red hour back saying that
Speaker 1: it was all a bunch of blowney. And as much
Speaker 1: as the conclusion maybe mathematically inaccurate, the underlying premise that
Speaker 1: people see patterns where there are none, that we're all
Speaker 1: subject to our cognitive biases, that still holds up. And
Speaker 1: that's still a key part of that paper completely, uh.
Speaker 1: And not only that, even if you do believe in
Speaker 1: the hot hand, like I don't think it is this
Speaker 1: exaggerated fireball of our imagination, right like you can miss
Speaker 1: when you feel hot. And also like, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of times when you are in an environment that does
Speaker 1: not allow for a hot hand, and believing in the
Speaker 1: hot hand can be disastrous, costly, it could really backfire
Speaker 1: and burn you. And so I do think, um, that
Speaker 1: paper is still really important and we should all read it.
Speaker 1: I mean, part of the whole fun of This concept,
Speaker 1: I think is figuring out what you think about it
Speaker 1: for yourself, right, and toying around with the idea and
Speaker 1: seeing where you land. And and as a long suffering
Speaker 1: Knicks fan, going back to the John Stark's era, where
Speaker 1: he would just you know, a streaky player, and whether
Speaker 1: the shots were sinking or not, he would still reel
Speaker 1: off seven, eight nine shots in a row. Whether they
Speaker 1: fell or not didn't matter. He would when he felt it,
Speaker 1: he heave did regardless of outcome. The Knicks are familiar
Speaker 1: with streaks, They're just not the kind that Knicks fans
Speaker 1: actually would enjoy, to say the least. So what I
Speaker 1: found so intriguing about the original paper about the hot hand,
Speaker 1: it was incredibly controversial. What was behind all the pushback? Well,
Speaker 1: it defides something that we all thought to be true, right,
Speaker 1: and we are not very good when people tell us
Speaker 1: something we are convinced of isn't true. So my one
Speaker 1: of my favorite examples of how easily we're fooled is
Speaker 1: you give the example in the book, but we've all
Speaker 1: seen this from personal life experience. A professor assigns a
Speaker 1: class flip a coin a hundred times and write it
Speaker 1: down and I want some of you to do it,
Speaker 1: and some of you make it up and immediately identifies
Speaker 1: these are real, these are fake, and the classes always
Speaker 1: astonished by this. What does that have to do with
Speaker 1: streaking this and our tendency to see patterns where none
Speaker 1: are there? So this is an incredible statistician at Columbia
Speaker 1: named Andrew Gilman who runs this very popular blog which
Speaker 1: sounds kind of like an oxymoron, like a popular statistics
Speaker 1: blog for a little wonky, yes, but but it's a
Speaker 1: brilliant website. And um, you know, I talked to Andrew
Speaker 1: Gelman about this and what he told me about how
Speaker 1: he is able to tell his classroom to uh. He
Speaker 1: splits his classroom into two and he tells them like,
Speaker 1: you know, one group flip a coin, the other group,
Speaker 1: imagine what it looks like when you flip a coin,
Speaker 1: and then right the sequences on a chalkboard, and I
Speaker 1: will walk in and I will be able to tell
Speaker 1: you which one is real and which one is fake.
Speaker 1: And so he leaves the classroom and he does essentially
Speaker 1: this magic trick first for a statistician. Right, he comes
Speaker 1: in and he always knows, and it's because the real
Speaker 1: one is the one that looks fake. It has a
Speaker 1: run of stp of heads in a row that you're
Speaker 1: not comfortable. You'll do heads tails, heads, heads tails, but
Speaker 1: you won't do seven heads in a row. That just
Speaker 1: seems wrong. But we all know sometimes when you flip
Speaker 1: a coin, you get seven tales in a row, right,
Speaker 1: But you would never do that if you were imagining
Speaker 1: what a string of coin flips actually looks like. And
Speaker 1: now you've ruined that trick for him in his first class,
Speaker 1: and well hopefully everybody at Columbia will read this book
Speaker 1: so he will not be able to pull off that
Speaker 1: trick anymore. Let's talk about the Miller sanjor Joe paper
Speaker 1: on why the Hot Hands Is Real first, and I
Speaker 1: think you may have been the first popular press to
Speaker 1: cover that, because that's how Not only is that how
Speaker 1: I found you, but when I was preparing for the
Speaker 1: interview with Joshua Miller and reading all the all the coverage,
Speaker 1: yours was the piece I found them, like, oh, this
Speaker 1: does a really nice job on the reason I remember
Speaker 1: this is not because I'm bragging, but because I was
Speaker 1: terrified when that story came out. It was very nerve
Speaker 1: racking because uh, the math had been rubber stamped by
Speaker 1: mathematicians by Andrew Gellman himself, like the math accurate. However,
Speaker 1: the journal is really not in the position to be
Speaker 1: writing full stories about pre prints, right, papers that have
Speaker 1: not been more published by like journals that you can trust.
Speaker 1: And so this paper was floating around the internet. It
Speaker 1: had been uploaded to ssr N, and Andrew Galman had
Speaker 1: written a blog post about it, and people were talking
Speaker 1: about it. But like if if this paper had been
Speaker 1: published in Econometrico, which it has been, now, it's very
Speaker 1: easy for the Wall Street Journal to write a story
Speaker 1: about that, right, But when it hasn't, suddenly it's it's
Speaker 1: just these two guys, these two young American economists in
Speaker 1: Europe and a statistician with a blog saying that it's right.
Speaker 1: Is that enough for the Wall Street Journal to write
Speaker 1: a story about that? It was? We decided that it was,
Speaker 1: So let me tell you why you were right. Because
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario is that Econometrical does the math
Speaker 1: and says this is wrong. But at the time, not
Speaker 1: only is this a really interesting thesis that identifies a
Speaker 1: fundamental floor flaw in the traverse ky Gilovich paper but
Speaker 1: it's really a whole new area of analytics for data sets.
Speaker 1: It's not just the hot hands. These guys figured out
Speaker 1: something really really interesting and lots of people were buzzing
Speaker 1: about it. And it's not just a blogger, it's Andrew
Speaker 1: Gilman of Columbia, who is a widely respected mathematician and statisticians.
Speaker 1: Is their peer review, right, he's peer review before peer review.
Speaker 1: So so I don't think you were that far out
Speaker 1: on a ledge. And the worst case scenario is some
Speaker 1: of the smartest people in math would have gotten it
Speaker 1: wrong also, and I have to say, the funny thing
Speaker 1: about this is that I let alone, Josh and Adam
Speaker 1: got the same reaction that Gilovich, Valon and Tversky did,
Speaker 1: which is, there's no way this is true. Over the
Speaker 1: course of thirty five years, that paper, which was so
Speaker 1: counterintuitive at the time, became conventional wizard It was was
Speaker 1: the way we thought about the hot hand, and so
Speaker 1: now here was this paper threatening to overturn that result
Speaker 1: in this uh strange mathematical that takes a lot of
Speaker 1: thinking to write about, Like there was a reason that
Speaker 1: nobody has seen this right. This this very subtle statistical
Speaker 1: bias that some of the world's brightest statisticians had missed
Speaker 1: for many years. It was this bias hiding in plain sight,
Speaker 1: and if it had been obvious, we would have seen
Speaker 1: it many years earlier. So let's talk about that bias,
Speaker 1: because it is very intriguing, it's very trippy. It's also intriguing.
Speaker 1: Explain why. So Normally, if you're gonna flip a coin,
Speaker 1: hold the gambler's fallacy aside, every flip of that coin
Speaker 1: should be fifty fifty heads or tails. But it's not.
Speaker 1: But but you're not just flipping a coin, you're looking
Speaker 1: at it after the fact ex post and and saying
Speaker 1: of the flips that followed two heads in a row,
Speaker 1: it's not fifty fifty. Explain why, well, I will say
Speaker 1: the one thing I've learned in thinking about this book
Speaker 1: and writing this book and talking about this book is
Speaker 1: that I'm not great at talking about this part of
Speaker 1: the book. It's very it's it's hard even for me,
Speaker 1: as like the best thing I could do is like say,
Speaker 1: actually go back and listen to your episode with Josh Miller,
Speaker 1: because he does a better job of explaining it than anybody.
Speaker 1: But what I will say is that it has to
Speaker 1: do with um, with sequences, and and and sampling without
Speaker 1: replacement right, and and figuring out um. When you look
Speaker 1: at a sequence of even three coin flips, if you
Speaker 1: look at the the average chance that you will get
Speaker 1: a heads after the heads, it's not as our brains
Speaker 1: are conditioned to believe, it's actually lower. It's it's biased
Speaker 1: in a negative direction. So you start with the you
Speaker 1: flip a coin a million times, and now you have
Speaker 1: a data set. And if you pull out all of
Speaker 1: the heads and heads in a row, you're not just
Speaker 1: pulling out half the heads. You're pulling out more than
Speaker 1: half the heads relative to what's left over. So what's
Speaker 1: left over is going to be a little tail heavy.
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that a fair way to describe it? Yes,
Speaker 1: And then the next obvious question is like, well, what
Speaker 1: does that mean for the hot hand? And really what
Speaker 1: it means is that for many years, for thirty five
Speaker 1: years to be precise, we thought that if a fifty
Speaker 1: percent shooter was shooting when he had the hot hand,
Speaker 1: when he felt like he couldn't miss, that was evidence
Speaker 1: against the hot hand. Right, there was no difference. He
Speaker 1: wasn't any more likely to make his next shot. What
Speaker 1: it actually was was evidence for the hot hand all along,
Speaker 1: because when you are shooting fifty and you take out
Speaker 1: those heads and tails and you look at what happens
Speaker 1: heads after heads, you should be shooting lower than like
Speaker 1: roughly right. And I believe somewhere in either your book
Speaker 1: or the Miller paper is the advantage of the hot
Speaker 1: hand is something like yeah, I mean if you look
Speaker 1: at the difference, like if you look at the difference
Speaker 1: of what we thought to what we think now or
Speaker 1: what some people think now, it's like twelve percentage points,
Speaker 1: and the difference is huge, like in the n b A,
Speaker 1: the difference between in the NBA, the difference of twelve
Speaker 1: points is the difference between Steph Curry and a league
Speaker 1: average shooter. So so we now, you know how reason
Speaker 1: to think that, you know, not only can we believe
Speaker 1: in the hot hand, but it actually might be a
Speaker 1: pretty sizeable effect. Now you know this is I think
Speaker 1: there are reasonable people on both sides of this debate,
Speaker 1: and that is what was so intriguing to me is
Speaker 1: that we have very smart people, brilliant minds, who have
Speaker 1: been thinking about this for a very long time. And
Speaker 1: you know, you could come out to to to thinking
Speaker 1: about this in different ways, and I think we still are,
Speaker 1: like I think we are still trying to think about
Speaker 1: what we should think about the hot Hand. So I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of intellectual energy thinking gil Vitch and Seversky,
Speaker 1: we're right. And then when Josh and Adams paper came out,
Speaker 1: I was skeptical. And then I read as much as
Speaker 1: I could up until the formulas, which is incomprehensible, and
Speaker 1: then had a conversation with him and then had him
Speaker 1: on the show, and suddenly it's like, you know what,
Speaker 1: he convinced me, The hot hand is reel. And now
Speaker 1: that I've spent so much mental energy on this and
Speaker 1: I'm committed to this at this point, my cognitive dissonances.
Speaker 1: I don't want it's crazy, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: I don't want to flip. I can't flip again. I'm
Speaker 1: locked in. If you could prove that it's not real,
Speaker 1: best of luck to you. But I'm tapped out of
Speaker 1: the debate. While imagine writing a book about it. But
Speaker 1: but but that was actually what was so intriguing to
Speaker 1: me about all this, because you know, at the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal, what I've learned is that every great story
Speaker 1: needs tension, right, Tension is really what makes stories. And
Speaker 1: I just couldn't believe how much tension there was in
Speaker 1: this fight over an idea. Right here was something that
Speaker 1: we all thought to be true, a belief, only to
Speaker 1: be told that it wasn't, only to be told that
Speaker 1: actually maybe it was, and that that was just so
Speaker 1: irresistible to me. And so the narrative itself is great.
Speaker 1: And then what I tried to do in this book
Speaker 1: is apply the lessons of that narrative very widely, right,
Speaker 1: because that's why these people have been studying the hot
Speaker 1: hand for so long. It's not because they wanted to
Speaker 1: argue about whether or not the hot hand is real.
Speaker 1: It's because it has these implications far beyond academia, farther
Speaker 1: beyond basketball, right, like they sort of apply everywhere. It's
Speaker 1: quite fascinating. So I mentioned to you I read this
Speaker 1: book on vacation. I plowed through it in a day
Speaker 1: and a half. I really enjoyed it. It fits in
Speaker 1: well in the sequence of sort of related to moneyball
Speaker 1: and related to some other things that are about sports.
Speaker 1: The first chapter of the Undoing Project about Darryl Moore.
Speaker 1: So I gotta ask you some questions about the book,
Speaker 1: because there's some really really interesting things in here. Please
Speaker 1: And also you called it wonky beach reading, which I
Speaker 1: think is the best description of the book I've heard
Speaker 1: so far. It really tickles me to hear that. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what it was to me. I was sitting on
Speaker 1: the beach. I'm like, this is good, wonky fun and
Speaker 1: I wanted it to be. I wanted it to be
Speaker 1: something that like anybody could read right, like you don't exactly,
Speaker 1: and you could read it on a beach, which which
Speaker 1: I love reading books on the beach. So so first
Speaker 1: question is the first of all, I like the arc
Speaker 1: that you tell. This is told as a story throughout
Speaker 1: time where there's this belief and then uh, an academic
Speaker 1: research channel olenges a belief, and then subsequent research challenges
Speaker 1: the challenge. Why in the beginning did it seem like
Speaker 1: they were the academics on one side and everybody else
Speaker 1: on the other, Because the academics were the only people
Speaker 1: who were saying that everybody else was wrong, right, um,
Speaker 1: And you know that was the beauty of their paper
Speaker 1: was that it challenged something that is so universal. There's
Speaker 1: this fundamental belief in the hot hand. That's in the
Speaker 1: original paper. They pulled basketball fans and NBA players and
Speaker 1: like something like them said, of course that there is
Speaker 1: such a thing as the hot hand, right, like if
Speaker 1: you had asked me. The one time in my life
Speaker 1: that I was not completely terrible at basketball was in
Speaker 1: high school, and I scored more points in one quarter
Speaker 1: of one game than I had in my entire career combined.
Speaker 1: There was something magical about that day that I still
Speaker 1: remember now, And it would never have even crossed my
Speaker 1: mind that this thing didn't exist, because I thought that
Speaker 1: I knew what I felt, and not until reading you know,
Speaker 1: hundreds of papers over the course of like four deck aids,
Speaker 1: that I realized that, like everything I thought I knew,
Speaker 1: might be wrong. So so let's talk about some real
Speaker 1: specific examples from the book that are fascinating. Uh, And
Speaker 1: let's start with Spotify and Apple iTunes. Their random shuffle
Speaker 1: is much better when it's less random. Explain that that's right.
Speaker 1: So a few years ago Spotify had this problem, which
Speaker 1: is that they kept hearing from users that the shuffle
Speaker 1: function was broken. The problem is that it wasn't actually
Speaker 1: shuffling their music, so sometimes you would hear the same
Speaker 1: artist twice in a row, or you would hear the
Speaker 1: same song twice in a row sometimes, And people got
Speaker 1: so mad about this that they accused Spotify of almost
Speaker 1: being corrupt, of like trying to curry favor with record
Speaker 1: labels by playing their artists more. And the very curious
Speaker 1: thing about this is that Apple actually had the same
Speaker 1: problem a few years before that. And there's this clip
Speaker 1: of one of Steve Jobs's keynote speeches when he is
Speaker 1: introducing a feature called smart Shuffle, and like, what they
Speaker 1: had to do essentially was change the randomness algorithm. People
Speaker 1: thought that it simply couldn't be random when it was.
Speaker 1: The fact is, though, that pure randomness is hard to understand,
Speaker 1: and sometimes pure randomness means you hear the same artist
Speaker 1: twice in a row or the same song twice in row.
Speaker 1: That's like like getting six heads in a row flipping
Speaker 1: a coin. It's the same thing. It's actually not what
Speaker 1: we want out of our playlist, right, And so what
Speaker 1: Spotify did was they tweaked their code. They evenly distribute
Speaker 1: songs and artists over the course of a playlist so
Speaker 1: that it's random the way that we think about random.
Speaker 1: So really, what they did was to make it feel
Speaker 1: more random. They actually had to make it less random,
Speaker 1: make it less technically random, but as a listener, randomness
Speaker 1: means that after and you use the Billy Joel example,
Speaker 1: but after a Billy Joel song, instead of hearing another
Speaker 1: Billy Joel song, I want to hear YouTube or Push
Speaker 1: Stars or Prefect Sprout or Elvis Costello or non revealing
Speaker 1: Maya playlist. But you don't want to hear the same
Speaker 1: artist twice in a row. And what the companies had
Speaker 1: to do was wrap their minds around the way that
Speaker 1: humans really think, right Like, there was no amount of
Speaker 1: money or engineering talent that could solve this problem. There
Speaker 1: was something about the way that randomness paralyzes the human
Speaker 1: mind that the companies had to come to grips with.
Speaker 1: And so they could have been stubborn and said, no,
Speaker 1: of course, this is random, this is how randomness works.
Speaker 1: But what they did was they gave their users what
Speaker 1: they wanted. Right, People don't want randomness, they want variety,
Speaker 1: and whether it's random or not is almost irrelevant. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about the NBA Jam. The people who created that
Speaker 1: game took advantage of the hot hand and streaks tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about that. So NBA Jam was
Speaker 1: developed by this game designer named Mark Trammel. And when
Speaker 1: Mark Trammel was a kid, there were three things that
Speaker 1: he loved. He loved basketball, and he loved video games,
Speaker 1: and he loved fire. He was actually a bit of
Speaker 1: a pyromaniac, and he was able to combine these three
Speaker 1: childhood loves into the biggest hit of his life. So
Speaker 1: I grew up playing NBA Jam. I am right around
Speaker 1: the same ages Steph Curry, and so I know that
Speaker 1: NBA Jam machines were sort of ubiquitous in our childhood.
Speaker 1: They were everywhere. And what I did not know while
Speaker 1: we were both playing NBA Jam is that NBA Jam
Speaker 1: was one of the most lucrative successful arcade games ever made.
Speaker 1: In the first year of its existence, it made a
Speaker 1: billion dollars in quarters. And this is but orders of
Speaker 1: magnitude bigger than anything else before, ginormous to the point that,
Speaker 1: like the people who were running the company, when they
Speaker 1: saw the numbers in the test arcade, they just refused
Speaker 1: to believe them. They thought this has to be a
Speaker 1: type of like, there's no way that these kids are
Speaker 1: playing NBA Jam so much, and yet they were. And
Speaker 1: part of that is because it was a basketball game
Speaker 1: and it was fun and you could do crazy things
Speaker 1: like somersault over the basket and throw down breathtaking slam
Speaker 1: dunks and foul anybody you wanted. But really what we
Speaker 1: wanted to do was catch fire. So in NBA jam,
Speaker 1: if you make a few shots in a row, you
Speaker 1: hear the announcer for the game say he's heating up.
Speaker 1: And then if you make your next shot, you hear
Speaker 1: he's on fire, and the ball turns into a fireball.
Speaker 1: And what happens when you're on fire is that you
Speaker 1: cannot miss. And that was compelling to so many people
Speaker 1: like it was this amazing example of Mark Trammel, the
Speaker 1: childhood pyromaniac, still playing with fire. And to me, I
Speaker 1: think he's sort of single handedly brainwashed this generation of
Speaker 1: impressionable young minds into believing the concept of the hot hand.
Speaker 1: Because when you were heating up, when you were on fire,
Speaker 1: you can't miss. That that's really quite fascinating. Let me
Speaker 1: go over a couple of other issues of the hot hand.
Speaker 1: I have to ask you about Shakespeare capitalized on the Plague.
Speaker 1: You have to explain that, well, this is oddly timely now, right, yes,
Speaker 1: which is kind of terrifying. Um. Shakespeare was never a
Speaker 1: metronomic writer, so scholars for a very long time were
Speaker 1: not exactly statisticians, believe it or not. And when when
Speaker 1: they would look at like twenty four shakespeare plays, if
Speaker 1: he wrote them over the course of twelve years, they said, okay,
Speaker 1: Shakespeare wrote two plays a year. In fact, that's not
Speaker 1: remotely true. Shakespeare ran hot and cold. He wrote in streaks,
Speaker 1: and one of the great hot streaks of his career
Speaker 1: was when he wrote King Lear Macbeth and Anthony and
Speaker 1: Cleopatra in this very concentrated amount of time some scholars
Speaker 1: believe as short as two months, which is crazy, right, Um.
Speaker 1: And the reason he was able to write those plays,
Speaker 1: and the reason those plays were such a success, was
Speaker 1: that it happened to be a plague gear and the
Speaker 1: plague actually worked to his advantage in very odd ways.
Speaker 1: But the plague was this force that shaped Shakespeare's life
Speaker 1: from the very beginning, Like he probably should have died
Speaker 1: when he was a kid of the plague. Um. It was.
Speaker 1: It was just always around in London, and to me
Speaker 1: that it spoke so neatly of the hot hand, because
Speaker 1: the hot hand is not this random occurrence. It's this
Speaker 1: collision of talent and circumstance and a little bit of luck.
Speaker 1: And sometimes circumstance appears when you least expect it. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's the plague. So let's talk about that luck, creativity,
Speaker 1: and circumstance collision. Some people have put forth the theory
Speaker 1: that even human careers, you will have creativity and bunches,
Speaker 1: and most people or many people's most productive work over
Speaker 1: the course of their lifetime comes in a very narrow
Speaker 1: sort of era. Explain that, and not only their most
Speaker 1: productive work, their most memorable work. There's a statistical physicist
Speaker 1: at Northwestern named Dash and Wang who tried to look
Speaker 1: at this idea, like, is creativity cluster? Do our hits
Speaker 1: come in bunches? And that's really hard to do in
Speaker 1: a lot of industries because there's just not great data, right,
Speaker 1: And so what he tried to do was try to
Speaker 1: put some objective numbers to subjective issues of taste. Right,
Speaker 1: So for movie directors, that's IMDb ratings, For scientists that's
Speaker 1: Google scholar citations. For artists it's auction prices. Now, these
Speaker 1: are not perfect metrics, but they're like about as good
Speaker 1: as we could do given what we have. And what
Speaker 1: he found was that, uh, if you tell him what
Speaker 1: your best work is, what your highest rated movie, or
Speaker 1: what your paper that was cited the most by other academics,
Speaker 1: was he can find the second and third best work.
Speaker 1: And it's because those works come to get other, like
Speaker 1: they build on top of each other. And we have
Speaker 1: these hot hand periods in our careers, and in those periods,
Speaker 1: we tend to produce the work that indoors and that
Speaker 1: other people remember. So let's talk about movies. Use the
Speaker 1: example of Rob Briner, who has written or directed some
Speaker 1: of my favorite films. He had a streak that was
Speaker 1: really quite astonishing, didn't he. The first few movies he
Speaker 1: made were Spinal Tap and The Shore Thing and Stand
Speaker 1: By Me, and those were all successes in their own way,
Speaker 1: whether it was critically or commercially, and it sort of
Speaker 1: earned him the runway to make a fourth movie. Now,
Speaker 1: all three of those movies were in movies that nobody
Speaker 1: wanted him to make, and they were huge hits regardless.
Speaker 1: They were these delightful contradictions. And he had this conversation
Speaker 1: with the studio executive around this time when he's trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what he wants to make next, and
Speaker 1: the studio executive says, we want to do anything you
Speaker 1: want to do, right, basically, like you're hot, we want
Speaker 1: to be in business with you. Clart Blanche, what is
Speaker 1: it that you want to do? And he says, you
Speaker 1: don't want to do what I want to do and
Speaker 1: she says, no, really, just tell us what movie do
Speaker 1: you want to make next? And he says, no, really,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you you're not going to want to make
Speaker 1: this movie. And she says, just name the movie and
Speaker 1: he says, the movie I want to make is The
Speaker 1: Princess Bride. And she says, anything but The Princess Pride.
Speaker 1: And that sounds crazy now, because The Princess Bride is
Speaker 1: this cult classic and one of the most beloved movies
Speaker 1: ever made. Right. It was written by William Goldman, who
Speaker 1: had written Butch Cassidy, He had written All the President's Men,
Speaker 1: like you could take his grocery lists and and win
Speaker 1: an Academy Award, and Marathon Man all he's just he's
Speaker 1: got like the run of and and if you've never
Speaker 1: read m his screenwriting books, The screen Confessions of a
Speaker 1: screenwriter or the screen trade. He's the guy who has
Speaker 1: popularized the phrase. He's no longer with us, but he
Speaker 1: popularized the phrase nobody knows anything, which is a good
Speaker 1: thing to think about when you're trying to write a
Speaker 1: book about people who think they know everything. So, following
Speaker 1: those three movies, The Princess Bride does really well, and
Speaker 1: then what was next, Harry Met Sally a John and
Speaker 1: smash Um Misery and a Few Good Men. Misery was
Speaker 1: a Stephen King book that nobody expected that to be
Speaker 1: a great movie, absolutely, and then A Few Good Men
Speaker 1: is just a nut. And he still continued to make
Speaker 1: movies that are still well liked. Beyond that, he was
Speaker 1: able to elevate his career to another level. Right, And
Speaker 1: I have to say, like I have runned this theory
Speaker 1: by Rob Reiner. He doesn't exactly agree. What he remembers
Speaker 1: from this period is it was still so hard to
Speaker 1: get The Princess Bride made. But to me, that's actually
Speaker 1: a proof of the hot hand that was shaping everything,
Speaker 1: because if he remembers, he was still so hard, and
Speaker 1: it was that hard, it simply would never have been
Speaker 1: made if he weren't hot. The Princess Bride had been
Speaker 1: attached to a number of other producers and directors, including
Speaker 1: some really giant names in Hollywood, and it was almost
Speaker 1: a cursed screenplay. It just couldn't get done. It was
Speaker 1: the great White Whale. Rollywood, I mean Trufaux tried to
Speaker 1: make it. Norman Jewis and Robert Redford tried to direct
Speaker 1: it and star in it, and still nobody could get
Speaker 1: it made. Goldman like to tell this wordy that one
Speaker 1: studio had bought the movie and was fired the next weekend,
Speaker 1: Like nobody could get this movie made. And you could
Speaker 1: argue that, like if Rob Ryner knew about this, maybe
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have And even when he went to Goldman
Speaker 1: to try to get his permission to make the Princess Pride,
Speaker 1: he was terrified. And Bill Goleman opens the door and says,
Speaker 1: the Princess Bride is my favorite thing I've ever written, Like,
Speaker 1: don't screw it up. And he was able to get permission,
Speaker 1: and he was able to make the movie, and I
Speaker 1: think we're all luckier for it. Quite amazing. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about how the NBA is adapting to the idea of
Speaker 1: behavioral economics. You wrote a really interesting column about quote
Speaker 1: the renegade executives of Houston who shook up sports management.
Speaker 1: Tell us about those guys, well, they haven't had a
Speaker 1: great few months since that story came out. But um,
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago, my colleague at the Journal,
Speaker 1: Jared Diamond, and I Jared covers baseball, I cover basketball,
Speaker 1: We went down to Houston to have lunch with two
Speaker 1: really smart executives there. One his name Darryl Morey, and
Speaker 1: he the general manager of the Houston Rockets. The other
Speaker 1: is Jeff lu Now, who was the general manager of
Speaker 1: the Houston Astros. And we just thought it would be
Speaker 1: fun to get them together and just talk about how
Speaker 1: much their sports have changed. And it was fun and
Speaker 1: it made for a really interesting story. And about a
Speaker 1: week later, Darryl became the most interesting man in geopolitics.
Speaker 1: He was already the most interesting man in sports, and
Speaker 1: I love Darryl, but um, he set off this feud
Speaker 1: between the NBA and China with this tweet supporting Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: And back up a little bit. So he got his
Speaker 1: graduate degree from m I T and M I T
Speaker 1: has a really deep relationship with Hong Kong, including lots
Speaker 1: of students. And I think they have a satellite school
Speaker 1: there as well well. And also the NBA has this
Speaker 1: long running financial relationship with China, right, I mean, China
Speaker 1: is the engine that is powering the future growth of
Speaker 1: the league. It's global growth outside of the U s
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's the most important foreign market. And like
Speaker 1: the league has always cultivated China, like over the course
Speaker 1: of three decades or so, and like the one tweet
Speaker 1: imperiled that relationship overnight. I mean to this day. I
Speaker 1: mean the NBA is still not on CCTV. UM, so
Speaker 1: a lot has changed. Um, But was it really a
Speaker 1: two or three hundred million dollar tweet? It was a
Speaker 1: lot of money. I mean, this the sal you know, Adam,
Speaker 1: they canceled the Precision Games, right, they played the games,
Speaker 1: but they weren't broadcast, right And and and NBA Commissioner
Speaker 1: Adam Silver said that he thought the loss could be
Speaker 1: about like four hundred million dollars. So, um, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of money. But like you know that it was
Speaker 1: a very fascinating issue because, um, it pitted like American
Speaker 1: democratic norms of free speech against like trying to do
Speaker 1: business in China. And I think this is something that
Speaker 1: like every company is going to have to be dealing
Speaker 1: with at some point, and um, it was just sort
Speaker 1: of this like dry forest, And I think Darryl's tweet
Speaker 1: turned out to be the kindling that nobody really thought
Speaker 1: would blow everything up, but it kind of did. So
Speaker 1: we were talking about film earlier. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't realize how much of American film is
Speaker 1: now one did by foreign investors, including China, especially China,
Speaker 1: And so what what happens is you end up with
Speaker 1: the bad guy being the Russians, never the Chinese. And
Speaker 1: that's a direct function of who's writing the check. It's
Speaker 1: and and to me it was just it was it
Speaker 1: was of course Darryll was involved, because Darrell is. I
Speaker 1: love the guy. I've written about him as much as
Speaker 1: ever written about anybody in the n b A. He's
Speaker 1: so smart and so interesting and he's this real renaissance
Speaker 1: man of the n b A. If you were to
Speaker 1: ask me, like, which NBA executive would unwittingly start something
Speaker 1: like this, like, of course it would be Daryl, because
Speaker 1: Darrel is in the middle of everything, and he was
Speaker 1: twice NBA Executive of the Year. I don't think he's
Speaker 1: going to win that this year. Well he might, I
Speaker 1: mean it, it depends. I mean it's voted on by
Speaker 1: other executives, and I'll take the other side of that that.
Speaker 1: I'll give you two to one odds. The interesting thing
Speaker 1: about Daryl winning that award is that that's an award
Speaker 1: voted on by your peers. And for a very long time,
Speaker 1: I think there was resistance among NBA general managers to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that Darrel is a really smart guy and he
Speaker 1: was using statistics and analytics and information in really interesting ways.
Speaker 1: Can't argue with success. Speaking of success, let's talk about
Speaker 1: Steph Curry. I love the story in the book. It's
Speaker 1: pretty good at not bad. And I understand he's taking
Speaker 1: more shots from behind the line. So that's the thing,
Speaker 1: the story about how he lights the Knicks up. Um,
Speaker 1: do you remember that game? No? No, I don't, And
Speaker 1: if I saw that game, I have suppressed the memory,
Speaker 1: like so many other losses the Knicks have suffered over
Speaker 1: the years. But he's a guy who's essentially on the
Speaker 1: bench or half the time, half the game. He doesn't
Speaker 1: have the green light to just toss up three pointers.
Speaker 1: What happened in that one game with the Knicks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the through line of Steph Curry's career until a certain
Speaker 1: point of his life was that nobody really thought that
Speaker 1: he could be as good as we now know him
Speaker 1: to be. Um. He was lightly recruited out of high school.
Speaker 1: He went to tiny Davidson College. Even after coming out
Speaker 1: of Davidson, where he had this incredible, unforgettable run in
Speaker 1: the n c A Tournament in two thousand eight. You know,
Speaker 1: he was the seventh pick in the NBA Draft. There
Speaker 1: were lots of questions about whether someone who was as
Speaker 1: small as him and shot three pointers as much as
Speaker 1: him could really be like a force in the NBA.
Speaker 1: And those questions kind of lingered until this one night
Speaker 1: in February. Let me interrupt you before we get into
Speaker 1: that night. So, as a Knicks fan, watching Jordan and
Speaker 1: the Bulls dismantled him. Season after season, the Bulls always
Speaker 1: had Um somebody Steve kerr Hodges, somebody who was an
Speaker 1: assassin from behind the three point line, and it forced
Speaker 1: the floor to be spread, so they couldn't if you're
Speaker 1: gonna collapse on Michael Jordan's He's going to find the
Speaker 1: open man and it might be a three pointer. So
Speaker 1: I think twice about it. That was a very specific
Speaker 1: tactical decision. Now tell us what happened with Uh Curry
Speaker 1: and the next that night, so so Steve Kerry with
Speaker 1: the three point shooter around Michael Jordan's. What if Michael
Speaker 1: Jordan's were the three point shooter right? That's sort of
Speaker 1: the question that has become prevalent in the NBA over
Speaker 1: the last few years. This was a night that nobody
Speaker 1: thought would be Steph Curry's breakthrough, his coming out party.
Speaker 1: The night before the Golden State Warriors had played in Indiana,
Speaker 1: they had gotten into a fight. Steph Curry was actually
Speaker 1: involved in the fight, and if you watch the clip now,
Speaker 1: it's kind of amazing because he charges this guy named
Speaker 1: Roy Hibbert seven ft two and ways two of Steph
Speaker 1: Curry's right, and what happened is exactly what you might
Speaker 1: think happened, which is Ray Hibbert just sort of brushed
Speaker 1: him aside. For his entire life, Steph Curry's great disadvantage
Speaker 1: was had been his size, right, but for this one night,
Speaker 1: it was his improbable advantage. He was too small to
Speaker 1: do any real damage in a fight of NBA players,
Speaker 1: So they fled to New York that night, so no
Speaker 1: suspension for him. He's not suspended. Other players on his
Speaker 1: team are. However, Steph Curry is fined thirty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and nobody has ever been so fortunate to lose
Speaker 1: so much money. The Warriors get to New York and
Speaker 1: they just don't have their full team right they they're
Speaker 1: there are only a certain number of guys who can play. Now,
Speaker 1: something else happens before they get to Madison Square Garden,
Speaker 1: which is very funny in retrospect. Steph Curry during Warriors
Speaker 1: road games always takes the second of three buses from
Speaker 1: the team hotel to the arena. There are three buses.
Speaker 1: Steps always on the side of superstition or timing, so like,
Speaker 1: he wants to be at the arena a certain time
Speaker 1: and he wants to warm up at a certain time
Speaker 1: and getting there on the first bus is too early,
Speaker 1: and the third bus is probably too late. This day,
Speaker 1: for some reason he can't remember, he misses the second bus,
Speaker 1: takes the third bus. What happens when the third bus
Speaker 1: leads the team hotel gets pulled over by New York
Speaker 1: City cops on the way to Madison Square Garden. So
Speaker 1: now he's missed his normal bus, his now bus, He's
Speaker 1: missed his normal bus. His third bus gets pulled over
Speaker 1: on the way to the garden. He's rushed, he's late,
Speaker 1: he's gotten into a fight the night before, He's down
Speaker 1: thirty dollars. And what happens at night is that he
Speaker 1: has the single greatest shooting night of his career. He
Speaker 1: scores fifty four points, plays all forty eight minutes, He
Speaker 1: doesn't come out of the game. He makes eleven of
Speaker 1: his thirteen three pointers. Nobody in the history of the NBA,
Speaker 1: let alone him, had ever taken so many threes and
Speaker 1: made so many of them in the same game. And
Speaker 1: this was really an epiphany for Steph Curry and for
Speaker 1: the Warriors generally, and actually for the whole NBA, because
Speaker 1: what they were able to do after that night is
Speaker 1: build a team around Steph Curry's remarkable ability to shoot
Speaker 1: a basketball, and he's only gotten better behind the behind
Speaker 1: the line. Before that game, he averaged like eighteen points
Speaker 1: and took five threes a game. Since then, he averages
Speaker 1: twenty six points and he takes ten threes. He's won
Speaker 1: two m vps, the Warriors have won three championships, and
Speaker 1: the most remarkable thing about all of this, um is
Speaker 1: that it took the NBA so long to figure this out.
Speaker 1: Like three is worth more than two. It's in the
Speaker 1: name of the shot, right, It's it's not just a
Speaker 1: little it's worth one and a half times a regular shot.
Speaker 1: But it's not one and a half times as difficult,
Speaker 1: or is it. There is a huge incentive to shooting
Speaker 1: three pointers. Now it is more difficult, but not if
Speaker 1: you're Steph Curry, right. Steph Curry is a shooter from three,
Speaker 1: and the name of the game now is shoot as
Speaker 1: many three pointers as possible. And the game was sort
Speaker 1: of going there anyway. But whether or not the Warriors
Speaker 1: would have built around Steph Curry, I'm not sure they
Speaker 1: would have. Without this game, we're going to have to
Speaker 1: move the three point line. We might, you know, I
Speaker 1: think that there there is talk about like a potential
Speaker 1: four point line. Um, there's talk about the three point line.
Speaker 1: But we're getting to a point now where about ten
Speaker 1: years ago, the number of three pointers in the NBA
Speaker 1: game accounted for about of shots. Now we're at about
Speaker 1: thirty five percent of shots. The number of threes per
Speaker 1: game has doubled over the course of fifteen years. I
Speaker 1: was at the m I. T. S. Slowan sports analytics
Speaker 1: conference recently and asked someone with a team, like, what
Speaker 1: is the upper limit here? Like when when do you
Speaker 1: get to returns? Well, the Houston Rockets are taking their
Speaker 1: shots now, so like for a single team, how high
Speaker 1: could you get? And this person, really smart, wonky analytical
Speaker 1: mathematical says that he has studied the numbers and he
Speaker 1: thinks that it's the team shots as three. So like
Speaker 1: by those standards, where nowhere even close to the end
Speaker 1: of this, I'm trying to think of how you would
Speaker 1: move the lineback with without Unless you make the line,
Speaker 1: you give up the corner shot, which is the best
Speaker 1: location shot. The corner three pointers the most efficient shot
Speaker 1: in the closest and it's the most it's still worth
Speaker 1: three points, right, I mean, there are some funky things
Speaker 1: that you could do, Like you could make an arc.
Speaker 1: You could make an arc. You could you could add
Speaker 1: a four point line but move the three point line
Speaker 1: in so that you actually make every shot worth the
Speaker 1: same amount of points. Right now, there is this huge
Speaker 1: incentive against shooting mid range shots because there worth two
Speaker 1: points and you generally at the same rate as three pointers, right,
Speaker 1: no sense, How could you sort of um incentivize people
Speaker 1: to take those shots? Is that you change the value
Speaker 1: of them? Now, I think there are people in the
Speaker 1: NBA who are encouraged that even though teams are shooting
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of threes now and all the good
Speaker 1: teams are shooting threes, there's not really a homogeneous style
Speaker 1: of play. They're getting those three pointers in different ways,
Speaker 1: so there is some variety, um, but the end result
Speaker 1: is the same. Like the name of the game now
Speaker 1: is how many three pointers can you take? And how
Speaker 1: many of them can you make? So let's talk about
Speaker 1: somebody that you've you wrote about after Kobe Bryant's passing,
Speaker 1: but I'm familiar with from Michael Lewis's book The Undoing Project,
Speaker 1: and that's Shane Batty. He's a guy that would be
Speaker 1: assigned to cover the best score on the other team,
Speaker 1: and if you look at his stats, that really nothing.
Speaker 1: What does a guy like Shane Batty a mean to
Speaker 1: the new version? And of course he was on the
Speaker 1: Houston Rockets under Darryl Moury, But what does the player
Speaker 1: like that mean to the new version of Basketball's equivalent?
Speaker 1: Of money ball, just about everything. Really. To me, the
Speaker 1: beauty of Shane Battier is that, um, he was someone
Speaker 1: who the NBA did not value properly because he did
Speaker 1: not have great stats. Right, He didn't score a lot
Speaker 1: of points, he didn't grab a lot of rebounds, he
Speaker 1: didn't shodow a lot of assists. But when he played,
Speaker 1: his team was better when he was on the floor, right.
Speaker 1: And there was no relationship that embodied this better than
Speaker 1: Shane Battier when he tried to guard Kobe Bryant. And
Speaker 1: so I talked to Shane after, you know, the tragic
Speaker 1: death of Kobe Bryant a few weeks ago, because I
Speaker 1: wanted to know, like, what did he remember from those
Speaker 1: games when they played each other? And you know what
Speaker 1: he What Shane says is that when they played, he
Speaker 1: always felt like he was Captain Ahab and Kobe Bryant
Speaker 1: was his Moby Dick and he was always chasing him,
Speaker 1: and they had this strange cat and mouse game where
Speaker 1: it was not only physical, it was not only on
Speaker 1: the court, it was psychological. Shane Battier knew that like
Speaker 1: trying to trash talk Kobe was the worst thing that
Speaker 1: you could do because it would get him. So he
Speaker 1: would like purposefully be modest when he walked on the
Speaker 1: court with Kobe. He would like basically say, like I
Speaker 1: don't even belong on the same court as you man,
Speaker 1: Like I'm this unathletic plots like you're gonna kill me tonight.
Speaker 1: What Kobe knew was exactly what Shane Battier was doing. So,
Speaker 1: like Kobe wrote in his book, like yeah, I knew
Speaker 1: Shane was like being modest because he thought that that
Speaker 1: wouldn't fire me up. And so they were going back
Speaker 1: and forth, and they were so deep into each other's
Speaker 1: minds and so their matchups were just these classic matchups.
Speaker 1: I mean what Shane says that nobody challenged him more
Speaker 1: than Kobe. He was like the pinnacle of challenge in
Speaker 1: his profession. The great thing about their relationship, the thing
Speaker 1: that I loved was that they had no relationship. They
Speaker 1: never talked outside the arena. There was nobody who each
Speaker 1: of them respected more in terms of offense and defense,
Speaker 1: and yet it was all on the basketball court, like
Speaker 1: they never got a chance to like have that beer
Speaker 1: and just reminisce about all of these incredible matchups that
Speaker 1: they had. So the plus and minus measurement is is
Speaker 1: your team scoring more points when you're on the court
Speaker 1: and as the other team scoring less points, what is
Speaker 1: your contribution? Daddy A turned Kobe Bryant into a negative
Speaker 1: for the Lakers, sometimes right and sometimes so um so
Speaker 1: plus minus is estab that like over the course of
Speaker 1: one game, maybe a little bit noisy, sometimes like sometimes
Speaker 1: it's not sometimes exactly shows a lot, but of the
Speaker 1: course of a season and over the course of a career,
Speaker 1: it's like hugely informative and so like for the last
Speaker 1: few years, who has had the best plus minus in
Speaker 1: the NBA. It's Steph Curry and that sort of shows
Speaker 1: his impact on the game quite quite interesting. So one
Speaker 1: of the person I have to ask about the number
Speaker 1: one draft last years Zion Williamson. How was he turning out?
Speaker 1: He was supposed to have a huge impact on the
Speaker 1: n b A he got hurt uh in the beginning
Speaker 1: of the season and now he's back. Is this guy
Speaker 1: gonna be worthy of a number one pick? Or is
Speaker 1: it another topic that goes bust? He's fantastic, he uh.
Speaker 1: There There are not many rookies in the NBA who
Speaker 1: changed the fortunes of their team immediately, Like you could
Speaker 1: probably list them on one hand over the course of
Speaker 1: the last few decades. Lebron James of course, um, maybe
Speaker 1: Kevin Durant, maybe Anthony Davis. Was Zion Williamson has done
Speaker 1: after missing the first few months of his rookie season
Speaker 1: with an injury, is that he's turned New Orleans Pelicans
Speaker 1: into like a real player. So like if you look
Speaker 1: at the numbers, even the plus minus numbers, when he's
Speaker 1: on the court, they're destroying other teams and so destroying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they are, Uh, they're going to be excellent building
Speaker 1: around him over the next few years. And so, um,
Speaker 1: he sort of lost some of his momentum because he
Speaker 1: didn't play for a few months and everybody sort of
Speaker 1: forgot about him. And yet we see him now and
Speaker 1: it's like you are like you're seeing a superstar in
Speaker 1: the making. Like there, he's gonna lose weight, his body's
Speaker 1: going to change, he's going to learn how to play
Speaker 1: the game. Like you watch him on defense. He doesn't
Speaker 1: know what he's doing yet. Right, he's a rookie. He's
Speaker 1: nineteen years quick, and he can jump, and he has
Speaker 1: brilliant vision, he can pass. He everyone knew that he
Speaker 1: was this incredible dunker, but like, his game is so
Speaker 1: well rounded, he is like going to be a sublime basketball.
Speaker 1: So so let's violate one of Darryl Morey's rules and
Speaker 1: compare him to somebody else. Who is Zion more like?
Speaker 1: Is he Gianni or is he going to be more
Speaker 1: like a little Bron? It's interesting? Uh, and you wrote
Speaker 1: to column Giannice is now hitting from the outside, which
Speaker 1: makes him even more dangerous of a player. So he's
Speaker 1: probably been compared more to Lebron. I'm pronouncing his name wrong.
Speaker 1: Is he going to be more liking Honest or Lebron? Well,
Speaker 1: he's always been compared with Lebron because their body types
Speaker 1: are kind of similar. Lebron's a little bigger, though, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what? But but like cooler, bigger, thick, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, he's like girthy. Right. The thing I think
Speaker 1: that makes him like Janice is that they're closer to
Speaker 1: the same age and they belong to similar generations. So
Speaker 1: the amazing thing about Jannice this year is that he's
Speaker 1: probably going to win the MVP Award for the second
Speaker 1: year in a row, and he's averaging about thirty minutes
Speaker 1: per game. There forty eight minutes in an NBA game,
Speaker 1: which means that he's only playing thirty minutes and he's
Speaker 1: putting up stats that he's going to win the m
Speaker 1: v p UH. In his first few years, Lebron played
Speaker 1: like forty two minutes. And I think what makes Zion
Speaker 1: more like Janice than Lebron is that his minutes are
Speaker 1: always going to be monitored for his career, because of
Speaker 1: his body type, because of his age, because of the
Speaker 1: way the NBA has played today, He's gonna play like
Speaker 1: thirty two thirty three minutes, and that means that, like
Speaker 1: in the playoffs, hopefully he will be fresher, so fresher.
Speaker 1: You also want to maintain the A c L as
Speaker 1: a problem, maintain the Achilles. Like when you look at
Speaker 1: the injuries that people in the NBA tend to get,
Speaker 1: they seem to come in different waves. Is the game
Speaker 1: changes there overuse injuries. We're not used to seven footers
Speaker 1: jumping out and trying to guard three pointers and having
Speaker 1: to be as mobile as you do now. So um,
Speaker 1: I think we're still learning a lot about that. Like
Speaker 1: I think even the smartest teams know that they don't
Speaker 1: know all that much about injuries and injury prevention and
Speaker 1: like wearables and biometrics like this in some ways is
Speaker 1: the next frontier of all of this stuff. So who
Speaker 1: do you think is the most interesting person in the league?
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna ask you that for players and for
Speaker 1: coaches or executives. Interesting in what sense? In any sense
Speaker 1: you choose Interesting in terms of their impact on the game,
Speaker 1: interesting in their potential. Well, you know, the real answer
Speaker 1: is Steph Curry because I just love watching him. I
Speaker 1: still find him just thrilling to watch. But but I
Speaker 1: actually the most interesting guys in the league are the
Speaker 1: ones who were misvalued for some reason, and the evolution
Speaker 1: of the game um has changed their value in the
Speaker 1: league and the premium that teams put on them, and
Speaker 1: so that tends to be like three point shooters and
Speaker 1: so not the step Curry types, almost like the like
Speaker 1: the Steve Kerr player types. So I've written a lot
Speaker 1: about these guys. I've written about Duncan Robinson with the
Speaker 1: Miami Heat, who went to a small high school in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. He went to Exeter Academy. He went to
Speaker 1: Williams College D three Williams College in the nest Gag
Speaker 1: transferred to Michigan when undrafted, played in the G League,
Speaker 1: and now is the single best three point shooter in
Speaker 1: the NBA. And it's a guy who, like, you know,
Speaker 1: basically the whole sport changed and he adapted, and suddenly
Speaker 1: he becomes this really valuable player. Did he adapt? Did
Speaker 1: the sports change to exactly what he was? The sport
Speaker 1: evolved into his favor right, and so um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's his story is really a fairy tale, right.
Speaker 1: But to me, what made it so interesting was that
Speaker 1: it's a case study in economics, right, and how we
Speaker 1: think about how we value players. Not too long ago,
Speaker 1: Duncan Robinson was not valued all that highly. Now like
Speaker 1: every team needs to Duncan Robinson. And that's the same
Speaker 1: sort of um progression that took place in the NFL
Speaker 1: with that Michael Lewis wrote about with the blind Side,
Speaker 1: where there was an off tackle that was never an
Speaker 1: important UM role and then suddenly protecting the quarterback becomes
Speaker 1: so much more important following some rule changes and some
Speaker 1: just generally the way the game changed, same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Suddenly what was you know, a league minimum salary role
Speaker 1: becomes a three four or five million dollar role. He
Speaker 1: got really lucky that this evolved right into his sweet spot.
Speaker 1: So so that's a player well, and the team's got
Speaker 1: lucky too, because the only way to win in professional
Speaker 1: sports now is to find the nf agiencies in the market, right,
Speaker 1: Sometimes that's the valuable role players. If if there's a
Speaker 1: um cap, if there's a salary correct, and you know,
Speaker 1: the greatest inefficiency are the superstars, right because in an
Speaker 1: open market, Lebron James is worth a whole lot more
Speaker 1: money than he's paid right now, right because his salary
Speaker 1: is capped. Of course, Like that's why you want superstars
Speaker 1: is because like you know, you don't you can't throw
Speaker 1: enough money at them. It doesn't matter Lebron James makes
Speaker 1: what thirty five million dollars a year, he's really a bargain,
Speaker 1: right because relative to what it means to the l
Speaker 1: A Lakers revenues no like relative to when you are
Speaker 1: building a team in the NBA, because there are a
Speaker 1: lot of other players who make thirty five million dollars
Speaker 1: a year because it's the most that you can pay,
Speaker 1: Like in an open market, what a team would give
Speaker 1: Lebron seventy five million dollars a hundred million dollars right,
Speaker 1: even if it were an open market in a cap
Speaker 1: system where the team had a salary cap but the
Speaker 1: players didn't and you could offer them whatever you want.
Speaker 1: You can make a case that, like, if there were
Speaker 1: a hundred million dollars salary cap, you should give Lebron
Speaker 1: ninety million dollars, right and just filling in with everybody else,
Speaker 1: and so like million dollars up stars are the great
Speaker 1: inefficiency and and that's what basketball teams believe. But there
Speaker 1: are other ways to find value. And it's to find
Speaker 1: value on the margins. It's to get those guys like
Speaker 1: Duncan Robinson and Shane Daddier, like guys who are not
Speaker 1: valued the way the markets suggests they should be. So
Speaker 1: there was another reference in the book that cracked me up. Um,
Speaker 1: George Steinbrenner and the Harlem Globe Trotters changed the NBA.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to explain that because listeners are going
Speaker 1: to think they misheard that. It has to do with
Speaker 1: the formation of the three point line, Like the three
Speaker 1: point line did not always exist in basketball. It seems
Speaker 1: so fundamental to how the game is played today. But
Speaker 1: somebody dropped somebody dropped a line on the court, this
Speaker 1: little strip of tape and decided shots from inside will
Speaker 1: be worth two points and shots from outside will be
Speaker 1: worth three points. And I misremembered this when I had
Speaker 1: my conversation with Daryl Maury. I thought it was in
Speaker 1: college first, but it wasn't. It started in the NBA first.
Speaker 1: It actually started in a basketball league called the American
Speaker 1: Basketball League, which predated the America Basketball Association, which then
Speaker 1: merged with the m b A, and so in the
Speaker 1: a b L in the nineteen sixties, this short lived
Speaker 1: Doomed Basketball League that was run by the founder of
Speaker 1: the Harlem Globe Trotters. They were the first to experiment
Speaker 1: with the three point line in a professional league. And
Speaker 1: there were eight teams in this league. And who was
Speaker 1: one of the owners of this doomed Basketball league but
Speaker 1: George Steinbrenner before he bought the New York Yankees. And
Speaker 1: which team did he own? He owned the Cleveland Pipers,
Speaker 1: And there was this discussion in one of their meetings.
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks ago, I went down and found
Speaker 1: these papers in this archive at the University of Texas
Speaker 1: that sort of showed how this league was formed, and
Speaker 1: the guy who started the league was this guy named
Speaker 1: Abe Sapperstein, who was this visionary marketing whiz behind the
Speaker 1: Harlem Globe Trotters. He also started the A B L
Speaker 1: and uh he had so much power that one day
Speaker 1: he missed one of their meetings where all of the
Speaker 1: owners came to be and Uh. They decided that they
Speaker 1: would try to strike back at some of his power
Speaker 1: by eliminating the three point line. So they took a vote,
Speaker 1: do we think like we should have a three point line?
Speaker 1: And if we do, like, where should it be? Should
Speaker 1: it be at twenty three ft? Should it be at
Speaker 1: twenty ft? Like? Where exactly? And they decided to move
Speaker 1: the three point line in, so three ft they move
Speaker 1: it in. They have this vote. Steinbrunner votes against it.
Speaker 1: He says keep it where Sapristein wants it to be.
Speaker 1: But it passes by a fourth three margin. Sapperstein comes
Speaker 1: back to the next meeting just completely ignores what happened
Speaker 1: in his absence and set the line at three ft
Speaker 1: nine inches away from the center of the basket. And
Speaker 1: where is the three point line in the NBA today?
Speaker 1: Twenty three ft and nine inches away from the basket.
Speaker 1: It's exactly where A sa Perstein decided it should be
Speaker 1: sixty years ago. That that that's quite fascinating. You would
Speaker 1: never guess that Stone Brenner has impacted not just Major
Speaker 1: League Baseball, but the NBA as well. There was a
Speaker 1: stat in your book that I found completely and totally insane,
Speaker 1: and I have to ask you about this, which one
Speaker 1: the Warriors have outscored their opponents by more than four
Speaker 1: thousand points in curries minutes, in other words, when Steph
Speaker 1: Curry is on the floor over the past five years.
Speaker 1: Talking about plus minus that has generated an advantage for
Speaker 1: the Golden State Warriors of plus four thousand points. That
Speaker 1: can't possibly be right. That's just are you questioning my math?
Speaker 1: Absolutely insane, It is insane. And the most insane thing
Speaker 1: about it is that I believe they are being outscored
Speaker 1: by the other team when Steph Curry is not on
Speaker 1: the court, right, So they're negative when he's not on
Speaker 1: the court. There their plus four thousand when he's on
Speaker 1: the court, and the other team beats them when he's
Speaker 1: off the court. And so that just shows it shows
Speaker 1: like this incredible force that Steph Curry has become so
Speaker 1: his plus minus has to be just crazy. If that's
Speaker 1: the case. Yeah, and that it's it speaks to um
Speaker 1: why it was so brilliant to build a team around him,
Speaker 1: Like nobody thought that you could or that you should,
Speaker 1: and the Warriors have proved everybody wrong. So so let's
Speaker 1: talk about some you mentioned going down to Texas and
Speaker 1: doing some research. Who was the most interesting post and
Speaker 1: you spoke to when you were recently researching this? And
Speaker 1: by interesting, I mean who is the most surprising person
Speaker 1: that you came away from the conversation with m I
Speaker 1: really didn't expect that. I talked to a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting people. I talked to Steph Curry. I talked to
Speaker 1: Eugene Fama, I talked to David booth Um, Tom Gilovich,
Speaker 1: these all of these So I haven't had stuff Curry on.
Speaker 1: But that's my that's my list right there. That's your
Speaker 1: bucket list. One bucket list that's checked off staff is
Speaker 1: on the bucket list. I have to say, one of
Speaker 1: the most interesting people I talked to is a guy
Speaker 1: named Nick Hagan, who I don't think you've had on
Speaker 1: this show. I have not. Nick Hagan is a fifth
Speaker 1: generation sugar Beet farmer on the border of Minnesota and
Speaker 1: North Dakota, and I took a trip out to his
Speaker 1: farm because um I wanted to know, like, do farmers
Speaker 1: believe in the hot hand? Like this is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why this is one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: people have studied the hot hand, is because it applies
Speaker 1: to all these different industries. And so um I went
Speaker 1: out there during wheat harvest. And Nick is this fascinating
Speaker 1: guy because his family has been in the farming business
Speaker 1: for five generations, right going back to his great great
Speaker 1: grandfather in the middle of the d and yet he
Speaker 1: didn't think that he would enter the family business. He
Speaker 1: was a trombonist. He came to Juilliard to play music
Speaker 1: before he finally decided, actually, I do want to go
Speaker 1: back into the family business and moved back to this farm.
Speaker 1: And what he told me was like music and farming
Speaker 1: and basketball couldn't be any more different. Like music is
Speaker 1: more like basketball than it is like farming. So in
Speaker 1: basketball the court is always the same, right, like you
Speaker 1: know the parameters, and farming it's always moving. So like
Speaker 1: if the basketball court is a rectangle, farming is like
Speaker 1: one day it could be a rhombus, and the next
Speaker 1: day it could be a trapezoid, and the next day
Speaker 1: it could be a triangle. Is that a function of
Speaker 1: whether the market for the crops? Everything you do not
Speaker 1: have control. And so what he has learned is that
Speaker 1: basketball is about playing offense, right, farming is about playing
Speaker 1: defense and trying to play the long game. And keep
Speaker 1: in mind like all of these lessons that you've learned
Speaker 1: for all of these years. So like he doesn't chase patterns.
Speaker 1: He doesn't believe in the hot hand, even though he
Speaker 1: does believe in the hot and he doesn't behave as
Speaker 1: if he believes in the hot hand. Um, what he
Speaker 1: does is he trusts principles instead of chasing patterns. And
Speaker 1: to me, like, you know, I could talk to academics
Speaker 1: like I've been in NBA locker rooms, I've never been
Speaker 1: on a sugar beet farm before. And that was one
Speaker 1: of like the most thrilling parts of this book for me.
Speaker 1: So last question before we get to our favorite questions.
Speaker 1: You're simultaneously writing a book and working for the journal
Speaker 1: full time writing a column. Lots of folks have said
Speaker 1: that's impossible to do. You have to take time off.
Speaker 1: How are you able to balance both of those. It's
Speaker 1: not easy to write a book while you're also writing
Speaker 1: columns that are, if not on the same topics, certainly
Speaker 1: similar topics to what you're covering in the book. A
Speaker 1: lot of early mornings and long weekends and not taking vacation.
Speaker 1: And I realized not too long ago that I haven't
Speaker 1: watched much television over the course of the last two
Speaker 1: or third Yeah, and so, um so there was that
Speaker 1: I gave myself a lot of time to write the book.
Speaker 1: It was like eighteen months from start to finish of
Speaker 1: of writing. Um So, it was just sort of trying
Speaker 1: to find time whenever I could. But I have to say,
Speaker 1: like I think that writing a book made me better
Speaker 1: at writing stories for the wallstre Journal. It was sort
Speaker 1: of like cross training in a sentence, like it just
Speaker 1: accessed a different part of my brain that was fun
Speaker 1: to play with that I never really get to exercise
Speaker 1: all that much. Quite interesting. I have to tell you,
Speaker 1: I approached this book in with great trepidation for a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons. First, I had already had Kanaman and
Speaker 1: Gilovich and Miller and whole run of people on and second,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the story you wrote about um Adam
Speaker 1: and Josh about their paper, and I'm like, oh, I
Speaker 1: hope this book doesn't suck, because every now and then
Speaker 1: I'll start a book and I'm like, yeah, I can't
Speaker 1: finish this. But I really liked it, and I plowed
Speaker 1: through it, and you did a really nice job taking
Speaker 1: what's essentially this narrow, wonky academic theory and turned it
Speaker 1: into a compelling two pages worth of a discussion. It's
Speaker 1: a great narrative. Well, thank you, thank you for overcoming
Speaker 1: your trepidation, and I'm glad that it didn't suck. Um,
Speaker 1: it really didn't suck it. First of all, I did
Speaker 1: say it's it's good wonky beach Rena because because it was.
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's interesting enough, and it's told in a
Speaker 1: sort of the inherent tention. Um, I think the tension
Speaker 1: resolves itself towards the ends. Well, it's funny. I think
Speaker 1: writing for the wall Stree Journal actually gives me good
Speaker 1: training for this, because when I write about sports for
Speaker 1: the journal, I write for people who know everything about
Speaker 1: sports and nothing about which is not easy to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you have to thread that needle. And that's
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do with this book. I wanted
Speaker 1: it to be entertaining to people who knew the saga
Speaker 1: of the hot hand, and also people who don't even
Speaker 1: know what the hot hand is. UM, And so that
Speaker 1: meant like trying to reach as broad of an audience
Speaker 1: as possible without alien aiding that core audience. And if
Speaker 1: you describe the hothhand simply as streaks, everybody understands what
Speaker 1: a streak is. It's not it's not that difficult to grasp.
Speaker 1: But I thought you did a nice book. And I'll
Speaker 1: repeat on the air what I what I told you earlier.
Speaker 1: So you know, I always sift through the sources just
Speaker 1: to see um who they used. And I don't know
Speaker 1: a lot of people read the acknowledgements, but it's another
Speaker 1: version of the sources. Well, the best part of the book.
Speaker 1: You should read the dast that's the secret of any book.
Speaker 1: And I was shocked to actually find that you mentioned
Speaker 1: the Masters in Business episode with Gilovich, and that set
Speaker 1: me back looking through the book. And I just went through,
Speaker 1: go down the list. They'll are konom and Miller. Um.
Speaker 1: I think I'm a few years into like a PhD
Speaker 1: in business from listening to this podcast. Because like, the
Speaker 1: beautiful thing is that not only have you had all
Speaker 1: of these luminaries come in here and be really open,
Speaker 1: but there are transcripts right like you can read these
Speaker 1: interviews as if their essays almost their biographies of these
Speaker 1: really brilliant minds. What what's the only problem with the
Speaker 1: transcripts is we we don't clean them up. They just
Speaker 1: get cut and paste uff like that. And very often
Speaker 1: what sounds normal in a spoken sentence reads terribly And
Speaker 1: but there are some people who speak in paragraphs, and
Speaker 1: those people just blow my mind because I don't know
Speaker 1: how they do that. I had a buddy in grad
Speaker 1: school who would write when we would have UM some
Speaker 1: some final exams were essays and some were multiple choice.
Speaker 1: And his first draft of an essay is better than
Speaker 1: everybody else's third draft. His the way he thought and
Speaker 1: constructed something was shout out to Jeff um was so
Speaker 1: just beautifully done. But just like, listen, the fact is
Speaker 1: that every draft makes a column better, and you don't
Speaker 1: have an infinite amount of time to do draft nine seven.
Speaker 1: It's all right, here's the research, cheers, the rough outline,
Speaker 1: here's the first pass. Now I'm going back and changing
Speaker 1: the structure and adding more stuff. And now I'm on
Speaker 1: the second pass and then usually there's a third or
Speaker 1: a fourth pass after that. But that's it. You don't
Speaker 1: have time to do. And I know if you do
Speaker 1: five more, it just gets that much better, tighter's faster, smarter.
Speaker 1: But who you You can't do a month for a
Speaker 1: weekly column. It's a weekly and so that's really the challenge. UM.
Speaker 1: And and I found that that sort of thing really, uh,
Speaker 1: really kind of interesting. So if you could speak fluidly
Speaker 1: the way we write, that would be a great thing.
Speaker 1: I have a pet theory which Barbara Taverski told me
Speaker 1: isn't true, or at least she says there's no data
Speaker 1: that supports it. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. I
Speaker 1: think the part of your brain responsible for writing is different,
Speaker 1: perhaps adjacent to the part of your brain responsible for speaking.
Speaker 1: I mean, I will say that I think Barbara Tverski
Speaker 1: knows more about the brain than I know about anything,
Speaker 1: so I trust her judgment on that. But I do think, um,
Speaker 1: there is just something about like sometimes I will just
Speaker 1: sort of dictate things and go back to them later.
Speaker 1: And what I've learned actually is that, UM, sometimes the
Speaker 1: easiest way for me to write a story. I can
Speaker 1: be staring at a screen all day long writing and
Speaker 1: if I look at that document on my phone on
Speaker 1: the subway leaving work, it looks totally different and something clicks.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like that thing where you stare across
Speaker 1: word for like fifteen minutes and you can't get a
Speaker 1: few boxes, and you come back to it a few
Speaker 1: hours later and it's just staring you right in the face,
Speaker 1: and like you're like, how did I not see this already?
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen the word jumbles where there's a
Speaker 1: reset button and it just changes the order of the letters.
Speaker 1: So so that's on on a phone or on a computer.
Speaker 1: I have friends who, when they're writing stories, will just
Speaker 1: change the font of the story as they're writing because
Speaker 1: it makes them look at it in a completely different
Speaker 1: So I don't know if you've so you go through
Speaker 1: an editor when you publish. When I publish ship Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: I have an editor who does that. When I throw
Speaker 1: something up on the blog, I'm just completely blind to
Speaker 1: my own typos, So sometimes I'll ask someone else to
Speaker 1: give it a quick through and catch some things that
Speaker 1: I miss. But the technique that's other people have talked
Speaker 1: about is take what you've written, cut and pasted into
Speaker 1: a different word document or whatever you're document were, you know,
Speaker 1: word processor of choices and change the size and the
Speaker 1: choice of funds, and now you're looking at it with
Speaker 1: fresh eyes. You're not on different lines, yes, and it's
Speaker 1: just order. It just changes your ability to see typos
Speaker 1: and spelling and grammar issues that you completely missed the
Speaker 1: first time. What some editors that the journal have taught me, like,
Speaker 1: we fact checked all of our own stories, right, we
Speaker 1: don't have magazine fact checkers, but you have your own
Speaker 1: bias there. Well. Sometimes what we do is if I
Speaker 1: have looked at a story a lot, I will fact
Speaker 1: check from the bottom up. And so when you just
Speaker 1: read the story in a different way and you're checking
Speaker 1: things off as you go, your eyes don't glide over
Speaker 1: things in the order in which you know they're coming right,
Speaker 1: because it's flipped completely the opposite way that that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: So eighteen months in the writing is that? Is that
Speaker 1: how long you're working on this for the draft? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean what about the research part? Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: worked on the proposal for a long time before that,
Speaker 1: and the research part I hired a research assistant who
Speaker 1: downloaded every paper ever written about the hot hand and
Speaker 1: sifted through them and like summarized all of them, so
Speaker 1: you didn't actually read every page. I read the summaries
Speaker 1: of all of them, but I read all the major ones.
Speaker 1: So I have I have in my apartment to like
Speaker 1: five page binders with double sided printing of like every
Speaker 1: scholarly paper ever written about the hot hand, because I
Speaker 1: wanted to like be really fluent in the literature and
Speaker 1: not miss anything. So when when you talk about first
Speaker 1: we believe this, and then we believe that, now we
Speaker 1: believe this, is it really more of sort of a
Speaker 1: pendulum swing. It goes from one extreme, then it goes
Speaker 1: to the other, and then when it comes back, it
Speaker 1: doesn't quite come back as far, and maybe it settles,
Speaker 1: and eventually we come up with some understanding and neither.
Speaker 1: So the initial paper clearly we see patterns where there
Speaker 1: are none, even if the math is wrong about the basketball.
Speaker 1: And then the pushback, Hey, but the math is wrong
Speaker 1: doesn't mean the underlying thesis is wrong. But there is
Speaker 1: a hot hand, um, And then it kind of comes back, well,
Speaker 1: there's a hot hand, but we weren't looking at how
Speaker 1: difficult the shot was. We weren't looking at the defense
Speaker 1: of intensity, and that changes the number. And then a
Speaker 1: few years later, oh, now we have the ability to
Speaker 1: look at that and the pendulum swinging because of forces
Speaker 1: beyond our control. So the first meaning technology or the
Speaker 1: data that we have right, I mean, the first paper
Speaker 1: was written using the best data that was available back then,
Speaker 1: which was terrible. Statis looks primitive now, but at the
Speaker 1: time it was cutting edge. Like the reason they were
Speaker 1: able to write this paper that the Philadelphia has seventy
Speaker 1: sixers had a statistician. He was the only person who
Speaker 1: took note of the chronology of shots, so he knew
Speaker 1: like what you would do after you made a shot,
Speaker 1: or you made two shots or three shots. Nobody else
Speaker 1: was doing at the time. That seems crazy now because
Speaker 1: we know everything there is to know about any given
Speaker 1: shot in the NBA, right and we can look back
Speaker 1: many years and figure out anything we might want to know.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't available back then. The data that we
Speaker 1: have now was not available to the researchers in like
Speaker 1: their nerdiest wonkiest, wildest dreams or else they would have
Speaker 1: used it because they did so the seventy sixers had
Speaker 1: a statistician and no other team did. Was that was
Speaker 1: that close to dr J? What? Why? You know? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think this guy named Harvey Pollock was
Speaker 1: just sort of, uh, you know, one of his own.
Speaker 1: He was like a man before his time, and he
Speaker 1: was nicknamed superstat like everybody knew. He was like the
Speaker 1: towering figure in analytics before analytics was like this buzzword
Speaker 1: in sports, and yet it took decades to catch on.
Speaker 1: That's right, quite quite shocking. So I could keep you
Speaker 1: all day, but I know I have to get to
Speaker 1: some of my favorite questions before we let you go.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to ask you what you're streaming
Speaker 1: you're listening, because I know you're not watching t V
Speaker 1: and I know some of the podcasts you've listened to.
Speaker 1: So instead, can I even ask you what your first
Speaker 1: car was? Did you ever own a car? I drove
Speaker 1: a nineties seven four Runner in high school and college
Speaker 1: that used to be my dad's solid Toyota Truit. But
Speaker 1: I know nothing to kills. I'm not a car guy.
Speaker 1: I absolutely no interests generational is it I like driving cars?
Speaker 1: Like I like I like when I'm on the road,
Speaker 1: like renting a car and I take Zip cars. I
Speaker 1: just I have no interest in like old Porsches or
Speaker 1: Ferraris or anything. And in the first couple of years
Speaker 1: of doing this, I started asking that question as a
Speaker 1: as a would you have for breakfast? What was your
Speaker 1: first car? Just to do a voice check, And then
Speaker 1: the answers became so interesting that I started weaving into
Speaker 1: these questions. And then as I interview younger people, they're like,
Speaker 1: why would I ever need a car? Between Zip car
Speaker 1: and Uber? Who needs that in a car? Tell you
Speaker 1: what I'm streaming? Go ahead, big Taylor Swift fan? Oh really? Um,
Speaker 1: have you seen the Netflix documentary How Is How? Is That?
Speaker 1: Pretty great? Oh? Really? Yeah, it's in my list. I
Speaker 1: haven't gotten to it. There is a scene in there
Speaker 1: and you will know what scene it is when you
Speaker 1: see it. That's like really arresting. It's like one of
Speaker 1: the best things you'll see on TV all year. Okay,
Speaker 1: I will definitely, I will definitely check that out. What
Speaker 1: is so? Now? I'm gonna ask you what else are
Speaker 1: you listening to and watching on on on streaming services?
Speaker 1: My streaming services? Um, my choices are strange. I I
Speaker 1: fall asleep every night watching Netflix on my phone. Usually
Speaker 1: what I do when I travel, I do that with
Speaker 1: the iPad, do you So? Now I put in. My
Speaker 1: wife is sleeping next to me, and I have like
Speaker 1: an air pod in and I fall asleep, and um,
Speaker 1: the show I've been watching over and over is this old,
Speaker 1: not old, but old ish um show called Gilmore Girls,
Speaker 1: which I can't believe you said that. Why, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: out myself you're a Gilmar Girls. So last summer, so
Speaker 1: my my wife and her sister have a house out
Speaker 1: in the Hampton, saying it from their parents, and um,
Speaker 1: there's always an argument about what were if we're out there,
Speaker 1: what we're gonna watch? And my my problem with them
Speaker 1: is that we'll argue over something I'll give into them
Speaker 1: and then they'll fall asleep. And I'm watching something of theirs.
Speaker 1: And one day we were prepping to go out and
Speaker 1: I'm flipping through Netflix and I'm just Gilmer Girls. What's this?
Speaker 1: And my sister in law says, I love that show.
Speaker 1: She goes in fact, that's the show that had Melissa
Speaker 1: McCarthy in it before anyone knew who she was. So
Speaker 1: we start watching an episode and two seasons through it.
Speaker 1: I still have like a dozen seasons to go. The
Speaker 1: beautiful thing about that show is that it gives you
Speaker 1: material to fall asleep to whenever you want. So it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like a good show to fall asleep too,
Speaker 1: because it's very fast paced. It's very like orkan Ash
Speaker 1: a little bit. The dialogue is very like that snappy
Speaker 1: and it moves along quickly, and you would think, like,
Speaker 1: you don't want those voices in your ear before you
Speaker 1: fall asleep. But what I found is that it just
Speaker 1: sort of I've seen them so many times that like
Speaker 1: they're sort of background noise, and by the time I
Speaker 1: get to the end of the series, it's been so
Speaker 1: long since I saw the pilot and the first season
Speaker 1: that I just go back to it and started again.
Speaker 1: So so I do that with two shows, one to
Speaker 1: watch and one to fall asleep with. I think Seinfeld's
Speaker 1: Comedians and Cars getting Coffee. I have that to just
Speaker 1: roll over to the next show. But they're too short,
Speaker 1: is the problem. But you can't watch him every day.
Speaker 1: You have to, Like that's a little bit. You watch
Speaker 1: one or two a week, and you go through the
Speaker 1: whole series, and by the time you finish the whole series.
Speaker 1: A new season comes out right, and when that's done,
Speaker 1: you could start over. But the other show that you
Speaker 1: can have two shows to full sleep to one is
Speaker 1: The Big Bang, which I've seen a million times. Another guest,
Speaker 1: former writer, producer of the show. And and then second
Speaker 1: and I find this hilarious. My wife finds this annoying.
Speaker 1: There is a show on the Sci Fi Channel called
Speaker 1: How the Universe Works that'll put you right this so
Speaker 1: so I'm but those shows work on two levels. If
Speaker 1: you're watching them while you're awake in a well lit room,
Speaker 1: it really is a very accessible way to reach some
Speaker 1: really interesting, cutting edge astrophysics things that are changing. That
Speaker 1: like all sorts of fascinating discoveries that you just never
Speaker 1: will see in the New York Times of Wall Street. Jenneral,
Speaker 1: it's way out there, both literally and physically. But second
Speaker 1: you put that in a darkened room. The uh the
Speaker 1: guy who does the voice overs, he's got it's just
Speaker 1: so horrific. His voice is so deep and soothing. It's
Speaker 1: almost the real TV equivalent of ambient recommend This is
Speaker 1: food shows from other countries that are subtitled so they're slow.
Speaker 1: There's classical music like Chef's Table France will crunch it
Speaker 1: right out like that. One season will last you like
Speaker 1: a year of falling. So my I always have this
Speaker 1: to agreement with my wife. She watches shows like UM
Speaker 1: Love It, or Listed or or Property Brothers. They engage
Speaker 1: your that's anytime there's an inherent tension and a conclusion,
Speaker 1: your brain wants to stay away till the end. So
Speaker 1: to me, deep space. What is more relaxing than a
Speaker 1: dark and screen and just the universe. It's just it's
Speaker 1: like sleeping under the stars. But what's your take on
Speaker 1: Gilmore Girls? Pretty great, right, It's really well written. I
Speaker 1: really like the characters. I haven't gotten as deep into
Speaker 1: the show as you have. Um, So it's you know,
Speaker 1: as as you watch the show progress, there are there
Speaker 1: are always the opportunity to go the wrong way and
Speaker 1: derail a show. And I'll cause a little controversy right now.
Speaker 1: So I've watched all of the marvelous Mismaysel from the beginning.
Speaker 1: It's wonderful, except except when you watch the initial season.
Speaker 1: The initial season is essentially what is it like for
Speaker 1: a housewife in the late fifties early sixties to break
Speaker 1: into stand up comedy in an era of very repressed speech.
Speaker 1: That's a fascinating topic. And unfortunately the show has been
Speaker 1: too successful because it kind of abandoned that theme and
Speaker 1: it's I don't care about going to the Cat Skills
Speaker 1: in the summer, even though I spent summers there as
Speaker 1: a kid. I don't like there was a whole run
Speaker 1: of the the in Laws moving to Queen's and that
Speaker 1: that whole thing was just the the the B storylines. Um.
Speaker 1: And you could take a show like Seinfeld that would
Speaker 1: have four equal storylines and have them all go off
Speaker 1: and they would interweave and all reach a conclusion at
Speaker 1: the end. I found the B storyline invested in. Like
Speaker 1: Midge's husband, I don't care about him. Shows feel similar
Speaker 1: to you Mazel and Gilmore Girls. There are elements that
Speaker 1: are very similar. Sure well they're written by the same person.
Speaker 1: That would that would make sense that you know I've noticed. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a British show I used to love called Coupling,
Speaker 1: which is basically Friends with some teeth. Like Friends was
Speaker 1: a milk toast lazy no, I mean, I mean with
Speaker 1: a bite. But I don't know if that's really true
Speaker 1: about the British dentistry anymore. But it was a serbic
Speaker 1: and nasty and funny, and it was written by guy
Speaker 1: whose last name is Moffett, who later goes on to
Speaker 1: write a bunch of Doctor Who and a bunch of
Speaker 1: other stuff. And it's amazing how smart a writer, how
Speaker 1: entertaining a writer. But I think I kind of knew
Speaker 1: that some of the people associated with gilmal Girls were
Speaker 1: also associated with with Miss maysl. What what's so interesting
Speaker 1: about the show is Melissa McCarthy's character is just so
Speaker 1: like you see the glimmers, Because I came to the
Speaker 1: show after she' earlyer already was a giant star and
Speaker 1: you could see glimmers. But even back then, like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's gonna be hindsight biased, She's going to be fantastic.
Speaker 1: Is it worth watching the rest of the show? Am
Speaker 1: I going to be? Not only do you get to
Speaker 1: watch the whole thing, you get to see Rory go
Speaker 1: to college and come out of college. But you know,
Speaker 1: Netflix did a revival I saw, so I haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: but I read about those four episodes there about an
Speaker 1: hour and a half each, and so you can kind
Speaker 1: of catch up with them about it. Is it worth it?
Speaker 1: Because the every it's good. As an arrested development fan,
Speaker 1: I was warned off of the Netflix version. It will
Speaker 1: it will satisfy an itch. Okay, alright, that works. Wow,
Speaker 1: that was a long answer to that long Gilmore girls thought.
Speaker 1: And you thought asking about streaming would be boring, Well,
Speaker 1: you told me you weren't watching anything, So that's that's
Speaker 1: why I was watching old things I watched. There you go,
Speaker 1: so you're not there's nothing you're watching currently. I Once
Speaker 1: I was done with the book, I I caught up
Speaker 1: on Succession in like a weekend and loved right. Um,
Speaker 1: so I watched the first two episodes. I don't matter.
Speaker 1: I don't like any of the characters and I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't and you know there's nobody I relate to.
Speaker 1: And it's like, wait, if I don't like any of
Speaker 1: these characters, if I'm not invested in any of them,
Speaker 1: if they can all get hit by a bus, that
Speaker 1: I don't care, why am I watching this? I want
Speaker 1: to feel And I know some people have said, well,
Speaker 1: I feel the same way about Seinfeld. There was a lovable,
Speaker 1: obnoxious nous about them. It's not and the same thing
Speaker 1: with Curb your enthusiasm. Right aside from all the cringe worthiness,
Speaker 1: there's a certain appeal to the characters, and everybody wishes
Speaker 1: everybody has a bit of Larry David. Well, well you wish,
Speaker 1: so Larry David is nothing like Larry David. Larry that
Speaker 1: is his kid right blown up, And we all wish
Speaker 1: there are times when we could give voice, like I
Speaker 1: come into the city on the seven, all right, go
Speaker 1: from the true because I don't want to go to
Speaker 1: Penn Station, so I'll come in that way. And I
Speaker 1: am still after years and years and years, astonished that
Speaker 1: this is literally the busiest subway stop in all of
Speaker 1: the New York City subway system and people haven't figured
Speaker 1: out to get the hell out of the way of
Speaker 1: the door. Really are you just paying? So? And I
Speaker 1: wanna There was a great um Seth Myers before the
Speaker 1: new season came out where they have Larry David on
Speaker 1: and basically set Larry David loose on all the writers
Speaker 1: to be Larry David and throughout the day. So one
Speaker 1: of the writers invites people to his home for dinner
Speaker 1: and Larry, no, no, you have to work with these people.
Speaker 1: They don't want to waste their Thursday night having dinner,
Speaker 1: and it's just great to have Larry David there as
Speaker 1: a foil for your deepest dark secrets. I have that
Speaker 1: sort of running internal narrative constantly. The best thing that
Speaker 1: I've streamed recently probably is that, UM, I am a
Speaker 1: huge John Laney dork, and UM, I just think he's
Speaker 1: a genius. So many there's so many like I I
Speaker 1: watched his talk show appearances because they're hilarious. The funniest
Speaker 1: thing on the internet is, Uh, he did and in
Speaker 1: review at the Street Why with Nick roll in their
Speaker 1: oh hello characters with and they're right, they are old
Speaker 1: old colleagues from way back when, and it's an interview
Speaker 1: with John Oliver and it's about ninety minutes. Um, John
Speaker 1: Oliver interviews them, they take Q and a's and I
Speaker 1: cannot describe how just outrageously funny this thing is. It
Speaker 1: is like it's it's I think he is the funniest
Speaker 1: stand up on the planet. It's funnier than any of
Speaker 1: his stand ups because the way that he can embody
Speaker 1: these characters is it's it's incredible. I would watch it
Speaker 1: like I have watched it so many times, and I
Speaker 1: like happily watch it any time it comes out, all right,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna put that on my list. Let me
Speaker 1: let me run through some of my favorite questions that
Speaker 1: otherwise uh people will yell email me and and complain.
Speaker 1: So who your early mentors, What journalists influenced the way
Speaker 1: you approach covering sports? There were a lot before I
Speaker 1: got to the Wall Street Journal, But there was one
Speaker 1: guy at the Wall Street Journal named Sam Walker, who
Speaker 1: was the founding sports editor of the journal, who is
Speaker 1: this brilliant and insane and insanely brilliant and brilliantly insane
Speaker 1: person who sort of set the bar really really high.
Speaker 1: And so when I was an intern, when I freelanced
Speaker 1: for the paper for a while, even when I was
Speaker 1: a staff writer, it felt like every time you got
Speaker 1: a story into the paper, you were like pole vault
Speaker 1: thing basically, like you were trying to get above a
Speaker 1: certain point. And um, I think that's why we used
Speaker 1: to hear a lot of the journal like we didn't
Speaker 1: know that you covered sports because we didn't. But now
Speaker 1: I think people understand that we try to do something
Speaker 1: a little bit different, and that's because of Sam. I
Speaker 1: think he sort of taught me what a good story
Speaker 1: was and like to not be precious with my own
Speaker 1: writing and to just like let other people make it better.
Speaker 1: So Sam hired me and had this huge influence on
Speaker 1: my life. Let's talk about books. What are some of
Speaker 1: your favorite books? What do you like to read when
Speaker 1: you're not writing books? Yeah, I mean it's I'm a
Speaker 1: sucker for the Michael Lewis books. I like, I think
Speaker 1: money Ball Is is still brilliant and um, when I
Speaker 1: went to visit Nick Hagan on the farm, we were
Speaker 1: talking as we boarded, like his weak combine. I asked
Speaker 1: him sometimes I write to classical music, and I asked him,
Speaker 1: like who should I be listening to? Like who who
Speaker 1: is your favorite composer since you was at Juilliard and
Speaker 1: he played trombone and he said, um, you know, I
Speaker 1: know this is going to sound silly, but like the
Speaker 1: best guy is Mozart and he's like and I know,
Speaker 1: like you know, other people know Mozart, but like I
Speaker 1: know Mozart and like I appreciate him. And I sort
Speaker 1: of feel the same way about Michael Lewis, like everybody
Speaker 1: loves his books, but like, you know, as someone who
Speaker 1: has tried to write a book along the same lines,
Speaker 1: like the stories that he finds like on a sentence level,
Speaker 1: like everything about them they're they're just brilliant, like they
Speaker 1: just they hold up. And whenever I feel stuck, I
Speaker 1: might sometimes go back and and read some just a
Speaker 1: few pages from his books because like that voice, like
Speaker 1: it just gets in your head and it's I love it.
Speaker 1: I I anxiously await all so money will get you
Speaker 1: wanna mention another one of his or and then other
Speaker 1: books you you like, well, I mean The blind Side,
Speaker 1: the Undoing Project. Um, now I don't know, I I
Speaker 1: M I read these types of books. I mean part
Speaker 1: of this book is like it is like using a
Speaker 1: social stych. It is like using an idea from so
Speaker 1: psychology to explore the world. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of books along those lines. And I think I read
Speaker 1: them at an impressionable age. They really like they really
Speaker 1: became popular when I was like in middle school, high school,
Speaker 1: and like they were just sort of intoxicating to me.
Speaker 1: And so um, there are a lot of books like that,
Speaker 1: I mean novels too, Like you know, I loved the
Speaker 1: Salary Rooney book Normal People when it came out, like
Speaker 1: like everybody else in New York City, it seems. And
Speaker 1: but but those that you know Moneyball and like the
Speaker 1: Michael Lewis Cannon, that's that's that's what really does it
Speaker 1: for me. Tell us about a time you failed and
Speaker 1: what you learned from the experience. It was, Well, I
Speaker 1: feel like I fail every time I write a story because,
Speaker 1: like you know, you're writing a newspaper story that's a
Speaker 1: thousand words words, like you've talked to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you know, all this nuance that you can't possibly pack
Speaker 1: into the story. And so, like you know, every time
Speaker 1: the story comes out, like I, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: not good enough, right. But but one time I really failed.
Speaker 1: It was actually not too long ago. Um. I wrote
Speaker 1: one of my like bajillion stories about the Golden State
Speaker 1: Warriors last year, and it was right before the finals,
Speaker 1: and you know, I needed something new to say about
Speaker 1: this team that I've been I about for five or
Speaker 1: six years. Um And we have a daily newspaper, and like,
Speaker 1: you know, give me a break. Not every story is perfect.
Speaker 1: And um, I was trying to express this thought that
Speaker 1: I had that the Golden State Warriors were the Golden
Speaker 1: State Warriors because there were like five Um, really valuable
Speaker 1: players on that team, and you take out any one
Speaker 1: of them and the whole thing falls apart. It's a
Speaker 1: bit like a Jenga tower, right. Um. And the way
Speaker 1: I phreeze this in the story was like, the Warriors
Speaker 1: are this dynasty because of Steph Curry, Clay Thompson, Kevin Durant,
Speaker 1: Draymond Green, and Andrea Gudala. And the end was italicized
Speaker 1: right because it was meant to say that, like, if
Speaker 1: you take out any one of their contributions, they're not
Speaker 1: the Warriors. That's not always the case with basketball teams.
Speaker 1: Like basketball teams were built around one or two guys.
Speaker 1: The ninety s Bulls are the Bulls. With Jordan's you
Speaker 1: could sort of substitute a lot of other guys, right,
Speaker 1: can't do that with the Warriors. Um. The problem was that, Um,
Speaker 1: I forgot that like on Twitter and on social media,
Speaker 1: you can't italicize words, right, and so UM when this
Speaker 1: stuff ran on social media, when I wrote tweets that
Speaker 1: we could share from like you know, wha, Um, it
Speaker 1: appears as like the Golden State Warriors are good because
Speaker 1: of Steph Curry, Clay Thompson, Kevin Durantraymond Grand and Andrea Guadala.
Speaker 1: And this turned into one day last year, like the
Speaker 1: entire internet dunking on the Wall Street Journal because it
Speaker 1: read like the Beatles are good because of Paul, George,
Speaker 1: John and Ringo. You know, like it that's a fair statement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it just sure it's Paul and John. But you
Speaker 1: know they're not the Beatles necessarily without George and Ringo.
Speaker 1: But it made for it. It looked like this very
Speaker 1: silly sentiment, and I just felt terrible. I felt like,
Speaker 1: when you have the entire internet like making fun of
Speaker 1: you for a day, you're just like god right, um
Speaker 1: and so um. What it taught me was like you
Speaker 1: kind of have to be careful and like every word
Speaker 1: actually matters. And also that like people forget about things
Speaker 1: on Twitter after a few hours, life is really short,
Speaker 1: future reference and well capitalize the equivalent in stars. Yes,
Speaker 1: that would make you to know a couple of months ago. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: I'll share my other uh secret Twitter secret with you later.
Speaker 1: You'll you'll appreciate this. Um, what do you do for fun?
Speaker 1: What do you do when you're not banging out columns
Speaker 1: for the journal? Well? I can't watch sports because sports
Speaker 1: is work, right, and my brand is always working. Um.
Speaker 1: I just wrote a book in my spare time, so
Speaker 1: I don't know all that much about fun. But one thing,
Speaker 1: one thing that I love lately is that, um, um,
Speaker 1: this is gonna sound silly, but um there's this YouTube
Speaker 1: channel from Bone Appetite and I don't know if you're
Speaker 1: familiar with it, and I'm not a great home cook,
Speaker 1: but um this these videos are like so magical and
Speaker 1: I'm reeling and like, um, there there are the editors
Speaker 1: in the test kitchen and the recipe developers. Um, they're
Speaker 1: just really charming and like you sort of fall in
Speaker 1: love with that. I'm a new episodes like almost every day,
Speaker 1: and my wife and I they're like fifteen minutes, will
Speaker 1: just put it on and like it really like soothes
Speaker 1: me before I go to sleep. Okay, So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give you marriage advice that I wish someone had given
Speaker 1: me many decades ago. My wife and I both like
Speaker 1: to cook, and it's only fairly recently that we started
Speaker 1: on a Sunday night pulling a cookbook out and making
Speaker 1: a recipe from scratch and not just like a simple
Speaker 1: you know, boil water throw pasta, like a full blown
Speaker 1: Bobby Flay recipe. And we've developed over just a couple
Speaker 1: of years a few favorite things. We have a dinner party.
Speaker 1: We know exactly what we're gonna make, and I you're married,
Speaker 1: how long now? Like three years? Okay, had we been
Speaker 1: doing this twenty five years ago, we would be fantastic chefs.
Speaker 1: We don't do it over the summer because that's always barbecue.
Speaker 1: But through especially from like the late fall to early spring,
Speaker 1: was it a new recipe every time? Just about just
Speaker 1: every now and then we'll go back to something and
Speaker 1: so right, and very often it's like, wow, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of work, and this isn't that good. Most of
Speaker 1: the time it's this was really good. And every now
Speaker 1: and then it's like, oh my goodness, your favorite. Um.
Speaker 1: I have to say, I love the Bobby Flay cookbook. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we have like a whole shelf of a dozen
Speaker 1: different cookbooks. There are a handful of people that try
Speaker 1: and work on on basics and I'm I'm embarrassed. Um
Speaker 1: what is her name? She has a restaurant I really
Speaker 1: like out in Hampton's called the Canal Cafe. There's something
Speaker 1: Gourmam drown a blanket. Had I prepped for this question. Um, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But but play with that and see if that does
Speaker 1: anything for you, Because we've just had a fun it's actually, um,
Speaker 1: not only useful, but like fun, it makes you actually
Speaker 1: want to do it right and you start to look
Speaker 1: forward to because usually Sunday night as I'm prepping for
Speaker 1: the beginning of work. Now you go shopping sometime over
Speaker 1: the weekend and then you do this and of course
Speaker 1: you have a bottle of wine open um, and sometimes
Speaker 1: you're drinking a bit throughout. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: Sunday nights. It just worked out for us. But it's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Um. And our final two questions, Uh,
Speaker 1: what sort of advice would you give a college grad
Speaker 1: who was interested in any of the sports or journalism? Um,
Speaker 1: to take advantage of their place in the world. So
Speaker 1: sometimes when the journal has interns, I always tell them this,
Speaker 1: that what they know, what their world is is actually
Speaker 1: very different from the world of the people like running
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal. So like just by virtue of
Speaker 1: being twenty one years old, you are on TikTok, right,
Speaker 1: and you talk to other twenty one year olds, and
Speaker 1: you know what, like this very interesting um subset of
Speaker 1: people are interested in and so like you almost think
Speaker 1: of your world as like this subculture to mine, like
Speaker 1: you are an anthropologist, and so by the very first
Speaker 1: frontage story I wrote for the Wall Street Journal was
Speaker 1: a few months after I graduated from college, and it
Speaker 1: was about this dance craze known as the Dougie, which
Speaker 1: you might remember this song like you know, teach Me
Speaker 1: how to Dougie, and everybody in sports was doing it.
Speaker 1: Was this was this an ahead kind of wise, it
Speaker 1: was an ahead and so um, and I tell them specifically,
Speaker 1: like you know, the ahead does not have to be
Speaker 1: about like you know, birding or something or something that,
Speaker 1: like you think, like it can just be something funny
Speaker 1: about something in your life. And so like, you know,
Speaker 1: the people running the Wall Street Journal did not know
Speaker 1: what the duck you was. But I was twenty one.
Speaker 1: Of course I knew what the duck you was, right,
Speaker 1: And like you can take advantage of that, Like what
Speaker 1: you know is actually pretty interesting, huh, quite quite interesting?
Speaker 1: And what is it about the world of sports that
Speaker 1: you know today that you wish you knew? No, normally
Speaker 1: I would say years ago, but a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago when you got started in in your career. Um
Speaker 1: that I should have taken a single course in economics
Speaker 1: or psychology or statistics or computer science when I was
Speaker 1: in college. I graduated from school and like immediately recognized
Speaker 1: that what I wanted to do, I really needed more of,
Speaker 1: like a quantitative background that I don't think I have
Speaker 1: to this day. And I wish I knew how to
Speaker 1: write code, and I wish I knew how to like
Speaker 1: really understand um statistics because it has become like essential
Speaker 1: in sports now and really writing about sports, like writing
Speaker 1: about sports fluently and finding interesting stories, like you can
Speaker 1: really use numbers and then try to build stories around them,
Speaker 1: which is something I hope I did in this book. Well,
Speaker 1: quite fascinating. I really enjoyed the book. Thank you, Ben
Speaker 1: for being so generous with your time. We have been
Speaker 1: speaking with Ben Cohen. He is the NBA reporter for
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal and author of the new book
Speaker 1: The Hot Hands, The Mystery and Science of Streaks. If
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