Speaker 1: Cutbooms.
Speaker 2: If you thought four hours a day, twelve hundred minutes
Speaker 2: a week was enough, think again. He's the last remnants
Speaker 2: of the old republic, a sol fashion of fairness. He
Speaker 2: treats crackheads in the ghetto gutter the same as the
Speaker 2: rich pill poppers in the penthouse. Wow to clearinghouse of
Speaker 2: hot takes, break free for something special. The Fifth Hour
Speaker 2: with Ben Maller starts right now in.
Speaker 1: The Air of Reware. The Fifth Hour with Me, Ben
Speaker 1: Mahler and Danny g Radio. A happy Saturday to you
Speaker 1: as we continue to provide fresh piping hot pods. Reminder,
Speaker 1: we have NFL football later today, and despite not being
Speaker 1: on my watch tower at the radio station, we still
Speaker 1: have Benny Versus the Penny a global audience watching on YouTube.
Speaker 1: We have the Saturday Special. If you just want the
Speaker 1: games that are being played later today, there's two then
Speaker 1: you can check that out. And if you want every
Speaker 1: game as being played tomorrow on the NFL Week seventeen
Speaker 1: schedule and Monday night that ram Falcon game, make sure
Speaker 1: to partake and enjoy the fun on Benny Vspenny on YouTube.
Speaker 1: So please do that and that content will continue throughout
Speaker 1: the NFL season every week, the playoffs, all the way
Speaker 1: through the Super Bowl in northern California. So this podcast
Speaker 1: is going to be a little bit different than most
Speaker 1: of the podcasts that we do. It just is. There's
Speaker 1: reason for that. You'll find out here in a minute.
Speaker 1: I wanted to say that I'm very happy that I
Speaker 1: have the podcast. I'm glad that you have a little
Speaker 1: bit of a break from the radio show, but I
Speaker 1: still have a chance to talk to you and share
Speaker 1: some information. And there's something that I felt was very
Speaker 1: important that I needed to talk to you as a
Speaker 1: member of the militias we like to call our little group.
Speaker 1: So we'll get to that in a minute. I've got
Speaker 1: the foam cowboy hat double mint gum as well, but
Speaker 1: we'll start with this. It has been said by wise men,
Speaker 1: people much wiser than I am, that sport is a
Speaker 1: delivery system for stories. That it's a vehicle right that
Speaker 1: we watch the games. It's really about the stories, not
Speaker 1: about the stats. It's not about that. I've always believed
Speaker 1: doing talk radio. It's the same thing. It's just with
Speaker 1: more bad lighting and fewer expense accounts and less bells
Speaker 1: and whistles and razzle dazzle and all that. Every once
Speaker 1: in a while, every now and again, that happened. Very often,
Speaker 1: there's someone that will wander into your life from the
Speaker 1: middle of the night and will stay just long enough
Speaker 1: to leave a dent in your memory to stand out
Speaker 1: from the crowd. And then that person will disappear back
Speaker 1: into the darkness. You wonder where where did they go?
Speaker 1: Where did they come from? I don't know. So this week,
Speaker 1: as I was winding down from a full year of
Speaker 1: doing the show and trying to recharge my batteries and
Speaker 1: all that, one of those dents in my memory unfortunately
Speaker 1: became permanent. So before we get to all that, let's
Speaker 1: take the hot Tub time Machine back. I think this
Speaker 1: was twelve years ago. I'm really bad with dates, really
Speaker 1: bad with dates. It could have been fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: It could have been eight years ago, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: not eight years ago. It's more than that. I think
Speaker 1: it was twelve thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, something like that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the jets are on full blast on the hot Tub
Speaker 1: Time Machine, full blast. The water smells faintly of chlorine.
Speaker 1: There's just a little chlorine there, and there's some other
Speaker 1: stuff I don't know what that is. We'll get that
Speaker 1: clean up in a minute. And on a random day,
Speaker 1: long long ago, I received a message from a listener
Speaker 1: claiming to be in the state of Colorado. Overnight Radio.
Speaker 1: When you do the Overnight show, it's like fishing in
Speaker 1: the ocean at three in the morning. You never really
Speaker 1: know who you're going to reel in. We have a
Speaker 1: diverse audience on the Overnight Show. We have people that
Speaker 1: are professors at university, have people that are executives at
Speaker 1: major companies, construction companies, people that work as farmers and
Speaker 1: make donuts, and people that are police officers fighting crime
Speaker 1: and criminals that are creating crime. There's a little bit
Speaker 1: of this, a little bit of that. A lot of
Speaker 1: you guys work in factories, whether it's the boys in
Speaker 1: El Paso or the factories in Ohio and Tennessee and
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and all the other places in the middle part
Speaker 1: of the country where you guys work in factories are
Speaker 1: up all night. So anyway, this person contacts me, he says, hey,
Speaker 1: you know fan of the show, blah blah blah. Competitive eater. Okay, good,
Speaker 1: I like competitive eating, Major League eater. Now, if you
Speaker 1: listen to the Ben Maler Show for more than like
Speaker 1: five minutes, and I'm going to assume the position you're
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast, which is a spin off of
Speaker 1: the radio show, that you are of the one percent
Speaker 1: of those that get the show, because you actually, unlike radio,
Speaker 1: where you can stumble on to a radio show, you're
Speaker 1: really not stumbling on to the fifth hour parties. You
Speaker 1: have to go out of your way to find the parties.
Speaker 1: And then we do very well, and I'm grateful for that,
Speaker 1: but still it's a lot harder to find a podcast
Speaker 1: than it is the radio show. So anyway, if you've
Speaker 1: heard the Overnight Show, you know that I have a deep,
Speaker 1: borderline spiritual appreciation for the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest.
Speaker 1: I've never been to the event on the fourth of July.
Speaker 1: I have enjoyed it from afar. Joey Chestnut is right
Speaker 1: there on the Mount Rushmore. Competitive eating is a little
Speaker 1: bit of this, a little bit of that. It's performance art,
Speaker 1: it's physics, it's human endurance wrapped in nitrates. It's all
Speaker 1: that stuff. And so this listener says, Hey, I would
Speaker 1: like to come to the studio and do a demonstration.
Speaker 1: I said, okay. It was in Colorado was gonna come.
Speaker 1: I guess he was coming to LA to do some events,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't say yes fast enough. Now, the man's nickname,
Speaker 1: we're gonna call him by his nickname, Big Sexy. How
Speaker 1: great a nickname is that, Big Sexy. That's a great name.
Speaker 1: It's a solid nickname. So that alone got my attention
Speaker 1: and got this gentleman through the velvet rope, the intense
Speaker 1: security that we have at Fox Sports Radio. Now, this
Speaker 1: guy had competed on Coney Island, right, Darren Brooklyn. He's
Speaker 1: the guy to jog your memory if you're a fan
Speaker 1: of competitive eating like I am. He wore these ridiculous
Speaker 1: oversized foam hats, the foam cowboy hat you might remember
Speaker 1: from the old highlight clips of competitive eating, the kind
Speaker 1: that makes you look like a lego character who wandered
Speaker 1: onto the wrong set. You know, it's just really cool, though,
Speaker 1: that's pretty neat. I know who you are because you're well,
Speaker 1: you're a big guy, but you got the heat on
Speaker 1: that see the hat, that's the key. So I immediately
Speaker 1: remembered him. I'm like, oh man, this guy stood shoulder
Speaker 1: to shoulder with gladiators of gluttony, a murderer's row of
Speaker 1: human garbage disposals, and he was right in the middle
Speaker 1: of it. And the event he was at was when,
Speaker 1: if you remember, Kobyashi crashed, decided to crash the event
Speaker 1: anyway to get him in studio, big sexy scheduling, it
Speaker 1: was a circus. At that time, I was doing the
Speaker 1: weekend overnight show. I was not doing the weekday show.
Speaker 1: So this was definitely over ten years and more than
Speaker 1: that now, more than that now. So when you do
Speaker 1: the overnight weekend radio show at the time, it doesn't
Speaker 1: work for most people's schedules. It just doesn't. Logistics are
Speaker 1: a yeah, human being who needed to be awake at
Speaker 1: an hour normally reserved only for raccoons, only for the raccoon. Eventually,
Speaker 1: a little back and forth we locked in a date.
Speaker 1: And I have done a lot of monologues that a
Speaker 1: lot of radio shows in my life. I'm very fortunate
Speaker 1: I've survived him A bit of zombie these days in radio.
Speaker 1: I started at the age of nineteen. Some people going
Speaker 1: to the military. I went into radio. I think they
Speaker 1: treat you better in the military. Most nights blurred together,
Speaker 1: kind of like when you're driving late. You had had
Speaker 1: a lot of sleep, the freeway lights at two in
Speaker 1: the morning. You know you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I know you're nodding your head. So this one didn't.
Speaker 1: This night was different than most other nights. It was special.
Speaker 1: Big Sexy arrived, but he didn't just arrive, because when
Speaker 1: you're named Big Sexy, you don't just arrive in style
Speaker 1: with the razzle, dazzle, with a posse, like a professional boxer.
Speaker 1: Although this was not hype men, it was medical men,
Speaker 1: an ambulance. Big Sexy arrived with not one, but two EMTs.
Speaker 1: Now this was not a bit, this was controlled demolition,
Speaker 1: just in case someone choked on a wiener, which I
Speaker 1: did not anticipate I would be using on this podcast.
Speaker 1: But yet here we are. So yeah, they were eating
Speaker 1: hot dogs. Now, on one side he had Big Sexy,
Speaker 1: professional eater, friend of the Ben Mather Show, built like
Speaker 1: a large fire hydrant, just a big man lifting weights,
Speaker 1: the whole thing in my head. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: we had on the other side, we had my boardop
Speaker 1: at the time, Jeff Deray was his name. I don't
Speaker 1: know what ever happened to Jeffy. We lost contact. Jeff
Speaker 1: was my engineer for a while, Emerson College, Boston, guy
Speaker 1: nice Man, whose only crime was agreeing to participate in
Speaker 1: a cheesy overnight radio bit. Now observing was my producer,
Speaker 1: Miss Pink Headphones herself, the great Miranda, who's gone on
Speaker 1: to a lovely life. She's a big executive at the company.
Speaker 1: She's got kids living the dream. So my job, I
Speaker 1: didn't enter the contest. I did play by play. I
Speaker 1: did it like my hair was on fire. If I
Speaker 1: had hair, I was Dick Stockton, Al Michaels, Brent Musburger,
Speaker 1: you're listening live, Kevin Harlan, and the late great Brian
Speaker 1: Wheeler yelling Boom Shaka Laca from the heavens Now. Jeff
Speaker 1: my boardop made it through about half a hot dog,
Speaker 1: about half a hot dog. He then waved the white flag.
Speaker 1: He tossed in the sponge, the bun one, the bon one.
Speaker 1: So we both then sat back and watched this brief
Speaker 1: eating contest as Big Sexy flexed. He did a pirouette
Speaker 1: on the catwalk. He walked around like a peak cock
Speaker 1: with his feathers in the air. Everywhere, one hot dog,
Speaker 1: one sausage at a time, hot dog and bun no flourish,
Speaker 1: no showboating during the contest, just dominance, pure dominance. Now
Speaker 1: in my memory, you, memories are funny things. Memories can
Speaker 1: be very hazy. In my memory, my boardop Jeff de
Speaker 1: Ray ate half a hot dog and this gentleman, Big
Speaker 1: Sexy about seventy seven hot dogs or something like that.
Speaker 1: Give her a take. You know, it was like watching
Speaker 1: Tom Brady throw a football, Michael Jordan rise over a
Speaker 1: defender with the Chicago Bulls to knock down a jumper,
Speaker 1: or right now, show Hal Tani hitting a baseball that
Speaker 1: violates these zoning laws in many parts of town. So
Speaker 1: you stop breathing. You stared, You were hypnotized and mesmerized
Speaker 1: by what you were seeing. And here's the part that
Speaker 1: always stuck with me. Big Sexy loved radio. He loved
Speaker 1: our show, which obviously made me feel good good for
Speaker 1: my ego. But he loved the show so much, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to be part of this bit so much
Speaker 1: he actually slept in his car that night in the
Speaker 1: parking lot at the radio station. He slept in his car.
Speaker 1: It was too late for a hotel, too expensive. Maybe
Speaker 1: he just didn't want to waste the money. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But for that night he was homeless because he wanted
Speaker 1: to be on the radio show and do an eating contest.
Speaker 1: That is dedication, all right, that's dedication. That doesn't show
Speaker 1: up on stat sheets. Now, over the years, he would
Speaker 1: check in life updates, you know, maybe complaint about the Rockies.
Speaker 1: There's so much to complain about the Broncos at that time. Misery.
Speaker 1: They've only gotten good now, like the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: they've been a competitive team. But for years the Broncos
Speaker 1: after Peyton Manning left, they sucked the Nuggets. Who of
Speaker 1: course that's the hope. They won the championship. I don't
Speaker 1: think you ever talked about the avalanche. Maybe he did,
Speaker 1: I don't know, not on our show. We don't really
Speaker 1: talk much hockey, you know, the usual. So he was
Speaker 1: a member of Big Sexuy, the Mallard militia in the
Speaker 1: purest sense, someone who listened when most of the world
Speaker 1: was asleep, most of the world not there and you know,
Speaker 1: kind of drooling new a pillow, doing whatever you're doing.
Speaker 1: And this week during the holiday, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say malaise is that's not the right word. Just the
Speaker 1: holiday reset and I got a Facebook message randomly out
Speaker 1: of the blue, and I don't normally check these things.
Speaker 1: I'm bad about it, I admit. And this message was
Speaker 1: from Big Sexy's mom, a woman named Shelley, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't good. It wasn't And I've gotten a few of
Speaker 1: these messages over the years, and they hit you like
Speaker 1: a old splash of reality, and it's like you look
Speaker 1: at them, you're like, well, maybe this is somebody doing
Speaker 1: some kind of ghoulish humor or something like that. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's not real, you know, maybe it's it's just somebody
Speaker 1: doing a sick joke or something like that. And now
Speaker 1: Brian Beard, Brian Beard, better known to the Malain Militia's
Speaker 1: Big Sexy. His government named Brian Beard, his mom named him.
Speaker 1: That passed away December twenty first heart attack. It's forty
Speaker 1: years old. That's it. Forty. You can do the math.
Speaker 1: I don't need to do the math. It doesn't add up,
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense, the math ain't mathing. It just that
Speaker 1: shouldn't happen. Told there were no warning signs. He was smiling,
Speaker 1: watching some comedy shows with his dear old mom there,
Speaker 1: enjoying life. And then that's all. Now, I was able
Speaker 1: to talk to his mother, who reached out. I do
Speaker 1: thank Shelley a lot for letting me know. And she
Speaker 1: had said that he was a big fan of the
Speaker 1: show and had fond memories of hanging out with us
Speaker 1: at the radio station. Things like that. So very kind,
Speaker 1: loving woman. We had a brief conversation on the phone.
Speaker 1: I learned some new things about Brian, or as we
Speaker 1: know him, Big Sexy. Things. I didn't know Big Sexy
Speaker 1: as a little boy was a ball boy for the
Speaker 1: Denver Nuggets as a kid. His mom worked at the arena.
Speaker 1: She knew some people, and she was able to, you know,
Speaker 1: talk to somebody, and she knew who to talk to.
Speaker 1: I don't know how all that stuff works, but her
Speaker 1: son was able to be a ball boy. How great
Speaker 1: is that? And but wait, there's more. He'd befriended Rocky
Speaker 1: the mascot. Now on I side, not hit the pause,
Speaker 1: but on the side note if you've never watched Rocky
Speaker 1: pass out while being lowered from the rafters as a cheerleader.
Speaker 1: Sugar took us and kept smiling like nothing happened. That
Speaker 1: video is Internet immortality from Rocky. Looked like Rocky had
Speaker 1: kicked the bucket as he was coming down from the
Speaker 1: rafters in the Mile High City and the cheerleaders are
Speaker 1: all dancing. It was wild back to the store here.
Speaker 1: So Brian, who again knew him as Big Sexy, he
Speaker 1: ended up actually working locally in Denver's Sports radio. He
Speaker 1: got to live his dream. He loved radio, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: he learned the dark side of radio, the reality financially
Speaker 1: that you're better off working the fry machine at McDonald's
Speaker 1: or making egg mcmuffins at McDonald's if you want to
Speaker 1: make any money. And despite it all from what I
Speaker 1: heard from from Brian's mom, and I kept his love
Speaker 1: of sports and all that. And recently, and this is
Speaker 1: the part that still makes me smile, a few days
Speaker 1: after all this I learned of this information is that
Speaker 1: Brian Big Sexy became a Nuggets cheerleader. Let me say
Speaker 1: that part again slowly for those of you who are
Speaker 1: doing the Honeydeo list or not paying close attention because
Speaker 1: you're distracted by some video game or driving. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna repeat that part. Big Sexy, large and in charge,
Speaker 1: our friend member of the Malain Militia, was dancing on
Speaker 1: the court during timeouts while mister MVP Nikola Jokicic drank Gatorade.
Speaker 1: Now that is a life well lift. That's what I say.
Speaker 1: Should have been much longer. But man, he was doing well.
Speaker 1: He was doing well. He was a founding member of
Speaker 1: his Mom told me the inside skinny on this, Brian
Speaker 1: Big Sexy, a founding member of the Nuggets. Average Joe's dancers.
Speaker 1: Just a bunch of regular dudes, beer bellies, regular looking dudes,
Speaker 1: dancing like nobody was watching. Except everyone was watching. There
Speaker 1: were eighteen thousand people in the arena and they were
Speaker 1: watching you dance around. In fact, Brian, he did this
Speaker 1: for a while. He performed at the NBA All Star
Speaker 1: Game in Indianapolis. Hello, made surprise appearances. Mom told me,
Speaker 1: with Rocky there was a famous backward half court shot
Speaker 1: playoff hijinks. It sounds like just pure joy. That's how
Speaker 1: much fun. You grow up a kid in Denver. You
Speaker 1: like all the Denver teams. You get to be a
Speaker 1: ball boy for the Nuggets, You become a dancer. You're
Speaker 1: doing bits with Rocky, the iconic mascot. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: That's all cool stuff. And Brian loved all the Colorado teams.
Speaker 1: From what I understand obviously the Rockies. I think he
Speaker 1: liked more, which is not good because they sucked. But
Speaker 1: he collected hats like trophies and size eight. That's my size.
Speaker 1: I don't know what his size was. I don't know
Speaker 1: he had a big head too, he probably had. I
Speaker 1: bet you had a size hat like me. We're hat guys.
Speaker 1: The point is we're hat guys. Hat guy, wrecking hat
Speaker 1: guy kinship united by fitted caps and stubborn optimism, if
Speaker 1: you will, And there is I want to stop right there,
Speaker 1: because there is a fraternity big sexy, big guy. When
Speaker 1: you're a big guy, there's a bit of a brotherhood.
Speaker 1: You learn early how the world looks at you a
Speaker 1: little different. There's that sideways look when you're a big dude.
Speaker 1: The whisper some mean things and make some jokes at
Speaker 1: your expense. Women especially can be very cold blooded assassins
Speaker 1: with the big dudes. Yeah. So, from what I can tell, though,
Speaker 1: Brian by all accounts, handled all of the pitfalls of
Speaker 1: that with humor. Seemed like a very warm guy when
Speaker 1: I met him. He was great, a big personality that
Speaker 1: filled the room before his body ever did. And it
Speaker 1: was I think it was doctor Seuss. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think all quotes are doctor Seuss, who once said,
Speaker 1: sometimes you will never know the value of a single
Speaker 1: moment until it becomes memory. And that sat with me
Speaker 1: this week as I was thinking and driving around running
Speaker 1: errands for different things we've got going on with the
Speaker 1: holidays and all that, and Brian was one of those
Speaker 1: moments for me. He wasn't and from what his mom said,
Speaker 1: it was a big thing for him too, and that's
Speaker 1: really cool and all that. It was a It's a
Speaker 1: story that I'll I'll tell forever. Someday I might write
Speaker 1: a book. I've been talking to some people about that.
Speaker 1: I had something in the works last year, didn't didn't
Speaker 1: pan out. Maybe we'll do that again, and I'll definitely
Speaker 1: have to include the story of meeting Brian and the
Speaker 1: eating contest and one of those zanier things that we've done.
Speaker 1: And it is proof that you never know who's listening.
Speaker 1: You know, it's really the magic. Radio's theater of the mind.
Speaker 1: And you go out, you got the bullhorn, the mega megaphone,
Speaker 1: you're just yapping away. And I point out that radio
Speaker 1: at night just matters a little more so a little
Speaker 1: differ at night than it is. During the day. People
Speaker 1: are working, they've got stuff going on during the d
Speaker 1: At night, most people, even if you're working, it just
Speaker 1: means more you by yourself. It's not a lot going on.
Speaker 1: And as I tell this story and I reminisce about
Speaker 1: the life and times of our friend Big Sexy, I
Speaker 1: did want to mention that his family has set up
Speaker 1: a GoFundMe page to help with the burial funeral expenses.
Speaker 1: Brian wasn't rich, he wasn't his guy was hustling, he
Speaker 1: was working multiple jobs. And none of us, none of
Speaker 1: us plan on checking out at that age, at age forty.
Speaker 1: So if you've got a few bucks, I hate doing
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. But if you got a few
Speaker 1: bucks and you want to do a good mitzvah, and
Speaker 1: you don't have to don't tell anyone about it. You
Speaker 1: know my rant about that, you just do it, and
Speaker 1: you want to help send Big Sexy out the right way,
Speaker 1: give him a nice, a nice goodbye. The link will
Speaker 1: be and should be there right now the podcast description,
Speaker 1: and my hope that somewhere right now across the Pearly Gates,
Speaker 1: Big Sexy is. It's been in a few I know it's
Speaker 1: probably got family there and all that, but he's catching
Speaker 1: up with the other mal and Millish legends. He's probably
Speaker 1: hanging out with Parker the snow Dog right now, Parker
Speaker 1: the mascot, the official mascot, but one of the characters
Speaker 1: with the Denver Broncos hanging out side by side there
Speaker 1: and the Great Beyond and the Boston Hater, probably telling
Speaker 1: stories about how he's so happy the Bruins and the
Speaker 1: Celtics aren't going to win the championship this year. That
Speaker 1: Genie and Medford off to the side. There are friend
Speaker 1: Jeanie having some drinks, Jimmy Ray from Tampa Bay, Rachel
Speaker 1: and Montabello, the Great Masshole, Mickey Rick in Boston we
Speaker 1: lost years ago, John Slash Captain, Jack Namo, big fan
Speaker 1: of the show, Matt the Warrior Raider A's fan, and
Speaker 1: Tom Brady roast fan, and so many more. So rest
Speaker 1: in peace to Brian Beard for us Big Sexy, and
Speaker 1: I say Big Sexy forever. We will miss getting those updates.
Speaker 1: He would check in every once in a while and
Speaker 1: give us updates on what was going on in his life.
Speaker 1: So rest in peace there to Brian. All right, there's
Speaker 1: no really good transition. So you know, what the hell,
Speaker 1: We'll just pause and we'll turn the page. I did
Speaker 1: want to mention this. Several of you emailed me a
Speaker 1: version of this story from different sources and wanted me
Speaker 1: to rant about it. I will do that here, and
Speaker 1: I will do this as quickly as I can. So
Speaker 1: the NBA, if you didn't see this, is exploring some
Speaker 1: new changes to try to curb tanking. Now. They have
Speaker 1: done stuff over the years that have absolutely failed to
Speaker 1: deter teams from deliberately losing games to improve their draft
Speaker 1: lottery odds. So the league had presented a bunch of
Speaker 1: other rule changes during a Board of Governor's meetings, which
Speaker 1: included doing what baseball does, you limit how often you
Speaker 1: can draft in the top for of the NBA draft,
Speaker 1: And they were trying to get input from team owners
Speaker 1: and general managers, which I always thought is funny because
Speaker 1: these are the people that are doing it. The owners
Speaker 1: of the general managers. You're asking them for input the
Speaker 1: owners like as a board of governors and the owners,
Speaker 1: but you're asking them for help to fix a problem
Speaker 1: that they're involved in actively. So this is a good
Speaker 1: jumping off point. Let us discuss the question, what are
Speaker 1: the odds that these NBA efforts work? So again, I mean,
Speaker 1: this whole story is bizarro to me, Like they're, well,
Speaker 1: we got to change this tanking and all this and
Speaker 1: deliberately losing games which has been going on for many,
Speaker 1: many years now in the league, putting all these options
Speaker 1: out there and all that. So let me break this
Speaker 1: down for those of you, I don't know, having a
Speaker 1: cocktail or whatever. So the NBA has a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of proposals, these shining new proposals to fix tanking. They
Speaker 1: have another meeting, another think tank, another promise that this
Speaker 1: tweet to the lottery or that safeguard is finally going
Speaker 1: to save the league from itself. And I will give
Speaker 1: you the malarodds right now. Three z's, zippo, zero and zilch.
Speaker 1: And here's why we've seen this movie before, and the
Speaker 1: ending never changes. The league keeps trying to treat a
Speaker 1: cultural systemic disease with policy band aids. You cannot rewrite
Speaker 1: the rule book in crayon inc. I mean you can
Speaker 1: write it in grant inc Or a gold leaf. I
Speaker 1: don't care. It doesn't matter. The behavior does not change,
Speaker 1: It will not change. Now listen, I'm not a pilot.
Speaker 1: I did recently stay at a holiday and express and
Speaker 1: here's what I know. When the plane you're flying is
Speaker 1: losing altitude, getting into an argument about the seat cushions
Speaker 1: is not going to fix it. You feel me on
Speaker 1: that the end is in a nosedive of selective effort.
Speaker 1: They know they have a problem, They know they have
Speaker 1: a problem, except they keep acting surprised by the gravity.
Speaker 1: It's like you combine tanking with load management and you've
Speaker 1: got double mint gum logic. It's the double whammy, is
Speaker 1: what it is. It's the double whammy, double your pleasure,
Speaker 1: double your fun, except the pleasure belongs to front offices,
Speaker 1: and the fun is watching fans slowly drift away like balloons.
Speaker 1: I know from boots on the ground doing the Overnight show,
Speaker 1: just how bad it is, like the level of interest.
Speaker 1: People lose their mind when I do an NBA monologue
Speaker 1: because they just don't care about the regular season. Because
Speaker 1: these are people that did care about the regular season
Speaker 1: and year after year of serving up this slop covered
Speaker 1: in maggots, and they don't want to watch anymore, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, these fans drifting with it's like balloons being
Speaker 1: let go to a kid's birthday party. It's roster malpractice
Speaker 1: meets calendar fraud. On one side, Yeah, you got teams
Speaker 1: losing on purpose to win tomorrow. Okay. The other is
Speaker 1: sitting perfectly healthy star players today because they might get
Speaker 1: hurt out of an abundance of caution to protect them
Speaker 1: for tomorrow. Now, it's different excuses. It's the same result,
Speaker 1: worst basketball tonight, and the league keeps pretending these are
Speaker 1: separate issues. Spoiler alert, spoiler alert, they're not. They are
Speaker 1: not at all all right, So just don't even go there, Like,
Speaker 1: why are you bothering to go there? It's the same deal.
Speaker 1: You're just you're in denial. They're not. Tanking and load
Speaker 1: management are brothers from different mothers. It's same DNA, same excuses,
Speaker 1: same smug tone. Well, you just don't understand the science
Speaker 1: when they explain it to you, like you're a toddler
Speaker 1: with a juice box and you want to slap some
Speaker 1: of these people across the head. This stuff did not
Speaker 1: sneak into the league overnight. It was imported. It was
Speaker 1: I know, the whole family tree. I've done the family
Speaker 1: tree test. I've looked at that the forefather of modern
Speaker 1: load management. I know who it is, Greg Popovich, David Stern,
Speaker 1: the commissioner. To try to stop it, Popovich sent a
Speaker 1: bunch of people back. I think there was Orlando to
Speaker 1: Miami or Miami to Orlando. I remember it was from
Speaker 1: Orlando to San Antonio. Southwest Airlines. A couple of Spurs
Speaker 1: stars went on a Southwest Airlines flight back to San
Speaker 1: Antonio and David Stern. It was a TNT game. David
Speaker 1: Stern lost his mind. So you can't do that. That's
Speaker 1: bad for our product. Gotta play him, so you find
Speaker 1: the Spurs much money. And then a bunch of bleeding
Speaker 1: heart writers. Oh, I defend the Spurs. You know, trust
Speaker 1: the science and all that stuff. But Papovich, the proud
Speaker 1: papa of that and the forefather of the modern tank.
Speaker 1: The tanking has been going on for a while, but
Speaker 1: the guy credited with taking it to the next level,
Speaker 1: Sam Hinky, that little weasel. Trust the process from the
Speaker 1: seventy six ers. Those guys carefully cultivated, watered, fertilized these things.
Speaker 1: They are an invasive species. And once an invasive species
Speaker 1: takes hold, it doesn't care about your little rules. It
Speaker 1: adapts it spreads, it eats the ecosystem alive, and that's
Speaker 1: what's happening. That's the part the NBA doesn't want to admit.
Speaker 1: They don't. You can't nudge your way out of this.
Speaker 1: You can't softly encourage competitiveness and asking the people who
Speaker 1: are providing the illness to solve the illness doesn't make
Speaker 1: a lot of sense to me. You need consequences, You
Speaker 1: need embarrassment, You need shame, because shame. Back in the day, shame,
Speaker 1: shame where the shame belt. It used to be the
Speaker 1: guardrail that there was generation after generation where you lost games.
Speaker 1: You were embarrassing. People look down upon you, and you
Speaker 1: were you were the ugly, redheaded step child, right. They
Speaker 1: picked on you, they told jokes, and you wanted to win.
Speaker 1: And there was a time when sitting meant something that
Speaker 1: it wasn't good. Now everything is fair. Well, we're smart,
Speaker 1: we have the smartest minds. We went to an IVY
Speaker 1: league and you didn't dumby dumb dunum dum dum. Strategic losing,
Speaker 1: strategic resting, strategic surrender. It's all cowardly. It's cowardice wrapped
Speaker 1: in analytics. And you can say and do anything in sports,
Speaker 1: and you just claim it's the analytics and nobody ever
Speaker 1: is allowed to question it. Somewhere along the way this
Speaker 1: became cool. I'm not sure why now the league in
Speaker 1: the NBA keeps selling us the idea, idea that fans
Speaker 1: just they don't understand. They're low assuming they're low IQ
Speaker 1: they understand perfectly. They know. The fan knows when a
Speaker 1: lineup looks like a preseason scrimmage in March or April.
Speaker 1: They know when stars are magically unavailable for load management reasons.
Speaker 1: Rest fans are not confused. They are insulted that they
Speaker 1: give their most important thing, their time, most valuable thing.
Speaker 1: There's also some money, which is nothing. And the problem
Speaker 1: is insulted fans. They don't riot. They might complain a
Speaker 1: little bit online, but they don't complain that much. They disengage,
Speaker 1: they stop watching, they stop caring as much. That's the
Speaker 1: real danger here, and that's why the NBA is trying
Speaker 1: to fix this. The toothpaste is out of the tube.
Speaker 1: It's not tanking records, it's not draft odds. That's the problem.
Speaker 1: It's the a word apathy. This is the as bestis
Speaker 1: of basketball warning label. Handle with care, you don't feel
Speaker 1: the damage right away. You breathe it in for years,
Speaker 1: you're fine, and then one day you wake up and
Speaker 1: wonder why your building is collapsing. That's where the NBA
Speaker 1: is headed. If it keeps pretending that this is harmless
Speaker 1: and don't tell me more rules will fix it. We
Speaker 1: tried lottery reform, We've tried flattened odds. We've tried incentives.
Speaker 1: Well they have not I and the teams just find
Speaker 1: new loopholes. The nerds go to Dorkville and they figure
Speaker 1: stuff out. They use new vocabulary, new ways to lose
Speaker 1: without losing. It's like whack a mole. You're blindfold they're
Speaker 1: planning whack them mole. Every time you smack one issue,
Speaker 1: another pops up, wearing a lab coat and calling itself innovation.
Speaker 1: We are innovators. If you want real change, make come
Speaker 1: competition matter. Make competition fashionable again, where you're shamed for losing.
Speaker 1: Make effort non negotiable, and hard work celebrated. Not treating
Speaker 1: your job like you're working at the DMV doing the
Speaker 1: bare minimum. Okay, you have some government job where you
Speaker 1: don't have to work hard. Make it uncool to intentionally
Speaker 1: lose games make it uncomfortable to sit healthy stars, and
Speaker 1: I would advise offering full refunds, full refunds if star
Speaker 1: players don't play, just do it. Give the option. Now,
Speaker 1: they'll never do that because that costs the money, you know,
Speaker 1: just embarrassed. Embarrassment would be big. Stop playing, scared, Stop coaching, scared,
Speaker 1: stop running a league. Scared because right now the NBA owners,
Speaker 1: the way they operate the league itself, they act like
Speaker 1: they're afraid of their own shadow, and they're scared. Adam
Speaker 1: Silver that league, the product here that they produced, it's
Speaker 1: scared basketball, and scared basketball is how a global sport
Speaker 1: turns into background noise. And you gotta fix it, and
Speaker 1: I hope it happens. I love talking about the NBA.
Speaker 1: Back in the day. I used to talk about the
Speaker 1: regular season all the time this time of the year
Speaker 1: until the NFL playoffs get going, and these days hardly
Speaker 1: mentioned the NBA. And I'll bring it up when the
Speaker 1: playoffs come around because I assume there'll be no tanking
Speaker 1: in the playoffs and there'll be nobody resting their star
Speaker 1: players in the playoffs. When that happens, I won't talk
Speaker 1: about that either. On that note, enjoy the football today,
Speaker 1: have a great Saturday. We thank you for supporting the podcast,
Speaker 1: myself and Danny G. Hope you had a great Christmas
Speaker 1: and New Year's coming up. And later skater Osta pasta
Speaker 1: my folation