Ryan, our nation’s preeminent sports media critic, is here to discuss reports that NBC wishes to offer the NBA a tremendous amount of money. What does this mean, other than that Adam Silver is our lord and savior?

Topics…

* Can Warner Bros. Discovery (TNT) possibly come up with a competing offer?

* What’s with WBD CEO David Zaslav sitting at Knicks-Sixers with Goldman Sachs tycoon Lloyd Blankfein?

* Do Barkley and the other TNT guys join NBC in this scenario?

* Irony of WBD needing the NBA most, but being most likely to be forced out

* Oddness of young Thunder players doing that “What a pro wants” ad

* Which TNT halftime guy is least essential?

* NBA playoff ratings are all over the map. New Nielsen system or something else?

* That traditional space at end of pod where we talk Israel/Gaza campus protests

* Are these protests being received by the public in a totally different way had Elon not bought Twitter?

Ace New York politics reporter, all around culture writer and crazed baseball fan Ross Barkan objected to my “Is Baseball Dying?” article. Naturally I had him here to say his piece and boy did we hit on a range of other topics.

* Contra conventional wisdom, is baseball more international than basketball?

* Why might baseball survive the future?

* Pete Rose was insanely famous in the 1970s, and we’ve forgotten

* Is household name sports celebrity over, post LeBron James and Steph Curry?

* Is Patrick Mahomes anywhere near as famous as prime Tom Brady was?

* Taylor Swift and parasocial fandom

* Will Swift exist outside her time?

* Travis Kelce’s obvious bid for fame

* Tucker Carlson vs. Bari Weiss on Israel

* Campus fight over Israel

Joe is really smart about the sports + business overlap, as evidenced by his viral story about Glen Taylor thwarting his own sale of the Timberwolves to the ARod + Lore duo. We got deep into that deeply reported article and hit other topics of interest, such as…

* The Pat McAfee + Bill Belichick combo

* Robert Kraft’s Dynasty hit job on Belichick backfiring

* Roger Goodell expanding the NFL season

* NBA TV rights reports

* The paradox of why NBA broadcasters might pay more while asking for less inventory

* The Minnesota mess

* Glen Taylor’s sneaky trick to recapture team control

* Those Forbes team valuations matter more than you’d think

* Why the WNBA can’t pay Caitlin Clark a lot of money

* The articles arguing that Clark got a big Nike deal in large part because she’s White

Jason Timpf of Hoops Tonight on the Volume Network seemingly appeared out of nowhere, thriving at the top of NBA media. Of course, like many an “overnight success story,” his rise was many years in the making. This was a great conversation wherein we discussed, among other things…

* How Jason used 2020 era Twitter Spaces as the battering ram to break into media

* Why Jason, as the counterpoint to Spike Eskin, loves JJ Redick

* How Jason’s career was decided by Colin Cowherd’s 5 seconds of judgment

* Reducing a game to a story

* How much should we blame or credit luck and variance in an outcome?

* Dre Greenlaw’s Super Bowl Achilles: Luck or something else?

* Analytics-leaners dismiss the midrange at their peril

* Steve Kerr’s secret to NBA playoff success

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Prominent foreign policy writer Eli Lake, currently posting at The Free Press, dropped by HoS to talk basketball. I, of course, wanted to discuss Lake’s views on politics, culture and the ever fraught topic of Israel. I’m not sure which of us won the battle for topic allocation, but I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation (and I’ve made the NBA part of it free).

Subjects include, but are not limited to…

* Why Eli is “my least favorite kind of intellectual”

* Eli’s beloved Sixers…getting mighty intriguing?

* How to fix the Warriors

* Eli, much like fellow Philly Jew Spike Eskin, has issues with LeBron’s public persona.

* Why LeBron vs. Daryl Morey on China turned into a crisis at my then place of work

* Is Eli, post October 7th, still friendly with Glenn Greenwald?

* The Zionist case for America ceasing to fund Israel’s military

* Protestors who block bridges against Israeli military action…is there a logic to what they’re doing?

* Are today’s protestors imitating the legend of the 60s? Or doing their own thing?

* Trump at the bodega

We’ve got Andrew Bogut and Mike “Pro” Procopio of the Rogue Bogues podcast to discuss the eliminated and possibly dead Golden State Warriors dynasty. Obviously we talked about a lot of other subjects with these first grade ballbusters. Topics include but aren’t limited to…

* The Warriors. What should they do?

* Draymond Green as player-podcaster

* Did the Warriors really screw up the James Wiseman pick? Or were there just few good options?

* Jontay Porter getting banned from the NBA for prop bets

* The way assistant coaches scheme against one another for power

* The time I got yelled at by a media member in front of Steph Curry

* Players and coaches leaking secret information to reporters

* Gilbert Arenas slighting Nikola Jokic

* Is it an issue at all if Luka Doncic is chubby?

* Pro is the King of Feminism because he was pro WNBA before it was cool

Top flight Audio Man Spike Eskin is here to discuss the newest NBA podcast hits. Spike’s gotten a lot of mileage out of humorously critiquing LeBron and JJ Redick’s “Mind the Game” pod, but perhaps he should be focusing more of his energy on Michael Porter Jr.’s “Curious Mike” product?

Topics discussed:

* Is Spike a hater for laughing at LeBron’s Internet-lauded NBA strategy podcast? What’s wrong with two dudes drinking fancy wine and talking hoops?

* Why did Spike’s “LeBron caught himself in a lie” clip go this viral?

* Is the broader media afraid to have fun with LeBron’s foibles?

* LeBron’s child star origins on display

* Michael Porter Jr. interviewed porn star Lana Rhoades and the results are very entertaining

* “Poop cookies” and the controversy surrounding Porter Jr.’s Rhoades interview

* A case of “locker room” talk infuriating segments of social media

* Athletes as political/social omnivores

Boy do we have a loaded topic docket with America’s preeminent sports media critic and New York Post newsbreaker Ryan Glasspiegel. Honestly discussed fraught topics abound.

As Ryan would frame this rundown:

* All things Caitlin Clark (ratings, will it translate to WNBA, the backlash from women's basketball players and the backlash to the backlash)

* Why Norby Williamson's out at ESPN/who he is/what it means

* Dawn Staley/Outkick: What’s with the prestige media anger over the biological male in women’s sports question?

* Why Timberwolves ownership dustup should be a bigger story

* Ryan loves WrestleMania. I don’t understand WrestleMania

Sports announcers and 49ers Youtuber Guy Haberman had vocal cord surgery and now sounds like Patty + Selma. I find his current predicament fascinating. He insists the subject of announcer voice issues isn’t interesting. We start talking 49ers around the 52 minute mark, for people who are into that sort of thing.

Topics include:

* What does a vocal cord surgery do for a broadcaster?

* Which sports announcers qualify for Top 5 “All Pipes” Team

* Do New York announcers have the best accent for the job? Do Midwesterners have the worst?

* Why did the elite duo of Guy + John Middlekauff break up?

* Is Brandon Aiyuk going to be traded?

* My crazy contrarian NFL takes

* Does the NFL have a good understanding of which positions actually matter?

* Who should the Niners draft?

* How good is the talent around Brock Purdy? Better than what the Lions have around Goff?

* Why paying your QB big money is no death sentence

* Oh, and subscribe today!

House of Strauss is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Our friend Amin Elhassan went negatively viral with his jump shot, but it’s only made him stronger.

Many a fraught topic discussed in this one, including whether it’s easier to say things now vs. the recent past. Subjects include but aren’t limited to…

* Amin’s crazy co-workers argued that Michael Jordan lacked charisma

* Amin’s moment as Internet main character, based on a jump shot

* Ben Bolch of the LA Times becomes main character over calling LSU women’s team “Dirty Debutantes,” and something about hot sauce? What happened here?

* Don’t search “Dirty Debutantes” on a work computer

* Is the Basketball Race War good for society?

* Caleb Williams’ Nail Polishgate

* Is the younger generation of athletes more into Williams’ style of personal expression?

* Male feminist writers aren’t helping women’s sports when getting too defensive on behalf of players

In the Elon X era, no article ever goes viral. At least that’s what I used to think. But now, of late, articles in New York Magazine and The Cut have broken through as a sort of rage bait. To assess what’s going on, we’ve called in honest and trenchant culture writer Kat Rosenfield. Topics include but aren’t limited to…

* Pre mourning your old dog

* Getting “serious” with your significant other early

* The Andrew Huberman cover story in NY Mag

* How the Huberman story, while well written, fails to hit its target

* It’s hard to publicly shame a man over having six girlfriends

* Kat’s piece on how nobody cares about the Christine Blasey Ford memoir

* The weirdness of the Brett Kavanaugh moment

* Journalists taking out high school resentments on public figures

* I’m “ethnically liberal”