Nate/Ethan jumping to a lot of topics of how to fix the NBA is what's wrong with the NBA. It's broken top to bottom.
- Too many games.
- You go to games and it's crazy expensive so it's hard for most people to go to more than 1-2 games a year. Even in a poor/small city like Milwaukee, $40 parking, $15 drinks, etc.
- The games are exhausting. There's constant loud music and fake fan noise. During breaks in play there's more loud music and an MC screaming into a mic.
- And because fandom is so heavily weighed around following star players and not teams, the star player you came to see being hurt ruins the whole night.
- Okay watch games on TV instead... It's hard to watch the games because you need not only cable, but the expensive, upgraded cable package.
- The broadcasts universally stink. The constant action means there's no time to learn about what's happening and spend time showing how amazing or intricate some of the plays are, so the casual fan just sees a guy standing around with the ball and eventually passing to a shooter who is standing like a statue in the corner.
- You get to tense moments at the end of the game and there could be time to explain how the game works (I stress this because look at how much time the NFL broadcast spends explaining the game) during the timeouts and replays (which usually are a bummer) but instead we cram in commercials with occasional returns to showing a ref looking at 12" screen.
- And with neither in person or home viewing experience being great, you REALLY feel the number of games being an issue.
- You play all those games and it really doesn't matter because 2/3 of the league makes the playoffs anyway.
- The playoffs are way too long, so it ends up being the healthiest top 5-6 team wins and we crap on the winners in the moment for not facing tough opponents.
And maybe the NBA is just not meant to be THAT popular of a sport. It certainly has the potential to dramatically expand in popularity during the insane heights (e.g. Jordan era, peak Warriors, etc.). But the baseline is maybe it's a sport that is on the level of hockey.
If it's to be "fixed" and keep pace with baseball long term, I think you'd have to sit down and consider it as if you were starting the league new. Consider entirely new season and playoff format, etc.
The playoffs being expanded has effectively replaced the regular season. This is unrealistic, but the way you make the regular season matter is by i) cutting playoff teams to six per conference; ii) lottery draft order is determined via best record of the remaining teams (team with best record that missed playoffs gets first pick); iii) teams that don’t win at least 25 games pay a hefty failure tax (since we can’t do relegation).
Late reply, but my current feeling is 7 teams per conference make the playoffs. Top seed on each side gets a bye in round one. And the rounds go best of 3, best of 5, best of 7, best of 7. It's unrealistic. But I think the baseball playoffs are cool in that there's a very real reward for being the best after that long ass season.
The main reason Clark's persona could become an issue, imo, is that a lot of her fans aren't really that invested in women's basketball. People obviously like that she's great and has a more aesthetically pleasing game than we're used to, but giving up the WNBA wouldn't really be a big sacrifice for many. If she starts to annoy people, it'll be pretty easy for a notable percentage of her fans to think 'Eh, screw it, I'd rather watch/read/do something else.'
The way Ethan pronounces Hawaii is making me reconsider my subscription.
I've been lucky enough to meet both of you. I randomly ran into Ethan a few times and saw him at some staged events. I think I saw both of you many years ago at Drake's for an event.
If you think it's nerve-wracking going up a girl, it's nothing compared to trying to strike up a conversation at a bar with your favorite podcasters.
Yeah, in general he's way too rational and logic-oriented (too male-brained, as Ethan put it) to fit in with the extreme left.
Though I've heard him reference 'toxic masculinity' (and not ironically), so that's a data point in favor of him leaning at least somewhat left socially.
While Nate’s advocation to be Ethan’s ombudsman is preposterous and would ultimately strip the value of this newsletter, it also revealed his political stripes. Nate is your garden variety California Democrat. He will support social justice and ‘the current thing’ issues because it’s clearly the morally righteous thing to do. He’ll look negatively on the heretics as ignorant/immoral deplorables — but of course will make excuses for his friends who lean in that direction.
Nate is an entrepreneur, so he probably has developed some libertarian sensibilities, but the social justice ones will supersede at surface level.
Even as someone who has listened to almost every episode of Duncd On for many years, I'm always amazed how much more interesting Nate is outside of the basketball-only environment. Sign me up for more Nate
As somebody who watches like 70% of the W games every year, I think you are dead wrong on this "conservatives watch the W" take. I would bet that there are less than 1000 people who watch both Megyn Kelly and the WNBA. And besides, there is no way anybody would be scared off by Clark's comments. The league itself is drenched in wokeness, they show obnoxiously woke commercials congratulating themselves for being women athletes and you for watching them every single broadcast, usually more than once. Talk of privilege etc. is inescapable and implications that everything and everyone is racist are common. Anybody who puts up with all that bullshit and still watches (like me) is not gonna give a shit that Caitlin said the words "white privilege" in an interview.
As far as how to fix the NBA: FIBA ruleset and the Elam/Target Score ending. Watch the CEBL for proof. Elam's ending is the best game ending in all of sports and can lead to some insanely exciting outcomes. I mean, what's better than next-basket-wins? It also encourages comebacks in blowouts (why play defense if you're up by 23 and only need 9 to win? just get the ball back) and leads to awesome big shot moments and the end of nearly every game.
Having to watch teams in the NBA go through the brutal foul and free throw BS at the end of games now is barely tolerable for me after 4 years of watching the CEBL. And it kills me to think of how much better even the good games would be with the correct ending. But American is not ready for this conversation, sadly.
I completely agree with you that Ethan is way over-estimating the number of Megyn Kelly viewers that watch the WNBA. I am sure many know who Caitlin Clark is because Megyn talks about her, but I bet there aren't many who actually care about the league or watch games. They only follow the culture war aspect of anything related to the league. Thats basically what Megyns show has turned into anyway. I used to find her interesting, but lately she has become such a partisan hack. Her show is nothing but boring right wing culture war nonsense. However, I do disagree with your post somewhat, I think if Caitlin Clark were to keep leaning into more woke progressive politics, it would turn some fans off. To be clear, I dont think she will, but if she did I think it would harm her brand and the league as a whole in the longrun.
>Thats basically what Megyns show has turned into anyway. I used to find her interesting, but lately she has become such a partisan hack. Her show is nothing but boring right wing culture war nonsense.
I would agree with this characterization in a world where you are also in touch with the fact that 40% of the NYT/WP/NPR is the same. A lot of culture warring going on on both sides, so much it is hard to get actual information on things a lot of the time.
I agree that most lefty media outlets are just as bad if not worse. It just disappoints me with Megyn because I always respected how she used to stay neutral and present both sides of an argument. Not sure if she just got too fed up with the current media landscape or possibly could be some audience capture too. I understand there is going to some bias no matter who you listen to, but she has moved too far right for my taste. I still occasionally tune in if I see an interesting guest, but mostly don't watch anymore.
In terms of divorces, it's not that people getting married later is decreasing divorce. According to the census (https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/time-series/demo/families-and-households/ms-2.pdf), the increase of the age of first marriage started in ~1975, but it was still around 24 in 1980. It had not increased by much by the time divorce exploded. In fact, the average age of marriage, at least for men, was the same in 1890 and 1990, but the rates of divorce are on completely different planets.
The actual answer is that the 1960s (really like 1964 to 1974) was the most destructive period in American history and killed norms around sex/marriage, leading to a ton of negative externalities, including on divorce.
OkCupid: I always got the impression of my friends who preferred OKC to Tinder etc. that what they actually preferred was filling out surveys to talking to the opposite sex. OKC had the failure mode of reading through answers to find one dumb reason to reject someone, or convincing yourself that someone was your soulmate because you liked all the same movies. In fact what you need is just the photos/paragraph to determine if someone is in your target market and then nothing else substitutes for just meeting up and finding out if you can stand each other.
Clark: I thought Nate was a little dismissive of how calculated it came off as. Normal people do not talk like that, so it sounded like an obvious attempt to buy people off. It was a little like LeBron’s first page of every book in the locker room routine. If she keeps giving interviews like that, eventually people will be turned off. I doubt she will though.
Not sure about the Amarillo comp. That’s just how everyone pronounces it. My wife is Mexican and is from Amarillo and she and her whole family pronounce it the “wrong” way, sometimes even if they’re speaking in Spanish they still do.
You have a very good golf swing. The ball goes straight and you hit second or third longest in your peer group, although you could never come close to approaching the distance or accuracy of your one buddy who played in college.
You monkey around with your swing and it's a disaster. You're hooking the ball all over the place. Now you're maybe the fifth best dude that you regularly compete with. You can either make a million changes to your stance and turn your body 45 degrees and get new clubs to try and fix the fixes that didn't work or you can go back to your old swing that worked.
The comparison of "talk to woman at bar" and "talk to grumpy athlete in locker room" is so perfect. Have used it on several occasions when speaking to media students. Hadn't considered I might be terrifying them haha.
To me, in both cases, worst case scenario: you get told to buzz off. Oh well, reload the clip. Better luck next time.
Fear of rejection is very real (and possibly getting worse?) folks.
I think Nat is under estimating meeting in person today. In theory yes you can still meet girls/guys at out. From my experience with the explosion of dating apps people have become much less open to randomly meeting in person and are much quicker to shut you down. Partially due to being able to “vet” the person now over the app and feeling safer about the interaction even you this rarely seems to work out for my friends.
Just for me personally, I used to watch almost every Warriors game, now I watch maybe 3 a year. 3's a part of it. You can say they have replaced 3's with 2's, but those 2's were BETTER shots. 3's aren't good shots, they are just efficient. The games where a team goes like 11-44 from 3 and has no plan B are just brutal to watch. The amount of BS fouls called per game and how the last 2 minutes of a game takes a half hour are also reasons. Load management too.
I would have to be paid to watch the WNBA so no real comment on Clark. I tend to side with Nate's side of the argument though.
I never understand how people don't understand the basic math of watching a team make 47% of 2s is more entertaining than watching them make 32% from 3 even if the latter is mathematically 2 pts better per 100 (or whatever).
It is like the reverse of the "its the math stupid" argument they make from an efficiency standpoint. A game where teams shoot say 39% overall instead of 46% is less aesthetically pleasing even if the shots are from slightly farther away and thus worth more overall.
Nate/Ethan jumping to a lot of topics of how to fix the NBA is what's wrong with the NBA. It's broken top to bottom.
- Too many games.
- You go to games and it's crazy expensive so it's hard for most people to go to more than 1-2 games a year. Even in a poor/small city like Milwaukee, $40 parking, $15 drinks, etc.
- The games are exhausting. There's constant loud music and fake fan noise. During breaks in play there's more loud music and an MC screaming into a mic.
- And because fandom is so heavily weighed around following star players and not teams, the star player you came to see being hurt ruins the whole night.
- Okay watch games on TV instead... It's hard to watch the games because you need not only cable, but the expensive, upgraded cable package.
- The broadcasts universally stink. The constant action means there's no time to learn about what's happening and spend time showing how amazing or intricate some of the plays are, so the casual fan just sees a guy standing around with the ball and eventually passing to a shooter who is standing like a statue in the corner.
- You get to tense moments at the end of the game and there could be time to explain how the game works (I stress this because look at how much time the NFL broadcast spends explaining the game) during the timeouts and replays (which usually are a bummer) but instead we cram in commercials with occasional returns to showing a ref looking at 12" screen.
- And with neither in person or home viewing experience being great, you REALLY feel the number of games being an issue.
- You play all those games and it really doesn't matter because 2/3 of the league makes the playoffs anyway.
- The playoffs are way too long, so it ends up being the healthiest top 5-6 team wins and we crap on the winners in the moment for not facing tough opponents.
And maybe the NBA is just not meant to be THAT popular of a sport. It certainly has the potential to dramatically expand in popularity during the insane heights (e.g. Jordan era, peak Warriors, etc.). But the baseline is maybe it's a sport that is on the level of hockey.
If it's to be "fixed" and keep pace with baseball long term, I think you'd have to sit down and consider it as if you were starting the league new. Consider entirely new season and playoff format, etc.
The playoffs being expanded has effectively replaced the regular season. This is unrealistic, but the way you make the regular season matter is by i) cutting playoff teams to six per conference; ii) lottery draft order is determined via best record of the remaining teams (team with best record that missed playoffs gets first pick); iii) teams that don’t win at least 25 games pay a hefty failure tax (since we can’t do relegation).
Late reply, but my current feeling is 7 teams per conference make the playoffs. Top seed on each side gets a bye in round one. And the rounds go best of 3, best of 5, best of 7, best of 7. It's unrealistic. But I think the baseball playoffs are cool in that there's a very real reward for being the best after that long ass season.
100% agree.
The main reason Clark's persona could become an issue, imo, is that a lot of her fans aren't really that invested in women's basketball. People obviously like that she's great and has a more aesthetically pleasing game than we're used to, but giving up the WNBA wouldn't really be a big sacrifice for many. If she starts to annoy people, it'll be pretty easy for a notable percentage of her fans to think 'Eh, screw it, I'd rather watch/read/do something else.'
The way Ethan pronounces Hawaii is making me reconsider my subscription.
As a long-time subscriber, I wholeheartedly agree - we need a detailed mea culpa on the Hawaii issue. Blaming it on a toddler isn’t going to cut it.
I've been lucky enough to meet both of you. I randomly ran into Ethan a few times and saw him at some staged events. I think I saw both of you many years ago at Drake's for an event.
If you think it's nerve-wracking going up a girl, it's nothing compared to trying to strike up a conversation at a bar with your favorite podcasters.
Great pairing, need the ombudsman on more.
To answer what people would guess Nate’s politics are and only guessing for myself—
Economics—> center to center left.
Social issues—> 95th percentile progressive.
I think he's probably center left on social issues too. He's a married dude, he doesn't have pronouns in his twitter bio, etc.
Yeah, in general he's way too rational and logic-oriented (too male-brained, as Ethan put it) to fit in with the extreme left.
Though I've heard him reference 'toxic masculinity' (and not ironically), so that's a data point in favor of him leaning at least somewhat left socially.
I don't know, as William F Buckley once put it, some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them.
100% agree, I think it is hilarious he thinks they aren't clear.
While Nate’s advocation to be Ethan’s ombudsman is preposterous and would ultimately strip the value of this newsletter, it also revealed his political stripes. Nate is your garden variety California Democrat. He will support social justice and ‘the current thing’ issues because it’s clearly the morally righteous thing to do. He’ll look negatively on the heretics as ignorant/immoral deplorables — but of course will make excuses for his friends who lean in that direction.
Nate is an entrepreneur, so he probably has developed some libertarian sensibilities, but the social justice ones will supersede at surface level.
Even as someone who has listened to almost every episode of Duncd On for many years, I'm always amazed how much more interesting Nate is outside of the basketball-only environment. Sign me up for more Nate
As somebody who watches like 70% of the W games every year, I think you are dead wrong on this "conservatives watch the W" take. I would bet that there are less than 1000 people who watch both Megyn Kelly and the WNBA. And besides, there is no way anybody would be scared off by Clark's comments. The league itself is drenched in wokeness, they show obnoxiously woke commercials congratulating themselves for being women athletes and you for watching them every single broadcast, usually more than once. Talk of privilege etc. is inescapable and implications that everything and everyone is racist are common. Anybody who puts up with all that bullshit and still watches (like me) is not gonna give a shit that Caitlin said the words "white privilege" in an interview.
As far as how to fix the NBA: FIBA ruleset and the Elam/Target Score ending. Watch the CEBL for proof. Elam's ending is the best game ending in all of sports and can lead to some insanely exciting outcomes. I mean, what's better than next-basket-wins? It also encourages comebacks in blowouts (why play defense if you're up by 23 and only need 9 to win? just get the ball back) and leads to awesome big shot moments and the end of nearly every game.
Having to watch teams in the NBA go through the brutal foul and free throw BS at the end of games now is barely tolerable for me after 4 years of watching the CEBL. And it kills me to think of how much better even the good games would be with the correct ending. But American is not ready for this conversation, sadly.
I completely agree with you that Ethan is way over-estimating the number of Megyn Kelly viewers that watch the WNBA. I am sure many know who Caitlin Clark is because Megyn talks about her, but I bet there aren't many who actually care about the league or watch games. They only follow the culture war aspect of anything related to the league. Thats basically what Megyns show has turned into anyway. I used to find her interesting, but lately she has become such a partisan hack. Her show is nothing but boring right wing culture war nonsense. However, I do disagree with your post somewhat, I think if Caitlin Clark were to keep leaning into more woke progressive politics, it would turn some fans off. To be clear, I dont think she will, but if she did I think it would harm her brand and the league as a whole in the longrun.
Fair point on the last part, I have no problem with that.
>Thats basically what Megyns show has turned into anyway. I used to find her interesting, but lately she has become such a partisan hack. Her show is nothing but boring right wing culture war nonsense.
I would agree with this characterization in a world where you are also in touch with the fact that 40% of the NYT/WP/NPR is the same. A lot of culture warring going on on both sides, so much it is hard to get actual information on things a lot of the time.
I agree that most lefty media outlets are just as bad if not worse. It just disappoints me with Megyn because I always respected how she used to stay neutral and present both sides of an argument. Not sure if she just got too fed up with the current media landscape or possibly could be some audience capture too. I understand there is going to some bias no matter who you listen to, but she has moved too far right for my taste. I still occasionally tune in if I see an interesting guest, but mostly don't watch anymore.
Elam ending is clearly vastly superior to what they have now.
On the app vs non app and divorce discussion, there have been studies that suggest meeting in person is more beneficial to a marriage than meeting online (https://www.psypost.org/online-datings-long-term-effects-on-marital-outcomes-explored-in-recent-study/). For whatever that is worth.
In terms of divorces, it's not that people getting married later is decreasing divorce. According to the census (https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/time-series/demo/families-and-households/ms-2.pdf), the increase of the age of first marriage started in ~1975, but it was still around 24 in 1980. It had not increased by much by the time divorce exploded. In fact, the average age of marriage, at least for men, was the same in 1890 and 1990, but the rates of divorce are on completely different planets.
The actual answer is that the 1960s (really like 1964 to 1974) was the most destructive period in American history and killed norms around sex/marriage, leading to a ton of negative externalities, including on divorce.
OkCupid: I always got the impression of my friends who preferred OKC to Tinder etc. that what they actually preferred was filling out surveys to talking to the opposite sex. OKC had the failure mode of reading through answers to find one dumb reason to reject someone, or convincing yourself that someone was your soulmate because you liked all the same movies. In fact what you need is just the photos/paragraph to determine if someone is in your target market and then nothing else substitutes for just meeting up and finding out if you can stand each other.
Clark: I thought Nate was a little dismissive of how calculated it came off as. Normal people do not talk like that, so it sounded like an obvious attempt to buy people off. It was a little like LeBron’s first page of every book in the locker room routine. If she keeps giving interviews like that, eventually people will be turned off. I doubt she will though.
Ethan goes to Spanish restaurants and orders “Pie-ella”.
Like all the Texans who insist on pronouncing “Amarillo” the same way we pronounce “armadillo” (and not like “tortilla”).
Not sure about the Amarillo comp. That’s just how everyone pronounces it. My wife is Mexican and is from Amarillo and she and her whole family pronounce it the “wrong” way, sometimes even if they’re speaking in Spanish they still do.
My dream podcast realized again.
You have a very good golf swing. The ball goes straight and you hit second or third longest in your peer group, although you could never come close to approaching the distance or accuracy of your one buddy who played in college.
You monkey around with your swing and it's a disaster. You're hooking the ball all over the place. Now you're maybe the fifth best dude that you regularly compete with. You can either make a million changes to your stance and turn your body 45 degrees and get new clubs to try and fix the fixes that didn't work or you can go back to your old swing that worked.
The comparison of "talk to woman at bar" and "talk to grumpy athlete in locker room" is so perfect. Have used it on several occasions when speaking to media students. Hadn't considered I might be terrifying them haha.
To me, in both cases, worst case scenario: you get told to buzz off. Oh well, reload the clip. Better luck next time.
Fear of rejection is very real (and possibly getting worse?) folks.
I think Nat is under estimating meeting in person today. In theory yes you can still meet girls/guys at out. From my experience with the explosion of dating apps people have become much less open to randomly meeting in person and are much quicker to shut you down. Partially due to being able to “vet” the person now over the app and feeling safer about the interaction even you this rarely seems to work out for my friends.
Nate’s politics came across as, “I’m above it all; it’s risible to think I would conform to any political category”
Ethan's pronunciation of Hawaii is psychotic.
Just for me personally, I used to watch almost every Warriors game, now I watch maybe 3 a year. 3's a part of it. You can say they have replaced 3's with 2's, but those 2's were BETTER shots. 3's aren't good shots, they are just efficient. The games where a team goes like 11-44 from 3 and has no plan B are just brutal to watch. The amount of BS fouls called per game and how the last 2 minutes of a game takes a half hour are also reasons. Load management too.
I would have to be paid to watch the WNBA so no real comment on Clark. I tend to side with Nate's side of the argument though.
I never understand how people don't understand the basic math of watching a team make 47% of 2s is more entertaining than watching them make 32% from 3 even if the latter is mathematically 2 pts better per 100 (or whatever).
It is like the reverse of the "its the math stupid" argument they make from an efficiency standpoint. A game where teams shoot say 39% overall instead of 46% is less aesthetically pleasing even if the shots are from slightly farther away and thus worth more overall.
“Hawaii” moment at the beginning reminded me of Britta in Community not being able to pronounce “bagel” (that’s a deep cut I know)