Nothing But Anarchy
"Nothing But Anarchy" hosted by Chad Sanders explores and subverts sports, media, Hollywood, and culture. Chad's vulnerable and raw commentary creates a fresh podcast experience you don't want to miss. Tune in Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12PM ET on Youtube Live.
Subscribe to the "Nothing But Anarchy" Youtube channel for full interviews and more anarchy!
Game analysis, social commentary, and music.
Instagram: @chadsand
Executive Producer: Chad Sanders
Producer: Morgan Williams
Music: Marcus Williams
Nothing But Anarchy
Eps #50 Our 50th Episode, Power Dynamics in Sports, Knowing How to Leverage Yourself & the Virtual Support for Colin Kaepernick
Get ready for a stimulating discourse on the ever-evolving power dynamics in sports, labor disputes, and the outcomes of bending rules.
0:08 Episode 50 Celebration and Reflections
12:13 Body counts
17:43 Damian Lillard and knowing how to leverage yourself
29:39 Dominant Matchup
33:16 Chad's book release story
47:10 Labor Disputes & Bill Simmons podcast
Tune in Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12PM ET to watch the show live on Youtube. Follow @chadsand on Instagram and subscribe to the Nothing But Anarchy Youtube channel for full interviews and more anarchy!
Executive Produced by: Chad Sanders
Produced by: Morgan Williams
This is Nothing but Anarchy. This is the show that explores chaos around the world, around culture, around sports, around media and some other stuff. I think that'll do just nicely for an intro. Yo, it's Nothing but Anarchy. Live from my kitchen, gleandale, queens, right outside of Ridgewood. Ridgewood is like the bushwick of bushwick. Ridgewood is now where the kids are moving, gentrifying. I'm right outside of that. I'm sitting here staring at my backyard. There's a banana tree back there and a hammock. It's a real mashup of lifestyles. My dog is not here, penny Rihanna is not here. She's with the dog sitter. It's just me. I'm here by myself.
Speaker 1:I am in party preparation mode, which for me, as someone who has, probably in New York City, thrown, I want to say, like eight or nine parties in my 12 years living here, even though this one's very, very different. Those have been birthday parties, housewarming. I used to have a housewarming every single year because I would move every year, but this one is special. This one is it's episode 50 of our show. This one, I think, marks in some ways, I would say, the beginning of something we're going to have. We got about 120 RSVPs right now. We got people traveling in from Maryland, denver, colorado, atlanta. Marlo Williams has come all the way from Los Angeles, california, obviously all over New York City, manhattan, brooklyn, queens. Hopefully we'll get a couple from the Bronx, staten Island, long Island. We got a bunch of people coming through tonight. I got like people I've literally known since I was born. My sister can't be there tonight for an amazing reason, which is that she's in Minneapolis right now signing books. Her book drops on October 3rd that's Tuesday, that's literally five days from now and I just played a song that is meaningful to me. That's like Drake, maybe like seven years into his career, maybe even less than that, talking about. It's a song that's basically about hey, like we tried to, we tried to get something going. You know what I mean. We pitched ourselves to you labels, we tried to get the local radio to play us, we tried to get the other artists to recognize us and want to fuck with us. And you guys just kept giving me the cold shoulder and you just kept ignoring me and you just kept telling me I was too corny or I was too this or I was too fat. And now, fucking, look up, I'm Drake and I am not Drake, but I'm doing pretty good If I'm, if I may say so, if I'm, if I'm allowed to acknowledge that for a moment, it's going pretty good guys.
Speaker 1:And I have my own story about people taking my work and not paying me for it. I have my own stories about representatives dangling me as talent for people to get them to sign other talent. I have my own stories about people saying you're going to get 90%, I'm only going to take 10%, and then hiking up the price and I find out I only got 60%. I have my own worst behavior, shit going on. And on a day like today, what I'm going to see.
Speaker 1:My actual people, right, like the people I actually care about. One the people who work on this show Morgan, josh. The people who are regulars on this show Tim TJ, ashile, marlowe, et cetera. The people who won't even get to be there but who I know are there in spirit my sister, brian, leon, justin. The people who listen to every episode. The people in Washington state in their gardens listening to nothing but anarchy while raising their family, homeschooling their children, but who think it's worthwhile to spend two hours with us twice a week. That's four hours of their lives listening to what we do. It means a lot to me. It means a lot to me and it's going to mean a lot to me to see the faces of the people who I think are helping us build something, so that I never have to kiss ass again.
Speaker 1:I want to be retired from. I want to 35 years old, I want to be retired from kissing ass. I want to be retired from laughing at jokes that are funny. I want to be retired of feeling like I have to lie to people for an opportunity. I want to be retired from Hollywood already in the way that I've known it to this point.
Speaker 1:Writing in a writer's room is not a good time, y'all. I'm just going to keep it a stack with you. It's not fun. Building somebody else's empire not dope. Working on building someone else's creative vision can be fun if you feel invested, if you feel bought in, but when you're the 10th person out of 12, not a good time y'all.
Speaker 1:I'm excited about today because today I think I and we are going to get an opportunity to look face to face, like, look in the eyes, share a drink with I guess not share a drink with, maybe clink a drink with some of the people who are building a foundation for us so that we don't have to do bullshit. And I don't just mean like work, I mean like I work, like I almost can't stop. Like I work I'm always working, morgan's always working is what we do. But what I mean is like we don't have to do bullshit. Hopefully, if we get this thing going right and it's going to be right and today feels like a day where we turn a corner, because we'll get to actually see, you know like energy has to be. It's like a ping pong table. It has to bounce back. I love working with Morgan because I get energy back from her. I like talking to certain guests that come on, certain people who call in, because they give us energy back. I'm exhausted by the one and a half hour mark on a Tuesday or Thursday and it's good to for somebody else to pick up the phone and grab the baton and run with it for a little while, and so I get and tonight we're going to get to see get that energy back from real IRL, real live people, and I'm very excited about it.
Speaker 1:Now here's what I do on days when I have something at night. I told y'all I'm like a lizard. I am. If I'm not running at full tilt after a fly. I'm like almost entirely still. I'm like like I just I don't know what it is. I'm like have you ever seen like a gecko in a in a little box, that someone has again one of those little tanks Like they're really not interesting pets because they're not doing shit for like 23 hours of the day? You put a cricket in there and the crickets just jumping around for like 30 minutes before the gecko even acknowledges it, and then all of a sudden it just goes and it's gone. That's how I am, especially on a day like today where I know for four hours, you know I'm going to need to be awake. I'm going to need to be awake and something I've been thinking about let's call these like game days. Right, if I got a thing, if I got a thing at night, I got a thing that I need to be awake and alive for at night. I'm like a lizard. I move around slowly, haven't walked outside my house yet. Today. When I do walk out, I'll probably go for a walk through the park by myself. I will listen to music. Today I just watched a full Brittany Rinner bundle of Brit, formerly known as bundle of Brit I love.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you something I love because this happened with Golden Barbie. Who is what is? What is God? What is her last name? Is it? I can't remember Golden Barbie? Go look her up. Sanders is her last name. That's my name. Last name, jasmine Sanders.
Speaker 1:Right, I used to follow Golden Barbie on Instagram. When I was new to Instagram. She was an Instagram model and then she blew up. She ended up dating my friend, terrence J, for a little while, so I got to hang out with Golden Barbie a little bit. Who is the fucking fan?
Speaker 1:Smart as a whip, sharp as a tack all the euphemisms you can use to describe someone who is like on point and I learned an appreciation for what I think people try to call, condescendingly, an Instagram model or, even more disgustingly, an Instagram thought. I learned an appreciation for what a job people, and specifically beautiful young women, are doing who are building a following, and how much it requires of them to like not just like the work digitally that they know how to do and marketing wise and the creative. And Jasmine even said we're in the car on the way to the BET awards one or NAACP awards one time, and Terrence was hosting and I'm sitting in the back of this like all blacked out SUV and just talking there about her job and she's like I'm like what's the? What do you like the best about what you do? And at this point she had pretty much crossed over into becoming like she was now sort of respected as a model model. She had done covers and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:But I was like what's your favorite part of this thing? And she was like the creative work that goes into it. Like when a brand gives me money to do an ad for them, like to do a sponsored content. Like they don't really do anything. They just give me the money and they're like you figure it out because you know how to talk to your audience, you know how to present to your audience. You know what they like. You know what color palettes they like. You probably know what camera angles they like. You probably know what aspect ratios they like, whatever. Just take the money and just give us something dope and make it. And that was the beginning of a turn in my brain to understanding who actually is building power and leverage in this industry. This is fun. This is interesting. This show has a different tone when I'm sitting by myself in my kitchen staring at a banana tree.
Speaker 1:But so I just listened to Brittany Renner on club Shae Shae Shannon Sharpe show and you know the reel that they cut as, like the trailer for it is her talking about her body count. She says she slept with 35 guys. All right, I'll take a moment here to address that specifically, which is to say specifically to guys, specifically to guys. Let's see If you are the and I'm just going to try to say this objectively and without judgment if you're the type of guy who is offended by, who wants to know and is offended by the amount of women that I'm sorry, the amount of men that a woman has slept with Is this a little bit of a brain teaser, but I'm going to try to say it straight, as directly as possible If you are the kind of guy who wants to know and is offended by or made uncomfortable by the amount of women as Shannon Sharpe is visibly uncomfortable in the video and makes a whole show and song and dance and doing we got to get these old niggas out of here, man, and I don't mean like old niggas, like specifically like old black men, just like I just can't wait to like belly, bump these old guys out of this whole shit when it's our turn but it's not our turn yet, but when it's going to be our turn soon, though when, when you, if you are that kind of guy, the kind of guy who gets sheepish and uncomfortable and even mean about a woman who has a certain number of, has had a certain number of sexual partners, and if you want that information, it is likely that, because of power structures, it is likely that women, including perhaps your own partner, lie to you so that they don't have to face that uncomfortable moment.
Speaker 1:It is likely that what you believe to be so about your own partner's body count is not so. Does that make sense? I think it makes sense. I'll give you another example of a different power structure. Besides men and women, white people don't like it when black folks tell them real shit. White people like it when we be dancing and laughing. A lot of times we be dancing and laughing instead of saying some real shit. It's the same thing here If you think that your wife or partner or girlfriend or lady or whomever has had eight sexual partners, or 12 or 21, because that's what she told you and you had a freak out about it and you're weird about it and she knows you're weird about it and you judge other people when it comes up in conversation, etc. She knows you and so it is thus, I would say, by my own calculation, thus likely that you do not even have an actual understanding of the truth with your partner for that reason, because of your own shit. Anyway, moving on Brittany Wenger, I came out of two hours watching that interview. Team Brittany is what I would call myself. I'm Team Brittany and not just Team Brittany Spears, but Team Brittany Wenger, team Bundle of Brits.
Speaker 1:She was smart, she knew exactly what she was trying to say, she was clear, she was forward. I don't think she danced around any question. She said a lot of shit that I think not just about sex and men and you know, like whatever, but like she said just a lot of things about her life philosophies parenting, motherhood, childhood, race. That felt clear and like she had spent time with them as topics in her own head that she had faced herself on her own points of view, and she shot extremely straight in the contrast. But even though they had, I thought they had a nice chemistry and it was warm and like I liked, you know, I thought more or less they had a good conversation.
Speaker 1:Her points of view very much contrasted to Shannon Sharp, who is old, southern of the establishment yeah, I shouldn't say what the establishment, but he is in the establishment at this point. He's got a fucking prime time show on ESPN. Like you can't really get more established than that and he was visibly he was sort of giving her paternalistic advice on God. You don't have to talk about that in public. You don't got to do this thing in public. I just I am excited, for I don't actually want, like Shannon I like Shannon Sharp more or less. I don't want him to go away, but like I'm excited for the people with those sensibilities to get pushed out the way a good bit by and also the people who are my age, with those sensibilities, to get pushed out the way to get belly flopped by people who are I'm not saying by Britney Render specifically, but people who are more comfortable in their skin with, like exactly who they are and what's going on with them.
Speaker 1:All right, music I'm coming back and talking about sports. Okay, relevant to the worst behavior, I just played Celebration by Kanye West, one of my favorite versions of I can't even. These aren't even really rap songs. They're like melodic sort of flowing. They sound like champagne. My favorite, one of my favorite versions of a rapper in general and a Kanye West song and a Drake song and a Jay-Z song is like something that's like lower beats per minute, like that and that's flowing, and then it's just like this song is for me to enjoy.
Speaker 1:Like I'm going to say collectively, we just like, we people who put themselves in their work, whatever your work is you could be an athlete, you could be an accountant, you could be but people who have no windshield in their work and what they do like it's face first. I don't mean like your image, I just mean like your skin. Is your skin? Like you can get hit, like you can get fucked up doing what you do because you're so in it. We just like pour so much into this thing and the costs go so unreported like my costs are certainly currently unreported. You know what I mean. And the repayment is you get to live a life that you like sometimes don't like sometimes, but that matters to you all the time. Like you care every day, but it's nice to get a break, to like see your people in clink glasses. That's why I'm excited about tonight. Like that's why I go, that's why I hit up Lalei, who was running Fashion X when I was in high school and who is a costume designer now in New York City, in Manhattan, for the last 15 years, to go help me pick an outfit, because, like it's meaningful to me. It's yes, morgan, you're right, I didn't go to the store by myself and hold up things and say hmm, because I don't like to do that, but it's meaningful to me. To have a moment to clink glasses because you know what's going to happen on Friday is like we've kind of I've cleared space in my life to like not have something to do on Friday because it's like, oh, I have some drinks, might go to another place after the place and have some more drinks, might stick around at the place when the next DJ comes on and have whatever but whatever. But like you know what's going to happen on Friday, we're going to wake up and do more work because like that's, that's it, like this is I don't. I know you're supposed to have, I think you're supposed to have.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I'm like weird about telling people how much I work, because I think there's now a level of judgment about work life balance. It's almost gotten to the point of like, if your work life balance is off, people judge you. You know, because it's so zeitgeisty that like you're supposed to have a separation between your real life and your work life and blah, blah, blah. I don't have that. I don't know what that I don't know, I don't. I don't know what that is Like. I'm not, that's not it. You know what I mean. I don't want that. I don't want a life that's all cut up into boxes and shit like a goddamn. I don't know like what's cut up into boxes, I don't know. Whatever. I don't want a life like that. I don't. I shouldn't even say I don't want one. That wasn't chosen for me. I don't have that. So I'm excited to go clink glasses because I know tomorrow we're going to be working again, and I lied, I'm not sitting around the house doing nothing, I'm working right now. All right, enough of that.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about Dame Lillirange and Yanis Antitikumpo. I have thoughts. I'm going to my Notepad, so I have a Notepad. Y'all. I'll be preparing for this. This show is a form of writing. Everything I do is a form of writing and this show is included so really quickly, to catch anybody up who hasn't been around for it, but mostly all been around for it.
Speaker 1:Yanis Antitikumpo is a top three player in the NBA. He has been for the last five years. I think there's a great case to be made that he is the best player in the NBA because he is a top three offensive player and he is the best defensive player in the NBA. And if we, if we cared about defense, like we sometimes pretend that we do, then it, then it would be no question that he's the number one player in the NBA. Damian Lillard is probably like the 14th best player in the NBA thereabouts, maybe somewhere something like that.
Speaker 1:Some people like him a lot more. I do not. I think that part of why I don't like him much more is because one he has a Extremely woeful playoff record. You can go look up at his record in playoff series. I'm sorry I don't have it in front of me. I have some other stats coming.
Speaker 1:Uh, he is like a knockoff Stefan Curry. He's really like a child of the Gilbert arenas archetype, which is like a solidly built but not very tall, like not short, though like six, three lethal score, pretty good floor vision, but not awesome Like he's a scoring guard. That is what Damian Lillard is and he is Very. He has some. I don't know what his clutch numbers are, so somebody could tell me he's clutch and I can't confirm or deny because I don't have stats in front of me. But the reason why people think he's clutch is because he has hit some Incredibly back breaking and noteworthy and beautiful game winning no time on the clock series ending playoff three pointers like that's. That's what Damian Lillard, when it's all said and done, like that's what will endure from Dame Lillard's legacy, is the shot that he hit over Oklahoma City to knock him out of playoffs in Paul George's eye. And another shot that I think people have already sort of forgotten about or forgotten about, but we don't see it as often which is His shot against the Houston Rockets the Dwight Howard, james Harden Houston Rockets that eliminated them from the playoffs. That I watched From the balcony in Jason Leon Endupri's apartment in Harlem, like 10 years ago.
Speaker 1:At this point, dame Lillard, he is knockoff Steph Curry. Everything that Dame Lillard is good at, steph Curry is better at that, better than him at and it is an unfortunate way of the world that singularity matters, which is to say, if you are the second best, something that that diminishes your value, legacy, wise, more than just like the actual Accomplishments, the actual feats. If there was no Steph Curry, I would care more about Damian Lillard, I would think more about Damian Lillard. He would matter more because he would have been the first of this thing, this like deep shooting volume, three-point record breaking, you know if Pretty efficient Damian Lillard is less efficient than you guys think he is, go look, but he is a knockoff Steph Curry in many ways. And worse than that, he is from a city that Steph Curry now owns, which is Oakland, california. Shout out, oakland. I used to live there, 1200 Lakeshore, and what I saw happened here and this and I'm gonna I'm gonna speak to Something this reminds me of.
Speaker 1:Damian Lillard tried to force a trade to the Miami Heat, and Damian Lillard famously, at this point, has been outspoken about Condemning guys like Kevin Durant for, quote-unquote, running from the grind, asking for trades to teams that are already either champions or very close to it, which is common in the NBA. At this point, everybody's trying to find the winning alchemy and they will force their hand, their owners Wow, they will force their team owners hands To get them into favorable situations. Damian Lillard has now taken that exact same approach. He tried to force a trade to the Miami Heat with, and offered his team no other options but to trade him to the Miami Heat, who were just in the finals. Just in the finals, and it didn't work. And this it's just. It's an. There's an amazing way that life will tell you what your actual leverage is when the, you know when the, when the shit hits the fan, like when it's really time to play your hand, to put your cards down. He, he tried, and he tried all summer and into the fall to get traded to the heat. And then was it even two weeks ago that Yanis told the world I'm gonna go to whatever team is serious about winning the NBA chip championship. And then, like a, like a pawn on the board, like a minnow in the water, damian Lillard.
Speaker 1:Damian Lillard became a part of Yanis's power move package. He became a part of the. He became an asset to Yanis's mission. Just like that, like he voices discomfort. He wanted to, damian Lillard. He wanted to be in Miami heat, he wanted to go live in South Beach and Nothing happened.
Speaker 1:Nothing like nothing, in fact. People were reporting that the phones were not even Working anymore. People weren't even calling each other to try to work this trade out. And then Yanis, who is an actual big dog in this thing, he says Two weeks ago I need help, I can't do it here, I've already done it here and I don't want to do it here again without more help. I don't everybody. Every other team improves on the in the off seasons. They're stacking the deck against me. I just lost in the first round to the heat. I'm not doing it by myself again here, and he didn't do it by himself, but you follow what I'm saying. And now Damian Lillard gets thrown in as a tool for Yanis, and so Damian Lillard needs to know now that's what you are, bro. You, that was what your leverage was. It was not. You didn't have any. Yanis has the leverage, he's Yanis. So last thing I want to say about Damian Lillard and Yanis, and then I'm just gonna talk about leverage and when and when you can use it and it and it comes.
Speaker 1:I Told you all my sister and I play, have been playing my whole family. We would sit around for hours, days in a row, and play Monopoly, gang of four spades, anything like over and over and over and over and over again and just finding different ways to beat each other, like that's what we do, finding different little intricacies in the rules and Like strategies and playing off of each other and using the emotions of the room to try to beat each other. That's what we do, and it made me very aware of Leverage. Leverage is something that I think about Constantly. Sometimes Morgan and I will talk about when to do certain things with this business, this particular business, and I speak often on Timing and I don't say it like this, but like stacking the deck, like building the boom before you use it, like that kind of thing, because that's as I see this world, this particular world. So Before I talk about that last thing I want to say is this Damian Lillard goes and he is being traded for.
Speaker 1:Drew Holiday, who goes out the door through holiday, was, in my opinion, the second most important player on the Bucks. He was the point of attack on their defense. He is possibly the best defensive guard in the NBA. He's an absolute bully and a nightmare to opposing point guards. He makes clutch plays. He made two extremely clutch plays in their run to the championship a couple years ago. He almost won the Boston Celtics Bucks series last year by stripping Marcus smart at half court and ending the game and game. What was that? Game five. He's gone now and I think that people who listen man, some people watch basketball and here's how they watch Ball goes through basket.
Speaker 1:Who's handed it leaves. He's awesome Then. That's kind of it. Even people with a sophisticated understanding of basketball get mesmerized by bullshit. Damian Lillard like I said, I don't know if he's clutcher isn't, because I haven't looked at the stats. Somebody go look at his clutch stats and compare them to like the other top ten guards of the league and please let me know. But I bet all y'all think he's clutch because you remember those two shots and that's how our eyes fool us, right People?
Speaker 1:Right now, conventional wisdom, I am guessing, is saying Damian Lillard is an upgrade over Drew Holiday, full stop, and I want to measure how much that is true. So Drew Holiday is always in the conversation for first team defense every single year. He obviously is a champion, because he was a champion on the Bucks as their second best player. He has played on competitive teams for most of his career. He he is someone who can score 25 points per game in a playoff series. If that's what you need out of him. He can kind of do whatever, like he is. He is willing to fill in any gap, one in In your guard space and do what you need from him.
Speaker 1:Damian Lillard cannot do that. What Damian Lillard can do, over and over and over again, is fill it up like buckets on buckets on buckets on buckets. Very, very, very, very important, but not Exactly something that the Bucks have been waiting for or wanting for. Like, the Bucks don't have Crazy issues scoring and they are close to the top of the NBA in three-point rate every year and three-point percentage. So like they don't have a Damian Lillard problem. They just they were injured last year they had a chance to win the championship last. Last year they were injured with the same thing that they brought back from two years ago. They were injured.
Speaker 1:So I Want to say this I just want to pull up here the in team so five years ago, when I think both of these two players were probably ensuring their peaks it's funny Damien Liller and Drew Holiday are they were born a month ago, almost to the day. They're born like 33 days apart from each other. They're in their mid 30s, so the P their prime started about five years ago, I would say maybe six years ago they faced off in a playoff series and in that playoff series, in the series okay, not on their teams, but in their series they were the second best players on each of their respective teams. It was the New Orleans Pelicans against the Portland Trailblazers, and Anthony Davis led the Pelicans in scoring and CJ McCollum led the Portland Trailblazers in scoring. Now, can some of y'all remember this series because I remember it vividly. I will not forget. If we want to talk about eye test, I will not forget what my eyes saw.
Speaker 1:But I went back and look at the stats From that series where Drew Holiday was guarding Damien Lillard and vice versa. I remember Drew Holiday bodying Damien Lillard in a way that I will not. The same way Jimmy Butler just body Drew Holiday. I will not forget how Drew Holiday body Damien Lillard, body Damien Lillard. I had not seen something like that between two NBA point guards through the course of a series, that sort of dominant. So I went back and look at the stats, all right. So Drew Holiday in that series averaged 28 points per game, 7 assists, 4 rebounds. He shot 57% from the field and 35% from 3. Damien Lillard in that same, in that same series in which he got swept, in 41 minutes per game on the floor, he averaged 19 points per game, 4 and a half rebounds, 5 assists, and he shot 35% from the field and 30% from 3.
Speaker 1:I know what y'all are probably thinking, like that one matchup does not define who two players are, it doesn't define who's better, etc. Etc. I just I think sometimes with sports we can lit what matters matter, and what matters is in the moments where you need your guy to be better than the other guy, like, can he just do that over the course of a series? Like Ken, can he just be better than the other guy, damien Lillard? At some point in the Blazers history and that particular point was when they met the Warriors in the Western Conference championship and got swept they just needed Damien Lillard one time to do what Drew Holiday did to Damien Lillard. They needed Lillard to do that, to step and curry once, so that they could, so that they could legitimize the era of game leader in CJ McCallum. He couldn't do it and Drew Holiday did it to him, and so I got to wonder how much better did the Bucks really get by up by quote-unquote upgrading from Drew Holiday to CJ McCallum.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna put my music and I'll be back, okay, there are moments that I remember from my life I bet you all have some as well where you break the decorum. You break a rule, that it's an unwritten rule but it's a rule in your mind, it's a rule in your body, it's a rule that You're living by without even realizing you're living by it and I, there are some moments where I have broken such a rule and realized that, one, it wasn't a rule at all, it was only a rule if I let it be. And two, that breaking the rule gave me what I wanted in a way that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise ever get it had I not broken the rule. And that, and once Once seen, you can never unsee those particular moments, even though sometimes you get scared again. I get scared again, I stopped. I stop being bold. In the same way, like I can never forget that that's not a rule. I'm letting something be a rule that isn't. I don't know if you ever seen there's this image of it's like you know, a thousand sheep out in a field and there's like a small gap in the gate, in the gate that's in front of them and they're all trying to. They're all like very docile Lee walking through the gates, trying to squeeze through this little gate, and then it pans out, it zooms out and you can see that on either side of this long gate there's nothing but opening like that. You don't have to even walk through the gate to get past it, you could just walk around it, and that's the kind of thing that I'm talking about. But I'll be more specific.
Speaker 1:So 2020, in 2020, I'm living in Bed-Stuy and my book is done, it's turned in, it's ready for manufacturing, but the process takes can take up to a year for them to Decide how many books they're gonna print, put the books in the printer, do the sales process to the bookstores, you know, get the PR engine revved up, marketing, all that kind of stuff, and so they. My publisher has told me that the book is not gonna come out until June. I believe is what it was set for June 2021. And I'm anxious at this point, I should say anxious, I'm, I'm excited, what's the word I mean? I'm, I'm impatient about the book coming out because, as far as I can see, the book is the beginning. The book coming out is gonna be my first points on the board. It's gonna be my first Product, my first art with my name on it, that I stand behind singularly, and that is. I say it's a death, but like that's what matters in this whole thing. So I'm like god, I need this book to come out. I don't want to wait. It's already, like you know, it's June. It's June, july, something like that 2020. I'm just like yo. I want this fucking book to come out. Come on, man.
Speaker 1:And it's a crazy thing. You know the books called black magic. The sub, the subtitle, is what black leaders learn, what leaders learn from trial. What the fuck is it? It's like what black leaders learn from trauma and triumph. I think that's it. It's all black stuff.
Speaker 1:And Wouldn't you know it? Like man named George Floyd gets choked and killed by the police and People start to rioting or whatever. What are we calling it? People start marching, people start riding. Also, people start protesting and with everybody at home, not at work, because of the pandemic, like the, the digital whirlwind around black civil rights and human rights is. Is it? It's a mouse drum, it's just. It's completely consuming for some for some period of time. Right, I'll call that. I'll call that itself a riot. It's chaos, right, chaos is a ladder.
Speaker 1:And I'm looking at this and I'm like my agency keeps putting out and you know, people are posting like the black squares as their profile pictures. People are doing all the performative allyship and my, my Agency, wme, my book agent and my publisher, simon Schuster, they're like. You know, they're like just wait your turn on when the book comes out. Just wait your turn. It comes out in this time, comes out in this time, and then, and then you I don't know what it was exactly, but I felt, I guess, from the rise of what was happening outside, I felt like for once, I had a tailwind behind me that I could use to push back on these faculties to make my book come out faster.
Speaker 1:And I thought about it for like two days and I think the straw that broke the camel's back was my agent. You know I was supposed to have a big meeting with, like PR and marketing about how the book was going to be launched and they were supposed to, you know, do their homework and present to me and all this stuff. And I was like, finally, like somebody else is doing the work here and they were going to push my meeting back because they were doing a fucking day of not going to work, you know, in solidarity with the cause. And it's like, man, it kills me how people will find a way to take vacation as a show of solidarity. Like, as a show, like you know, in solidarity with black people who were slaves in this company, I'm not going to work today. It's like that doesn't make any fucking sense.
Speaker 1:So I emailed them and I was like in so many words I said it much more eloquently, this, but I was like look outside, there's people rioting, there's people protesting, there's blue lives matter flags all over New York City right now and black lives matter flags over New York. So, like, what better time to release a book about what my book is about than this? And also like, do not tell me you're going to slow down the train on on the marketing and PR process for my fucking book called black magic, because you guys are going to not go to work tomorrow in solidarity with I'm like, with who? With what? Black people? I'm like I'm right here. I'm here, I'm black, my book is black. Like, what are you doing? You're not going to go to work tomorrow, you're going to skip my meeting for solidarity.
Speaker 1:And of course, I thought this would be another time where Chad is spicy. And the response from the industry as it is, the response from like these stalwart giant concrete blocks known as studios, publishers, agencies, of course they're just going to be like, if they even respond, they're just going to be like, sorry, can't do it. Company policy. And this was probably the first time for me that I was wrong about that and the response was God, you know what we're tripping, let's have the meeting. And the results of that meeting was that we moved up the publication date on the book by three or four months, so I got my book out faster. I got on the road doing speaking gigs to get paid faster I got let. I met Dax Shepard and Brené Brown and Julie Bowen and all these other people who, like, started to open doors for me because I had leverage for something beyond awful.
Speaker 1:But, like, I felt the impulse to use that leverage in the moment. And I guess I'm saying all that to say like, even though Damien Lillard tried and failed to use his leverage, he did not have a good understanding of his leverage, neither did his agent get a poor understanding of it Right, so that's on him. He was not sophisticated in the way that he tried to use his leverage. But you can't really gain a taste for what your leverage is without trying to use it. Like you can't really know what's going to knock the wall over until you hit it in a couple spots and find where the weak spot is. So I'm happy that Damien Lillard got to learn this lesson twice about his leverage, first by failing to use his and then by watching Giannis use his to get Damien Lillard to be a part of his fortress. And I got to remember for myself like keep fucking pressing on the wall, just keep pushing, keep pushing, keep applying pressure, because sooner or later, like that shit is going to fall down.
Speaker 1:All right, music, that was pretty good Going. All right today, music. And then what's? Oh, kaepernick. And then we're going to talk about Bill Simmons. All right, I was trying to get to Hope's part, but it just takes too long to come in. Good song, though Devil is a lie. Brian has formal for the party tonight. Yes, I'm playing energy music today because that's how I'm feeling, feeling good about what's going on tonight. Come on, kaepernick and J Cole. So, colin Kaepernick. All right, here's my disclosures.
Speaker 1:Met Colin Kaepernick not too long ago, pitched a project to him and his company company passed Donalm just met him for an hour in a meeting. Seemed like a cool guy. I shouldn't say that. Seemed like a nice guy. Whatever Donalm recently, like a week ago, like days ago not even a week ago, two days ago maybe he wrote a letter to the New York Jets front office saying in so many words Zach Wilson, your quarterback is AS and we all know he's AS and I could come in and step in a quarterback for you guys. You guys should sign me, you guys should sign me to your practice squad something. I can work my way up, whatever. He said something like that. It was a long, long, long email paragraphs and paragraphs of text. I only know that. We only know that because J Cole took it upon himself to repost that same letter.
Speaker 1:He got Colin Kaepernick's permission and he posted that letter on his Instagram. In the caption he wrote something about Yada Yada, my brother, colin Kaepernick gave permission to post this because people got to see this. Basically, people got to see this. I don't like. This is preamble. I'm about to say a preamble and I'm going to strike through it. Right, because I'm not doing this preamble anymore. There's a required preamble for the rest of this conversation, which is to say, I hope I'm not being cynical or jaded and I'm sorry to see it this way If this was an act meant and earnest and blah, blah, blah. I'm going to put a strike through that and I'm going to make a rule for myself and Morgan, please hold me to this no more safety preambles, because when something is phony, just let it be phony, it's phony, and there's a couple of reasons why that's funny One if Colin Kaepernick wanted that letter to be public he has every vehicle and then some, to make public a letter that he sent.
Speaker 1:He could make it an open letter. He could post it on his own Instagram. He could post it on his own Twitter. His wife could post it on her Instagram. He could have any number of. He could call on the phone any other number of celebrities to post on their own shit, like there's. If Colin Kaepernick's intention was to make a public display of trying to get onto a team, he could have done that on his own.
Speaker 1:This looks like marketing. This looks like a celebrity Cause I don't want to say a rapper, because that suggests that like this is something specific to rappers, but like this is celebrity. This is like being virtuous, being an activist of some kind, being a civil rights mover and shaker. Like this is what I and it's my book, which is coming out in 2025 so far from now. But this is something that I call trending activism. This is called trending activism. This is, if you go look at your Instagram right now, if you go look at your Twitter right now, if you scroll through the people that you follow and you've tried to reverse engineer, why do I know this person and why do 220,000 other people know this person? Oftentimes it boils down to some visible act of activism that that person did. They climbed on a statue. They took a video of themselves confronting the police.
Speaker 1:I'm watching the morning show. There's a scene where Steve Carell's character has moved. Spoiler alert he has moved to Italy because he is so much, he is such a villain in the United States at the time. So he moves to Italy. He's sitting there having tea. A woman from America, from the United States, walks up to him. Young woman, probably in her late 20s oh, it's my mom, hold on Walks up to him and starts condemning him and just popping off, telling him all the ways that he's a monster and an asshole and a schmuck and all this other shit. And this other lady comes over and she's like hey, stop the facade, shut up. You're performing right now the things that you're saying. You don't even understand what they mean. And then she points to another woman across the promenade and she's like and tell your friend to put that phone down and delete that video. I know you're doing this for social media and the woman's caught. It's true, she was trying to make herself famous by doing an act of civil rights. That is a thing.
Speaker 1:Intentions are important. In my point of view, intentions matter. You can do something good by accident, but you do not get points for that, in my point of view, if what you're actually trying to do is have a moment on social media by like being like dude. I was telling the show this last night. Listen, I'm the person who's not supposed to feel this way and this how I feel.
Speaker 1:Guys, conk Kaepernick is never gonna play in the NFL again Like this is obvious. They made their point clear. He last played in the NFL in 2016,. It's 2023. All it's not going to happen. The NFL owners they have made their stance known. It's not happening Like this, when I talk about the wall and hitting on the wall, hitting on the wall like there's no leverage and a large reason why there's no leverage is because we were not willing to turn the TVs off y'all. We didn't do it. Like we talk about the power of black Twitter and the power of our United agency when we do, but there's some shit that we are just not willing to walk away from, and NFL football is one of those things. We were not willing to do it. For Conk Kaepernick or what he stood for or what he knelt for, I should say, like we weren't, it's over. And so, as much as I know it's over and as much as y'all know it's over. That's why, like, I could never get the impulse to repost that letter unless I was doing it for likes, unless I was doing it for retweets, because I so much know that the Conk Kaepernick thing is over. When we hear about Conk Kaepernick, when it comes up, it's like a, it's a memory, like we don't have a visceral connection to Conk Kaepernick anymore, like the impulse has left the movement of the Conk Kaepernick thing. It's over, it's over. All right, I'm gonna stop saying it's over, but it's over. I got one nice thing to say and then I'm gonna stop. It is only this. I'm gonna say it with less energy because I do need to save some energy for tonight.
Speaker 1:I was listening to the Bill Simmons podcast. He had on on his podcast a guest named Wasny Lambray I believe that's how you pronounce his name. Big Was Wasny is one of the black writer podcasters at the Ringer. The Ringer is Bill Simmons company, obviously, and they were talking about, among other things, james Hardin and his professionalism, or lack thereof, with regards to how he is trying to work his own leverage to get moved away from the 76ers. He famously has beef with his estranged friend, slash boss or general manager, whatever Darryl Morrie, and he wants out. And in fact I saw a video last night from camp, which is a club in Houston, where James Hardin had people holding up signs that said Darryl Morrie is a liar. Hey man, I just played the doubles a lot and I saw Earl in one of those videos Shout out to Earl and while I was listening to Bill Simmons.
Speaker 1:So Bill Simmons is, in these conversations, anti-labor, he is anti-players. He it's in his voice, it's in his tone, it's in the little crevices of the things he's saying. But if you're paying any bit of attention you can hear him saying I can't believe these guys are so some combination of like entitled and lazy that they would be willing to, you know, work their way off of teams by sitting out practices, getting fat, like doing these little, like quiet protests of their contracts and things like that. Like I can't believe they do that. And when you go on his show he is leaning that direction already. And so if you don't lean in that direction with him, I'm guessing, just from listening, that either he poked at you and makes you sound stupid or he just won't have you on the show.
Speaker 1:And in this case he made a joke about Wozny. He said something like no, I can tell you're being a James Hardin sympathizer, have you must have been at the club with James, which I, you know. I thought that was a little racial, just gonna say. But he's like you must have been at the club with James. You must be at the club with James and Wozny. You know it's a boss, he works for him. Ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha. And here's just what I just couldn't. I just couldn't unsee it once it flashed across my head. This is Bill Simmons and Wozny Lambray watching a labor dispute between James Hardin and management ownership at the place he works at. Wow, wozny, that Bill Simmons is his boss.
Speaker 1:Like, imagine sitting with your boss, the guy who owns the company you work at, and looking at a situation where somebody is having a conflict with their boss and trying to find whatever levers they have to make a move, and you guys are supposed to be having an explorative, analyzing, humorous conversation about that situation where you look at the angles of it honestly and you present your point of view. But, like, your points of view are naturally going to be diametrically opposed because that's your fucking like. You work somewhere and on the other side of the table that guy has somebody working for him and it's you. So, like Bill Simmons, I don't expect any better. And when I see Wozny in that situation, I'm like, I'm not. Like, oh my God, I can't believe you sit here and ha ha, he would like. That's his job, that's where he works at, he needs his check. But like, how can they possibly have an honest conversation about a workplace dispute, about a labor disagreement, when one of the people owns the fucking place and the other one is labor. All right, I think that's a good point and I don't need to say much more about it.
Speaker 1:Thanks you all for being with us. This is episode number 15. See you Tuesday at noon. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye им. Thanks for watching, guys.
