
Marques and Alex explain basketball to David and Andrew!
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Narrator/Advertiser
When I got a new car, I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account. Like if fatween won the lottery.
Marques
I've invested most of my winnings in
David
chicken tenders because they're bomb.
Marques
But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is going to be all trampoline, bro, with a helipad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound, but
David
they're just being babies.
Narrator/Advertiser
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Alex
It feels good to save some hard earned cash. It feels good to geico.
Narrator/Advertiser
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David
Context is a pump fake where you pretend to shoot and then you don't.
Ellis
Yes.
David
Yeah. Steph Curry does that a lot.
Alex
Yes, he's very good at it.
Marques
It's like when you're about to ship a product, when you don't like airpower. It's like, it's like head fake.
Andrew
Yeah.
Marques
What's up, people of the Internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform podcast. We are all of your hosts. I'm Marques.
Alex
I'm Alex.
Andrew
I'm Andrew.
David
And I'm David.
Marques
And in this bonus episode, we're going to be covering a whole bunch of things, but mostly sports. And the way that we're going to do it is we have our fellow non ball knower.
David
Hey, hey, hey.
Marques
Andrew and David over here. Guests, hosts who we want to explain the massive amount of overlap between sports and tech. And we have a lot of analogies and similes and ways of explaining that. And Alex and I ball knowers of the podcast and maybe we'll get some Rufus and Adam over there chiming in as well.
Andrew
I don't know anything. We split the Easter table. I don't know anymore. Okay, Rufus is on our side, Adam's on this.
Marques
Even better. Even better. Okay, so then we're gonna use all of this to hopefully get you guys caught up to on the incredible world of what's happened in basketball for the last couple weeks, months by using tech.
David
Oh, I know. The Last couple weeks. I just do not know.
Alex
The last couple weeks, David has quietly become a ball knower.
Marques
I mean, if you actually.
Ellis
Loudly. Loudly,
Marques
you were pretty dialed. But there's still plenty to learn, obviously. There's lots of lore and things to like.
David
Mike Bibby.
Alex
Can I add the first beef of this episode? Can you, Webby?
Andrew
Oh, it's a classic.
Marques
There's a couple things you kind of just start chanting when you become a sports fan. That's one of them.
Alex
It's a classic chant now.
Ellis
Yeah.
Marques
Nixon 5. If you just live in the area, you just walk outside and say that, and people, like, high five you.
Andrew
That's. We don't say good morning anymore.
Marques
Nixon 5.
David
Yeah, especially new York.
Marques
You make sure whenever you order breakfast for the next six months, you just order Brunson egg and cheese. You don't have to explain it. They'll just know what it is. Is it special?
David
Is it different than a regular egg and cheese? No, it's not.
Alex
It's a bacon, egg and cheese. It's just a Brunson egg and cheese.
Marques
It's just named in his honor.
Andrew
No, it has sriracha mayo.
David
Does it?
Alex
Does it?
Andrew
Are you guys kidding me?
Alex
I don't know. I just.
David
It all stemmed from, like, this.
Andrew
This kid asked him, what's your bodega order? And he said, well, I don't actually live in the city, so I don't have a normal bodega order. But if it was going to be that, it would be this.
David
I thought you guys were going to teach us.
Alex
Yeah. Who knows the Lord?
Marques
Damn walnut tables.
Andrew
Yeah, it has sriracha mayo on it.
David
Oh, that sounds better.
Marques
Incredible. Well, we're going to go through all of this, starting from the rules of modern NBA and then the teams and the history and then maybe a little bit of like. I think I want to end this by talking about the fan overlap, because there's so much overlap between fans of tech companies and the tribalism in the sports world that I feel like we need to just bandwagon on to some team before the end of this.
Andrew
Okay.
Ellis
Apple in five.
David
Five, bro. Just like that.
Alex
Yo, shut up. Google in five, bro. Google in five.
Marques
Exactly.
David
OnePlus is out of the finals.
Marques
Yeah, the NBA all together.
Alex
Oneplus got knocked out in the first round. Let's be real.
Marques
All right, so I think we'll start with the rules. Just like, what is the NBA? The NBA, obviously a basketball league here in the US and we had. How many teams are in the NBA? 30, 24, 30. Is it.
David
National Basketball Association.
Andrew
Yes, it is.
Marques
Very good.
Alex
Good job, David Ball Knower. Actually, wait. There is going to be 32 teams soon, right? They're expanding. Yeah.
Marques
Expansion.
Andrew
Seattle. Huh?
Marques
Seattle.
Alex
And presumably Seattle and Vegas are about to get teams and then one team is going to move to the Eastern Conference.
Marques
Yeah, yeah. Which is a good opportunity maybe to talk about teams in general because obviously there's lots of tech companies who you can kind of think of as teams. And I'm trying to think of what. What would an expansion team be? It would be kind of like a startup. Right. You need to like, build the whole thing from the ground up very quickly and then just join the league. Yeah, it'd be kind of like a startup. So we're gonna have some startups soon, which is interesting to root for. They don't have any history, but you have some teams that have been around for a very long time who have a history of winning in the past. A ups and downs. They've had rosters, AKA employees, who have done amazing things, sometimes terrible things that have caused the companies to rise and fall. And so whenever you watch those tech companies, you're kind of like watching the players for the team affect their outcomes.
Andrew
Can I. Almost every question I'm going to ask is going to preface with saying, this is what happens in hockey. Does this happen in basketball?
Marques
Okay.
Andrew
And if I'm correct, Seattle had a team at some point. Right. So bringing it back potentially has like an old fan base coming back to it. This happened with the Winnipeg.
Alex
If I may. Seattle got really kind of hosed by their ownership group who decided for whatever reason, I think they. I think they changed ownership in the late 2000s. And then the owner, for whatever reason, really wanted to move them to Oklahoma City and just take them out of Seattle. But the Seattle fan base was really passionate, but it was like an arena issue where the. The city didn't want to pay for a new arena or something. And so they moved them to Oklahoma City. And Seattle has been starved for basketball since then. They now have a. They have a WNBA team.
Andrew
And are they going to play in the Kraken Arena? There's a new NHL?
Alex
I think so.
Andrew
Yeah. That's the most recent.
Alex
I think they'll play in the new arena. I mean, it's sick arena. It's not final yet, but it. Presumably that is where they will play.
David
Climate Change Arena.
Andrew
Yeah, it's. It's one of the only arenas.
David
Climate Pleasure.
Alex
Climate Change arena is crazy.
Andrew
It's like one of the only arenas that's Down. So if you look from the ice up, you can see this big window, and that's actually the sidewalk of the street.
David
It's like my apartment.
Marques
Nice.
Andrew
Yeah.
David
Yeah.
Andrew
Okay.
Marques
So for David. Yeah. Nokia.
David
Nokia.
Marques
Nokia used to be a whole thing. Great company, thriving, and then kind of just stopped. They do telecom stuff now, but they had to bring it back.
David
Oh, yeah.
Marques
And they bring it back, and they've licensed that name, and they started making phones and doing things with that name again.
Ellis
That's.
Marques
That. That's Seattle getting an NBA team again. Okay. So they're licensing the name. It won't be quite exactly the same team, but it will be fun to root for, because we know that name
Andrew
because when that team moved, all the players moved. So a lot of Seattle fans probably became Oklahoma City fans or were so mad about it that they followed their players. Yeah. But now they're getting a team.
Alex
It's actually interesting, too. Not to get too into the weeds, but there's been multiple times in the NBA where teams have moved and then come back or whatever, and it's created this weird history gap for certain teams. Like, so, for example, the Charlotte Hornets back in the day moved to New Orleans. It became the New Orleans Hornets, but then they eventually added another team to Charlotte called the Charlotte Bobcats. And so then they were like, well, do we get the Hornets history? And it was like, no, you're a new team. You don't get history. But then New Orleans was like, well, we don't like the name Hornets. We're gonna change our name to the Pelicans. So they're the New Orleans Pelicans now. And then Charlotte with the Bobcats was, wait, Hornets is on the table again. So let's become the Hornets.
David
That's weird.
Alex
And now people are like, wait, so do the New Orleans Pelicans own the Charlotte Hornets history, or do the Charlotte Hornets own the Charlotte Hornets history?
Andrew
Wait, so I don't understand that. What's a tech version?
Alex
I don't know. A tech version of that one analogy. It's not a perfect one to one,
Marques
but there's not a perfect one to one of everything.
David
Maybe there's like. It's like Carl pay, right? It's like he kind of ran one plus and then he nothing.
Alex
But then David is right in the well, but then.
Andrew
But how Carl pays then bought essential, but just the name, and now nothing has essential in it.
Marques
So do they get the nothing history because they have just.
Andrew
Or do they get the essential history? You don't want the Andy Rubin history yeah.
David
So if they, if they made a new company called Essential, like, would they get the essential history or would it just be the nothing?
Alex
Essentially, yeah.
David
Hey, they made that gem phone. I'm all in on the ball. You know what I'm saying? All right.
Marques
So anyway, basketball, the rules are pretty simple. I don't know if you need a technology, but obviously the teams are just trying to score the most points. You have four 12 minute quarters. You can pass the ball, dribble. You can't foul or travel. Pretty basic sports.
Andrew
Does Wemby know?
Alex
Actually, it actually. Well, Wemby's core tenets of basketball is fouling people.
David
Can I. Yeah. Can I ask a question based on what I saw last week?
Marques
Yes.
David
When I was a child and I watched the Sacramento Kings play with Mike Bibby.
Marques
Yes.
David
They, like, you couldn't. You had to dribble when you were walking, when you were moving down the court. When I was watching last week, a lot of people were not doing that.
Alex
Okay, so this brings us to the core tenets of basketball. So why don't we talk about the core tenets?
David
Give me the rules.
Alex
The three core tenets of basketball. If you go up to any, any court in America and you just want to try to play basketball.
David
Yeah.
Alex
Three core tenets. Dribble, pass, shoot. Those are your three things.
Andrew
Okay.
Alex
Right.
Marques
No defense.
Alex
So it's called travel. No defense.
David
Is it called traveling if you walk with the ball but you don't dribble? I thought so.
Alex
Dribbling.
Ellis
Yeah.
Alex
Is if you're. If you have the ball and you're moving. In basketball, you get three steps without dribbling at some point.
David
Three.
Alex
Yes. But if you pick up your dribble and you're like going to finish a layup, you get.
David
What's a layup?
Alex
We'll get there.
Marques
Okay.
Andrew
Everyone was like, David knows ball. Everybody asked that.
Alex
Never mind.
David
I'm asking for the audience. Many of our audience members do not know.
Alex
David is playing a character. He's best at acting.
David
That's right.
Marques
Good save.
Alex
That's right. But so dribbling is when you're. You're dribbling down the court. That's how you set up bouncing the ball. Yeah. Dribbling is bouncing the ball up and down into your hand. So that is like software dev. So that is like your core principle to basketball.
Marques
It's like step one.
Alex
Step one. You got to have your software, your ide.
David
Basically.
Alex
Yes.
Marques
Okay.
Alex
Yes.
Andrew
Your ide.
Alex
Passing is how you get the ball from one player to another. So there's five players on each side. You throw it and you throw it to your teammates so that you can try to break the defense and get inside. So passing, that's your testing. That's like your alpha testing, beta testing, trying to get to the, get to the end. Because the idea is to get a basket, right? So shooting, that's your deliverable.
David
So you throw it up.
Alex
You throw it up and you deliver and you make a basket.
Marques
Shipping your product.
Alex
Shipping your product.
Marques
They use a lot of the same words, deliverables.
David
Does that when you basketball too?
Marques
No, when you deliver a product, when you ship a product.
Alex
Can you imagine a basketball coach is in the huddle and they're like, guys, guys, we got to really hit on our deliverables right now. We got to get the passes and get our deliverable.
Marques
We got to ship. We got to really got to ship.
David
The market fit between the basketball and the hoop is really high.
Alex
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
David
Yeah.
Marques
Okay. Yeah. So the entire time these teams are trying to get as good as possible at shipping as many products as possible, more than all the other teams. Okay, I'm dead serious. If you ship more products than the other team, you win. But you only have four 12 minute quarters. The fiscal years, I mean, divided up into quarters. So Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4. The more products you ship, the better. If you ship more than the others, you win.
Alex
And in a single game, you might ship like 70 products.
Ellis
Yeah.
Marques
And the thing is, you are competing directly against the other team who is trying to stop you from shipping products.
David
Right.
Marques
They're gonna try to interrupt your testing, your development, your shipping process, all of that. Okay, but there are rules, right? So every team has players that have different roles and different styles. And occasionally a member of the other team will try to mess with your team. We don't like those players very much. Some call them like dirty players, like Wemby. You're supposed to play within the rules. Obviously some people kind of try to bend the rules, like Wemby.
Alex
What do we say about Wemby?
Ellis
But
Marques
we always know that there are these pieces fit together like puzzles. These players on these teams, these leaders and these teammates are all trying to ship products as quickly as possible. But if they do their role really well, then they can pass it to the next role. And the next role, you get through the software development phase really quickly. And then you ship it and you market and you do the whole thing really, really fast. Then you're successful. Okay, wait, so everyone has to know
Andrew
their role Nix team As Apple executives go.
David
Great. Okay.
Marques
That's a great place to start. Nick's team. As Apple executives.
Andrew
The captain, just players.
Marques
You probably start with the captain, right?
David
Yeah. Tell me about the roles.
Marques
Yeah, great. So players have different size roles and players have different size roles. Different, like appreciation. Yeah. And different appreciation just based on what they're good at. In sports, it might be just because you're taller or shorter or you have a certain skill set that lets you do the thing. Yeah, that's kind of like in tech. You might be a really good supply chain person or you might have a business mind or you're a ruthless leader who's like galvanizing the troops and gets people behind him. So sports team with a captain like the Knicks, that's Jalen Brunson. That's the captain. That's the MVP of the team. The best player. Finals mvp. He's the guy that everybody recognizes when you look at that company. So at Apple, Tim Cook, I think Tim Cook today. That's Tim Cook.
Alex
It's also. Brunson is also very well liked.
Marques
Yeah.
Alex
And so Tim Cook seemed very well liked.
Marques
Yeah, I'd say so.
Alex
I would say Steve Jobs for being a visionary, but it seemed like a lot of people were not the biggest. Steve Jobs.
Andrew
Yeah.
Alex
If we gotta use the. He got results, but you know what I'm saying.
Marques
Yeah. Modern Apple. We'll go with Tim Cook just because he's the guy who's getting the results and he is ruthlessly consistent and maybe even a little underrated despite his success. So that's Jalen Brunson. Tim Cook.
David
Okay.
Marques
All right. Who's the second player on the Knicks?
Alex
We should go with Karl Anthony Towns.
Marques
Carl Anthony Townes.
Alex
Yeah.
Andrew
All right.
Marques
Karl Anthony Towns is. I mean, there's a starting five on the team, so I feel like we should go through the five. But he's arguably one of the most important players on the Knicks.
David
So he's like benched until he's not. Is that the situation?
Marques
No. So he plays. He's a starter.
Alex
Five players play.
Marques
Five players start on the Knicks. Karl Anthony Towns, who happens to be a seven foot center who can shoot and pass and basically do everything a center should do.
David
Seven foot.
Marques
Yeah. Seven feet tall.
Alex
You're a big boy.
David
You know what's crazy about basketball? Everyone looks normal sized.
Andrew
No, That's Jalen Brunson's 6 foot 2
Alex
and he looks tiny.
Andrew
He looks like he's 5, most of
Marques
his head, but yes, he looks so small. Yeah. So Karl Anthony Towns is 7ft tall, and he's very well rounded. So I feel like I would put him in a, like, executive position as well. I'm tempted to give him, like, marketing management.
Alex
So in the. In the postseason.
Marques
Federigh.
Alex
I was gonna say in the postseason. He actually was. He became a big passer. So if we're saying that passing is testing, he would maybe be like, chief of Software.
Marques
That could be. That's Craig Federighi.
Alex
Yeah, Craig Federighi.
Marques
So Craig Federighi, one of the most recognizable faces at Apple. Pretty versatile, but everyone knows his chops is software. He leads the software team. And yeah, that's. You know, Carl Anthony Towns has his specialty, but he's able to move around in his role and do stuff like ship and test. So, yeah, Carl Anthony Towns. Craig Federighi.
David
I like that.
Alex
Or Josh Hart is Jaws.
David
Josh Hart is.
Alex
All right, we'll do Josh.
David
Josh Hart is Jaws.
Marques
Is that because he's the longest tenured?
Ellis
No, that's Mitchell Robinson. I think Josh Hart would be Jaws because he's the marketing guy and Josh Hart is the heart of the team. It's like the slogan. He's all over social media. He's like the face basically next to Brunson.
Marques
Okay. Yeah. Josh Hart. His role on the court is maybe not as large in terms of contributing to winning and shipping products, but you still need a Josh Hart on your team. You need someone who's going to do the dirty work. Doesn't get a ton of credit, doesn't have the best counting stats, but he
Alex
might only ship one product for the whole game, but he's still going to be a winning party.
Marques
He's going to ship the product that nobody else is going to.
David
What makes him good?
Marques
Just a simple drive to do the dirty work that nobody else would have done. In a basketball sense, that is jumping and getting a rebound that looked like no one was gonna get, or diving on the floor for a loose ball that either team could have gotten.
David
There's a lot more diving this season than I remember when I was a child. Yeah.
Marques
Yeah. People diving a lot in Apple world. You know, Jaws is interesting because marketing tends to get. I feel like they get a lot of credit maybe for shipping, even though they don't actually ship anything. Right. Like, market. I do like Jaws because. Yeah. It's a face that you recognize when you think about the company. And you need one.
David
Got it. How many players are there again?
Alex
We're just doing the starting five. So we're through three out of five now.
David
Okay. How many players Are there on each team?
Alex
15.
David
What?
Alex
Well, actually 18, including two way players.
David
Why do they have that many?
Alex
Because it's a long season.
David
Wow.
Marques
Yeah.
David
Everybody.
Marques
You can't be shipping products by yourself. You need help all the time.
Alex
You need help.
Marques
So they got to take breaks.
David
The starting five are the ones that always start, and then they rotate out
Alex
for the most part. I mean, sometimes the starters change, which is like executive turnover.
Marques
Okay.
Alex
Sometimes the executive isn't performing the way you want them to, and you. Maybe you. Maybe you demote them, Give them a little. A little step down. Or maybe you just fully cut ties and.
David
Oh, like a Siri AI guy cut them.
Marques
Yeah. Switching to John Ternus as a CEO is kind of like benching. That'd be like benching. We're not going to do this. It would be like benching Jalen Brunson for a new point guard.
Alex
You know, it could be. You know what the real thing is, is it's going to be like in 10 years when Jalen Brunson is getting ready to retire, the Knicks will have a new point guard ready to go.
Marques
Right.
Alex
And then they'll say, you know what, Jalen? And he'll make his own choice.
Marques
This is the LeBron. Luka. Yeah, I think.
Alex
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Like we're going to see this soon with LeBron and Luka Doncic, where LeBron is going to finally hang it up, say, you know what? I've had a great career.
David
Is he still playing?
Alex
Yeah.
Marques
Wow. Just like Tim Cook.
David
Why didn't he win?
Alex
Because he wasn't. His team wasn't good enough this year. Also, Luca, the guy who's replacing him, didn't play for most of the postseason.
David
Oh.
Alex
So, okay, okay, okay.
Ellis
Let's.
David
Let's go through the rest of the guys.
Andrew
Okay, so we got typical AI overview. Starting 5 wrong. By the way, even when you click the images, every single photo is the five people you're talking about. But AI Overview does not have Josh
Alex
Hart who did it add instead of Josh. Out of curiosity, what number is he wearing?
Andrew
5. Precious.
Alex
Precious. Precious wasn't even on the team this year.
Andrew
Oh, wait, really? I thought you were. I thought I pronounced his name wrong and I was like, that's okay.
Alex
Precious. Acua man. Oh, my God. He wasn't even on the team this year.
Marques
All right, last two starters.
Alex
OG Anunoby.
Marques
OG Anunoby.
Alex
Jack of all trades.
Marques
Definitely jack of all trades.
David
And he's the guy that did the tip.
Alex
He did the tipping.
Marques
Exactly. And was incredibly versatile and useful for Them for the entire playoff run. Helped them ship a lot of products, also helped the other teams helped stop the other teams from shipping a lot of products.
David
He's a defense guy.
Marques
He's a two way guy. He's doing a lot of the good, positive shipping and a lot of the stopping the other team from shipping.
David
Okay,
Marques
in Apple executive land, I gotta reach one here. Okay, hit me.
Ellis
Johnny Shruthi.
Andrew
Oh, I was gonna say, I was thinking Shrugie Shruji.
David
Shruji is the guy that makes the,
Ellis
he makes the chips and he's the engine behind the reason. I like that.
Andrew
I was gonna say Turnus for like launching Apple Silicon.
David
Turnus might be better.
Marques
I think Suriji is good because not only is Apple Silicon so good that other companies have to like chase that, but it's like, it's the reason that Apple is. It's not the head, it's not the iPhone like Jalen Brunson, but it is also a massively important thing for them. Yeah, yeah, I like that.
David
I also like that I've recently found out in recent weeks I watched a couple interviews and he's like a really quiet guy.
Marques
Suriji. Yeah.
David
No, no, no, no.
Andrew
Og og.
Marques
OG Anunoby. Oh, you've seen that? Yeah.
David
He went on like on a late night show a couple days ago and he was, every question he'd just be
Andrew
like, yeah, it's because he probably hasn't slept in four days.
Marques
Yeah.
Alex
He's also extremely quiet. Yeah, he's so funny.
Marques
Okay, all right.
David
Who's the last guy?
Alex
Last guy is Mikhail Bridges. I have a pitch.
David
I've never told him.
Marques
Iron Man.
David
He's.
Alex
He's six foot. Oh, five. Yeah. Mikhail Bridges is like six. Five or six, six. He's a wing. He has a very, very long wingspan, which is your. How far your arms go.
Marques
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alex
He's great. Also great at defense. Very similar OG Anunoby. But I'm going to say I think maybe he would be. I had to look this up. I'm not going to lie. Sabi Khan, Chief operating OFFICER I knew the position I wanted to give him. I didn't know who it was at Apple, but I think Mikhail Bridges is a chief operating officer because he is extremely well liked. He's a good vibes guy. He doesn't necessarily always make the biggest impact on the game, but he's keeping everybody, he's keeping operations going. And we learned that after they won the championship. All the Knicks players talk so highly of him, really. And his impact on the Locker Room and everything.
Marques
What did he do?
Andrew
He bought them Rolexes.
David
What did he do in the games that was like a big deal in
Alex
the finals or in other games?
David
In the finals.
Alex
In the finals, he played really good defense. He had a couple, actually, technically. The game where Brunson scored almost 50, the final game, he was the second leading scorer with a whole 14 points.
Marques
Chips of product.
Alex
So he was the. He was the second leading scorer.
David
Yeah, yeah. He.
Alex
He does similar things to OG Anunoby. Plays really good defense and he actually, he does handle the ball a decent amount. So he did a decent amount of passing. So testing, you know, whatever our analogy
Marques
is, it's like the executive that like gets in the testing and actually does some. Some coding once in a while.
Alex
Yes. He can do a little bit of
Andrew
everything, but isn't really on stage.
Alex
He also never misses a game. He has not missed a game his entire NBA career.
David
What?
Andrew
What a jinx.
Marques
That's crazy.
Alex
No, I mean, he.
Marques
It's out there.
Alex
It's out there. No jinxing it at this point.
David
That's wild. Okay.
Marques
Yeah. So there is obviously some puzzle piece nature to it. You gotta have pieces that fit together. Not everyone can have overlapping roles. If you have a bunch of Jalen Brunson's, it sounds great, but you're gonna be missing some parts of the game. So you have these complementing pieces, kind of like different parts of an executive team on a tech company, and they all combine together to do the thing, ship lots of products, stop other companies from shipping products, take competitive wins, give other teams losses. That's it.
David
Can we talk about the positions? Like.
Marques
Yeah, yeah, I guess the positions. Yeah, we kind of tried to. I mean, so chief operating officer being like the small forward who's kind of just in the middle of a whole bunch of things called forward. The captain is often point guard doing most of the visible. Yeah. So the point guard in basketball.
Andrew
These are fair questions.
Narrator/Advertiser
It is.
Andrew
I never understood these except for center.
Alex
Should I just list these real quick? Yeah, okay, I'll list them and I'll just give the basketball explanation. Then we can start relating.
David
Okay.
Alex
You have five positions. And these positions become more and more fluid over time. Like, I feel like these used to be more hard and fast, you know, like each position did a specific role. Now you're having people have to be way more multifaceted in how they play.
David
Yeah.
Alex
So they.
Marques
In general, it's a one through five.
Alex
And the Golden State warriors, who a lot of tech people maybe are familiar with because of their Silicon Valley roots.
Andrew
Oh, yeah. Let's compare them to Dota.
David
Yeah. Dota also has five different roles.
Alex
It actually probably is pretty solid.
Andrew
I'm going to try and help. And we're going to get these as mobile lanes.
Alex
Okay.
Andrew
Okay. So you're not going to understand.
Marques
We're just going to explain a niche thing in terms of an even more niche.
Andrew
They know mobile lanes more than.
Alex
But so the five positions. Point guard traditionally is the smallest player on the team.
David
They're guarding the points from the other team.
Alex
No, they're running the point. They're running point. Right. That's a common term. So that they're running point, which is to say that they are the one bringing the ball down the floor and starting what your team does. So they have the ball in their hands the most. They're setting everybody up.
Marques
Orchestrator.
Alex
Orchestrating.
David
I'm kind of surprised that they even like have a guy that's supposed to do that every time instead of just everybody.
Alex
Teams that don't have that struggle mightily. It's like an IGL not having a good point guard. The Knicks for a long time did not have a good point guard, which is why we all love Jalen Brunson so much. So the point guard is the guy who brings the ball down the floor, sets everything up for everyone. The shooting guard is the second position. There are two guards. So the shooting guard also generally a little on the smaller end for a basketball player, but slightly bigger. Yeah, which is to say six foot five.
David
Yeah, I'm five nine, baby.
Marques
Point guard.
Alex
That player, typically high level athlete, good shooter, scores the basketball a lot, delivers lots of products.
Marques
Right.
Alex
Small forward. So there are two forwards.
Andrew
This is the three.
David
Now one of them is called the small forward.
Andrew
What was the second one?
Marques
The first one was the one. Point guard, point guard, point guard. Second one is the two, the shooting guard. Now we're on the three. Even bigger.
David
Small forward, which is always shorter.
Alex
No, I mean, you know, Kevin Durant is considered a small forward, but he's like 7ft tall.
Marques
We're roughly going in order of size.
Andrew
6, 11.
Ellis
Alex.
Marques
The one is the point guard. The shooting guard is a little bigger. The small forward is a little bigger.
Alex
Yeah.
Marques
Okay.
Alex
Everybody keeps getting a little taller. Traditionally, the further you go down the numbers.
Andrew
Got it, got it.
Alex
So the three is a guy who's maybe six foot seven. Six, seven, six, seven, you know.
David
Damn.
Alex
And will be a versatile player, defensive minded, usually plays good defense, can shoot well, that sort of thing. And then you have your power forward. Four big Powerful.
Marques
Now we're getting the biggest guys, right,
Alex
Tank OG on an obi on the Knicks is the four. Big strong man, big broad shoulders.
David
Okay.
Alex
You know, typically like 6, 10, 6, 11, 6, 9, maybe something like that. And then you have the center, which is the biggest player. The five. And otherwise known as the pivot, because they pivot in the post and they score down low.
David
Oh, that's.
Alex
They bang elbows and they get.
David
Is not Jalen Rudson.
Alex
No, no.
Marques
I feel like he does that.
Andrew
Do they do that the least amount of times?
Alex
Depending on the center. Some of the most prolific scores in NBA history have been centers like Wilt Chamberlain, who we'll talk about later. Wilt Chamberlain. We'll talk about him later. But in the modern game, Yes, I would say centers generally scored the least the players on the team. For the most part.
David
It feels like Jalen Brunson, kind of. Because he's shorter, he's kind of like shoving people getting in there, really shoving his way in and then doing the twos.
Alex
That's because Jalen Brunson is a dog. Okay. That's another basketball term with a W. Right? Yeah. And. And that's why you sing who let the dogs out? Like. Like the Knicks head coach does.
Andrew
Didn't you say stop that at the.
Marques
He did.
Andrew
I think she was like, I asked you to stop doing that.
Alex
Yeah, I think Brunson did that.
Andrew
Or.
Alex
Yeah, it's. It's hilarious.
David
I think that's pretty.
Andrew
Okay, wait, I have. So my terms are from League of Legends, but I think it should be pretty close to what are the five. Okay, so I have point guard is mid, mid, carry. Usually.
Alex
Don't call Brunson mid.
Andrew
No, mid is like the most important lane that once you can make it to both lanes. They're usually have the most kills in a game. Like they are.
Marques
Okay.
Ellis
Yeah.
Andrew
Solo.
David
Okay. So mid is dominant. It seems mid should be. Is the same in dota and league.
Andrew
Yeah. And they can like win a game. If you are a really good mid laner, you can. That's true.
David
Yes.
Andrew
I have shooting guard. We call them ADC or like that means AD is.
David
Are they the ones that we have
Andrew
it as like a bot lane carry that generally brings a support with them. They're farming a lot in league. It's generally attack damage versus. Yeah.
David
So just called carrying dota.
Andrew
Okay. So carry. So that's like bot carry also can have a lot of kills but has a little more support with them in and like kind of is like a damage. Whereas the point Guard scoring all the points, so maybe ADC bot carry is getting attack damage. Carry.
Marques
Oh, okay.
Andrew
Small forward. I have his jungle.
Marques
We don't have a jungle lane in there.
Andrew
There's no jungle in Dota.
David
There is jungle, but do they kind of push you out of meta?
Marques
Oh, it's not.
Andrew
Okay. I'm like 15.
Alex
I could feel my eyes glazing over. Is this what people feel like when I explain sports to them?
Andrew
Have you seen us the last 20 minutes?
Marques
Yeah, I get it now.
Alex
Oh my God. I understand so much about myself and others now.
Andrew
Okay, imagine old jungle then.
David
Well, there was never a dedicated jungle lane.
Andrew
Okay. It's just not a lane, but it's a position in Dota.
David
You have mid carry, you have Tank,
Marques
which is called offlane, which.
Andrew
I know that one.
Alex
I know that one. This is like when you know one basketball thing. I know Tank. I know Tank.
David
Yeah, but they don't call it Tank and don't.
Alex
It's called let's call it whatever.
Andrew
Yeah.
David
And then there's two supports. There's hard support, which is like the weakest support. That's supports the hard carry.
Andrew
Okay.
David
And then there's a soft support which supports the Tank slash.
Andrew
I don't want to say this out loud because I'm going to get destroyed by the Dota fans that have made it this far into the basketball con.
David
Right.
Andrew
I have a feeling jungle and soft carry or soft support are probably pretty similar. Like jungle in league is they're just farming the middle and not taking farm from everyone else. And then they're supporting all of the other lanes by jumping into them and.
David
Yeah, sort of like soft support and.
Ellis
Sorry, what is farm is this Farm Bill?
Andrew
Farm is farming in. In these games, in order to get money, to get more items, there's also you have to get non playable creeps and if you hit them last, you get money. So you are fighting each other and fighting to get money.
Alex
What did the creeps do to get categorized as creeps? Were they not for this podcast?
Marques
They were for the wrong.
David
They are kind of creepy, to be honest. They're creepy looking.
Andrew
Okay, so then I have power forward is top. Which power forward. Power forward as a basketball term.
David
I've never heard that in Dota before.
Andrew
I have it as top lane, which for you is off lane or off lane. Yeah, yeah, which it sounds like they're very similar. And then just main. Did you call it main support? Hard support.
David
Hard support.
Andrew
Hard support. Bot lane support is center.
David
Center. What is the center one in basketball?
Marques
Big boy he's the guy in the middle.
Alex
Big boy in the middle.
Marques
In the middle. He's gobbling up rebounds and playing it back out.
Alex
Playing defense, I feel like that would be off lane. Who's the last line of defense in?
Andrew
Power forwards score more than center.
Alex
Traditionally, I say a top lane.
David
Off lane is usually the initiator. So I feel like the initiator has got to be the point guard.
Andrew
Okay, maybe the. No, no. Point guard should definitely be mid lane. They're the carry. They're getting all the kills. They're scoring all the points.
Alex
Maybe that could be variable in basketball. Could be the point guard. Whoever your best player is.
Andrew
Jalen Brunson's a mid laner.
Alex
He definitely.
Marques
Here's the thing. Here's the thing. And this might be true about Dota 2, you know, and there's. There's the roles and the play style from the 1 through the 5, but different teams have a different member of that team being the best player. So if your best player is your one, then you build your team around that. If your best player is your three, then you build your team around that. If your best player is a five, you build your team.
Andrew
I don't think how much you compared them perfectly. Like, that makes this argument even stronger. Like, yeah, a top lane can carry as an unkillable tank. Like, sometimes.
David
And all sports are the same.
Marques
Yeah, that's what we're saying.
Alex
Even esports.
David
Even esports.
Marques
Even esports. Can you guys. So I play CS and Valorant. Can you explain? Oh, my God.
Andrew
And I don't think.
David
How about Candy Crush?
Alex
Wait, so really the basketball players are like the different Angry Birds?
David
No.
Alex
No.
David
I mean, you're not wrong.
Alex
Honestly. I could do that. I'm a big Angry Birds guy, so I could do that.
David
Let's continue with the basketball tech stuff because we are a tech podcast.
Marques
Yeah.
David
So allegedly.
Alex
Allegedly.
Marques
What's so far off?
David
What's next?
Marques
On your.
David
On your.
Alex
Should we talk about types of shots?
Marques
Yeah, well, sure.
Alex
David did ask what a layup is.
Marques
Yeah, yeah. So the basket. You know, the basket looks like. And you know what it means to score a basket. The ball goes through the basket, right?
Andrew
Yeah, yeah.
Marques
So further away from the basket. Harder. A shot.
David
Yeah, Right.
Marques
Right next to the basket. If you're just laying it off the glass and in, that's called a layup. You just literally go lay up right next to the basket. If you actually jump up and slam it through the basket, that's a slam dunk.
David
Slam dunk.
Marques
You've Heard of that term?
David
I've heard dunk. Yeah.
Marques
You've heard of a slam dunk product? Like something is a slam dunk. It's like the easiest. Bam. Guarantee it's going to be a winner for sure.
David
Like that's Apple made a fitness band Slam dunk.
Andrew
Apple added USB C to AirPods Max Slam Dunk. Slam dunk.
Ellis
Exactly.
David
I don't know about that.
Marques
As you get further away, all of these, all these shots, by the way, are worth two points.
David
Yeah.
Marques
Unless you're far enough away. If you get far enough away, there's a line, an arc around the basket. It's a three point line. If you shoot from behind the three point line and score, it's worth three points. You can imagine the distribution being like, the easiest shots are right next to the basket. They're worth two points.
David
Yeah. Unless you're Steph Curry.
Marques
We'll get to him.
Alex
He makes it look really easy.
Marques
He makes it look really easy.
David
Okay.
Marques
Analytically, the next easiest shot is slightly further away and slightly further away. But you get to a point where if you're at the longest possible two pointer, you might as well step back and make it a three pointer because it's not much harder, but it's worth 50% more points.
Andrew
Okay.
Marques
A lot of teams study this and they realize, wow, if we want to ship a lot of products, it would be more efficient for us to ship a lot of three pointers.
David
Right.
Marques
Even though they're a little bit harder, they're worth a lot more points.
Andrew
Every EV startup ever who's like, we'd rather ship the really expensive ones right now. Oh, before the cheap ones.
Marques
The ones that feel like they're slightly harder to ship but that you know you will ship way more of.
David
Right.
Marques
That's the stuff.
David
Which is like Apple's strategy. Right. Like Samsung ships like a bazillion SKUs of their phones and so does Evo and Oppo. But Apple's just like, we only make five products, but every single one of them is going to sell a bazillion.
Marques
That's a really good. Yeah. So certain companies like Samsung who ship a ton of stuff, they're like, I'm trying to think of a team that just shoots whatever. The Hornets.
Alex
The Brooklyn.
Andrew
Where are they going to say the Hornets?
Marques
The Hornets shoot their shot chart, which is like the graph on the court of where they shoot from is all over the place. And it's fine because they're equally good
Alex
at everything and they score a lot of points. So they take a Lot of weird shots, but they hit a lot of them.
Marques
But you might have heard of the Golden State warriors, who are maybe closer to Apple, conveniently because they're a California team, but they have a slightly more selective shot chart, meaning they're really good at three pointers and layups and dunks.
David
Yeah.
Marques
And why bother with the mid range stuff? Like Apple could add stuff to their plate and ship more products, but iPhones, Macs, that's all they really have to ship.
David
Unless you're Steph Curry and you shoot from half court and that's like if the Vision Pro is successful.
Marques
Yeah, yeah. You've probably heard. Yeah, there's terms like a hail Mary or like a. Like a deep buzzer beater. Yeah, yeah, that would be like deep three.
David
Deep three.
Marques
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So yeah, three pointers. Steph Curry is really good at three pointers. That's like Apple being really good at iPhones.
David
Right.
Marques
They ship a ton of them and there's not many who can stop it.
David
Right.
Marques
And why do anything else at this point. Right.
Alex
Adam and I actually related that when we were cooking up this episode to like a software feature that initially you didn't think you needed, but that then you get it and then you never want to live without it again. It's like it was. The three point shot was disregarded for a long time as just sort of
David
a luxury, a wireless charging.
Alex
Right. And then it became.
Andrew
I love three pointers.
Alex
Yeah. And then, and then, and then suddenly teams came around on it and they said, wait, three is greater than two. Why don't we shoot more of these wires?
Andrew
No, wire is better than wire. I don't get how people can't figure that out.
Alex
Right. And then, and then teams just became. Now it's like you can't live without it. It's. It's the feature.
David
Wireless charging.
Alex
Yeah.
Andrew
I've. Oh, are you still going to talk about points? Because I have two questions about points I could do.
Alex
Do you want me to give the nerdy math that is defined the NBA for the last 10 years?
Marques
Yeah.
Alex
I want to make your guys eyes glaze over real quick.
David
I'm ready.
Andrew
Okay.
Alex
All right.
Andrew
So accomplished.
Alex
Glaze. All right. So the three point shot used to be a luxury in the NBA. In the NBA it was introduced in the 1979-80 season, where before that, any shot on the court was worth only two points.
David
What?
Marques
Yeah, they used to not.
Alex
There was no extra line.
David
That's crazy.
Alex
Yeah.
Andrew
Wow. The 80s. So we're 40 years away.
Alex
He's Already gone off the rails.
David
When I was watching the NBA in
Alex
the 90s, there was a three point.
David
There was already a three point.
Alex
Did you hear when I said that they introduced it? 79, 80 season.
David
Yeah. That's crazy. That's so wild.
Alex
Okay, okay, so I'll start from the top.
David
No, no. All right, all right. Come on.
Alex
So the three point shot is longer than a two point shot. There's a line that defines where you do it. And it's worth, as the name implies, three points instead of two points. Right. So teams for decades still ran most of their offense inside the three point line because that was previously what was considered like real basketball or whatever. And that's just what teams were used to.
David
Yeah.
Alex
But around 2014, 15, Steph Curry's rise with the warriors, and they're getting Steve Kerr as head coach, teams finally did some math and realized that 3 is greater than 2. So explain how this works, percentages wise. Right. So the nerdy math that has basically defined the NBA for the last decade is this. Every possession in the NBA is dictated by the amount of points you can get per possession.
David
Right. So what is a possession?
Alex
So possession. Each time you hold the ball and bring it down the floor and try to score. Right. A good point per possession number is generally anything over one. If you're scoring 50% of the time on a two point shot, that's one point per possession. Right. So shooting 60% on two point shots has generally been kind of the line considered good for shooting a two point shot. If you shoot 60% of the time, you make it. Yeah, that's considered too good. That's 1.2 points per possession.
Marques
Okay.
Alex
However, teams finally figured out, wait, if we shoot 40% from three.
David
Right.
Alex
That's the same as shooting 60% from two. It's all 1.2 points per possession.
David
Right, True.
Alex
And therefore teams put a huge emphasis on shooting threes about 10 years ago.
Marques
Yeah.
Alex
And it has completely changed the entire game of basketball.
David
Yeah.
Alex
And made it more focused on shooting threes instead of twos.
David
Would you say that trees are also harder to guard to.
Alex
To an extent. It's also changed how defense is.
Marques
Yeah, yeah. I think the idea is it's easier to get above 40% from 3 than it is to get above 60% from 2.
David
Right.
Marques
So people are, if you can get a layup or an easy two, that's great. But those mid range shots that are like a jump shot and someone's guarding you, you might as well step back behind the three point line. 40% of those instead of taking a long two and trying to make 60% of those.
Alex
Do you need an explanation of what a jump shot is, by the way?
David
Jump and then you shoot it?
Alex
Yeah. Okay. It's pretty self explanatory, but I want
David
to even have a name for that. Thank you.
Alex
Because you could take a set because
Marques
a layup, you don't have to jump.
Alex
You can also take a set shot. You can take a shot without jumping
Marques
right next to the basket. Yeah, you just, you just sort of lay it up.
Andrew
That's what layup is where you like so early.
Alex
Also, the jumping is part of strategy. Early on you used to have your feet set when you shot. But then people discovered that if you jump and then shoot, you can get your shot even higher up so nobody can block it.
David
How long did it take for them to realize that?
Andrew
Yeah, basketball seems like they're just discovering the simplest.
Marques
This wasn't discovery.
Alex
Yeah.
Andrew
Closer to basket.
Marques
This is all in the 60s, like at the beginning.
Alex
I think the jump shot came about like the 50s.
David
Wait, when about basketball?
Alex
Start 1930. Something.
David
Okay.
Alex
With a peach. A peach basket. What is that, James NASA? A basket that you would collect peaches on.
David
I put a basket on a pole.
Ellis
1891.
Alex
Oh, 1891. Man, I thought it was when I was reading 1891.
Ellis
The first game was an 1890 and
David
it took them till the 50s to figure out if you jump, it goes higher.
Alex
I'm a proxy.
Andrew
Three is more than two.
Marques
It's not that it took them. It's not that it took them that long to figure it out, but it's like the whole point of like scoring points is you want to be consistent and make it easy. And if you're jumping, that introduces a variable of like, well, if I jump a different height, I gotta compensate for that. And it's difficult. And so a lot of training and a lot of people doing it, eventually they figured out how to jump consistently and make shots. It's the same as the three point line. Like that existed for many, many years. It's not like nobody realized it was worth three, but teams finally got good enough at making that very long 25 foot shot that it finally became worth it. We can finally shoot 40% from three.
David
Okay.
Marques
So the evolution of the game has pushed slowly, slowly, slowly, incrementally. Better and better. Kind of like the chip getting slightly faster on the iPhone. It's not like we didn't know the faster chip could eventually play this game, but we've been working towards this. Slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. Generation after generation until it's gotten to where it is today.
Andrew
Okay. Okay. Two questions about points.
Marques
Yes, points. Points.
Andrew
Do you want the short one or the long one first?
Alex
Either.
Andrew
I guess both at the same time. 1. Basketball players, why do they miss free throws?
David
Why do they miss.
Marques
I can answer this.
Andrew
So much money.
Marques
Why? I can answer this.
Andrew
It's literally the same thing every time. It's called free.
David
It's true.
Marques
It should always work.
Andrew
It should be a free throw.
Marques
Fantastic question.
David
I mean, do you hit three for them?
Marques
So here's the real answer.
Andrew
I'm not getting paid millions.
Marques
Here's the real answer. If you watch an NBA player in an empty gym, they basically make every shot they take. I've never seen terrifying, Clarkman. It's kind of terrifying. Like they make basically every shot. Right. When you introduce the variable of the real world, stuff gets a little weird sometimes. There's a crowd behind the basket. They're cheering. There's pressure, there's a score. There's people who are, like, hoping, you know, there's a whole bunch more to it. This is like shipping software with bugs.
Alex
Yeah, I was literally about to say bugs, dude.
Marques
In theory, it should work 100% of the time. I'm just pressing the button and the software is supposed to do the thing. Of course it should work every single time. It should be free. It should be a layup for these companies. It should work every time.
Andrew
That's a really good analogy.
Marques
But for some reason, you put it in the real world, and then people get their hands on it, and it's doing stuff that you didn't expect, and it's odd and it's not so much. Yeah, obviously some of it is a skill issue, but it is just the fact that the real world variables sometimes throws you off. It throws some off more than it throws others off.
David
It's like, why did the Screenshot tool in iOS 27 just not crop things anymore?
Marques
Like, I.
David
They couldn't have changed the code where they're like, we're changing the way screenshots work completely. They didn't do that. It's the same as before, but now it just doesn't work.
Marques
What happened?
Alex
You know, and that's like, free throw. That's like changing your shooting form. Sometimes players, they go, I don't. I don't think the way I'm shooting is proper. And then they change how they shoot, and then it ruins it.
Andrew
They drag their liquid glass slider.
David
That's crazy.
Alex
Yeah.
Marques
Yeah. Okay.
Andrew
Okay. I really like the bug analogy. My second question. When do I cheer for a point? Because they're.
Marques
When so many of them.
Andrew
Yeah, I listen, if you have to cheer 50 times a game, you're not sure.
Marques
No, that's a val.
Andrew
No, I think this is a super.
Marques
Comes from a sport where they score once or twice. So you can't.
Andrew
This ain't soccer.
Alex
The general rule of basketball is you wait. The most important times of the game are the final two minutes of each half.
Andrew
So why wouldn't you only show up for the final two minutes?
Alex
Because you're a real fan.
Marques
So for the whole game, there's a storyline.
David
Okay.
Alex
So it all adds up.
Marques
There are some more important baskets than others. So obviously if you're shipping 100 products in four quarters, not every product is going to get a standing ovation.
David
Sure.
Alex
But we could do an Apple analogy for this.
Marques
Yeah.
Alex
The bucket that they make in the middle of the third quarter is the polishing cloth.
David
Yeah.
Marques
Nobody needs to.
Alex
There might be a dunk. It might be a drink.
David
It's really good cloth.
Marques
There is going to be some. Some fans that are going to cheer for that for sure. That's fine.
David
Worth the $20.
Alex
The.
Narrator/Advertiser
The.
Alex
The buzzer beater at the end of the fourth quarter that wins you the game is the iPhone.
Marques
Yeah. You know they're going to ship this iPhone and it's going to push them over the edge. And the iPhone ultra now are the best.
David
They.
Marques
They cheer a lot of M1 chip maybe that.
Ellis
I have another analogy here.
Alex
Yeah.
Ellis
So staying for all of the points is kind of like going to see these developer conferences at IO so you can see what's coming down. Like if you're there in the middle of a game and your team makes a bucket that is like they haven't scored in so long, but then they finally make a bucket, you can feel the momentum shift and you can be like, okay, this team is now gonna from this point forward do well. And that's kind of like these developer conferences. You go to the developer conference and you can see where the company's vision is going. Okay, wait, they're onto something here. And those are the like points in the middle that don't really matter.
Andrew
Quote unquote is like that's like the filler episodes in Anime Me. Sure, sure. It like it means something to the story. But you can probably just watch the important.
Ellis
It's like the bonus episodes on the way form podcast.
Andrew
I was going to say.
Alex
Oh my God, this is like Inception. Now we're on a Bonus episode.
Marques
I just felt the momentum shift.
Andrew
I think.
David
You know how on the Waveform podcast when they do the bonus episodes, like they're not really that important to the story but.
Marques
But the fans stay and they change.
Alex
This is a filler. They know where we're going as a filler episode. This is the most anime filler episode of all waveform episodes.
David
This is our crossover, dude. This is our crossover.
Ellis
Okay.
Alex
This is the baseball episode of Dragon Ball super right now.
Marques
I like the draft because this is a really interesting one. It's unique. The basketball draft. The draft, yes. It's unique to sports. There is no equivalent for this in the tech world. So I'm going to give you a what if that might keep it interesting because we have these tech companies operating, competing against each other and you know, capitalism is supposed to say that the best products and the best ones win in sports. If we leave it like that for too long, you're gonna get teams that are just so far ahead of other teams that the other especially newer franchises will never get any chance to catch up. Yeah. So here's what we do after every year, every season we have a draft. And the team that was the worst this past year gets the first pick in the draft. Roughly. This isn't exact science, but they get the highest picks in the draft and the teams that were really, really, really good. Okay. You don't need a bunch more talent. So get the last picks in the draft.
David
Okay, so how.
Marques
And the draft is drafting among this brand new upcoming talent from college, similar to tech companies.
David
Okay.
Andrew
So when they hit 18.
David
Right.
Marques
Basically. So here's a what if for you. Imagine if the least successful tech companies the last year got the most, the highest picks of all, the best college talent going to them. And the most successful teams, the best tech companies in the world didn't get any of that talent. Yeah, they have to pick the scraps from who's left.
Alex
Just pretend for a minute that money doesn't exist.
Andrew
Yeah, it's almost the exact opposite. This will keep it even of what tech does because when you graduate college at like top year class, you're probably going to be poached by the biggest and you're going to want to pick the biggest company because you'll make the most money and go to the thing that's already doing really well. So it's the opposite. I guess if college players didn't have a draft, they would leave college and be like, oh, the team that just won the championship wants me. I'm going to want to play for the team that won the championship.
Alex
Maybe this is how we bust up big tech. We institute a draft, and then the lesser companies will become better.
Marques
It's more easy to see in sports because the teams are smaller and one high talent can have a big impact on winning. But if you imagine essentially the draft from college, upcoming talent in that way, in tech, it would be like if the best companies who are the most successful, made the most money, do not have access to the best talent. They have to do it again next
Alex
year with their same talent.
Andrew
Best guy out of Stanford's like, I have to go work for Humane.
David
Ouch.
Marques
But sometimes what happens is all of that talent goes to Humane, and then Humane has a great.
Alex
And then Humane figures it out.
David
And then HP makes a printer that
Marques
can work, and you're like, wow. See, we have all this competition. It's an even playing field thing again.
Andrew
Yeah.
Marques
So people like that in the sports world. We really like that. It keeps it even and interesting. The worst teams get way better.
David
Yeah. I mean, it would be cool if, like, you know, instead of Apple having 40% of the RAM supply every single year, if suddenly that went to, like, an up and coming company.
Alex
Oh, man. Yeah. Maybe that's the way we do the draft.
Marques
We.
Alex
We make it RAM supply.
Andrew
That almost feels like Formula one in terms of, like, wind tunnel time, where, like, the worst teams get more tunnel time.
Marques
Yeah.
Andrew
To, like, develop their car.
Marques
I mean, it's sports still, but. Yeah, exactly.
David
Okay. I like. What do they call that in Dota? That's a balance patch, basically.
Andrew
Oh, balance.
Marques
Balance patch.
Andrew
Man. If tech had balance patches, you know,
Marques
you know the physics. I don't know how real this is, but you know the, like, video game slingshot physics where if you're in last place in Mario Kart, you get all the better power ups.
Andrew
Yeah, yeah.
Marques
It's like that.
David
Yeah. Okay.
Marques
Yeah.
David
Socialism.
Marques
Yeah. So if the team. If you're in last place, here's a. Here's a weird thing.
David
Okay.
Marques
And this is. This is kind of a problem in the NBA and in sports. Sometimes someone will intentionally go to last place in Mario Kart to get the better power ups, because they know that that's going to get them back to totally.
Alex
That's a. I don't know why right
David
now,
Andrew
explaining it to, like, your child.
David
Do they do this in basketball?
Andrew
Dude.
Marques
Yeah, they do this in basketball. They will intentionally.
Alex
They'll do what's called tanking. Yeah, you tank your.
David
Shouldn't that be against the rules?
Alex
It should. And they're and they just instituted new rules to stop it.
Andrew
Wait, what is it? The PWHL has an awesome rule for this, actually.
Alex
Okay. Without getting too into the weeds on it, basically. What the. So the NBA has a lottery at the end of the season. Typically, if you're worse, you get a higher chance of getting the number one overall pick. What they're now doing is they're flattening those odds, so they're making it so that the worst teams actually only get, like. Instead of. It used to be like, a 25% chance against the number one pick. Now you have only like a 10% chance. And then the teams in the middle get a slightly better amount. And then the teams actually that barely miss the playoffs now get, like, an 8% chance of getting the number one pick.
Marques
So what's that power up in Mario Kart where you just get, like, the black thing, the bullet thing?
Alex
Yeah, yeah.
Marques
And you just soar across everything. That's like the number one pick in the draft. It's not a guarantee, but the number one pick in the draft is going to be immensely talented and push you
Andrew
from the no to like, the middle
David
of the dramatic, at least to like.
Marques
So there will be a team slash, Mario Kart player.
David
Yeah.
Marques
With more than enough talent and skill to come in second or third place. But they see that they're not going to win, so they just hit the brakes and go all the way to last place. They pick up the bullet, and then they go all the way back to second or first, and you're like. Like, that's just.
Alex
So your reaction is the general public's reaction to tanking in the NBA. So, yeah, you nailed it.
David
It took them this many years to make that against the rules.
Alex
They tried to.
Marques
It's actually hard to. To force. So initially, it was literally like, if you are the last place team, you are the first pick in the draft. Right. Then it was like, okay, I will literally lose all of my games because I want to be the first pick of the draft. They're like, okay, okay, okay, okay. If you are in the bottom five, then we'll have this little lottery system and you'll get more of a chance of last of first pick. But you're not going to guarantee first pick.
David
Yeah.
Marques
And it's still a pretty good chance of first pick if you're in last place. So the teams are still trying to get last place. They're like, all right.
David
Has there ever been a circumstance where multiple teams are trying to tank literally this year, and nobody could win because Everyone was trying to lose.
Alex
Yeah.
Marques
Is that what the Sixers did, or are they.
Alex
They did last year. Yeah. The Sixers tanked last year.
David
And Ellis is a fan of these.
Marques
Yeah, well, he's watching, you know, is
Andrew
on his plane back from vacation listening to this.
Marques
It's kind of funny because kind of like, in tech and in a lot of other things, the worst thing to do is be, like, in purgatory in the mid.
David
Yeah.
Marques
You want to be winning franchise, top of your game, in your prime, like, unbeatable.
David
Yeah.
Marques
Or just bankrupt. Wipe it. Start it over. Right. Because if you're in purgatory, like petering, and you can't really do anything about
Alex
it, like OnePlus, the draft is like a government bailout.
Marques
Like, you don't want to be a mid team forever. So a good draft pick could finally change that for you. So a mid team will tank to try to get a good draft pick.
David
They penalize you if you. If they catch you tanking.
Alex
Allegedly. Allegedly. But it's. Yeah. It's like, hey, billionaire owner, that wasn't great. It was a $50,000 fine. It's like, oh, okay, whatever this might
Andrew
be, we're going further from tech. But I just want to explain to you guys what the Women's Hockey League is doing. They do something called the Gold Plan. Well, once you are mathematically eliminated, then your wins start accumulating points towards the draft pick. And then. So every time a team gets eliminated, every win they get after that gets them closer.
David
That's so smart.
Andrew
So it, like, incentivizes you to win.
David
Why don't they do that in basket?
Andrew
Wow.
Alex
Take no Adam Silver. Come on, man.
Marques
Specifically. Good. Because a lot of late season games are boring, are mathematically irrelevant. It'll be like, oh, we've scheduled this out from the beginning of the season, but it turns out this Charlotte Hornets vs. Chicago Bulls game is two teams that are already mathematically eliminated and have no reason to win. And so they sit all of their best players and people will go to the game and pay and show up and get to watch horrible basketball.
Andrew
Or not show up at all. And the arena's empty, and it's just a pain.
Marques
So that would make those games interest.
Ellis
Watch.
Marques
Because those. Those are used.
David
Yeah. Because then they might get a draft pick. None of the statisticians.
Marques
That's a really good idea. Shout out to that league. That's awesome. Yeah.
Narrator/Advertiser
Cool.
Marques
Cool.
Andrew
Okay.
Marques
Should we take a break? We've gone way into that.
Andrew
I assumed you were putting a break in there somewhere.
Marques
Here is a natural spot for a break. Okay, we'll be right back.
Alex
When I scraped my car in that parking garage, I was worried that it could be a long process to take care of it. Like a landscaper's first day trim a hedge maze.
Marques
I have definitely already been here.
Alex
Now, was it left, right or right?
Narrator/Advertiser
Left.
Marques
Well, maybe I'll cut a path out
Alex
and find my way back later. But it wasn't like that. I filed a claim in under two minutes on the Geico app and they handled it from there. It was taken care of almost as quickly as it happened. It feels good to get help quick. It feels good to Geico.
Andrew
Whoa.
Marques
Okay, this one says you get a free phone if you switch. Hey, this one also says you get a free phone if you switch.
David
Yeah, they all do.
Marques
Hun.
Ellis
Huh?
Marques
The T Mobile one says their customers had the lowest wireless bills versus the other big guys over the past five years. And their latest experience plans have Netflix included, plus a year of dash pass by DoorDash. Hang on, let me see that. Oh, yeah, we're switching. That's what I'm talking about.
Alex
Do we clap now or AT T Mobile? Get savings that keep stacking up. That's value you can feel every day. And right now, bring your phone to T Mobile and we'll give you $400 when you switch.
Marques
Savings based on Harris X billing snapshots from Q3 2021 to Q4 2025 compared to average AT&T and Verizon bills. Comparison includes discounts, credits and optional charges. 400 with new account on qualifying line. Unlock device credit ported 90 plus days with device and carrier and timely redemption required. Virtual MasterCard typically takes 14 weeks. No cash access and expires in six months. Card issued by Sunrise Banks and a member FDIC@teamorld.com and we're live from the living room as Doug eyes up the match. Say spread. He's reaching for the buffalo wing.
Ellis
Perfect.
Andrew
Hang on. What's this?
Marques
Oh, he's gone for a can of Pepsi too. Incredible. What a finish. Sensational combination. Look at the delight on his face. There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Match days deserve Pepsi.
Andrew
Food, dessert.
Marques
Grab a pack of Pepsi. Zero sugar for today's match. It's poetry in motion.
David
Welcome back. I have a question. What does the coach do?
Marques
Yes.
David
Okay, so like, you know Mike Brown, you know, he's the Knicks coach. He coached the Sacramento Kings before this.
Ellis
Yes.
David
Got booted off the Sacramento Kings.
Marques
Wow.
David
Ball.
Marques
Ball knowledge.
David
Just saying.
Alex
You know how many teams he's been fired from, like, half a dozen. It's crazy.
David
And it's because coaching and stupid.
Marques
There has to be. I think there's a tech analogy for that, too. The top teams, like, trade tech.
Andrew
Just every employee of a major tech company, look at their LinkedIn. They look like a coach in the
Alex
NBA that goes somewhere else. Yeah.
Andrew
Tesla, Apple, Google.
David
Because my question about the coach is, like, you know, they, like, call timeouts and then they talk to the players. But, like, what are they talking to them about? Like, how does this work? Yeah.
Marques
So the coach knows the range of talents of the players really well. And before every game, they do the hard work of looking at what the other team is really, and how their team compares and what they should do to beat the other team. So the players, they come to the table with their skills and they're like, yeah, I'm a dunk it. And they're like, all right, you're good at dunking it. I'm going to put you in positions where you get a lot of dunks. Okay. But if you're playing against a team that's really good at defending dunks, they're like, all right, you're going to get rebounds and pass it out to the shooter. Because they're bad at defending shooters. So they're the brains orchestrating what the players are doing. In theory, yeah.
Alex
I mean, if we're talking about, like. Like a technology. If we go to the hardware side, they're like the logic board or whatever
Ellis
it is you with a bunch of agents who have the orchestrator, all the
Andrew
players think they're building this incredible thing, but they need the person from outside to wrangle them back in. Right. Like, Snapchat could have used a coach to tell them those glasses are ridiculous.
Alex
Yeah. Okay, so the Snapchat CEO in this analogy, who clearly is the one that thought those were a good idea.
David
Well, I don't know about that.
Alex
I think you have to wear them. It seems like it. I don't know. But. So whoever the person was that was pushing for the Snapchat spectacles the most.
David
Yeah, specs.
Alex
The specs. That person is like a basketball player that needs to be wrangled in and needs to be told you're shooting too much and you're not making your shots.
David
Yeah.
Alex
So we're gonna bench you.
David
Okay.
Alex
So that's the purpose of a coach,
David
is that's like the board.
Alex
Sure.
David
Maybe because the board can, like, switch out.
Alex
Can kibosh.
David
It can switch out the CEO if they're not doing a good job.
Alex
Yeah, kind of.
Marques
Yeah.
Alex
This is not a pure one to one, because there's also some way to say that, like, the coach could be the coach and the assistant coaches could be like a CEO, CEO, cmo, that sort of thing.
David
There's an assistant coach, too.
Alex
There's like multiple assistants.
David
What are they?
Alex
Mike Brown, famously this year was very collaborative. That was part of why they hired him. He was very open to listening to his assistant coaches that focus on different, you know, areas of the game. So in pure basketball terms, the Knicks had like an assistant that was more focused on the offense. They had an assistant that was more focused on the defense.
David
Okay.
Alex
They had another guy that would sit on the second row that literally his whole job was, should we review this play or not? Because you get to challenge plays if you think that the referees got the call wrong.
David
Yeah.
Alex
And the Knicks had a super high conversion rate on successful challenges of bad calls.
Marques
That's like the legal team.
Alex
That's like their legal team.
Marques
Should we appeal this lawsuit?
Alex
Yeah, it's like, is the lawsuit worth pursuing? Yes or no? That's basically, they have an assistant that's like that. That's like their legal counsel.
Marques
Yeah.
Alex
Okay. But yeah, the coach makes decisions that it leads to the overall success and cycles people in and out. So a board is probably a good thing. You know, brings in turnover, has some churn, you know, to make sure that things stay fresh. Manages egos. Yes.
Marques
Players doing pretty well, but kind of getting tired. Hey, I know you're good, but you're getting tired. Let me put the bench player on.
Alex
Okay. They also set the roadmap in a way, because. So, for example, the Knicks this year played a style of defense under their old coach where you would try to force people to the perimeter to try to get them away from the inside of the.
David
So that they could get more two pointers. Cause Jalen Brunson's good at two pointers.
Alex
Well, so this. I'm talking about what they would do on defense. So the Knicks would try to make the other team not get to the inside for each.
Marques
Right.
David
Oh, I see.
Alex
And then the Knicks, during their worst stretch this year, tried something new and said, what if we defended the perimeter a lot, the three point shot, and let teams get to the inside. And then teams were just getting layups left and right, and it was not pretty. So then they switched their scheme back.
David
Okay.
Marques
They didn't push outside like a Wemby.
Alex
Yeah, right.
Marques
Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Andrew
Alex just broke a little bit.
Marques
The spurs they didn't have anyone to
Alex
flagrant foul the other team.
Marques
Yeah, the spurs, you might know, have a player who's 7 foot 6 with really long arms called Victor Wembanyama. Defensive player of the year. Defensive player of the year. And so their entire defensive strategy, if you were smart, the coaches would go, hey, really close out on anyone trying to shoot a three pointer, make them stop, pump fake and try to dribble and drive for a two, because we've got an alien in there who will just block everything.
David
Is it pump fake where you pretend to shoot and then you don't?
Ellis
Yeah. Yes.
David
Yeah. Steph Curry does that a lot.
Alex
Yes, he's very good at it.
Marques
It's like when you're about to ship a product and then you don't like air power.
Alex
It's like head fake.
Andrew
Like the Street Life Manifesto album we're releasing. Just kidding. Let's go.
Alex
You got pump fakes, bro?
David
Yeah,
Alex
David just broke inside.
David
Okay. Okay. Speaking of gta. Gta.
Alex
Yeah, yeah, Rocks are. They are the best at pump face.
David
That's true.
Alex
Look at this trailer.
Andrew
Look at this trailer.
David
You mentioned, you mentioned the, the ref.
Alex
Yes.
David
So I went to a basketball game with you.
Alex
Yeah.
David
Well, no, we watched it.
Alex
We watched it on tv.
David
On tv.
Alex
I yelled at the refs a lot. I lost my voice.
David
So there were multiple points in the game where the ref would come out and he would talk about the type of foul. So can you explain the types of fouls that exist?
Alex
Yeah. Wow. It's so good. That's literally the next thing on the document.
Marques
Oh, nice.
Alex
Are you sure you didn't read this?
David
I'm not in the doc.
Alex
That's crazy.
Marques
There's two types of fouls.
Alex
All right? So there's, there's different types of fouls and violations. Yeah. So we'll start with just a foul. Okay, so a foul is when a player prevents another player from taking and or making a shot.
David
Isn't that what you're supposed to do?
Marques
Well, we should start with the fucking basketballity of it. Basketball is a non contact sport.
Alex
Yes.
David
Oh.
Marques
So in the basic sense, you can guard, but you can't make too much contact. And that would be a foul.
David
Unless you're Victor Wembioma.
Alex
Yes.
Marques
If you make too much contact, it's a foul. The referees are the ones who decide how much contact is too much contact.
Alex
And the thing is, especially with shooting, you're allowed to affect them however you can without touching their body while they're shooting. Unless you're Victor. Wembiama Unless you're Victor Wembiama. Yeah. So unless you're Victor Wembanyama. Anyway, but so the basic rule of fouling is if someone is trying to shoot, you can do whatever you can without touching their arms. You can also touch the ball. That's legal. And if you just touch the ball, that's called all ball. You hit the ball, that's a block.
Ellis
All ball.
Marques
Nice block.
Alex
Yes, a nice block.
David
The block.
Alex
Right. But if you hit their arm, then you're affecting their ability to shoot, and that's a foul.
David
Okay.
Alex
Right.
Andrew
I feel like it's got to be more than just your arms, because if I just punch someone in the gut.
Alex
Well, now that also I'm trying to make it as simple as I can. But yes, if you do anything that's a Wemby foul, it's any level of
Marques
contact with the player. Yeah, yeah. Like breaking their ACL while they're shooting,
Alex
while they're dribbling intentionally, anything.
Marques
It's obviously more important to not foul when they're shooting because if you foul someone while they're shooting, then they go to the free throw line to make up for it.
David
Okay.
Marques
So if I go to take a shot and you don't foul and I make it great if I miss. Oh, well. But if I go to take a shot and you foul me now, I can go take those two free throws because I probably would have made it if you didn't foul me.
Andrew
So if you think someone's got a lot of bugs, foul them because they suck at free throws.
Alex
You can also think of this a bit like a data breach where a company goes, whoopsie, we accidentally gave your credit card information away. You can join a class action suit and get $5 from us now. And that's your free throw.
Andrew
That's why I told you one point.
Alex
So.
Marques
Yeah, right. Yeah, one point. Yeah, one point.
David
Okay, yeah.
Andrew
$5.
Marques
One point.
Alex
Yeah, $5. Each point in the NBA is worth $5.
Marques
Now, the thing, the thing that you're talking about, which is the referee going to the table and figuring out what type of foul it is.
David
Yeah.
Marques
Is if you foul someone so hard and so egregiously, you break the rules so hard, it is more than a normal foul, then they'll penalize you even more than just free throws. So if someone goes to shoot or whatever and I punch you in the chest or whatever. Andrew said, yeah.
Alex
If you do what wemmy would do,
Marques
that average play, that would be called not just a common foul, but that's a flagrant foul. And there's actually flagrant foul, level one or level two. There's two. The penalty is worse. A flagrant foul, level one is free throws. And you get the ball again.
David
Oh, you get to start with the
Alex
ball after the ball. And a flagrant foul, level two is free throws and the ball again. And the player that committed it gets immediately tossed from the game.
David
For the rest of the game.
Alex
For the rest of the game.
Ellis
It's a red card, baby.
Alex
It's a red card.
Andrew
But you're allowed to have a player sub in for them right on the court.
Alex
Yeah.
Andrew
Red cards, you lose.
Alex
Red card, you lose the player spot.
Andrew
Wait, hey, Adam, have you ever watched soccer before? That's weird.
Ellis
It's called football, actually.
David
Wait, so. So if you. What do you have to do to get a red card?
Marques
That would be flagrant level two.
Alex
Flagrant, level two.
Marques
So sometimes you just have one less
David
player the whole game?
Alex
No, no, no, not in basketball. That's only for soccer. Soccer, you do lose a player for the whole game.
Marques
Right. So sometimes there's some super heavy level of contact and the player falls over, it looks like he's hurt. And they called it a regular foul, but they're like, well, actually, maybe that was a lot. So they'll go and review it, look at the replay, and decide we're going to upgrade that or not to a flagrant.
Alex
A large part of flagrant fouling, too, is that they determined that it was not a basketball play, that it was just with the intent of hurting someone, basically.
Marques
So the tech equivalent would be like, see, it's a little different in tech again, but there are rules.
David
There are laws.
Marques
There are laws, There are laws. There you go. And these companies are supposed to follow these laws, but sometimes they will do things that are against the rules and they should be penalized for it. And that will come in the form of, like, you broke the law, now we're going to sue you. You'll get sued. Yeah.
David
And BMW cheating on gas emissions, for example.
Marques
That might even be considered a flagrant foul. Sometimes the things that they do are so obviously cheating and so obviously against the rules that they get penalized above and beyond almost to make an example of them. Yeah, this happens all the time in tech with companies. That would be like a flagrant foul.
David
Yeah. Okay.
Marques
It should really affect you.
David
So, physically, what's the difference between flagrant foul level one and level two?
Marques
Often it's just intent or follow through. They'll say things like wind up, impact and follow through or excessive.
Alex
It actually, it actually carries sort of a similar thing to like manslaughter versus murder.
Marques
Yeah.
Alex
It's like, were you just reckless or did you have malice at forethought about what you were going to do?
Andrew
Okay.
Marques
Did you put a. Did you. Was there a bug in the software or did you put a tracker in the software?
David
Yeah.
Andrew
When Motorola had the affiliate, was that
David
a whoopsie or was that. We're trying to make a lot of money.
Marques
Exactly.
David
Okay.
Marques
And so that. That is the tech equivalent.
David
Okay. So you.
Marques
In theory, the teams play by the rules the whole time, but it's competition. Like, they're going to be pushing the rules, they're going to be pushing the limits all the time. Fouls are expected to happen. We would hope that the referees accurately set the line in the same place every time so that the players know exactly how aggressive they can be. Sometimes they don't. And then. Refs, you suck. Is one of the chants that sports fans will say because they don't get it right every time.
David
And am I correct that if you get three flagrant fouls in a season, you get kicked off for the rest of the season?
Marques
No, there's a couple of rules around fouls. If one player fouls six times in one game, Regular foul, Regular foul. Six regular fouls in one game, they're out for the rest of the game.
David
Okay.
Marques
Yet that's the limit for regular fouls.
Alex
Okay.
Marques
If one player has two flagrant penalty ones.
David
Yeah.
Marques
They're ejected for the rest of the game.
Alex
For the rest of the game.
Marques
If a player has a single flagrant penalty, two, they're rejected for the rest.
Alex
But the other thing that I was explaining. I know that. I know why you're asking this, because I explained this to you the other day.
Marques
Yeah, yeah.
Alex
But basically in the postseason especially, there's. You get a certain number of points.
David
What's the postseason?
Alex
The postseason is the playoffs.
Marques
That's like September, October, after the regular
Alex
season is done, then you play for the championship. That's called the postseason.
Ellis
Yeah.
David
You're gonna have to explain this.
Ellis
That's busy season.
Alex
Yeah, it's busy season.
Ellis
When we have our iPhone events.
Marques
That's our playoffs.
Alex
Our playoffs. Which is our analogy from. You'll watch it. But yeah. So basically in the post season, during the most important games, during the playoffs.
David
So the postseason is the playoffs.
Alex
It's the playoffs. Those are.
David
Yeah, there's playoffs are when the Eastern
Alex
Conference and the Western Conference compete against each other. And then the winner of each conference Faces each other in the finals, which is why the Knicks just face the Spurs.
Andrew
And all the points you get in the regular season, only some teams make it to the playoffs.
Ellis
Yes.
Andrew
So in the regular season, you're trying to make it to the playoffs, then matching happens, and then you're slowly working,
Alex
and then you all play each other and then figure out who the true best team is.
David
Okay,
Alex
So as it relates to fouls in the postseason, the playoffs synonyms, if you get a certain number of flagrant fouls in the postseason, then you get suspended for an additional game. So Wemby should have been suspended for an additional game against the Knicks because he committed numerous flagrant fouls that they didn't call, but we'll call him. Like, OpenAI. They get to steal your data, train their models on stuff illegally, and yet somehow there's just a government blind eye to it and they never really get penalized.
Marques
He'll get over the number of flagrant fouls.
David
Well, he should have.
Alex
He should have had a number of more flagrant fouls.
Andrew
Yeah, it was like. OpenAI. Did you flagrant fouls steal all those videos from what.
Alex
So the play where he shot shove Brunson into the ground was a basketball play is what you're telling me?
Marques
This was a referee issue that you have?
Alex
Yes, it's a referee issue. It's a regulatory issue.
Marques
If you are. This is. And we'll get into fandoms in a second. If you are a fan of one of these tech companies, slash teams, then you may interpret. You may interpret the lawsuits that hit them a little bit differently than if you are not.
David
Oh, I see.
Alex
That's all I'm saying is your dad and I are fans of the same tech company in this analogy, so speak carefully, pal.
Marques
I'm just saying there are a lot of people who are especially like. I try to consider myself neutral. I don't have a horse in the race. I've seen lots of fouls that I would think are flagrants that don't get calls from both teams, but that's up to the refs. So the referees are humans instead of machines. And so they almost act like a hand on the scale a little bit sometimes where it can feel like they're being paid off. Certain referees are. Are almost like, only judging one way. They're only enforcing the rules for one company. And like the other series, yeah, it feels kind of weird. There's famously a couple Knicks pilled, so. Dude, there's famously a referee.
Alex
David's a bigger Knicks fan than Me at this point. It's crazy.
Marques
There's famously a referee. I'm trying to remember the stat, but Chris Paul is like, oh, for 12 against Scott Foster or something. Like every time this one referee has refereed this one player in a playoffs game, he has lost. Similar to every time this one judge judges this one company in a lawsuit, they lose every time. And it's like, okay, they're a judge, they're supposed to be impartial, but they're not. And every case should be unique. But damn, 0 and 12 against this judge. This seems kind of like a vendetta at this point.
David
Have they ever charged any of the
Alex
refs for like, oh, famously a ref in the 2000s was busted for betting on games and fixing games.
David
That's probably happened more now, right?
Andrew
It's gonna probably start happening way more actually in coffee Zillow. It's not refs, but yeah, players are like doing stuff like this because there
David
were players that were like talking about betting websites.
Alex
Yeah.
Marques
There was promotion.
Andrew
There's some who are like, I'm gonna go out in the first quarter with like a foot injury. So yeah, bet that I'm.
Alex
That happened. There was an NBA player within the last couple years that got banned for life for doing that. He was a very low level player and he would, he would. He had. He had a discord group all things funny and would put. He would be like, guys, bet the under on my rebounds today. He's like, I'm gonna. He's like, I'm gonna check in for 30 seconds and then say my tummy hurts and sell myself out.
Marques
That's insane.
David
He put that in writing.
Alex
Yeah.
Andrew
There's a good coffee Zillow in a discord, dude.
David
Stupid.
Alex
Crazy.
David
That's so stupid.
Marques
So anyway, yeah, we hope for the refs to be just like judges, impartial, but they're not. That is interpreted very much based on where you are. If you're maybe working for one of companies.
Alex
I do feel like we should. This is going so long already. I feel like we should start moving. But I have one other violation I want to highlight because I'm so proud of my analogy.
Ellis
Okay.
Alex
Okay. So there's a thing called a shot clock violation.
Andrew
Okay.
Alex
Have you noticed when you're watching basketball, David, since you're a huge basketball fan now, every. Every time the team gets the ball, there's 24 seconds, it starts.
David
I didn't know it was 24, but I've seen the clock go down.
Alex
So there's. When you get the ball when you're on offense, when you're trying to score the ball, you have 24 seconds to take a shot that at minimum hits the rim. Him.
David
Right.
Alex
That's the. That's what resets the shot clock each time. That's a 24 to 24. Or if you get your rebound and
David
resets it to 14 seconds every time you have the ball, every time you pretty much try to hit.
Marques
For simplicity. Yes.
Alex
For simplicity.
Ellis
Yes.
Andrew
And it's four if you're ahead. So you don't just keep playing keep away.
Marques
Four seconds.
Andrew
No, no. Like if you're the team that is winning.
Alex
Yeah.
Andrew
Then you can't just play keep away. Yeah.
Alex
You can't just hold the ball forever.
David
And if you don't do it, they just give it to the other team.
Alex
Yes. So that's. You nailed it. That's what I was about to explain. So if you go 24 seconds and you don't shoot, then you give the ball to the other team. You've turned the ball over.
David
That's called the turnover.
Alex
Right. So my analogy for this, that I think looking through this is my favorite one. Apple has committed a 24 second violation with Apple Intelligence. They said they were gonna release it and they took way too long to release it and now they have been forced to hand the ball over to Google Gemini.
Andrew
Wow.
Marques
Oh, that's good. Wow, that is good.
Alex
Shock violation on Apple because it.
Marques
Yeah.
Andrew
Streetlight needs a shot clock violation.
Marques
Rockstar. Rockstar is committed numerous 24 second violations.
Andrew
I could do the Rockstar one and our audience would love it.
Alex
But Streetlight street light hurts David more.
David
There have been at least two comments about my street light manifestation.
Andrew
Well, those two people, if they made it this far, are very street.
Alex
Streetlight Manifesto hurts David more.
Marques
What's the shot clock violation on the roadster?
Alex
That's also a shock.
David
Yeah.
Marques
Tesla has committed a shot clock violation.
Alex
I think they committed about. I think they committed about five in a row. Yeah.
David
Okay. I have one question.
Alex
Yes.
David
At least. So you know there were a couple instances during this series where the ball was like over the hoop and then a guy knocked it over and he got in trouble for knocking it off.
Andrew
Off. I know.
Marques
Why do you get in trouble for that?
Andrew
I know the term explain goaltending, correct?
Marques
Yes.
Andrew
Goaltending is it once the ball is on the trajectory down, you are then not allowed to stop the ball.
Alex
Yeah. Why so?
Andrew
Because players could just reach over the net every time.
Marques
They're so tall they could just jump
Ellis
up and knock it over.
Andrew
So you could just.
David
Okay. Is that considered like a foul type thing?
Alex
It counts as a made shot.
Marques
Breaking the rule.
Andrew
Oh, it counts as a made shot.
Marques
Yeah. Yeah. So if a player goes to shoot it and it goes up and starts coming down towards the basket and you reach up, up and hit it when it's supposed to give it a chance to go, to go in.
David
Yeah.
Marques
That is a breaking the rules violation.
David
Yeah.
Marques
They will count that as a mage shot. They'll count that as a ship. They give them the point, you get
Alex
the full two points or three points.
Marques
So you really don't want to commit that violation because you just give them a shipped product.
David
So. But if you hit it out of the way while it's heading towards the apex of the parabola, then that's fine.
Alex
That's a block.
Andrew
That's cool.
Alex
Yeah.
Marques
Similarly, if the ball is NBA specific, bounces off the rim and is still over the rim, like in the cylinder of the rim, you're not allowed to touch it.
Andrew
Okay.
Marques
Until it leaves.
Alex
And actually in international basketball, you are allowed to, which is interesting.
Marques
That's a weird.
Alex
It's such a weird discrepancy of how basketball is played around the world. Yeah, that's the EU. Oh my God.
David
This is.
Alex
That's USB C on iPhones is being
David
able to hit it off.
Alex
But then sometimes the rules from international come back to the NBA. They have not. They have not adjusted.
Marques
I think it's more like in the eu there's different power plugs.
Alex
Yeah.
Marques
So like every power plug here in the US we kind of know is basically the two prong or the three prong. And then you go to Europe and it's like, oh, that's kind of still a two prong, but it's a little different. Like they have a slightly different rule set, right? Yeah, but it's mostly the same.
Alex
And there is. We're not even really getting into this, but there's robust other forms of basketball in college basketball, international basketball, multiple international leagues around the world. And in many of the leagues it's played, oh, so slightly different.
Marques
Okay. We're mostly doing NBA rules here.
Alex
Yeah. But NBA rules is where we're sticking
Marques
to that is goaltending that you speak goaltending.
Alex
Yeah.
Marques
I don't know if there's a tech equivalent of goaltending. Like the 24 second violation is pretty obvious, but fouls are pretty obvious. But I think goaltending is just another like breaking the rules thing where it's pretty clear, the referee can see it, you will get sued.
David
You Will, is there anything else small like that that you're not allowed to do?
Marques
Yeah, there's little things. You're not allowed to kick the ball. If your foot makes contact with the ball, it's a kickball violation.
Alex
You're not allowed to stop dribbling and then start dribbling again or move without dribbling. That's either travel or a double dribble.
Ellis
Unless you're OG and an og.
Alex
Yeah. De' Aaron Fox got to double dribble right in the middle of a finals game. And they didn't call it for some reason.
David
You see on the Spurs.
Andrew
Uh huh.
Marques
All right. Now you guys understand the game. We'll talk about some lore after the break. We'll be right back.
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Alex
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Marques
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Andrew
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Marques
All right, welcome back. I think now we've basically covered the rules and violations of the game enough that the last thing we should do is fill you in on some of the lore that got us to this point in the modern NBA. And there's so many things we could talk about, but I think the ones that have the best tech equivalents are the ones that we should give you guys. I'm gonna start with one of my favorite LeBron James. Have you heard of LeBron James?
David
I know that guy.
Ellis
Yeah.
David
Great. They call him the King.
Marques
Do you know how old he is?
David
45.
Marques
He's more or less. He's over 40.
Alex
You nailed it.
Marques
He is still to this day at 41, one of the top 20 best players on the planet. I would say.
David
That's crazy.
Marques
That is crazy because he came in as a rookie in. I'm gonna get this wrong. 2000-2007-2003-2003.
Alex
He was drafted first pick of the 2003 NBA Draft.
Marques
So LeBron James, straight from high school.
Andrew
I was in high school.
Marques
Straight from high school with the longevity of his career and being one of the best is essentially like the iPhone came out a really long time ago, was one of the best. And many others competitively have come and gone since then. And maybe at certain peaks could have been considered slightly better than him, but he was always one of the best. And here we are two decades later, still one of the best. A lot of this competition bankrupt, totally gone. LG HTC Essential come and gone. IPhones still around. Nokia and come back and probably gone again.
Alex
BlackBerry, bro. Blackberries were big.
David
So why didn't he win the championship?
Marques
So he is. I mean, it's a team sport, so you can't win every year by yourself. But he is from an era where when he first came around, there were like these big dynasties of teams of the past. Almost all of the players that were actually. Sorry. Every single player that was active when he was drafted has retired.
Alex
Okay.
Marques
Every single one.
David
Has Yao Ming retired?
Marques
Yao Ming has retired.
Alex
Long time ago. I loved Yao Ming, though.
Marques
And there's. And you know, when you look at that time in the past, it was like, oh, BlackBerry was really big. No key was really big. Samsung was kind of starting to get big. And you look at all the waves of all the things that have happened since then and. And now he's part of the modern NBA and the landscape is totally different. And he's still one of the best. The iPhone. It's kind of insane. His longevity.
David
Yeah, okay.
Marques
Some people call him a goat. There will always be debates about it, just like the iPhone. But that is LeBron James career.
Alex
Do you want to know a fun fact?
Andrew
Sure.
Alex
LeBron James has been playing elite level NBA basketball four years longer than the iPhone has existed.
Marques
That's insane.
David
That's crazy.
Marques
He's literally more. He literally has been around longer than
Andrew
the Taco Tuesday keep keeping him going.
Marques
Isn't that like he's played against 40% of the NBA ever or something?
Alex
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like 40% of all NBA players that have ever played. He's played what?
Andrew
He's so good. I imagine if he had kids, they'd probably be really good in the NBA.
Alex
He has one and he has a second one. Who maybe will make the NBA? I don't know.
Ellis
Yeah.
Marques
Is there a tech equivalent of that? If, like, Apple had, like, a sub brand that spun off and, like, became another crazy smartphone company, but they would.
David
Well, there's a nothing in CMF.
Alex
I was thinking nothing in CMF. Yeah, but nothing isn't like LeBron level.
Andrew
We already put. Who's the CMF? Phone Pro 2. Oh, was that CJ McCall?
Marques
CJ. Yeah.
David
There's also, like, Oppo and Realme and like Vevo and.
Marques
Yeah, you know, that's a bad analogy. Sub brands are way too easy to make in tech. It's impossible to have a son in the NBA.
David
Is it really?
Marques
He's done it. It's insane.
David
Wait, what about.
Alex
Hey, Jalen Brunson.
David
Jalen Brunson. Brunson.
Marques
Sorry. It's impossible to have a son in the NBA while you were still in the NBA.
Alex
Yeah, yeah. He was the only one to ever do that.
David
Yeah, I think Jalen Brunson did that.
Alex
No, no, no, no. LeBron playing with his own son.
Marques
Playing with his own son in the NBA. In the NBA on the same tip. Threw him an alley oop in.
Alex
Yeah, I was about to say LeBron has thrown an alley oop to his son.
David
To his son in a real NBA game.
Alex
Yeah.
David
That's unbelievable.
Alex
I'll show you the clip after this.
David
That's so cool.
Alex
It's so cool.
David
Wow.
Alex
There's also. Wait, can you turn your computer towards them? There's my favorite NBA photo ever. Is LeBron recording the all Star game on, like, a next cell phone back in the day? That was LeBron.
David
That doesn't even look like him.
Alex
His rookie year.
Marques
That's how long he's been.
Alex
That's him as a child before his facial hair. Yeah.
David
Damn.
Alex
Yep.
David
That's crazy.
Marques
So, yeah, good stuff.
Alex
Okay, so if we want to jump more to the current NBA, we're doing lore drop. Yeah, but this is. This is where I get to speak the praises of the New York Knicks.
David
Is there any lore about my.
Andrew
Hasn't happened yet. First is where it starts.
Marques
This is where it starts.
David
I just to need. Is there any lore about Mike Bibby?
Alex
I didn't write any down, but something up. Wait, Mike Bibby is awesome. Are you aware of what Mike Bibby's up to these days?
Marques
Don't Is he a crypto scammer?
Andrew
No.
David
Tell me he's a crypto.
Alex
He retired as like a very like lithe NBA point guard and then randomly just decided to get mega jacked?
Marques
Yeah.
Alex
Dude. Wait, wait.
Andrew
What?
Alex
You're Mike Bibby. You're Jack.
David
The last time I saw Mike Bivy, he was really, really lanky.
Alex
Look up a picture of Mike Bivvy in the current day. He randomly just decided to get like mega jacked, dude.
David
Okay, I also need to know about the guy that did the Palm phone.
Alex
Steph Curry.
David
Steph Curry.
Alex
Yeah.
David
Yeah.
Alex
What about him?
David
I just need to know his lore cause I feel like he's listening.
Marques
Oh, is he has a tech product.
Alex
Did I put the phone.
Marques
Steph Curry has changed the game. And I do want to think of a good product that has changed the game in the way that Steph Curry is changing.
Alex
Let's Brainstor. So what's a product that existed for a long time and then someone came along and redid it a little bit and completely changed it for the future?
Marques
The iPhone or Apple Silicon is another Apple Silicon or electric cars like Hyundai
Andrew
specifically were like Hyundai. They're doing decent, but they weren't. And then like they kind of made a Pivot with their EVs.
Marques
Yeah, I like Tesla Model S. Okay.
Andrew
For.
Marques
So we had cars for forever. Everybody could make cars. We had a whole competitive landscape, lots of lore, lots of cars. Somebody comes along and makes an electric car that's actually effective because electric car's reputation before wasn't all that. But then the Tesla Model S comes along and then you look at post Tesla Model S and there is a vibrant landscape of electric cars. Everyone is doing an electric car.
David
True. Okay.
Marques
That is Steph Curry. Before Steph Curry, there were some threes, There were some teams that had sharpshooters. Peja Stojakovic, you might have heard that name before. Asia shot some threes. Exactly. I'm just saying that because you've said that before.
David
That's why it's toy accurate.
Marques
But you look at post Steph Curry, entire teams build their entire strategy around multiple people being as good at three point shooting as possible on their team. It is just a different landscape now that he's done that.
Alex
It's actually. It really works with the Tesla thing too, because the Tesla Model S, I don't know if anyone would ever say like this is the greatest car of all time, but they might say that this is the most influential car of all time. And I think Steph doesn't often get talked about as the greatest basketball player of all time. But I think most hardcore basketball fans would say that he's the most influential basketball player of all time.
David
Of all time.
Alex
Yes.
Marques
Wow.
Alex
Because he completely by his mastery of three point shooting changed how the entire league played.
David
But the Knicks don't really focus on threes as much.
Alex
They do.
Marques
Every single team now shoots way more threes than they did.
David
I felt like the Knicks missed almost
Marques
every three they shot.
Alex
Well, the good thing was that the Knicks were adaptable. But they, they did. They set a lot of team three point records. They set some playoff three point records in the earlier rounds and stuff. They shot a lot of threes.
Marques
This year the spurs set a first half three point record in the game that they lost to the Knicks because they stopped making threes. Oh.
Andrew
Back in the day.
Alex
Because they're chokers.
Ellis
You have like one or two players that can shoot threes.
Alex
Yeah.
Ellis
So you would have like a whole team of people that just played regularly and then one guy that shot the three.
David
Okay, got it.
Ellis
And now it's like the whole team is built around people that can shoot threes.
Marques
And even another thing that's interesting about this is that now gets you to a lot of the comparisons between old NBA and new NBA where it almost feels like a totally different sport. Like when you look at cars today and how crazy they are versus like the record setting cars of the past were goaded for their time. But it's hard to compare them with modern cars. Electric cars are fastest because they're so different. Exactly. That's kind of what like the record books look like today. Like you've heard of Michael Jordan. A lot of people consider him the greatest player of all time. He didn't shoot threes like very much and wasn't very good at them. And so a lot of people would argue if you put Michael Jordan in today's NBA, he wouldn't be one of the best players. A lot of other people argue. While he was all mental, he would have figured out a way to beat.
David
What was he good at specifically?
Alex
He did add threes to his bag late in his career.
Marques
Very, very late. But not like modern NBA.
Alex
Yeah, actually for the second three peat, he was a much better three point shooter.
Marques
Michael Jordan was freakishly athletic and basically made every two pointer he looked at. Okay.
Alex
And was also the most psychotically driven athlete of all time. Probably. He like famously would make up narratives against him.
Marques
Steve Jobs.
Alex
Yeah, he is sort of Steve Jobs. Cause he would be like, he would be like this Guy said that I'm trash and that he can guard me and whatever. And it would be like one passing comment that a guy had made five years prior that was like, yeah, I think I could try to guard Michael Jordan. He'd be like, he thinks he can stop me. He thinks he can stop me and he can't.
David
So he would just create motivational energy for himself.
Alex
Like there's. If you watch the documentary the Last Dance, they talk about this a lot with Michael Jordan making up fake narratives against him.
Marques
And I took that personally.
Alex
Yeah. Yeah. Literally the meme. And I took that personally.
David
That's a Michael Jordan meme.
Alex
Yes.
David
Okay.
Alex
That was just him all the time.
Andrew
Now he owns a NASCAR team, right?
Marques
Yeah. His post NBA career is a whole lot.
Alex
He owned a basketball team at one point, too. He owned the Hornets for a minute. He was real bad at that nose. Protest games. As far as we know, he sells sneakers.
Marques
I do think Steve is a really good. Because a lot of the upside is, like, savant, possibly the goat. Nobody could do what he did. But also some of his shortcomings were kind of insane.
Alex
Yeah.
Marques
And maybe this is like post career Michael Jordan, but like, like one of the worst owners, probably because he's bad at judging talent. He's just like, hey, why can't you jump over the other guy? Like, I did, like, just be better. So he's a bad owner.
David
Sounds like Steve Jobs to me.
Marques
Yeah.
David
Honestly, I know this is physically impossible, but just do it.
Marques
Like just be better. Like, just be better.
Alex
And that's what MJ asked of everyone around him.
Ellis
Wow.
Alex
At all times. And that's why teammates did not love him. They talk about him now with reverence because they won championships, but they hated playing with him at the time.
David
Just like everyone that worked with Steve.
Alex
Just like with Steve Jobs. Yeah.
Marques
So I have another one. I want to make an analogy a technology. I don't have this fully fleshed out, but this one right here.
Andrew
Oh.
Alex
We were trying to figure this out and we wanted your opinion.
Marques
Okay. I want to try something.
Alex
Yeah. Okay.
Marques
The goal is to ship products, as many products as possible. There are record books for the most products anyone has ever shipped in a single day, AKA the most points any player has ever scored in a single game.
David
Okay. Yeah.
Andrew
Didn't we talk about this on the pod?
Marques
I think we did, because. Okay, famously, you know, NBA teams today are scoring roughly 100, 220 points a game.
David
I was going to ask if that's gone up over time.
Alex
It's with the Three point revolution, higher score, et cetera.
Marques
The most points any one player has ever scored in a single game was back in the day. This man named Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points by himself in a single game against. Against the New York Errants. Yeah, in color.
Alex
It's against the Knicks.
Marques
Now there's a lot of lore around this because one, there's no video of this, but there is tons of eyewitness accounts and radio, and it's definitely happened. It's just a bit of a mythological performance.
David
Oh, interesting.
Alex
And there's a little bit of conspiracy about fudging the scorekeeping to get him to 100, but.
Marques
Yeah, but the idea is this was one of the most dominant players of all time. But it's the 1960s, so what equivalent. It's kind of like in tech. It would be like the fastest car of that time. It'd be like Jesse Owens or something. And you're like, that's not tech, but that's like a different sport. But the fastest thing of that time, the fastest computer of that time was so much faster than every other computer. It's like, wow, that clearly is record beating, etc.
Alex
A computer the size of a house with one megabyte of RAM.
David
Let's say like the first time they hit 1 gigahertz because I think the US government put like a sanction on like an export sanction on the first computer that hit 1 GHz because they were so scared of it, like, like going to China or whatever.
Marques
That sounds about like Wilt Chamberlain and
Andrew
the sounds like mythos right now.
Marques
That's basically. Yeah. Nobody has gotten anywhere near 100 points in a game. And if you look at the record books, most of the top 50 performances for most points ever in a game are also. Wilt Chamberlain, he also had like 70 something.
Alex
He had a season where he averaged over 50.
Marques
Yes. Which is impossible in today's NBA. So this really is like. This record book is like filled with this one guy from the 60s. And today this year there was a player who got 83.
Ellis
Whoa.
Marques
Which is the second most anyone has ever scored in a game. And it's the closest anyone's gotten in a while. And so it was technically a legendary performance, but it was just by this one guy who doesn't really. No, it's a guy who doesn't really have any other records. You might not even have heard of him. His name is Bam.
Alex
Adebayo.
Marques
Adebayo.
David
Adebayo. You've said that.
Andrew
We talked about it. I Think we did explaining that in tech terms as a segment.
Marques
And so we explained it as if it was like, I forgot what we said. But it would be like if the. If the LG Wing shipped like 50 million phones or something. It's just like this crazy. You're like, this doesn't seem right. But I guess it is record breaking, so congrats. Yeah, it was an anomaly. And his team, once he got to like 65, 70, 75, was like, just, just keep going. Give him the ball. We gotta try to get this record. And that was the closest anyone's ever gotten.
David
Was the other team trying to stop him at that point or were they just kinda.
Marques
So anytime anyone is near setting a record, everyone is trying to stop you from setting the record against you.
Alex
Because he also got a little bit of help from the referees. He shot about 40 free throws in that game.
David
What?
Alex
Yeah.
Ellis
Yeah.
David
That's crazy.
Andrew
They're free. Take them.
Marques
Which if you get fouled a lot, you gotta make the free throw.
Alex
Yeah.
Marques
You don't just get.
Alex
And I think he made about 30 free throws on his way to 83 points.
Ellis
So.
Marques
Yeah, it's hard to come up with a tech analogy for that, but the third most points of all time was Kobe 81. Another legend. Everybody respects the 81.
David
81. Wow.
Marques
In one game. In one single game. Which is crazy. There's a lot of career highs right around the 70 mark. But those are legendary, iconic performances. Wilt. Bam. Kobe.
David
What was Kobe specifically good at that made him so legendary?
Marques
Kobe was.
Alex
He was. He was like a Michael Jordan clone with all the sliders set to like 90%.
Marques
Okay, 96.
Alex
96. Yeah. Depending on the day. 90 to 96%, depending on the day. But he. He basically modeled his entire game personality, everything after Jordan.
Marques
Okay, is there a Steve Jobs equivalent to that? Is there like a 96% Steve Jobs, like also a psycho, but just a little bit less.
Alex
Less Sam Altman, like in the current era?
David
Yeah, same Altman.
Marques
Really? Okay. I mean, I don't know, but I mean, who.
David
Who else is like, ruthless? Like, I think St. Alton's pretty ruthless because he just lies about everything, but
Marques
also, like, gets to the point of like, everyone outside the game thinks you're a savant and sees all of the massive changes.
Andrew
I don't think anyone thinks that of
Marques
Saint Altman because Kobe. Kobe has a much better basketball reputation than Sam Altman has a tech.
Alex
Yeah, I would say so.
David
Maybe, like, I guess.
Alex
I guess we don't really know until Sam Altman's Done, though, because the same thing with Steve Jobs, where it was like, people at the time, like, didn't necessarily love working with him, but now we'll idolize him.
David
What about, like, Linus Torvald?
Marques
That's a little more niche, but yeah, like, very positive reputation.
David
Yeah, generally. But he's like. Can be mean.
Marques
I think the Michael Jordan Steve Jobs thing is perfect because in the moment, he was, like, levitating. Like, everybody understood that what this guy was doing was only something he could do. And then it would come out to people who know more ball and were like, it's kind of hard to work with this guy, but he will ruthlessly get you across the finish line because he's a psycho.
David
Right.
Marques
And you're like, all right. Yep, it worked.
David
So it's like the CEO that they pull in when the current CEO is not working just to, like, get you across the finish line.
Marques
Maybe. I don't know if that's a tech thing.
David
Yeah.
Marques
Like, sometimes like an interim CEO, a culture setter. Oh, interesting. Yeah. But, yeah, I don't know if there's a Kobe equivalent in.
Alex
I don't know if there is, but that was what Kobe was. So if you. If you could find a tech CEO that's like 90 to 95% Steve Jobs.
Ellis
I have a bad one.
Alex
Yeah.
Ellis
Elon.
Marques
Oh, maybe old Elon. Yeah.
Andrew
That almost is.
Marques
New Elon is not.
David
It's kind of even hard to compare.
Marques
It's like winning in the way that Steve Jobs.
David
Right.
Marques
Like, he's winning in a different way. 2015 Elon with Tesla maybe. Maybe just Tesla. Elon maybe is Kobe when people kind
David
of saw him as a safant at the time.
Marques
Interesting.
David
Okay, what's the next legend?
Alex
I was going to talk about the current New York Knicks real quick because I think I have a pretty good analogy that matches up actually with an. Exactly. With a tech thing. So let's wrap up. Talk about the best and worst teams of each conference right now.
Andrew
Right.
Alex
So we'll talk about the New York Knicks first. I think I'm uniquely qualified to talk about this. Let's go. Nix Nixon 5. Let's talk about Apple Silicon. Okay. Right. Apple Silicon comes out in 2020.
David
Yeah.
Alex
Apple decides to put everything in their own hands. They're going to make their own system on a chip. They're not going to rely on intel anymore. Right?
David
Yeah.
Alex
Entire system on a chip. It works with Apple hardware. And then all of a sudden, now it has completely redefined what computers are capable of. Honestly, like, not to. To Praise Apple too much and get accused of being fanboy.
David
So it's true though. It's true.
Alex
It is true. It removed all the fragmentation, made everything. They are designing their entire system from the ground up.
David
Yeah.
Alex
Another thing that happened in 2020.
David
The New York Knicks could have come a different way.
Alex
Hired Leon. Hired Leon Rose to be their president of basketball operations. Right.
Marques
Okay.
Alex
So while they were way worse than Apple and years prior to that and way worse than Intel Macs, because Intel Macs were still good computers, the Knicks were not a good basketball.
David
The i9 one was kinda.
Alex
Yeah, I guess kind of like right before the Knicks hired Leon, they were like the butterfly keyboard.
David
Yeah.
Alex
I9.
David
Putting in the freezer to cool it down.
Alex
Not great. Yeah. So they were not doing great. Things were fragmented, things were not working well.
David
Sure.
Alex
They hire Leon Rose and he made it his mission to build a cohesive team, like an M chip.
David
Okay.
Alex
He prioritized first team, teammates that play for each other, guys that are interested in working together, being collaborative.
David
Power, friendship.
Alex
The power of friendship.
David
Wow.
Alex
With Jalen Brunson, Mikhail Bridges, Josh Hart, college teammates, all that.
David
So they were college teammates.
Alex
They were.
Marques
They won college.
David
I already knew this, but I'm just for the audience.
Alex
Yes, they were college teammates.
David
Wow.
Alex
Oh, well.
David
UC Santa Cruz.
Andrew
No, Villanova.
Alex
Villanova.
David
Where the heck is that?
Alex
The Nova. Knicks. Philly.
Andrew
Philly.
David
Okay.
Alex
It's a pretty big school, you know.
Andrew
It's a very big school.
Marques
I'm from California.
Alex
All right, well, anyway, so the Knicks make it back to the playoffs in 2021 for the first time in almost a decade. They signed Jalen Brunson in 2022, eventually brings in a ton of cohesive players, builds them around Jalen Brunson and makes a perfect team that plays for each other and wins through the power of friendship. Much like Apple system on a chip.
David
So there's a different guy that does the team organizations. That's not the coach.
Alex
Yes, he's called the president of basketball operations. There's also a general manager in basketball. It depends on how you want your team to run. Some teams, their highest guy is the general manager. Other teams, they go, well, we want someone above the general manager. So we'll have the president of basketball operations and a general manager and whatever. The Knicks have a general manager also? Basically, yeah.
Marques
The Knicks have president of basketball operations. Sounds like a title you make up as a six year old when they ask you what you want to do.
Alex
I want to be the president of the Knicks someday. Yeah, that's me. But anyway, now the New York Knicks are NBA champions before Joel Embiid has ever made a conference finals.
David
So they all played basketball together in college.
Alex
Not all the Knicks, but three of them.
Marques
Three of the starting five.
David
That's pretty storybook.
Alex
Yeah, it is.
Marques
That's pretty cool.
David
Yeah, I like that.
Marques
That makes them the best team in the East. The best team in the west was San Antonio team. The worst team in the east is Sacramento Kings.
Alex
The Washington Wizards.
Marques
Definitely not Washington Wizards.
Andrew
Oh, was that in the East?
Alex
In the East.
Marques
In the East. In the East. And the worst team in the west
Alex
was the Sacramento Kings.
David
No.
Marques
Really?
Alex
I don't know if that was actually true, but they were pretty bad this year.
David
I don't think they could have been
Alex
that we picked it. No, they were.
David
When I was there in December, they shot the laser, which they only do when they win the beam.
Alex
They call it the beam.
Andrew
They play 80 games.
Marques
They were tied for the worst.
David
No way.
Marques
With the Utah Jazz.
Alex
Yeah.
David
Wasn't Michael Jordan on the Jazz?
Alex
No, no. He famously stole their soul year after
Marques
year on the Wizards. But, yeah, the Wizards were turned into the blues.
David
Okay.
Marques
Also, I will say that there's probably a tech equivalent to this. The San. The. The Pacers.
Alex
Okay.
Marques
The Pacers were the best team in the east last season. They lost one player and were now the second worst team in the entire.
Andrew
Sounds like the Devils. The last couple years.
Alex
And then we didn't lose our player.
Andrew
Our player got his hand cut at dinner, and then we just fell apart.
Alex
How did he cut us?
Andrew
He leaned on a piece of.
Alex
Did he mistake his steak for a hand or his hand for a steak?
Andrew
No idea. It was a steakhouse. But he absolutely destroyed our team.
David
Damn. Golden State did pretty bad this year.
Marques
Is it tech equivalent to being one of the biggest, most successful companies, losing a single person, and then being one of the worst.
David
Steve Jobs, when he left Apple, and then they basically tanked, and then they brought him back.
Marques
All right, Tyrese Halliburton, we heard it here first.
Alex
And then Halliburton will come back, and hopefully they'll be better. I guess the Knicks need a little bit of competition next year, so I would love if the Pacers could come back better, because the rest of these doesn't come back.
Marques
They're essentially the Same exact team, minus 10.
David
What do you want them to have a competition?
Alex
Because it's more fun, honestly. It felt too easy this year, actually.
Marques
That's a perfect place to end this. Perfect place to end this. Okay.
Andrew
Nick's missing the Playoffs next year.
Marques
We've been using this entire podcast to try to explain sports, specifically NBA basketball, in tech terms. And I think the number one overlap, the most obvious similarity between the two is fanboy isms in sports. You pick a team and you ride or die with this team, Rationality be damned. Right. They might be the best team. You get to cheer for them. They might be one of the best teams. You call them the best team, they might be kind of mid. You call them the best team, but as soon as they start to get a little bit bad, you ruthlessly rag on them until you get them back good again.
David
But you're mean to your own guys.
Marques
You're mean to your own guys. We gotta get them better. This is and unacceptable. They have to be the best. They have to be the best.
Alex
Knicks fans, famously, during bad years, will boo their own team to tell them that they sucked.
Marques
Tell them that they sucked. But it's the same thing in tech, where, I mean, the fanboy isms of iPhone versus Android, of all these different companies, Macs versus PCs, this is a tale as old as time.
Andrew
I feel like it's even similar in the sense of in tech, let's say. Like the. Our Android subreddit is insane.
David
Yeah.
Andrew
Because it's so many different company fanboys in one place. Where if you went to the Google subreddit, they would be like, I can't believe Google's screwing us again. I can't believe it's only 100 doing their own team. Yeah, yeah. But then in the Android separate, if someone says something bad about Google, that same person who's like, how dare you? We are the best. You are terrible. I don't care. What's your problem? You're an idiot.
Marques
And that is a one to one perfect replica of what happens in sports.
Alex
It's like, I'm allowed to say that. You're not allowed to say that. I'm allowed to say that about my team. You can't say that about my team. And your team is even worse.
Andrew
And you're not allowed to like your team.
Alex
You're an idiot. You're an idiot for liking your team. Oh, that's what Knicks fans were told for years.
Marques
Yeah. Okay, so I would like to give you guys an opportunity to pick an NBA team now to ride or die with and to defend them and to live with them the exact same way till death do you part for a tech team.
David
Wait until you. Because I feel like you should just root for wherever you live.
Marques
So that's the easy version of this. We're also conveniently located in a. A desert where there used to be an NBA team. Rip. New Jersey Nets. You can pick the New York team. You will just warning you.
David
In New York.
Marques
I'm just warning you, you will get accused of bandwagoning. That's okay. That's okay.
Alex
I've already.
Marques
Hey.
Andrew
He watched for 15 days before they watched.
Alex
I've given David the path.
Marques
Many people do. And the people who are already fans will give you a pass, but the people who are not fans will call you a bandwagon. That's fine. I will give you the best.
Ellis
There were some very dark years as a Knicks fan. Yeah. So we're in a high.
Alex
We're past that. We're past that. We'll never go back there again.
Marques
As long as you, like, sort of acknowledge that.
Andrew
Let's just pick a new team later, right?
Alex
Yeah, he can just move and get a new team later on.
Marques
David's from Brooklyn, so you should be with the Nets.
Alex
No, the Nets.
Andrew
See, that's true.
Marques
That's not. You live in Brooklyn. You live in Brooklyn. Brooklyn. So if you want.
Alex
No, it doesn't matter. You don't.
David
Closer to Queens, to be honest.
Alex
Dude, the Nets aren't a real team. You don't need to root for them.
Marques
I. I have similar. So this is the thing. I grew up in New Jersey, and when I first started watching NBA basketball, coincidentally, the New Jersey Nets were an incredible team. I remember I went to this. This basketball camp randomly as a kid and got to meet some of the players. I remember bald Richard Jefferson. Prime. Richard Jefferson comes over and like, rustles my hair and he's like, what's up, kid? I'm like, oh, my God, Richard Jefferson. Like, that moment I will have forever. Kenyon Martin, Kerry Kittles, Jason Kidd.
Andrew
Like, you got to meet all that.
Marques
This was a team that went to the Finals. Incredible. They have not been the same since they have thus moved to Brooklyn and have been one of the stinkers who's been tanking and just horrible to watch. Yeah, that's what happens to a lot of people that move to Brooklyn.
Alex
Come.
Marques
A real stinker. I come from, you know, that's the team I used to root for. But I'm not a Die Hard. They left me. I don't have a team anymore. So I kind of just root for play.
Alex
You know what's hilarious about that whole situation? Maybe there's a tech analogy here. Jay z was a 5% stockholder or whatever in the Nets, right. They do this whole Thing to move to Brooklyn for Jay Z. Because they're like, yo, we're moving with hov. We're moving to Brooklyn. Whatever. Jay Z, like, one year after they move, starts a sports agency and has to immediately divest from the company.
David
Damn.
Alex
And leaves them high and dry. And now is back to, like, cheering for the Knicks again.
David
So. Okay, here's the thing. I feel like you should, for life, have to cheer for, like, the closest team to where you were born. Okay. The problem with that, for me specifically, is that the Kings have not won since 1951.
Alex
Yeah. They're bad.
David
And they were called a different.
Marques
This is your.
Alex
They were the Royals back then.
David
Yeah.
Marques
This is your opportunity to get on your Knicks. Like, this is the feeling that Knicks fans have had for 50 years, all my life. Which is they've been bad for your entire conscious lifetime. And they're finally good.
Alex
David, plant your flag right now.
Marques
You can plant your King's flag now.
Alex
No, no, no. Not your king's flag.
Marques
If you. No, if you. I mean, you can.
David
I do have the Mike Bibby bobblehead. So if they do win, then I have, like, some with the baby bobblehead.
Alex
That's true.
Marques
I think that's a more credible, deeply rooted. Like, you could celebrate with if the Kings win.
Andrew
Here. I'll give you this. Also, people are less mad if you have two teams you really like when they're in different conferences.
Alex
Yeah. So if you have a. If you have, like. If you're like, the Knicks are my Eastern Conference team and the Kings are my Western Conference. That's all right.
David
Oh, it's my flag.
Alex
I've kind of always had, like, a Western Conference team that I like, which is the Spurs.
Andrew
Oh.
Alex
I mean, it's varied. No, absolutely not. Yeah, it's actually varied for me. But, like, for a long time, I like, liked the Sonics when Ray Allen was there.
David
Where's that?
Alex
Seattle. They're no longer there anymore. And hopefully we'll be coming back in the next couple years. But then I liked when Tracy McGrady was on the Houston Rockets with Yao Ming. I was a.
Marques
See, you're doing what I do, which is, like, I follow a player for a while that I really like.
Andrew
I wanted to bring you some.
Marques
And when they're a West coast team, it's tough because I can't watch many games because they start their games.
Alex
See, I like that because I'm a night owl. So I like having a West coast team that I mess with.
Marques
And at, like, 1:00am, I've been a Chris Paul fan for basically his entire prime and he's bounced around a bunch of west coast teams and all of those teams have had heartbreaking, disastrous losses by the way. So it's been tough. But I'm trying to watch more east
Alex
coast because I also don't really have a Western Conference team right now because that was always a coping mechanism for me. When the Knicks were terrible was like oh, what other team can I like just while the Knicks are terrible.
David
Andrew, what is your. What are your.
Andrew
Well, so I was going to kind of bring that up. So I feel like I have to be a Knicks fan one because. Because Alex then roots for the Devils with me when he watches hockey and he's not. So I, I have so many friends that are Knicks fans.
David
Friendship.
Andrew
Watching them throughout this was very funny. I mean in Game 4 when they were down, my friend was like that's it. We lost the series. We're losing two, four. And I was like that's the Knicks fans. I know they were already up like they're going to win. Cuz that's the dejected nature that I'm used to.
Alex
Yeah.
Andrew
But then I was going to say in basketball, you know, working with Marquez for song. I've never seen a sport where people follow players as much rather than teams.
David
What about.
Andrew
So Darius Garland, who does he play for?
Alex
He now plays for the Clippers.
Andrew
I'm a Clippers fan.
Alex
Okay.
Andrew
That's my West Coast.
Alex
Yeah.
Andrew
Darius Garland all the way.
Alex
The reason for that by the way. This. Well, maybe, maybe we can relate this just.
Andrew
NBA players are more marketable.
Alex
They're marketable because you see their face all the time. 100 and then also in NBA. NBA player. A single NBA player can influence the entire fate of a team more than a single player in any other sport. It's like any other team sport.
Andrew
It's like if you were a quarterback that didn't have to suffer and you could see their focus.
Alex
Yeah.
Andrew
Yeah.
Alex
But even a quarterback like with a bad offensive line. Still a bad team.
David
Yeah.
Andrew
But it's still like they're still the guy.
Alex
Yeah.
Andrew
Like it's hard to be the guy in a lot of things unless you're Connor McDavid.
David
I have a question I should have asked earlier but is related to the players. What exactly does it mean to be.
Marques
Be a free agent.
David
Yeah.
Alex
So basically the way that basketball works is you sign con. Actually this, this relates.
David
We didn't really talk about this.
Alex
Contract employees in tech.
David
Right.
Marques
Companies.
Alex
A lot of tech companies have contract employees.
David
Yeah.
Alex
All of basketball. All of basketball are contract.
Andrew
They have no competes.
Alex
Yeah, they have non competes, non competes until they become a free agent, at which point they can sign with whatever team they want.
David
So they have to stay with one team until.
Alex
For the length of their contract.
Andrew
Although if Tech could trade, that would be crazy.
David
Yeah, they kind of do.
Marques
They kind of do, but in a different way.
Alex
Actually, Tech is kind of like Premier League Soccer because they allow buyouts. Premier League Soccer, I'm learning about this. I'm learning a new sport. You can pay a transfer fee. So if you see a player on another team that you really like, you'd be like, hey, I want Erling Haaland or whatever who's player on Manchester City.
Ellis
And.
Alex
But he's really good. So the team doesn't want to give him up. So they say, fine. If you want to even negotiate with him, you have to pay us $200 million. And then the team might be like, okay, here's 200 mil. And we're going to also negotiate a contract with him to pay him hundreds of millions of dollars too.
David
Holy crap.
Alex
So that's. But that's kind of like Tech, where you can have, you know, people get buyouts and whatever.
David
Is there a certain number of years that have to go by before you become a free agent?
Alex
It varies by contract.
Andrew
Negotiated. Yeah.
Marques
Just based on your contract. So typically a three, four or five year contract, there's a max long contract.
Alex
Yeah.
Marques
Once you get MBA is a max of that contract. Then you like Nick's.
David
Okay.
Narrator/Advertiser
Okay.
David
So when you first start out of college, you are automatically in a contract and then after that you're a free agent.
Marques
Yeah.
David
So you start as a free agent when you're right out of college.
Narrator/Advertiser
No.
Marques
You get drafted and then you sign maybe a rookie contract for that one year with that team.
David
Okay.
Marques
Then you may be. You're a free agent again. You might sign another one or two year contract. As you get to your prime and you're more desirable, teams want to lock you down for longer. That you might sign a three, four or five year contract where you're there for a long time, but once that contract ends again, you're technically free agent.
Alex
But then teams can also arbitrarily decide to trade you.
David
Got it.
Alex
And be like, oh, actually you're not as good as we thought, so we're gonna trade you to another team.
David
So you have to go live where they want you to live.
Alex
Yeah. Players don't like it. I don't like that either. Yeah, yeah. But I Mean, they're making millions of dollars to do it, so they.
David
Yeah, I guess I can get that.
Andrew
Okay.
David
Well, I feel like I know ball now.
Marques
Yeah, I think this is a great place to wrap it up. Ideally. Now, when we do our Smartphone awards at the end of the year, we can have, like, a sports equivalent. Like, you guys will know. Like, when I give an MVP award to a phone, you'll now have that much more lore and context to the Jalen Brunson Awards.
Alex
Can we call it the Jalen Brunson Memorial Smartphone of the Year this year? Memorializing it season.
Marques
Yeah. You'll now be able to draw the equivalent. You'll be like, I can see how that phone is. Jalen Brunson.
David
The jvp. The Jalen.
Alex
Jalen Brunson Valuable player.
David
Yeah.
Marques
There's a million more strings that we didn't tie in this episode. I'm sure the comments section will help us out with that. There's many more crossover things between tech and sports, but what do you think
Alex
the percentages of usual Waveform listeners have made to this point in the episode?
Marques
I think we'll find out because zero spurs fans. I know that if you made it this far, comment. Knicks in six, Knicks in five. That's how we'll know.
Alex
All right, all right. Everyone is saying Nick in last episode.
Andrew
But then everyone who comes in is going to be like, oh, waveform's talking about basketball. Look at the comments and be like, they obviously didn't do a very good job.
Alex
Wait, what if you do Nixon four? That's like another cut because they did four in every other.
David
Oh, Nixon four.
Alex
So we say Nixon four.
Marques
All right, that's your comment. That's how we'll know you made it to the end of the episode Nixon 4.
Andrew
And now we'll know if you made it to that part of the episode.
Alex
Of the episode. There's gonna be so many. Nixon 6. Wait, no. Nixon 5. Wait. Nixon 4.
Marques
Well, so that's been it.
Andrew
Thank you for watching Degrees in this room right now.
Alex
It's so hot.
David
Just know that.
Marques
Hotter than a New York Kings win.
David
I'm gonna be there. I'm gonna be there with my mic baby bobblehead. Okay.
Alex
I'll be there with you. I'll work for them with you.
Marques
On your bubble bar.
David
On my bubble bar.
Marques
You will have really earned that.
Andrew
Thank you.
Marques
Sick. All right, catch you guys in the next one.
Andrew
Peace. Waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Rufus Mulhaupt. We are partnered with Vox Media podcast network and our giratro music was created by Vain Sill.
David
Bingo.
Andrew
Let's go. Nixon 5.
David
Nixon 5.
Marques
We all do it. You have a night for yourself, but don't like the sound of the silence. So you turn on the TV just for the ambiance. It's a little trick that helps you feel like you've got company. And alone. And other insurers, well, they may make you feel alone, but when you switch to geico, you've got claims reps available around the clock, so whenever you need, you'll have people around to help. And let's turn on the washing machine just for good measure. Isn't that soothing?
Alex
It feels good to have support. It feels good to Geico.
Narrator/Advertiser
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In this lively bonus episode, the Waveform crew bridges two deeply tribal fan worlds: NBA basketball and big tech. Marques (“MKBHD”) and co-host Alex—self-identified “ball knowers”—guide Andrew and David (“non-ball knowers”) through the rules, structure, lore, positions, and culture of the NBA by translating everything into tech analogies. They relate players, team strategies, and league phenomena to software engineering, startups, product launches, device lineups, and famous tech CEOs. The show is rich with inside jokes, viral chants, relatable analogies, debates, and accidental crossovers into esports, mobile games, and soccer, all with the approachable, nerdy, and fast-paced cadence signature to Waveform.
"Whenever you watch those tech companies, you’re kind of like watching the players for the team affect their outcomes." –Marques ([05:13])
"If you ship more products than the other team, you win. But you only have four 12 minute quarters—the fiscal years." –Marques ([11:30])
"If they do their role really well... you get through the software development phase really quickly. And then you ship it." –Marques ([12:41])
"I can feel my eyes glazing over. Is this what people feel like when I explain sports to them?" –Alex ([28:51])
"Teams finally did some math and realized that 3 is greater than 2." –Alex ([37:03])
"Imagine if the least successful tech companies got the top picks of all the best college talent... the most successful didn’t get any." –Marques ([47:08])
"Apple has committed a 24 second violation with Apple Intelligence... forced to hand the ball over to Google Gemini." –Alex ([74:22])
"LeBron at 41 is still one of the top 20... It's essentially like the iPhone came out a really long time ago." –Marques ([80:16])
"Tesla Model S... is Steph Curry. Before, 3-pointers were a sideshow. Now, after Curry: entire teams built around it." –Marques/Alex ([86:00])
"This record book is filled with this one guy from the 60s ... It's just a mythological performance." –Marques ([91:28])
"Rockstar... best at pump fakes. Look at this trailer!" –Alex ([61:54]) "Wait, so really the basketball players are like the different Angry Birds?" –Alex ([32:06])
On NBA/Tech Structure
"NBA expansion shall be like a startup. New team. No history. Build the whole thing fast." –Alex ([04:41])
On Core Game Mechanics
"Dribble is like software dev. Passing, that's your testing... shooting, that's your deliverable." –Alex ([10:20])
On Modern Game Analytics
"The nerdy math that has basically defined the NBA for the last decade is... teams finally figured out, wait, if we shoot 40% from three, that's the same as shooting 60% from two." –Alex ([38:41])
On Tech Parity via Draft
"Imagine if the least successful tech companies... got the best college talent. The most successful didn't get any. Parity would be off the charts." –Marques ([47:08])
Efficiency Revolution
"Steph Curry is like Apple being really good at iPhones...there's not many who can stop it. Why do anything else?" –Marques ([35:37])
On Fandom and Tribalism
"You pick a team and you ride or die... Rationality be damned." –Marques ([103:05])
"In tech, I can't believe Google's screwing us, but in Android subreddit, as soon as someone attacks Google, it's, 'You are terrible!'" –Andrew ([103:40])
On NBA Lore
"LeBron at 41, still top 20; that's like iPhone for 20 years, always top product." –Marques ([80:16])
"[Chamberlain’s 100 points]—it's like hitting 1 GHz for the first time, and the US government puts a sanction on it." –David ([92:06])
On Delays and Missed Opportunities
"Apple has committed a 24 second violation with Apple Intelligence...now they've had to hand the ball over to Google Gemini." –Alex ([74:22])
Through an episode packed with fast banter, relentless analogy, and deep dives into both basketball and tech culture, the Waveform team manages to make NBA lore, rules, and culture genuinely accessible to “non-ball-knowers” (and vice versa). The analogies are frequently spot-on, sometimes hilarious, occasionally stretching credulity, yet always bringing the audience into both worlds. If you ever wanted to explain the NBA to your tech-obsessed friends—or vice versa—this episode is the ultimate crossover event.
Listener Challenge:
If you made it to the end: comment “Nixon 4” to prove your stamina!
([113:56])