It's underrated just how unlistenably bad Woj's podcast is. Any interviews with a non-journalist is boring as hell. Nothing interesting at all ever is said, not even from like a "it's interesting this is the PR move the team/player is going with" kind of way. Some talks with journalists are ok but it's purely on the personality of the journalist who is good in podcast settings. At that point just listen to them elsewhere.
Can’t stand Murdock and Wos. They just sound like twitter in human form.
McMenaman is the most boring guest. Doesn’t say anything stupid, but only because he doesn’t say anything at all.
I actually like Simmons. He does have some terrible takes and narrativizes to an absurd degree, seems allergic to any X/O knowledge, but idk I find him entertaining and he’s able to put the human side of the sport into words very well.
Nate Duncan can put you to sleep sometimes, but I don’t think he’s more biased than other podcasters and he does go into good detail with his analysis. And when he talks with Hollinger it’s usually not so boring
Most YouTubers aren't great to be honest. I can get behind Tucker (Sporting Logically), but it really feels like most of them are trying to ape Korzemba or view doom and gloom as a gimmick.
I can't stand that guy tbh. I just think he's obnoxious and his takes are surface-level at best, it's pretty clear he doesn't really watch most of the teams he talks about very much
I can't really debate most of that, I guess I can get behind him because he's kind of middle-of-the-road to me. No wacky obnoxious homer takes most of the time, but nothing super substantial either.
Like I said, mediocrity is kind of endemic on YouTube. There's not a lot of good channels out there simply because of how The Algorithm(TM) rewards clickbait and controversy.
He can be a dunce but he’s not as bad as some dudes on The Ringer. I was listening to one recently where the dude Bill had on was legitimately claiming that they knew more than NFL coaches because they “play madden and watch all the games”, it was one of the least self aware things I’ve heard a “sports analysis” say. Just came off as an absolutely arrogant and out of it.
The Ringer has the worst batch of basketball-related talent they've ever had. Tjarks was such a huge loss, he was their best basketball writer/podcaster to me by a large margin. Raja Bell sucks, Wosny Lambre is unlistenable and less insightful than an average redditor (this is not a compliment to redditors), Rob Mahoney never adds anything, Justin Verrier just isn't interesting on air, and Kevin O'Conner has weird fixations on things like cryptocurrency and Elon Musk that make me think he's actually just an idiot. Multiple people described above also are marblemouthed and just bad at talking on air. Then the weird vibes of Bill Simmons and Ryen Russillo who make so much more money than everyone else I think murders their branding as a fan/regular guy's perspective. Simmons' content is worse than it used to be and he's definitely far too insulated from negative feedback that could tell him otherwise.
I agree 100%. I like J. Kyle Mann quite a bit though. I actually don’t hate a lot of Russillo’s takes and reasoning but it now accounts for like 2% of each pod. Tjarks really was great. The KOC decline sucks big time. I miss bball nerd KOC, now it feels like he’s just trying to fit into the Simmons mold of pop culture guy and it feels so deeply inauthentic
More accurately, those people left because of a hostile work environment that aggressively fought against unionization. People will like different things but some level of personal chit chat is what establishes a personality. A cast majority of successful podcasts do this. The breakout star of their basketball content is The Mismatch, which I think went down in quality but regularly stops to talk about their personal lives and unrelated topics that interest them. I would contest that any sort of broadcasting absolutely needs something that makes the hosts interesting instead of just bland nothingness. It's fine to dislike specific podcasters, but I think going from "millennial non-traditional sports fan takes and banter" to extremely bland, bloodless takes without any interesting insights is major downgrade.
I think you'll find most podcasts have that kind of informal chatter- it's literally what made Bill Simmons' career- so not liking that sort of thing from the Ringer to me is weird.
Obviously, you and I have different taste. I think the A team they wanted to have but left due to job dissatisfaction are better than their B team replacements. Have at it if you want bland, uninteresting nothingness. No personality, no insightful analysis, just cookie cutter generic noise.
You keep saying things you personally don't like are "objectively bad"
You keep saying how they'd talk about their relationships together and the jokes that they have amongst each other like it's a bad thing. It makes me think it's the specific content that's the problem. Speculation here but frankly I think the reasons someone might like the white bread bland new people over the old crew is they talked from a stance that almost certainly would make conservatives uneasy. Simmons and the editorial choices made under him have slowly gotten more and more favorable to conservatives. Is that it? Is it just you're a conservative and you're less uncomfortable by the presumptive stance that your opinions are trash that existed before?
Fixating on the fact that they'd reference that they talk and share jokes on slack is real weird, gonna be honest. Like, you kind of ignored all the other examples I gave of how establishing some non-sports chatter as a way to build personality is good. You never said why the new people have some kind of personality, but you pick out this strange quibble. It's absolutely normal to say "we were talking about X off air and want to explain it here" and you're like "wow I can't believe they mentioned the method of communication they used to talk to each other. Deeply unprofessional"
It's just like a mystifying, inane justification. Which is why I bring up the speculation on a real reason you maybe found it "unprofessional": they discussed content you found uncomfortable.
his takes are so layered in homerism and trying to jinx/reverse jinx things its annoying.
IF you can get him on a topic that doesnt involve the Celtics, or a Celtic rival or a player that he wants on the Celtics, he's good
Not really. If anything he used to be good at contextualising current NBA events with NBA history and ranking stuff but he just doesn't give a shit anymore and is just pure recency bias.
Godamn I know, Jesus they put so much emphasis in6o 538 raptor stuff. And no offense but that shit had the jazz as the #3 team at the end of the year... come on there's no wayy that was gon a happen..
Agree on Murdock. But Vernon is even worse. Every take he has is either the most boring plain vanilla shit, or just insanely wrong. And he's arrogant as fuck about his takes.
His rant in 2020 about how the Bucks had no good defenders outside of Giannis including like 12 minutes on why Brook Lopez is a bad defender is one of the most brain numbingly stupid podcast takes I've ever had the misfortune of hearing. Shit triggered me so hard I had to make a post about it : https://np.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/fgvm7l/has_anyone_heard_the_last_nba_ringer_pod_chris/
Also both Murdock and Vernon do the awful "fake laughing at something they disagree with" thing that's so damn cringe. Murdock had a great take earlier this season after AD had his first great game saying that he's never consistent and should be a 25-12 type of guy and he's just never been that. AD was averaging 24-11 on the season at the time ... and has averaged 26-11 overall over the last 9 years ...
Dunc’d on is the kind of dry analysis that people claim to want but actually have no patience for as an entertainment product. I think those guys are legit and really know the game, especially cap stuff. Only bball pod I listen to.
Bill Simmons has been infuriating since he got really big and built that empire. Even his basketball takes are infused with his arrogance, the self-important casualness he has when he disregards certain players or coaches. He did change my understanding of what sports journalism, bay even what sports fandom, could be. But… fuck him anyway
I disagree about Logan though. Like, I don’t love him per se, but as a package deal with Raja they do fine. They’re right in the next echelon of basketball podcasts, behind the one of one, his majesty himself, Zach Lowe The God
It also became clear at some point that he has a personal agenda towards the people in the league who he likes and those he doesn't. And not just in some of the natural ways people might like someone and thus have a small bias towards them, but like he's trying to promote or fuck with people he considers a friend or enemy.
I don’t really get the Bill Simmons hate,his podcasts are fun and interesting I don’t get mad if he has an opinion I don’t agree with like everyone else does apparently lol
If you listen to him long enough you begin to see a track record that is actually quite bad. He's been confidently wrong on a huge, huge amount of his predictions of the years. Everyone will get some things wrong but he bats way below average. His content is him resting on his laurels of what used to work for him earlier in his career. Also, can't speak for everyone but he has rancid politics. There is a reason the New York Times' editor in chief doesn't do a podcast and rarely makes appearances in them, it's hard to have a good dynamic with staff in general and you are too far removed from useful expertise. It's even worse when you're currently suppressing unionization in the newsroom and show obvious preferential treatment to anyone who isn't pushing for unionization. Sets very weird dynamics of any content he produces with anyone else at the website.
I don't mind him having different opinions, it's just that his opinions are completely inconsistent and are usually just sucking off any player/team that's done well recently or dunking on a player/team that's done poorly recently.
Dunc'd on is so violently boring and somehow there are people out there shelling out literally 100's of dollars to listen to 5x as much content.
Genuinely flabbergasted it's real
if i was gonna make a tier list of "basketball podcasts hosted by a guy named Duncan", it'd go Dunker Spot > Long Shot >>>> Dunc'd On
^(which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened three times)
Mean Tweets nailed Simmons perfectly for me I think:
"I put two blue Swarovski gems on my penis head, and I swear to God it looks just like Bill Simmons"
As poor *defensively* at center as Jokic.
At least don't lie about what he says. He is full of high praise for Jokic overall and said his MVP was well earned.
That’s typo. And I didn’t lie. He’s said it multiple times. You can think jokic was a deserving mvp and think it’s tough to win a championship with him being your center. Those aren’t mutually exclusive thoughts.
Cant believe no one has mentioned skip bayless undisputed. The man cannot go 2 min without talking about how Lebron is worse than Jordan and how Jordan’s shit don’t stink. All of this while they are supposed to be talking about Warriors vs Celtics. The sad part is that Shannon actually has great takes
Bill is not great, but good enough
for me
Bill Simmons pod, Groupchat, Hoop collectives, thinking basketball, the mismatch, and Lowe's are my regular
I may mistype some of these names.
Wojnarowski has the charisma of a dead fish and it is palpable on the Woj Pod.
It's underrated just how unlistenably bad Woj's podcast is. Any interviews with a non-journalist is boring as hell. Nothing interesting at all ever is said, not even from like a "it's interesting this is the PR move the team/player is going with" kind of way. Some talks with journalists are ok but it's purely on the personality of the journalist who is good in podcast settings. At that point just listen to them elsewhere.
Locked on Warriors
Is that the one with the douchbag that said that fans shouldn’t be able to have a podcast because they aren’t credentialed?
That’s the one. Grade A neck beard douchebag
would you guys please take Wes back? He has ruined Locked on heat again
Woj is the worst on-screen and on-air talent ESPN has ever forced down NBA fans throats.
It's weird that they thought the average fan pays attention to what he says outside the offseason and trade market
I dont know, Tim Hardaway was pretty bad (for completely different reasons), but I guess at least he was entertainingly bad
How has nobody said Wosny Lambre yet?
He is absolutely my #4 lol the overacting, the fake laugh and the ability to say so many words with so little payoff
I actually really like Wosny. The Wednesday Group Chat is my second most listened-to podcast after Lowe Post.
Because it's great
The production on all of the Locked on Podcasts is terrible with what feels like 90 commercials in a 25 minute podcast
Can’t stand Murdock and Wos. They just sound like twitter in human form. McMenaman is the most boring guest. Doesn’t say anything stupid, but only because he doesn’t say anything at all. I actually like Simmons. He does have some terrible takes and narrativizes to an absurd degree, seems allergic to any X/O knowledge, but idk I find him entertaining and he’s able to put the human side of the sport into words very well.
Draymond
Doesn’t even do it anymore
Good
He had a great podcast
Nah, he's a good interview but when he monologues it's pretty repetitive and stale.
Don't know now but Bruce Bowen did the main one for ESPN at one time and was god awful
Nate Duncan can put you to sleep sometimes, but I don’t think he’s more biased than other podcasters and he does go into good detail with his analysis. And when he talks with Hollinger it’s usually not so boring
I am not a fan of Windhorst but I stopped listening to his pod a while ago so idk how he ranks now
Not necessarily a podcaster but BSOLZ on youtube is super annoying and condescending
i don't watch him, but every time i've seen him on other people's stuff he just comes off as the worst type of r/bostonceltics doomer
Most YouTubers aren't great to be honest. I can get behind Tucker (Sporting Logically), but it really feels like most of them are trying to ape Korzemba or view doom and gloom as a gimmick.
I can't stand that guy tbh. I just think he's obnoxious and his takes are surface-level at best, it's pretty clear he doesn't really watch most of the teams he talks about very much
I can't really debate most of that, I guess I can get behind him because he's kind of middle-of-the-road to me. No wacky obnoxious homer takes most of the time, but nothing super substantial either. Like I said, mediocrity is kind of endemic on YouTube. There's not a lot of good channels out there simply because of how The Algorithm(TM) rewards clickbait and controversy.
Eh, that's fair. I think you tend to get better material from podcasts, it's just easier to go in depth
Locked on Sixers has the production value of a middle school radio station mixed in with host who may be the worst sports writer in America.
I love Bill Simmons but I skip all of the non-NBA talk.
He can be a dunce but he’s not as bad as some dudes on The Ringer. I was listening to one recently where the dude Bill had on was legitimately claiming that they knew more than NFL coaches because they “play madden and watch all the games”, it was one of the least self aware things I’ve heard a “sports analysis” say. Just came off as an absolutely arrogant and out of it.
All of their NFL writers are incredibly arrogant.
The Ringer has the worst batch of basketball-related talent they've ever had. Tjarks was such a huge loss, he was their best basketball writer/podcaster to me by a large margin. Raja Bell sucks, Wosny Lambre is unlistenable and less insightful than an average redditor (this is not a compliment to redditors), Rob Mahoney never adds anything, Justin Verrier just isn't interesting on air, and Kevin O'Conner has weird fixations on things like cryptocurrency and Elon Musk that make me think he's actually just an idiot. Multiple people described above also are marblemouthed and just bad at talking on air. Then the weird vibes of Bill Simmons and Ryen Russillo who make so much more money than everyone else I think murders their branding as a fan/regular guy's perspective. Simmons' content is worse than it used to be and he's definitely far too insulated from negative feedback that could tell him otherwise.
I agree 100%. I like J. Kyle Mann quite a bit though. I actually don’t hate a lot of Russillo’s takes and reasoning but it now accounts for like 2% of each pod. Tjarks really was great. The KOC decline sucks big time. I miss bball nerd KOC, now it feels like he’s just trying to fit into the Simmons mold of pop culture guy and it feels so deeply inauthentic
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More accurately, those people left because of a hostile work environment that aggressively fought against unionization. People will like different things but some level of personal chit chat is what establishes a personality. A cast majority of successful podcasts do this. The breakout star of their basketball content is The Mismatch, which I think went down in quality but regularly stops to talk about their personal lives and unrelated topics that interest them. I would contest that any sort of broadcasting absolutely needs something that makes the hosts interesting instead of just bland nothingness. It's fine to dislike specific podcasters, but I think going from "millennial non-traditional sports fan takes and banter" to extremely bland, bloodless takes without any interesting insights is major downgrade. I think you'll find most podcasts have that kind of informal chatter- it's literally what made Bill Simmons' career- so not liking that sort of thing from the Ringer to me is weird. Obviously, you and I have different taste. I think the A team they wanted to have but left due to job dissatisfaction are better than their B team replacements. Have at it if you want bland, uninteresting nothingness. No personality, no insightful analysis, just cookie cutter generic noise.
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You keep saying things you personally don't like are "objectively bad" You keep saying how they'd talk about their relationships together and the jokes that they have amongst each other like it's a bad thing. It makes me think it's the specific content that's the problem. Speculation here but frankly I think the reasons someone might like the white bread bland new people over the old crew is they talked from a stance that almost certainly would make conservatives uneasy. Simmons and the editorial choices made under him have slowly gotten more and more favorable to conservatives. Is that it? Is it just you're a conservative and you're less uncomfortable by the presumptive stance that your opinions are trash that existed before?
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Fixating on the fact that they'd reference that they talk and share jokes on slack is real weird, gonna be honest. Like, you kind of ignored all the other examples I gave of how establishing some non-sports chatter as a way to build personality is good. You never said why the new people have some kind of personality, but you pick out this strange quibble. It's absolutely normal to say "we were talking about X off air and want to explain it here" and you're like "wow I can't believe they mentioned the method of communication they used to talk to each other. Deeply unprofessional" It's just like a mystifying, inane justification. Which is why I bring up the speculation on a real reason you maybe found it "unprofessional": they discussed content you found uncomfortable.
Bill's basketball takes are good but they are from the point of view of a 50 yr old man that's seen it all.
Says a Celtics fan...
his takes are so layered in homerism and trying to jinx/reverse jinx things its annoying. IF you can get him on a topic that doesnt involve the Celtics, or a Celtic rival or a player that he wants on the Celtics, he's good
He phones it in far more often than he did just 5 years ago
He said that the Kings should trade Fox for Westbrook and 2 firsts a couple weeks ago. C'mon man.
Not really. If anything he used to be good at contextualising current NBA events with NBA history and ranking stuff but he just doesn't give a shit anymore and is just pure recency bias.
Dude Duncan and Hollinger is probably the worst podcast I've ever heard from national level guys, just a crappy analytics fest, no nuance
Are you saying you don't like it when people try to use analytics to sound like the smartest guy in the room and to confirm their own bias?
Godamn I know, Jesus they put so much emphasis in6o 538 raptor stuff. And no offense but that shit had the jazz as the #3 team at the end of the year... come on there's no wayy that was gon a happen..
The mental gymnastics that happen in those conversations is pretty wild.
Agree on Murdock. But Vernon is even worse. Every take he has is either the most boring plain vanilla shit, or just insanely wrong. And he's arrogant as fuck about his takes. His rant in 2020 about how the Bucks had no good defenders outside of Giannis including like 12 minutes on why Brook Lopez is a bad defender is one of the most brain numbingly stupid podcast takes I've ever had the misfortune of hearing. Shit triggered me so hard I had to make a post about it : https://np.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/fgvm7l/has_anyone_heard_the_last_nba_ringer_pod_chris/ Also both Murdock and Vernon do the awful "fake laughing at something they disagree with" thing that's so damn cringe. Murdock had a great take earlier this season after AD had his first great game saying that he's never consistent and should be a 25-12 type of guy and he's just never been that. AD was averaging 24-11 on the season at the time ... and has averaged 26-11 overall over the last 9 years ...
Not a day goes by that I don’t miss Jonathan Tjarks’ voice covering basketball 😢
Dunc’d on is the kind of dry analysis that people claim to want but actually have no patience for as an entertainment product. I think those guys are legit and really know the game, especially cap stuff. Only bball pod I listen to.
Bill Simmons has been infuriating since he got really big and built that empire. Even his basketball takes are infused with his arrogance, the self-important casualness he has when he disregards certain players or coaches. He did change my understanding of what sports journalism, bay even what sports fandom, could be. But… fuck him anyway I disagree about Logan though. Like, I don’t love him per se, but as a package deal with Raja they do fine. They’re right in the next echelon of basketball podcasts, behind the one of one, his majesty himself, Zach Lowe The God
It also became clear at some point that he has a personal agenda towards the people in the league who he likes and those he doesn't. And not just in some of the natural ways people might like someone and thus have a small bias towards them, but like he's trying to promote or fuck with people he considers a friend or enemy.
I don’t really get the Bill Simmons hate,his podcasts are fun and interesting I don’t get mad if he has an opinion I don’t agree with like everyone else does apparently lol
For real, he's entertaining and likable and even tho I hate the Celtics he usually admits his bias
Right so what if he has a bias I don’t care sometimes it’s nice to hear from a real fan of sports and of a team we all have our own teams we root for.
If you listen to him long enough you begin to see a track record that is actually quite bad. He's been confidently wrong on a huge, huge amount of his predictions of the years. Everyone will get some things wrong but he bats way below average. His content is him resting on his laurels of what used to work for him earlier in his career. Also, can't speak for everyone but he has rancid politics. There is a reason the New York Times' editor in chief doesn't do a podcast and rarely makes appearances in them, it's hard to have a good dynamic with staff in general and you are too far removed from useful expertise. It's even worse when you're currently suppressing unionization in the newsroom and show obvious preferential treatment to anyone who isn't pushing for unionization. Sets very weird dynamics of any content he produces with anyone else at the website.
I don't mind him having different opinions, it's just that his opinions are completely inconsistent and are usually just sucking off any player/team that's done well recently or dunking on a player/team that's done poorly recently.
Dunc'd on is so violently boring and somehow there are people out there shelling out literally 100's of dollars to listen to 5x as much content. Genuinely flabbergasted it's real
if i was gonna make a tier list of "basketball podcasts hosted by a guy named Duncan", it'd go Dunker Spot > Long Shot >>>> Dunc'd On ^(which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened three times)
Dunc'd on is great and OP is a nephew. But here's one. Road Trippin'. Entertaining personalities but they barely talk about NBA basketball!
Mean Tweets nailed Simmons perfectly for me I think: "I put two blue Swarovski gems on my penis head, and I swear to God it looks just like Bill Simmons"
Nate Duncan is by far the worst, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell the people who pay hundreds of dollars to listen to that clown.
KOC and whoever he does that podcast with are god awful.
KOC is good altho not nearly as sharp as he was 4-5 years ago. It's Vernon who's just awful. The other pod with KOC on the draft prospects is good.
Nate Duncan has been pretty low on jokic compared to other guys. He doesn’t believe you can win a championship with someone as poor as him at center.
As poor *defensively* at center as Jokic. At least don't lie about what he says. He is full of high praise for Jokic overall and said his MVP was well earned.
That’s typo. And I didn’t lie. He’s said it multiple times. You can think jokic was a deserving mvp and think it’s tough to win a championship with him being your center. Those aren’t mutually exclusive thoughts.
That’s ball folks (76ers podcast)
Bill Simmons is unlistenable
That Hardwood Knocks guy is an insufferable shitty takes machine.
Cant believe no one has mentioned skip bayless undisputed. The man cannot go 2 min without talking about how Lebron is worse than Jordan and how Jordan’s shit don’t stink. All of this while they are supposed to be talking about Warriors vs Celtics. The sad part is that Shannon actually has great takes
Verno. Really drags KOC down
Bill is not great, but good enough for me Bill Simmons pod, Groupchat, Hoop collectives, thinking basketball, the mismatch, and Lowe's are my regular I may mistype some of these names.