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The Road to Modern Basketball, Part Two: How Dribbling Became A Thing · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
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  Speaker 1: show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: tuning in. Let's hear it four our super producer Max
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  Speaker 1: the ref Williams.
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  Speaker 2: The Incorrigible.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, so, I absolutely, with all passions, hate threads and
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  Speaker 3: umpires like I'm waiting for technology to make them like irrelevant.
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  Speaker 4: Right, Well, what's the one where you're like underwear snitcher? No,
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  Speaker 4: that's picture. But there there are various rhymy kind of
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  Speaker 4: ways of maligning the Uh.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, I hate themselves. It seems like a danger. But
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  Speaker 2: do you not acknowledge if their their net?
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  Speaker 3: I mean I'm waiting for the purpose I mean, I
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  Speaker 3: I baseball and parts of the worst ones. They their
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  Speaker 3: purpose they believe is for everyone to watch them, don't.
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  Speaker 5: I mean, look, we're the star of the show.
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  Speaker 3: No one else take away from us, watch us, which
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  Speaker 3: they're just you know they take away from the game.
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  Speaker 2: Did they're an officiants? Did did something happen?
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  Speaker 3: I as brian O Nora who finds note listens. Brian
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  Speaker 3: O Nora is currently under investigation for soliciting a prostitute
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  Speaker 3: as and he got caught by the FBI for in
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  Speaker 3: a sting.
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  Speaker 2: From sex worker if you will.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, so that's saying what the FBI said, Cleveland, Ohio.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, well, before you introduce those guys, I said the
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  Speaker 1: P word. Before you introduce those guys, let us introduce ourselves.
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  Speaker 2: Did this is? This is part two of what is
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  Speaker 2: becoming an increasingly.
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  Speaker 1: Spicy series, very spicy history of basketball.
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  Speaker 2: A lot of hot takes and tangents.
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  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that's a good one. Yeah really, really, I'm serious.
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  Speaker 4: You know, I'm the first to admit that I am
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  Speaker 4: not a big sports guy, but I always have always
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  Speaker 4: found basketball to be the most enjoyable and watchable of
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  Speaker 4: all of the sports.
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  Speaker 2: And the history of.
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  Speaker 4: It is just as enjoyable and listenable, you know. And
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  Speaker 4: I think you guys are going to enjoy this part
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  Speaker 4: too a lot. So, as as we know, basketball became
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  Speaker 4: kind of a big deal, and it happened relatively quickly.
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  Speaker 4: I believe the first public game was played in a
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  Speaker 4: YMCA gym and was recorded or reported on by the
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  Speaker 4: Springfield Republican, and that was on March twelfth of eighteen
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  Speaker 4: ninety two. We had around two hundred folks show up
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  Speaker 4: to watch the game. Despite having never heard of it
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  Speaker 4: before and not having previously existed. When that don't we
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  Speaker 4: don't have enough of that, man, we don't have like
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  Speaker 4: a new sport like ooh, you guys, hear about the
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  Speaker 4: new sport.
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  Speaker 2: That'd be cool.
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  Speaker 4: I might, I might get in on that, you know,
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  Speaker 4: like rollerball or you know, like the running man.
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  Speaker 2: That'd be cool. I yeah, I love.
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  Speaker 1: I love the idea of new sports being invented. There
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  Speaker 1: are a lot of quirky ones.
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  Speaker 2: Is big.
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  Speaker 4: It's not new, but it's it's it's achieved insane popularity
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  Speaker 4: in the last handful of years. But I think it
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  Speaker 4: is sort of a new ish game. It's it's styled
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  Speaker 4: on kind of. It's like a full court version of
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  Speaker 4: ping pong, isn't it kind of?
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  Speaker 2: You could go in the other direction.
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  Speaker 1: You could say that pickleball is to tennis what putt
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  Speaker 1: putt is to golf, you know. And I say that
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  Speaker 1: because a good friend of mine who actually listens to
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  Speaker 1: stuff they want you to know, is a a retired
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  Speaker 1: marine who is now a tennis coach.
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  Speaker 2: He's the coolest dude.
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  Speaker 1: I met him just because we hang out the local
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  Speaker 1: pizza place and he's got some hot takes. You dig him,
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  Speaker 1: but he he hit me up a few weeks of gosh,
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  Speaker 1: a few months ago actually, because he teaches tennis and
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  Speaker 1: he's furious about the rise of pickleball, and it will
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  Speaker 1: hit me up and we'll say steel my thunder Man.
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  Speaker 1: He's like Ben Well because he teaches pickleball too, and
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  Speaker 1: he's like, these people have no respect for the game.
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  Speaker 1: It's just a bunch of pickleballers out here. And I'm like, wow, you,
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  Speaker 1: thank you.
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  Speaker 4: Did you hear that pickleball's become so popular, but that
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  Speaker 4: it's a lot of these dead malls that they are,
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  Speaker 4: like big box stores are being converted into pickleball arenas.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, it's solving a problem, I guess, because what
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  Speaker 4: else are they going to do with those things?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're also uh, there are a lot of parody
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  Speaker 1: songs about it. MPR did a great piece on it
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  Speaker 1: where they talked about pickleball parody songs.
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  Speaker 4: There is There was like a limited run maybe it
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  Speaker 4: was a YouTube series with starring Paul Sheer and his
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  Speaker 4: wife June Diane Raphael that was like a lot of
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  Speaker 4: those like Lonely Island kind of adjacent La comedian folks
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  Speaker 4: or what was it human giant some of those guys. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: there's like a you know, sort of like a basketball
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  Speaker 4: kind of pickleball kind of send up. But yeah, I
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  Speaker 4: mean basketball really took off pretty quickly, like, you know,
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  Speaker 4: just within a couple of weeks after this original game.
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  Speaker 4: The positives of it were immediately clocked by those in
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  Speaker 4: the field of I guess physical education. You know, they
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  Speaker 4: acknowledged that folks that play and that were good at
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  Speaker 4: it had to have, you know, certain agility and sportsmanship
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  Speaker 4: and hand eye coordination and stuff. It kind of combined
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  Speaker 4: some things that existed in other popular sports, but it
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  Speaker 4: was inherently a little bit less brutish, you know, right.
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  Speaker 1: There was this emphasis on agility, on teamwork, on nimbleness,
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  Speaker 1: as he said, and students who went to other schools
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  Speaker 1: would go to their own YMCAs and say, hey, we
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  Speaker 1: got to start playing this, you know what I mean.
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  Speaker 1: Rugby and face slap is for the birds. Face lap
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  Speaker 1: was a very popular game at the time. Jeez, oh
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  Speaker 1: my god.
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  Speaker 4: Shout out to I think someone that you know as well,
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  Speaker 4: Gabby Watts, who's a local musician and comedian and just
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  Speaker 4: launched a podcast that I think ridiculous historians would be
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: a fan of It's called American filth, and it's all
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: about it's like a history podcast, but it's very X rated.
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  Speaker 2: It's like and she recently did an episode.
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  Speaker 4: On a little known American sport called Rough and Tumble,
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  Speaker 4: which in where it which is basically fight club. It
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  Speaker 4: involved like eye gouging and things like that. Basically it's
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  Speaker 4: like a fight to the death. But it was very
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  Speaker 4: popular at a time in the probably the early eighteen hundred's.
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  Speaker 2: Face slap was exactly what it sounds like.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I may or may not have made that up,
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  Speaker 1: but yeah, there's a lot of there are a lot
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  Speaker 1: of weird sports out there. And I got to say
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  Speaker 1: basketball inspires a lot of very specific versions of basketball.
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  Speaker 1: You know, you've got people who are differently able playing basketball.
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  Speaker 2: You've got that's true. Yeah, and then you've.
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  Speaker 1: Also got basketball where people just put their own weird
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  Speaker 1: rules in.
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  Speaker 2: Of course, well, and you can do one on one,
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  Speaker 2: you can do smaller tea.
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  Speaker 4: You know, it's a lot like since you know, obviously
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  Speaker 4: there are positions and stuff.
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  Speaker 2: But it's pretty nimble.
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  Speaker 4: Again, like I was saying earlier, not only do you
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  Speaker 4: have to be physically pretty nimble to like maneuver around
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  Speaker 4: the is malleable, you know what I mean? Like there
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  Speaker 4: there are different ways of being and I don't think
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  Speaker 4: we mentioned this with that first game that was reported
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  Speaker 4: on in eighteen ninety two was between students and the
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  Speaker 4: teachers at that particular Ymcagim and I believe the students
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  Speaker 4: won five to one, much more interesting score than what's
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  Speaker 4: reported for that first ever basketball game one to nothing.
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  Speaker 2: But still, gosh, it seems like the teachers just got trounced.
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  Speaker 4: And the article in the Springfield Republican credited the teachers
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  Speaker 4: with having agility, but the students having science.
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  Speaker 2: Ye that they were younger.
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  Speaker 4: I guess their physical prowess is what led them to win.
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  Speaker 1: I think it meant more that they had a better
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  Speaker 1: understanding of the game. Okay, so they knew when to
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  Speaker 1: pass to whom right and how to position players and stuff,
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  Speaker 1: just because they have played more often than the teachers
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  Speaker 1: who were at best watching the game.
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  Speaker 2: So we still don't.
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  Speaker 1: Know when exactly the first intercollegiate basketball game occurred. We
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  Speaker 1: know that high schools began introducing it in the early
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  Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. By nineteen oh five, basketball was officially recognized
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  Speaker 1: as the go to winter sport, and in eighteen ninety three,
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  Speaker 1: two college newspaper articles published separate recordings of different college
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  Speaker 1: basketball teams go into court with each other. So we
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  Speaker 1: don't know exactly who was first, but we know that
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  Speaker 1: it's set one heck of a precedent.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, we haven't really heard much of did
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  Speaker 4: Nay Smith, like patent this did he is this intellectual
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  Speaker 4: property that's protected when you invent a game. He wrote
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  Speaker 4: down the rules, he pinned them to the wall. I mean,
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  Speaker 4: you know, technically you can claim a copyright just by
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  Speaker 4: committeed something to any media. You know, you can say
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  Speaker 4: I wrote the song because I wrote it down first
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  Speaker 4: or whatever.
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  Speaker 2: But even if you don't file.
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  Speaker 4: But I'm just wondering, like, did he become a rich
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  Speaker 4: man off of this in his lifetime.
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  Speaker 1: Or you know, if that's a good question here. He
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  Speaker 1: definitely in the public mind. He definitely was the father
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  Speaker 1: of basketball, and anytime somebody brought it up, they brought
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  Speaker 1: him up. But I don't know if it's like a
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  Speaker 1: Nike swoosh situation.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's also sort of like whoever was the
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  Speaker 4: first that quote invented the fidget?
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  Speaker 2: Spinner.
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  Speaker 4: We don't know who that person is because either they
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  Speaker 4: didn't patent it or it was ununique enough that it
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  Speaker 4: could be done a bunch of different ways. And I
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  Speaker 4: think that's probably true of a game. You can't really
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  Speaker 4: say you can't play my game unless you pay me.
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  Speaker 4: That's not really how games work. Yeah, it's just the
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  Speaker 4: way you would have to approach that. As you could say,
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  Speaker 4: you can't televise my game without getting cut, or you
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  Speaker 4: can't hold a thing where people pay to watch you
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  Speaker 4: play it, but you can't stop people from throwing a
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  Speaker 4: ball around.
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  Speaker 2: No.
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  Speaker 4: I just don't get the sense that Nace Smith had
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  Speaker 4: any quote unquote ownership over basketball, like as a trademark er,
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  Speaker 4: as like a concept, you know what I mean.
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  Speaker 2: I think he was. I think he was kind of
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  Speaker 2: driven by the mission. He just wanted to give it
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  Speaker 2: to the world.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he felt really interested in spreading it.
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  Speaker 1: In eighteen ninety eight, he becomes the first official men's
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  Speaker 1: basketball coach at the University of Kansas. He is also,
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  Speaker 1: at this point the only coach in the program's history
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  Speaker 1: to have a losing record, and while he is while
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  Speaker 1: he is coaching these college students, he watches his original
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  Speaker 1: thirteen rules evolve. Eventually they do cut the bottoms out
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  Speaker 1: of the peach baskets and transform them to hoops, and
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  Speaker 1: free throws eventually become part of the game. Nineteen oh one,
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  Speaker 1: dribbling is introduced, and that meant that now you can
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  Speaker 1: run with the ball, you just have to bounce it.
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  Speaker 1: At the same time, Nay Smith originally said, look, the
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  Speaker 1: size of your basketball team can be anywhere from three
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  Speaker 1: to get this forty players. And then they said, nah,
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  Speaker 1: it's crazy, man, We're gonna do five people on each squad.
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  Speaker 1: And that makes a lot more sense. The sports spreads everywhere,
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  Speaker 1: it goes viral, as they would say, these days, you
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  Speaker 1: see professional leagues forming across the country, basketball fans or
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  Speaker 1: cheering on their hometown teams, so.
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  Speaker 2: The game starts spreading like wildfire.
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  Speaker 4: And yeah, man, that conversation about the whole ownership of
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  Speaker 4: the sport really intrigues me because obviously, once you start
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  Speaker 4: getting into professional leagues, that's when there's money to be
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  Speaker 4: made and like endorsements to be had and all that stuff.
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  Speaker 4: And I was just doing a kind of a cursory
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  Speaker 4: Google and it doesn't seem like Nay Smith.
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  Speaker 2: Like cleaned up, like no money in his life.
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  Speaker 4: He didn't become a coach in Kansas later to hilarious effect,
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  Speaker 4: which we'll get to when the time is right.
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  Speaker 2: But this is it.
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  Speaker 4: This is when you know basketball really comes into its own,
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  Speaker 4: and you know, we're on the beginning the very end
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  Speaker 4: of the eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, we start to
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  Speaker 4: see the formations of leagues in the US. Like the
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  Speaker 4: first one is the National Basketball League, which is you know,
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  Speaker 4: I guess a precursor to the NBA in some ways.
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  Speaker 1: There were a couple of different leagues. We don't have
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  Speaker 1: to get two two in the leads, but just the
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  Speaker 1: high level stuff. The first professional league was the NBL
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  Speaker 1: National Basketball League that was six teams up in the Northeast,
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  Speaker 1: and that league only lasted about five years. It dissolved
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen oh four, and then three decades passed until
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  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven and a new league occurred. And this
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  Speaker 1: league had corporate support. They had Goodyear, fire Stone and
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  Speaker 1: General Electric footing the bills.
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  Speaker 4: And it's really interesting the National Geographic article that we
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  Speaker 4: source for this, which is behind a paywell, I'm having
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  Speaker 4: a hard time loading it up to get the writer
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  Speaker 4: credit where credit is due. But if you if you
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  Speaker 4: have a subscription type in basketball, it's like the title
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  Speaker 4: is something like from peach baskets to something that is
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  Speaker 4: now below a black square. But they describe it as
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  Speaker 4: the corporations owning the teams like it, like it's bigger
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: than just they're sponsored by These are like corporately held leagues,
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  Speaker 4: which I think is very interesting.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a it's a new evolution for sure. And
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  Speaker 1: the game continued to involve because as it became more popular,
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  Speaker 1: more and more people were paying attention to it, and
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  Speaker 1: they were pointing out things that they thought could improve
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  Speaker 1: the rules. So not all of Naysmith's ideas were winners.
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  Speaker 1: This is what we this is what we talked about.
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  Speaker 1: Some of some of this stuff in his head was weird.
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  Speaker 1: One of the rules was when the ball goes out
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  Speaker 1: of bounds, it's thrown into field by the first person
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  Speaker 1: touching it. Does that mean that you just die like
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  Speaker 1: ten dudes running for this ball.
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  Speaker 4: It also goes against kind of the spirit of the
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  Speaker 4: whole non contact sport thing. I just picture like a
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  Speaker 4: cartoon where it's just a dog pile of everyone just
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  Speaker 4: jumping on the thing and piling on top of each
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  Speaker 4: other and like a you know, swirling like dirt, kind
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  Speaker 4: of dust. And then you see a player crawl out
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  Speaker 4: of the melee and get dragged back in by their leg. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: that's not a winner, as let's see. Eric Zimmerman, who
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  Speaker 4: is a professor of game design and game theory, notes
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  Speaker 4: He also noted that it was unclear. The rule was
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  Speaker 4: very vague, and I think did they replaced this with
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: like a tip off or something now or maybe it's
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: just Max helping me out here.
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  Speaker 2: What is the sort of replacement the modern replacement?
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  Speaker 3: So now it's the last person who touched the ball,
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  Speaker 3: the other team gets the ball. So if like you
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  Speaker 3: and me are playing against the other and you touched
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  Speaker 3: the ball out of bounds, I get the ball.
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  Speaker 2: That makes sense, easy penalty, right and just it changes.
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  Speaker 1: Sides and it and it incentivizes you not knock the
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  Speaker 1: ball out about absolute which is smarter.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
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  Speaker 1: So one example of this is stuff like early YMCA games.
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  Speaker 1: The ball landed in a balcony and one team sprinted
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  Speaker 1: up the stairs to get it, and then two of
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  Speaker 1: the players on the other team boosted a third guy
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  Speaker 1: up so he could climb on the balcony the ball.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, get the ball first. Yeah, shout out to Jack
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  Speaker 2: and Miles.
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  Speaker 4: There was another tale of like a kid who strikes
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  Speaker 4: me as maybe one of the ones that you were
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  Speaker 4: sort of characterizing as like the one that would just
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: come a swink, come in. Yeah, tough home life, got
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  Speaker 4: a really wicked scar.
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  Speaker 2: Lloyd. Where is this kid's name?
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  Speaker 4: And Nate Smith writes about this, and I believe in
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  Speaker 4: his in his memoir that this kid took quote great
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  Speaker 4: pleasure when in a jovial move in exhibiting a scar
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  Speaker 4: that he got when he dives for the ball and
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: came into contact with the sharp corner of a radiator.
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  Speaker 4: See that rule to me feels like a holdover from
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  Speaker 4: something like rugby, you know, or like a like a
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  Speaker 4: dog pile kind of tackle situation, which again goes against
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  Speaker 4: the spirit of the type of game that Nate Smith
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  Speaker 4: was trying to create.
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  Speaker 3: And to jump in here like one thing that basketball
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  Speaker 3: and baseball and football all have. It's very different than
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  Speaker 3: like a rugby or a soccer. Is there sports that
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  Speaker 3: I don't know got invented with clocks were in greater
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  Speaker 3: greater supply, So there's pauses and goes, pauses, and goes.
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  Speaker 3: We watch rugby and watch soccer. It's just constantly going
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  Speaker 3: a moving thing like soccer. They're like, oh, we don't
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  Speaker 3: stop in soccer, and the clock never stopped.
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  Speaker 2: What he's saying, they were just lousy with clocks.
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  Speaker 4: In the old days, there were just clocks falling out
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  Speaker 4: of the sky, which this is a time where clocks
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  Speaker 4: were more plentiful.
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  Speaker 2: I don't understand.
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  Speaker 3: What I'm saying is in sports like basketball, you can pause,
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  Speaker 3: you can stop the action. But it feels like at
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  Speaker 3: this point now it feels more like a soccer or
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  Speaker 3: rugby where it's like you.
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  Speaker 5: Don't stop, you just keep going.
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  Speaker 3: I see, because I mean the fifteen minute clock will
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  Speaker 3: probably just hit start and they just played for fifteen minutes,
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  Speaker 3: and then if the ball rolls out of bound, clocks
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  Speaker 3: keeps going.
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  Speaker 5: Now, basketball you stop the clock if it goes out
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  Speaker 5: of bounce.
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  Speaker 2: And of course think about it. Think about this, folks.
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  Speaker 1: If you were absolutely unfamiliar with basketball and you watched
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: the first game, probably one of the weirdest things for
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: you is going to be dribbling.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: Well, it's a weird word to describe bouncing of the ball.
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: I wonder where that came from. Would love a little
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: bit of etymology behind dribbling. It's very visual if you
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: think about it, and it is as though the ball
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: were some sort of fluid that is just kind of
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: dripping out of your hand repeatedly and back up like
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: a bead of moisture of some guy.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: Then I'm grossing myself out.
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: But yeah, like nas Smith's whole rule about not moving
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: with the ball did not include discussion of how you
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: could move with the ball, right, excuse me, there.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Was no moving with the ball. No.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Once you had the ball, you had to wait for
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: someone to run to a better position.
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: Which is kind of dull, right, Like I mean, it
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: doesn't add much dynamism to the game. It doesn't add
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: much like movement. It sort of cuts down on a
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: lot of the things that make watching sports fun.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: And it feels like a pe teacher, yeah game right.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: It feels like the teacher saying, look, I've got these
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: kids for two hours and I can't let them get.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: Her get I got a wicket hangover, yeah exactly, and
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: I am so hungover.
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: These are mad men drinking days, you know. There he
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: had a big old carafe of gin. You know in
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: his office, nothing else.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Gin and coffee mixed in together at room temperature.
• 18:48
  Speaker 5: Oh.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: The place across the street, you know, you know, folks
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: were recording in the office more and more often though.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: The place across the street has coffee lemonade, which I've
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: never heard of. I'm gonna go try it after we record.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: I want to try it. You want to go? Oh, definitely,
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: you want to go? Max? Absolutely? Okay, see, well so
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: so Steve. It's pouring down rainstill.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: But yeah, this was an important addition because a lot
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: of eyes were on the game now, a lot of scrutiny,
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: and we have now Ding Ding Ding corporate sponsorships, and
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: there's a lot of money at stake, so they there
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: are certain interests in making the game as competitive and
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: interesting to watch as possible.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: It's becoming a spectator sport.
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: It's no longer relegated to the to the gym, you know,
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: with the with the incorrigibles.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: And Natesmith feels like at some points he has a
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: dark knight of the soul and he wonders whether people
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: have just taken his idea and twisted it, perverted it
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: into something different. The idea of a player not being
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: able to run with the ball is what he predicated
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: the entire sport of basketball on. And it wasn't until
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the Yale basketball team introduced dribbling and dribbling, you know,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: basically fall and drops.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Right, that's what it is. Okay, So I was I
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: was barking up the right. So it was.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: It was very it was a very legalistic kind of
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: work around because they're like, I'm holding the ball, I
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: can't walk.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Bounce I'm walking because I'm now not holding the ball.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Bounce I'm walking. Still I'm not holding the ball.
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: And it may have been more of a byproduct of it,
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: but it's also an opportunity to do some cool fancy footwork,
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Dribble it between your legs,
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: do a little fake outs and stuff. And I mean,
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: I don't think that was necessarily the intent. It's a
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: good example of something that's established for a very functional
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: reason that then becomes a sort of stylistic feature of
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: the game that makes it a way of flexing, a
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: way of kind of a spectacle peacocking around.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: And these these guys at Yale, at the Yale basketball
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: team around eighteen ninety six, they referred to dribbling first
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: as passing to themselves.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: What a bunch of law school Yeah, but that also
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: that makes me think of something else.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was a bunch of school kids though
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: to say that, like, no, I'm not walking with the ball.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: I wasn't holding it when I stepped. Oh I'm sorry,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: I'm a child.
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: All these Yale's in there, fancy shoes, yes, and dapper haircuts.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: They're who's who columns in the in the local paper,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: society pages exactly, And so dribbling might have ended there
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: with just a clever loophole, right, But everybody kind of agreed,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: and even Naismith eventually agreed that dribbling was a really
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: cool idea.
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: It is, like, like you say, it led to so
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: many other you know, sort of byproducts. Did we mention
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: that these Yale guys were really good, that they were
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: sort of the top, Yeah, they were, they were very Yeah,
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: so we're sort of what I mean, I'm sort of
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: in my head just sort of laughing at the idea
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: of late eighteen hundreds Yale students being the best at basketball,
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: because again, it just hadn't hit the cultural high water
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: mark that they ultimately would.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: It was still very early days, capital Capitol shots, capital
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: basket there, old chum, did they even let black people
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: play basketball in these days? I didn't think so. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah and again yeah, I mean again, I'm not saying
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: only black people are great basketball players, but it is
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: such an important part of like hip hop culture, shoe
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: culture and all of this stuff, you know, and that
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: is really the identity that we have for it now,
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: and it's just you really wouldn't think of it any
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: other way, and then it's just.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: So white bread and dull. The early stages of basketball sports.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Have done a lot to improve the state of racial
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: discrimination in America, which continues today obviously.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: But then they also have their their issues. Oh they're
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: huge in yeah, you know, who.
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: Actually owns the teams and some of the perhaps they
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: say that's right, and also just the taking advantage at
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: times of of you know, young athletes and.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Things like that, college athletes not getting paid, not.
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: Getting paid, and also just the fact that you can
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: have a very lucrative career or a very like promising
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: career and then get injured to the point of you
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: have no backup plan and like it's like you're kind.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Of toast right your shelf life in that career can
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: be pretty especially in college.
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: You can get injured to the point where it ruins
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: your prospects of a professional career before you even have
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: a chance to get paid. I think the whole not
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: paying college students anything and he making it illegal for
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: them to it's a real selling.
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, well, it has been getting better.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: I heard it, had, I heard it had.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: Also, I wanted to cross reference this first black basket
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: professional basketball player, first black basketball player in the NBA
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: with Earl Lloyd, and it wasn't until make sure I
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: get the state right October thirty first. Nineteen fifty's a
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: long time.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: So the sport got way better in the fifties. The Also,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: I want to give a shot to Nay Smith quote
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: when he came around to dribbling, he called that one
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: of the most spectacular and exciting maneuvers in basketball.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: And that's the way he's going to sound now. It's
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: just difference. I say, swimming. Snosberry's tastes like Snosberry. I
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: don't know why. He's like a Willy Walker. Ask figure
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: in minds and he knew.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: The reason he was saying dribbling was better is because
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: he heard he had seen other attempts to try to
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: bring movement to the game. He said players would lose
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: possession of the ball voluntarily, by which means they dropped
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: it and they would roll it somewhere.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: That's kind of boring to watch.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Dribbling was a much more sophisticated version of this tactic,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: and later people like philosopher doctor Sean Klein would call
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: it a subversion. Dribbling as a subversion. They were adhering
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: to the rules the yelites, but they were subverting the
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: expectations of how those rules.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Would be followed.
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: Hey, Klein, stay in your lane. Stick to talking about
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: play nerds. Yeah, you know, what do you know about sport? Yeah,
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: you can't dribble, nietzschee bro it's a subversion that does
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: sound like something professor of philosophy.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: You you guys saw that fantastic show Kunk on Earth.
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: I have heard of it, and I know it's related
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: to a really great British guy who wrote Black Black.
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: I read it like a bunch of Charlie Brooker. Yeah,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: that's you. You especially on Netflix now.
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: And I thank you for reminding me because lately I
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: have been running dry in that phase where you just
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: scroll for forty five minutes and you have subscriptions to everything,
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: but yet there's nothing for you.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: And it's very disheartening.
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: We're in an age of oversaturation that yet feels like
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: we have no options at all.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I feel it somehow a mean statement about my intelligence.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: If I look on Criterion channel, I'm like, I don't
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: feel like watching any of these.
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: I do love Criteria. I love it recently. Why there's
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: a great collection on there. I think you'd like, Ben.
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: It's a Roger Korman and directed all of these Edgar
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: Allan Poe adaptations, because I guess it was just like
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: free intellectual property, you know, because it was like in
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: the public domain. And some of them like share the
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: same sets, like Pitt in the Pendulum and follow the
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: House of Usher clearly reuse some of the same spooky
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: skeletons in the Crypt, but they're like really well done.
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: And you know, Roger Corman, of course was a super
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: important creature feature kind of director. He gave a lot
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: of the best, biggest, you know, blockbuster directors their start,
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: like James Cameron, I think worked on The Cruise with
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: him and stuff, and you know, he was real scrappy
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: and kind of figured out how to make use of
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: what he had. But those Poe adaptations are great, and
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: there's like ten of them, and the Vincent Price is
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: in almost every one of them.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: All. I really appreciate that.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: No, I'm going to check those out, and when you
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: check out Kunk on Earth, I don't want to split up.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: I've been meaning to, and thank you for the reminder.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: I'll give you a heads up. Could you like this?
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: So Kunk talks to a lot of top notch experts
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: on history of very specific aspects.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Kunk has sort of like an explica. She's like Steve
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Colbert when he's doing the Cobert Rapport.
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: Okay, but it's sort of like a blank slate, kind
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: of like figuring things out, like kind of like taking
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: the stock of what this earth is all about.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: There, kind of.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Aggressive with the profound confidence of the unshakeably stupid. There
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: you got is the best way to describe Kunk as
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: a character.
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: I got it.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: But anyway, there's this one guy's a philosopher that she
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: talks to who is not enjoying the conversation, and he's hilarious.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: That's what I think of whenever I hear about a
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: philosopher now, oh gosh, okay, just text me when you
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: watch it.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: I will so well.
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: For some time, when you were saying kunk on Earth,
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: I pictured it like a Morgan Mindy kind of situation
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: where it's sort of like an alien taking in like
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: this absurd planet. But it does not seem like it's
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: that at all, but it sounds amazing. So this idea
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: of dribbling being kind of not popular to some right.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: They're always going to be you know, some quote unquote
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: traditionalist or people who say, hey, that's again the rules,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: and they're right, it is kind of against the rules.
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: But if I describe this amorl though, like this philosopher
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: guy Klin, he's like, you referred to the a moral
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: underpinnings of dribbling, right.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And then and then says later says, despite this,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: you know, more than a century after the invention of dribbling,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: it's safe to say basketball is better thanks to it,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: and points this out, which we see in so many things.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Client says, in the creation of any game, there are gaps.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: The players discover, these ambiguities and vagueness and the rules.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: It's the way that the game evolves, which I think
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: is a fair point. Now it is, and I was
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: mischaracterizing Clin. He wasn't saying that he was against it.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: He was just describing kind of.
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: The evolution of this and how yeah, it technically was
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: changing the rules, but it was, like he said, more
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: flipping them a little bit and making it a little
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: more interesting.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: I'm still thinking about Clin now. I like the idea
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: of this being Klein's Mary mission in life is to
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: stop drippling, because it's.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: To end dribbling. This shall not stand.
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: Only classic basketball is Professor Natesmith intended exactly only with
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: peach baskets.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: And they're like, all right, doctor, let's get your back
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: to the bus.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: Let's get Yeah.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: So originally to let's talk about the ball. Originally the
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: soccer ball, right, yeah, it was a soccer ball, and
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: later Naismith asked a former baseball pitcher named A. G.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Spaulding to create a ball specifically for basketball.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: I've heard of him, You have at least heard of
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: the name.
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: It looked way different than the modern basketball today. It
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: had uh suutures on it, you know, yeah, Frank.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Like a medicine ball.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, very that's a great comparison. And because
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: this stitched up scar basically running down the middle of it,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: it affected how the ball moved, so you had to
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: try to bounce it.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: On the flat part, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: And it's funny though, because the modern basketball still does
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: have those kind of visual seams, like I don't know
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: if they're actually doing anything.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: It's obviously all molded, you know, and all of that.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: There's a pattern to it because it is consistently around
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: the you know, it's spread in a consistent design around
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: the ball. But to your point, it does remind me
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: of when you go to a fast food place and
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: you can tell they put fake grill marks on the thing.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: That's right. It feels like fake grill marks. That's so funny, man. Yeah.
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: And and I bet to your point, Ben, if you
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: did dribble it on one of those seams, it probably
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: would fly off willy nilly, you know. Yeah, it wouldn't
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: be consistent, so that would probably be a little more tricky.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: And that's where that is, apparently, where trick dribbling comes
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: around the stuff you were talking about earlier.
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: You can make it kind of put a little english
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: on it on a sideway.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's cool.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: So we did say that. Nasmith came around to dribbling,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: he became a dribbling fanboy. But make no mistake, he
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: didn't love all the changes into his sport. After he
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: stopped coaching, he watched a contest in nineteen ten between
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Kansas and Missouri and he freaked out. He freaked out.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: He said, they're killing my game. He said, the referees
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: are need to be more authoritative. He said, you know,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: this game is full of fouls. I made rules for
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: there not to be fouls. And he was irritated with it.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: And then to your point about corporate America. Just one
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: year later, in nineteen eleven, he published an editorial talking
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: about the problem of quote commercialization in sports.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: Oof. Yeah, I think that ship has sailed.
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: Brou Yeah even then, like what we were talking about
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: earlier with Max, Like you know, now it's just they're
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: just squishing the game.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Talk about making the.
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: Rules malleable for the wrong reasons, you know, to like
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: fit in more advertisements. I mean, this is definitely the
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: early stages of the utter corporatization and commercialization of sports.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he said, look, you need to keep money out
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: of college basketball. I hate the idea of quote, the
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: worship of the dollar in the field of athletics. And
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: then he gets a little high faluting here. I'm on
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: his side, but he gets high faluting. He says he's
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: invented his game to be a quote, a laboratory in
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: which the great moral lessons of fair play and the
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: square deal are taught.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Again, cool, cool idea, but weird some truth to that.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: It isn't good, you know.
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: It is certainly if you're young and you're learning to
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: play basketball. It's a community building thing. It's a way
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: of making friends, you know, if you're playing in college
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: or in high school, even like you'll you're in you're
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: in the trenches with these people. You're learning how to
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: think of others, you know, and not just yourself. And
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: saying what he's saying, though, is more about the I
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: don't know, I guess kind of the idealistic.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Version of what the sport is kind of drink in
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: his own flavoring.
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: He definitely is no question about it, and he's going
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: to go on to drink some even more oddly flavored
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: as we're to get to that for sure. But again,
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: that ship has sailed. This guy and is out of
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: his hands now like truly he is. He is passed
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: the ball Ah there it is, whether by choice or
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: just again, it's just it's just what happens. An idea
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: is you can't really own it at the end of
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: the day. Especially you can own you can, but you
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: can say I created this, or like I made this.
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: But it's like with the work of art, you know,
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: once people are interpreting it and looking at it and
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: then enjoying it and making it part of their lives,
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: then it's no longer even it doesn't even belong to
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: the artist anymore.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: And if it's a good idea, then should it not
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: belong to everyone?
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: And should you not be able to improve it?
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: That's another thing though, that makes a different than say
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: Van Go going back and touching up his paintings. Like
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: this is an idea and it's a little bit fluid.
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: But then you start to get into these debates whether
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: it's like, you know, strict constructionist kind of views of sports.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: It's funny you say that because I was I went
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: to the Prato, you know, when I's traveling a while
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: back and they've got a bunch of Picasso stuff, and
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: I heard this amazing, amazing conversation from two people. I'm
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: still trying to figure out what exactly their relationship was,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: but it's like it was this older guy and this kid,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: and the kid is pretty young, maybe eight or ten.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: I don't think the older guy was his father from
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: the way they talk to each other because the dad.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: They're staring at the huge the huge Picasso painting, which
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: is the bull fight thing. Yeah, I can't remember Guernica
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: that yeah, yeah, I think right, the big one.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. So they're staring at it.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: It's kind of slow because we're there on a weekday morning,
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: and uh in Spanish. The older guy is saying, what's
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: the big deal about this? It's impressive, you know, as
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, I could do this. And then
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: they right, and then the kid looks up without missing
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: your beat, and he goes, yeah, but you didn't. You
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: won't and you never will. And I was like, I
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: don't think that's your dad.
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: Game set match.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: How does that go?
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like no one can well knock you out.
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: That's good.
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, cool, I know I know from sports thee love
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: it makes a super who super who.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: I was thinking of the interstate gas station, which is
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: a cool one. Yeah, it's it's no BUCkies. It's no BUCkies.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: But who is nothing.
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: Sadder than a love's across the street from a BUCkies.
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: It's like, y'all just is not going.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: To go up.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so the sport was going to undergo this kind
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: of transformation as soon as it got popular. Dribbling probably
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: saved basketball, to be honest with you.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: No question.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: And this goes to something that you were you were
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: talking about at the very beginning when we started this
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: series this week, Basketball is something that is continuing to evolve.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Colleen Macklin. In conversation with author Nick Greed, Colleen Macklin
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: says games are a democratic art form. The beauty of
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: a physical game is that you don't have to be
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: a programmer or an artist to make changes. The rules
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: are modified and tweaked and then played by regular humans.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of like crowdsourcing.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
• 36:32
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: Then again, the art comparison, it's a tricky one because
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: you know, you sure art belongs to the public, but
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: also you're not going to go back and change a
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: work of art like that would be considered black unless
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: you're like George Lucas, in which you shouldn't do that point.
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: But with basketball or any sport, or like hell, the Constitution,
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: it's designed to be somewhat fluid and living so that
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: it can change with the times, you know what I mean,
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: varying degrees of success. But I would argue and agree
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: with you that dribbling was an incredibly important innovation in
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: the sport.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: And that's where it verges into something poetic, because Nick
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Green says basketball is the only major sport that can
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: be traced to a single person. But that person's most
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: important contribution was that he relinquished control of his invention,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: and so he built the car and he let other
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: people drive it and decide where it would go, you know,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: And there's there's something poetic to that. It's still work
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: in progress, as you said, and it's gone far beyond
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: just keeping a bunch of rowdy kids from beating the
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: stuft out of each other.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: Sometimes we save these these tangents and trivia bits for
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: like our new kind of clip show concept, and we're
• 37:52
  Speaker 4: starting to do, but I think that some of these
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: would be a great way to wrap this one up.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just we we've kind of been hinting at some
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: of nath Smith's.
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: Sort of let's do it otter proclivities, and also the
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: fact that despite having invented the game, he only ever.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: Played it twice.
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, and like, you know, some of the images
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: of him in the early days are hilarious.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: And there's one where it's like him and this like
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: old like kind of washer woman.
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: Looking type figure Kobe, and he's holding the basket up
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: and she's just got this like really it's like it's
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: again a soccer ball, really really funny.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: But yeah, only played it twice.
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: His team in one of those games, the teachers at
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: the YMCA lost five to one, so he did. He
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: played in that original game, that's the five to one
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: game that we were talking about, the one that was
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: first for public consumption, and the one point for his
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: team that was scored in that game was by his pal,
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: a guy named AA Stagg, who was kind of the
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: inventor of American football.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: And uh yeah yeah.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: And it's it's interesting how these stories coincide because Nay Smith,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: along with his spouse Bodney Smith, they invented an early
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: version of the football helmet to help out Stag and
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: their early version was flannel.
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: It makes me think of like the Pete and Pete hat,
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: you know, like the kind of what do they call
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: that a deer stalker hats or whatever, but like the
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: flannel classic red and black, you know, checkered kind of pattern.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: It was made to prevent something called cauliflower ear, which
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: is a condition that happens and he get bashed in
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: the ear and repeatedly and it starts to kind of
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: swell up and then stays that way.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is this is strange because he also
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: he also had beef with coaches, even though he himself
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: was a coach at University of Kansas for a while.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: He thought terrible coach.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he had a bad losing record because he thought
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: coaches basically shouldn't do their job.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: He said, if you're a coach who micro manages your
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: players by telling them what to do while they're on
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: the court.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: It's like cheating your tantamount. Huh, you're evil? WHOA? So
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: he was. He was way worse than evil.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: He was way more like I think a ted where
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: he's like, come on, guys, you know basketball, it's a
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: lot like falling in love.
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: Following it's like going on a magical journey with your
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: best friend and being a goldfish.
• 40:10
  Speaker 6: Shall you just get out there? You'd be a dog
• 40:11
  Speaker 6: with peanut, but you have a good old uh No.
• 40:14
  Speaker 6: But that all that tracks though, doesn't it. It's philosophically,
• 40:18
  Speaker 6: he's still stuck in the gym trying to get these
• 40:21
  Speaker 6: horny teenagers to chill out.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: All of this other stuff is sort of against his
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: whole philosophy of the game. And I was saying earlier
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: it almost sounds like he thought telling them what to
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: do was cheating or something. It was like depriving them
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: of the part that actually matters, where they figure it
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: out themselves.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Ah. Yes, And that is a good point. It is
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: an aesthetic philosophical point. We also know and maybe this
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: is our maybe this is our rap, because I know
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: we're all three excited about this. What happened to Nasmith
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: after basketball? After coaching? If you look at Rob Raine's
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: biography of our buddy James, you find that he spent
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: his years after coaching working on medical experiments. This is
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: a true story.
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: Look at John Harvey Kellogg type figure. You get deep
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: into this. Yeah, Betty was really into enemas. But you know,
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: he invented or was developing, something called a sobriety tester,
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: which I imagine must have been some early form of breathalyzer,
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: right kind of. I mean, they didn't really go any
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: further than that. He also had all of these notions
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: about what testing people to see if they add natural
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: athletic abilities, and the test that he developed is boggers.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so he would he was okay, is true
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: story Again, He would blindfold his students or his patients, right,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: his subjects, he will clog up their ears. He would
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: put them in the driver's seat of a car and
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: see if they could sustain a speed of thirty five
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: miles an hour. Doesn't that just mean that they're like
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: loose can and kind of insane. What does that have
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: to do with anything? It doesn't even involve coordination.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: He can't sell you.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: He says, if you do that, you've got a great
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: canesthetic sense. And it's like, thank you, I'm glad no
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: one died.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: No joke.
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: Hopefully they were doing it in like a park and
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: abandoned parking lot or some sort of test track.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: But again, he was not a rich man. I'm not
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: sure where he would have conducted.
• 42:24
  Speaker 5: He wasn't even a good driver.
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: No, he hated driving, that's right. And then the last one,
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: I think, which is maybe what we've been hitting at.
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: He invented this like stretcher machinet machine for children to
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: like help them grow taller.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, for anybody.
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: Didn't have to be for children, just for short kings
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: and queens out there. And he was was interviewed about
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: this device by a school newspaper and he said that
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: babies between the ages of five months in one year
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: should be given a good stretching oh tight. But there
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: was something that he was a little concerned about. He
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: did have something that he hadn't quite figured out yet.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: My torture rack is so effective that the children may
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: never stop growing.
• 43:10
  Speaker 5: And definitely these.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: String being giants have ruined basketball. Yeah, yeah, the playing
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: field has no longer been leveled. The very playing field
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: has been leveled. The other kind destroyed this device. But
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: what a guy, man.
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: I'm really such an interesting story despite all of the
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: inherent racism.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: Obviously that we I wouldn't say we glossed over. I
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: think we just what a what a week? Two? And
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: we're not even done because we may come back to this.
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: I think there's more because again we haven't even gotten
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: into the modern era and all of the you know,
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: again we've we've hinted at it, but at the tie
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: ins to fashion and music and I mean.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: Just the the level.
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: Of stardom that is achieved by you know, some of
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: these individuals. It's almost like for it's to me. I
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: don't know about you, but doesn't it feel like basketball
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: is kind of the stars sports, star maker sport more
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: so even than baseball household more, household amy kind of.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: Thing for us.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Yet in pop culture, basketball, like very very well known
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: athletes achieve a level of fame that transcends the sport.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm getting at, and you nailed it.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: I would say, of the sports, basketball is the one
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: where one person can take over the game a lot
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: more and baseball you could go like four for four
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: with three home runs and your team loses. Football, you
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: like a quarterback can be really good. But like you know,
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: Michael Jordan, Lebron James, star.
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: Maker, like on the by the nature of the very
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: nature of the sport right.
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: How it's played too, is in a lot of systems,
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: like you know, our local team in a lot of
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: Hawks is the offense goes through Trey Young and he
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: runs it, so that person can sometimes get because they're kind.
• 44:52
  Speaker 5: Of like, you know, the point guard.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: They're running the whole thing, so they get the attention
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: focused on them, which you.
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: Know, doesn't That also mean though that it could be
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: more conducive to fixing games and chiefs and if you
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: have inside information that a player is not going to
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: be there or something like that, or you could make
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: bets accordingly, I mean early two thousands.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: I forget forgetting his name the top my head. My
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: buddy Kevin would be very disappointed. But there was an
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: NBA ref who yet we talked about.
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: Him, and it was easy to do because he'd kind
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: of do it like death by a thousand cuts, like
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: little little inaccurate, and that nobody could even notice.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: Those are so subjective. Also, I want to Scott Foster.
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: I don't think christ Paul has ever won a playoff
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: game with this guy.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: Shout out to Brian Towey. That's right, that was the
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: guy about. You know, he believes all.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: Sorts and uh and also gather ye Spaldings, while you may,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: I posit to you the basketball is in its heyday
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: until sumo wrestling becomes more normal.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: That is a hot take back. No, I can't wait
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: to see sumo arrests. Still, it's very popular in Japan.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: I mean like it's also a.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Huge organized crime element to it totally, because you know,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: it's fixing sports, right.
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: I always really liked i Honda in Street Fighter too. Yeah,
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: he always fought in like the weird Japanese bathhouse, you know,
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: and he had the cool torpedo move and uh and
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: the slap.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: He did a yeah, good, good animation on that.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: I I was so disappointed because I thought I was
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: going to go see a sumo match. But they're really expensive. Really,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: they're really expensive. And then I thought I was talking
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: to a friend and was like, what are we paying
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: for here? For equipment or something like that, and he goes, man,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: it might just be for you know, the upkeep of.
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: The yeah, massages and stuff, you know, and barley.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, because they might look like they might like
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: look like they're not in shape.
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: Oh no, it's a different kind of in shape, right. Yeah,
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: it's like competitive eaters.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: You know. I bet you too, I mean maybe you
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: saw this.
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: I bet you that there are like sumo stars, just
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: like there are basketball stars.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they're just an individual kind of thing.
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: Like go into business, like how Shock owns the Krispy
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: Kreme here in town.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: They own stuff.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: You know, You'll be walking by a restaurant and then
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: you'll see a picture of a sumo guy who's just.
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: Like some you know.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: Boom, I'm into noodles now.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: But that's but so we we hope we delivered, folks
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: on what we're saying in part one of this series,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: which is that even if you yourself don't tune into
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: every basketball game, there's a lot to learn.
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: Oh man, No, the history of it is so interesting
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: and uh, you know it also being one of only
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: two uniquely American sports, you know, which.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: Is kind of a big deal. Yeah.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: And speaking of big deals, we want to thank you
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: for tuning in, folks. We also want to thank some
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: of the big deals on our show, our research associate
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: doc Z of course, super producer Max Williams. And I
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: don't know if he deserves it, but I'm still gonna
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: thank Jonathan Strickland, aka the Quister, even though he high
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: roaded the heck out of us in me he's in
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: the office right.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Now you think I didn't see him.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: He's using the biggest and nice studios just for himself.
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: I caught a glint out of the corner of my
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: eye and it was the light reflecting off his bald head.
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: He's also in the studio that does not have blinds.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: Yet it never can stare at he did that.
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: We're in the one with the best ac.
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: Speaking of the zoo, if anyone's gonna be in Vegas
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: next week for the iHeart Music Festival, your boy's been
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: bowling and Noel Brown will be podcasting in something of
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: a human zoo type scenario.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: I mean there's like a booth of some sort that
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: we will be housed in. I hope there's snacks. I
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: think there's air conditioning. But it is as part of
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: like a a Bose promotion of some kind, which I
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: love and not getting paid to say that I love
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: their products. But you can come and put on headphones
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: that observe us like like reptiles in a reptile house
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: or something.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't word is still out on whether or
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: not you can feed us, but.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: You know, be the change, just like James NS exactly.
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: But we'll be there on Friday doing ridiculous history and
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: then also stuff that I don't want you to know,
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: in addition to several other podcasts that are in our
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: kind of og stuff, kind of network family.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: You know who else is going to be there to Jonathan, Yeah,
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: that's right.
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: You know who else is else is going to be there,
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: Lenny Kravitz, Oh yeah, Cheryl Crow, Little Wayne, Yeah, yeah, lots,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: Travis Scott, who's apparently got quite popular. Yeah, I'm stoked
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: about Cheryl Crow. I'm actually genuinely kind of dig Chryl.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: Didn't we have a fake beef with Cheryl Crow back
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: in the day. She knows what she did. Okay, fair,
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: Maybe we can address it. We can squash the beef
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: for set it on fire. She just pushes people. We'll
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: see you next time, folks.
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.