One of my favorite Uncle Remus stories—in part because it’s one with a lesson I’ve too often failed to apply—is the story of Br’er Rabbit and the tar baby.
You see, Br’er Fox wants to catch Br’er Rabbit, and to do so, he makes this doll out of tar and turpentine, and puts some clothes on it and sets it by the side of the road.
Br’er Rabbit walks by and says ‘hi’ to the tar baby, and the tar baby doesn’t say a thing. Br’er Rabbit greets the tar baby again, but the tar baby doesn’t say a word. Finally,
Br’er Rabbit, offended by the tar baby’s failure to respond to a simple greeting, punches the tar baby and gets stuck, whereupon he is captured by Br’er Fox.
Jaylen Brown, an otherwise smart fellow, has punched the tar baby. He’s risen to the bait. He’s gotten into a feud with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith.
Put another way, the Daily Picayune of New Orleans once published this little aphorism:
To argue with a fool is to make him your equal.
In short, Stephen A. isn’t worth Jaylen’s time. Not only because Jaylen is smarter than Stephen A., but because fighting Stephen A. is basically the same as fighting the culture that has put Stephen A. in the position that he’s in today.
I mean, the guy has a platform that reaches millions of people.
This isn’t in spite of his ludicrous takes; it is because of his ludicrous takes.
We have watched televised sports journalism devolve from the smart and often nuanced takes of The Sports Reporters to today’s brand of rage-baiting, concocted by individuals who have either turned their backs on their professional ethics (Stephen A., Skip Bayless), or have absolutely no background in journalism whatsoever (former pro players like Shannon Sharpe and Pat McAfee).
Why has this happened?
In short, because TV is a ‘hot medium.‘ Now, I’m not a whole-hearted follower of Marshall McLuhan, but I think he definitely got things right when he talked about a spectrum of mass media ranging from cool to hot.
Hot media is media that can be consumed with minimal mental engagement—and the hottest of hot media are what I like to call ‘background noise’ shows. These are shows like The View, First Take, and so forth, that people tend to have on in the background while doing other tasks.
We’re still consuming this media, but there is very little engagement of our minds with what’s being said… until someone says something stupid or outrageous, or most often, outrageous and stupid.
The way these shows hold our attention is by saying something that requires almost no directed thought to process.
If Stephen A. were to say something like, “I think that Jaylen is giving folks the wrong impression by saying that this was his favorite season, based on how it ended, and the fact that Jayson Tatum missed most of it,” that’s just not going to register. You’re going to catch maybe one word out of ten, and it’s just going to slip through your mind without leaving behind a trace. You hear the words while you’re active on your other task, but your brain doesn’t latch onto them because the message is too complicated to process simultaneously with what you’re doing.
However, when Stephen A. says something like “Jaylen Brown needs to stop talking unless he wants to be traded,” well, that’s simple — it’s hot, and it’s something designed to elicit an almost immediate reaction of either “You’re an idiot” or “You’re right.”
The important thing is that Stephen A. doesn’t care what your response is. He just wants the response.
Why?
Because the response is what drives engagement with the show.
It’s what pushes that show out of the background and, briefly, into the foreground. Shows that do this are more successful than shows that don’t. A show like the aforementioned The Sports Reporters requires more of your attention to consume, and therefore, it doesn’t work as well in the environment that shows like First Take are consumed in. There is nothing in a show like The Sports Reporters that will divert your attention. It is ‘appointment’ television. You need to have your time and attention unfettered to appreciate the show, and that is a tough ask in this day and age.
On the other hand, First Take is sort of like an air horn—or nails on a chalkboard—the stupidity that is uttered cuts through your primary focus and grabs your brain by the short hairs.
Moreover, even though we’re moving away from linear television, shows like First Take are still the basis for the social media engagement that keeps these stories hot. Stepen A.’s outsized reach on social media is founded on his role as host of First Take.
Since this is just how the medium works, if Stephen A. weren’t there, there would be someone else equally obnoxious. If and when Stephen A. retires, the next host, contrary to Jaylen’s hopes, will not be someone who brings the discourse of sports journalism back to the realms of sanity and responsibility because, frankly, that sort of journalism doesn’t work as well for the audience that these shows have.
Once you realize that, unfortunately, these hosts are entertainers with no sense of responsibility for what they say, you realize that it’s pointless to try to fight them. Their platform ensures that they’ll always have the last word.
IT is back!
In 1957, Red Auerbach went down to North Carolina to scout college basketball players. He had intended to visit the University of North Carolina, which had just won the NCAA title, but the coach of Wake Forest told him that the best basketball player in the state was actually lacing up his sneakers at North Carolina Central College—a university for blacks located in the shadows of Duke at Durham.
The coach was Bones McKinney and the player was Sam Jones. Sam would eventually retire with more championship rings than any player in NBA history except Bill Russell, and while some call Jerry West “Mr. Clutch”, it was Sam Jones who delivered for Boston time and again when everything was on the line.
And who was Bones McKinney?
He was a guy who played two years for the Boston Celtics, averaging a rather pedestrian 5.3 points per game.
But Red kept in touch with him, as he did with many of his former players, and in this case it paid off.
Sam Jones came out of nowhere to be the key scorer for the Celtics in the 1960s. If it weren’t for Red’s relationship with Bones, the Celtics might not have become The Celtics.
The Celtics have always been a ‘family’ organization. When Red was running the team, he routinely put ex-players on the bench as coaches. Bill Russell was only the first player to win a championship with the team as a coach. Heinsohn and KC Jones both notched a pair of championships as coaches as well.
Basically, once you’re a Celtic, you’re always a Celtic.
That’s continued into the current era. Joe Mazzulla issued an open invitation to former Celtic players before the start of his second season as a coach, and players as diverse as Leon Powe and Satch Sanders showed up for it.
I don’t know what IT has done to develop his scouting chops, but I know that he’s got good people skills, and as an overlooked player who came out of nowhere, I think he knows the mentality required to make a mark when you’re sitting down in the bottom of everyone’s mock draft. To the extent that he can recognize that in upcoming college prospects, so much the better.
