- [Evan] All right, Dan.

- Yes, I was lucky enough to see Wilt Chamberlain, who you mentioned earlier in the conversation, play in the college all-star game in Kansas City after he finished at KU.

- [Evan] Wow.

- How do you think he would do today, and do you think anyone will ever equal his 100-point game?

- Yeah, what about Wilt?

- Yeah, well, I...

He's another one I'd put in this category, if you've watched, that guy would thrive, like, he looks a lot like Giannis physically, his strides are...

He's one of the top 10 athletes to ever put basketball shoes on, period, and he was competitive and driven enough to adapt, so I think a lot of his physical traits would work in any era, and yes, I do think somebody will score 100 points, in part because of this heliocentric trend, we're seeing 70s, 80s, and we're seeing faster games, and we're seeing defenses just stretched to the limit, as more and more people can shoot the three-point shot from further and further out, that's gonna be the reason that I think somebody's gonna do that in the next 20 years.

- [Dan] Cool, I actually got his autograph, and he was towering over me, I was little at the time.

- [Kirk] Oh, my god.

(indistinct) - He'd pretty much towered over anybody.

You know, here I come back to Aaron Judge, just to come back to the baseball analogy, how long did we have to wait for somebody to hit 60 home runs in the season, and now, he's about to...?

We think he's about to hit 60 home runs for the second season in three, like, something has happened to sports, right?

Where suddenly, 100 points is not unthinkable.

- Yeah, and in baseball, they've really figured out how to train the athletes with biomechanics and swinging, and they're optimizing the swing path of the baseball bat... - [Evan] It's kind of amazing, isn't it?

- And if you're built like Aaron Judge and you have the optimal swing path, well, guess what happens?

- [Evan] He'd be a pretty good center too, wouldn't he, actually?

- Do you know he's, like...?

He's shorter than the average, like, shooting guard.

- Isn't he, like, 6' 8"?

- He's 6 '6"?

- [Evan] 6' 6"...

Merely, merely 6' 6".

- Yeah.

Yeah, he would fit in in the NBA.

- He just looks... Every time you see him next to Jose Altuve, it's just like, "This is hilarious."

- That's right.

- Mr. Ward.

- Thank you.

Kirk, thanks for being here.

So I was curious to... - [Evan] That's a Jose-Altuve-sized mic.

- That's right.

(indistinct) And speaking of, have you seen the picture of Altuve with...?

- [Evan] It's great.

- It's phenomenal.

So Kirk, you made a comment about journalism that I thought was really interesting, and I was thinking about this while you're talking, which is if sports analytics has, in many ways, contributed to making the sports we love more fun to watch and has improved on those efficiencies, do you think it's, in some ways, actually contributed to that demise of sports journalism?

Because I think, in growing up, the writing that I loved about sports was much more about the personalities and the feel for things, and now, it seems like it trends much more towards the stats, and I'm a stats guy, but from a narrative perspective, it really does seem like the conversation shifted.

- Yeah, I think that's a fantastic observation, and I think in this book, talk about how, yeah, greatness is not just a math equation and it never should be, and I think, yeah, the level of writing in these places has eroded over time, I mean, there's no... Jack McCallum's great writing about the NBA in the '80s and '90s is, like, etched into my brain as a Sports Illustrated reader, and I don't think analytics has made sports better, generally speaking, the aesthetics at least, I think it's made us more efficient, but baseball is a great example of a sport that had a crisis largely as "Moneyball" really took hold, and basketball, me included, think there's too many threes and they should be addressing this, so you're asking a bunch of questions and I would say that analytics, in every aspect of American popular culture, hasn't always been a helping hand, look at cinema, you look at television, journalism, I don't think bringing financial thinking and VC thinking to art or sports has always made these things better.

- I think Frank makes a great point, you know, here in Texas, the era of Dan Jenkins, and Bud Shrake, and the people who... Blackie Sherrod, the people who wrote about sports for so many years, the defining sports journalists, they might not know what to make of sports today, I mean, I'd like to think that they would figure it out, but it's a very...

It's a long walk from that, isn't it?

- Yeah, I think so, I think, you know, Frank Deford, who has given some lectures here at University of Texas before he passed away, these are the legends of...

They were writers who happened to write about sports, there's not many of those people anymore.

- [Evan] Fair.

Good point.

- [Frank] Thank you.

- Thank you.

- [Evan] Sir.

- I live in Austin, so I filter the NBA through who I've seen at...

Formerly at the Erwin Center, and my question is, what are your thoughts on colleges adding general managers to the layer of their programs now?

- Yeah, they have to, I mean, the number-one expense for every pro sports team on this planet is generally paying the players, and it's an expense that college teams have escaped for most of my life and until very recently, so once you have to pay the athletes, which you should, you have to manage those expenses... - [Evan] You're for it.

- Oh, 100%, I mean, I- - [Evan] Oh, and were always for it?

- Many of my students are student athletes and they're gonna get a little bit of money and they deserve it, 'cause we're coming to see Kevin Durant or LaMarcus Aldridge, you know, we're coming to see Rori Harmon or Madison Booker at the University of Texas, I'm not coming to see my friends Vic Schaefer or Rodney Terry, I'm coming to see those athletes, and... - Yeah, and the university is in...

I'm gonna put air quotes around this, "profiting from 'em."

- Oh, yeah, when ESPN writes that check for Big Monday, you know, they're...

They want Kevin Durant, Lawrence, Kansas, so it's about time, but we're gonna see a big operational adjustment at these fronts.

- Can I piggyback... come on up to the mic, I wanna just piggyback on... No, no, no, I'm... Ma'am, you can come on up, I just wanna piggyback quickly before you ask your question on something that he asked, which I thought he was gonna ask and he didn't.

How do you feel about one-and-dones?

- I think it was... Well, Kevin's a great example, I think it was sort of...

I'll make this make sense, but it's an insult to higher education, okay?

As a professor, like, it's a charade that these people are college students in many cases, but it was a necessary evil because I think the pro leagues had installed these minimum ages and these requirements that sort of put them in purgatory for a year or two, so I don't fault the athletes or even the universities, but I think the rules... Look, one thing I'd say, Evan, is that America got really bad at building young basketball players, and that's a symptom of it.

We have, at the most important stage of their development, AAU, which isn't great, college basketball for a year here, three different coaches in the NBA, and by the time they're 25, they've had eight coaches in the last eight years.

- And not everybody is Kevin Durant.

I mean, that's the other thing, Kevin Durant is back to one of one, he's one of one.

I'm not convinced that some of the others who've been one-and-dones necessarily are in Durant's league, and I'm not sure that we're doing them any favors.

- Most of them are not, and we forget their names, and that's a great observation, I think.

- [Evan] Yeah.

Good, okay, ma'am.

- I have to apologize before I ask this question, but I was in physical education for my whole career, 50 years, do you see the same thing happening in women's sports and basketball as you're seeing in the men's...?

- [Kirk] We haven't talked about that, right.

- That might not be your wheelhouse... - [Evan] Like, the women's game is obviously on everybody's mind, as it should be right now.

- Yes, and I'm just curious if you see the same patterns of shooting and... - Yeah, I'm a part of it, it's behind, there's less investment on the women's side for reasons that we're all aware of, which is unfortunate, but it's happening, I'm working with the women's basketball team more closely at the University of Texas than the men's team, and they have a terrific program, and their players and coaches are very receptive to it, the WNBA is about to get a lesson in the three-point revolution from Caitlin Clark, which I think has brought a lot of attention to efficiency and some of the themes in this book, I think they're a little bit behind for reasons that we know, but I do think this is gonna come because it's too smart and it's too important to not happen for them.

- Thanks so much.

(indistinct) - A couple more, and then, we're gonna zip off here.

Sir.

- So we talk about offense a lot, and around, like, the dead-ball era, there were, like, defensive specialists like Ben Wallace, guys without, like, a really strong offensive game, and yet, now, guys like Matisse Thybulle, they're like...

They struggle for playing time, why do you think the game has changed to kind of eliminate any sort of defensive specialists?

- That's a great question.

- I just think there's a litmus test now that you have to be able to shoot, whether you're André Roberson or Matisse Thybulle and you don't pass that test, that's the problem, Lou Dort is another example of somebody who's that, who developed a three-point shot for Oklahoma City, and guess what?

Now, he just got paid and he's a 40%-catch-and-shoot three-point shooter, so it's really a litmus test, can you do this one thing off the ball that Bruce Bowen did for the Spurs 20 years ago?

Which is catch the ball and shoot it into the basket, and then, go attack Kobe and Dirk on the other side of the court like a menace, so I just think there's a little bit more of a skill threshold, especially for catching and shooting for those guys now.

- [Evan] Good.

Thank you for your question, sir.

- [Person] We've got two more ahead.

- Yeah, we got just two right there, that's perfect.

- Perfect.

- I'd like to start off with, like, bringing context into, like, how I view basketball, I'm a fan of the Phoenix Suns, and so, it's been interesting to watch Kevin Durant join the Phoenix Suns of late, and watching the Olympics, it was interesting to see these younger players look up to Kevin Durant, and you were talking about these, like, style icons of the game, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and so, I'd like to hear you... And you started to talk about it when I was in line, but talk more about Kevin Durant and his role and influence in the way in which basketball is being played both with local players, American players, and also international players.

- What do you think about that?

- Kevin Durant, I'll start with, is the greatest longhorn basketball player of all time and he is also the greatest Olympic basketball player to ever exist on the men's side, Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird have something to say about the women's side, but he's the first player ever with four gold medals, and Evan said it earlier, he's one of one.

I think there's guys who come through that are very good and aren't gonna influence future generations, that's not an insult, I just don't think that you can replicate him, it's almost more respectful, it's very hard to do what he does as a shooter at his size, we had never seen that before and there's not a lot of guys that size that can dribble and shoot, especially like Kevin has, his game is harder to copy than Stefan's, as crazy as that is, Stefan has dominated from further away, Kevin says it to these guys' faces and I think that's why he's, like, really respected.

Like, he gets in...

He'll beat anybody in the League one-on-one and shoot a jumper in their face like Kobe, and he's unquestionably one of the greats, but I just don't think there's a lot of copying of that 'cause it's such a freakish combination of size and skill.

- Thank you.

Okay, last one, sir.

- Okay, since I'm the last one, I was gonna ask an intelligent question, but now, I'm gonna ask, who is your least favorite player in the NBA right now?

(audience laughing) - [Evan] Oh.

Great, all right, go.

- Well, I will...

I'll tie it with the earlier question that I got asked, is, you know, I learned as a journalist and a writer, I wrote a really negative piece about David Lee one time, and I hate that it got so popular, it was almost like Seinfeld swearing in his act, that was like, "I hate that it was that easy to go viral," and I trashed David Lee and I wish I hadn't had done it, so I start with, "Man, these guys got to a place in their lives that I wished I could have done and I wasn't good enough," so I don't say negative things about pro basketball players, period, 'cause they did something that I tried my hardest to do and am never gonna come close... - [Evan] Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right.

- So the guys I really start to get annoyed with, you know, they're arrogant, which came up earlier, and they're defiant in ways, but it's hard for me to name names, I mean, I root against certain players or teams.

Again- - I mean, the people who behave on the court in a way that you wouldn't want your kid to see, right?

- Patrick Beverly, Patrick Beverly, and it's not...

It's he's disrespectful to other players on the court... - [Evan] That's the problem I have, right.

- And he's disrespectful to the fans and the League, and he hurts players, so there's a player that I would say, "Patrick, I love your talent, but I wish you wouldn't risk other people's health, and I wish you wouldn't be so disrespectful to the other people on the court with you..." - Good.

- So he's my answer... - Good.

- And by the way, I think he's out of the League for these related reasons.

(audience laughing) - It's a respectful answer, right?

I think that's good.

- Thank you.

- All right, give Kirk Goldsberry a big hand, thank you all for being here, we'll see you again soon.

- Great, thank you, Evan.

- Good work, man.

- Thank you, brother.