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SPEAKER_00: Bomani Jones noticed something. That's one of the best things about Bomani. He's one of the most popular sports journalists around. He watches games. He has takes. He has an HBO show. He has a podcast. We all have a podcast. But more than anything, Bomani is a noticer.
I kind of picture him watching a football game on a Monday night, standing a little off to the side, arms crossed, head cocked, thinking about the plays, the players, the sport as a whole. And then he notices something about some of the players on the field, especially the wide receivers, especially the white wide receivers.
SPEAKER_03: It's very interesting if you note the like really good white wide receivers. They seem overall to have one thing in common, which is they all seem to grow up in place places that are almost exclusively white, or at the very least, don't have black people.
SPEAKER_00: Now this this is an intriguing observation. If you've watched any football over the last 40 years, you've probably noticed that most of the top wide receivers are black. But there are the occasional white pass catchers who break through. So take Cooper Cup, for example, Cooper Cup, incredible receiver. Also fun name to say. Cooper Cup, Cooper Cup.
SPEAKER_03: Cooper Cup is from somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the state of Washington, went to Eastern Washington University, Yakima, Washington, but my Yakima, Washington, to
SPEAKER_00: look up the stats. I think we know.
SPEAKER_03:
Nope, you said it all right. Jordi Nelson, remember, he played for the Packers from Manhattan, Kansas.
SPEAKER_00: In football, the stereotype is to see black players as faster and more athletic and to see white players as the brains of the operation. This racist stereotype meant that for decades, there were very few black quarterbacks. Black players would run or catch the ball. White players would be behind center. But Monie's theory kind of turns that inside out, right? Because if you've got a football team in, say, Manhattan, Kansas, and all of your players are white, who's going to play wide receiver?
Cooper Cup, Yakima, Washington, Wes Welker and Riley Cooper from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Garrett Crockford is from Chesterfield, Minnesota. Eric Decker is from Cold Spring, Minnesota, 0.2% black. But Monie, one of those names I just listed was made up.
SPEAKER_03: It was the second to last one.
SPEAKER_00: Garrett Crockford does not exist. Yeah, I was like, huh, he must be new.
SPEAKER_00: Chesterfield, Minnesota does not exist. But I was going to, if you called me out, I was going to tell you that he got 800 receiving yards in 2012 for the Titans.
SPEAKER_00: For all these players, the real ones, not the ones I made up, but Monie's theory checks out. Wes Welker's high school in Oklahoma City has about 900 students. Only 50 or so are black. Not a lot. I mean, you can go online and check this out for yourself, or you can trust us and find better ways to spend your time.
SPEAKER_03: It's basically if we ain't got no other choice, then I guess we'll play this white dude. And then when he gets good, we will tell everybody he is the greatest ever.
SPEAKER_00: Really, but Monie is making an observation about opportunity and the circumstances in which someone is willing to give you that opportunity to crack open the door to success. Well, so if you talk about opportunity, the example that jumps out to me is Hunter Renfro.
SPEAKER_03: Hunter Renfro plays wide receiver for the Las Vegas Raiders.
SPEAKER_00: Hunter Renfro is another famous white wide receiver. He played college ball at Clemson. And guess what? The coach there is Dabo Sweeney, who himself was a white wide receiver. Can you hear the door of opportunity squeaking open?
SPEAKER_03: Dabo is still out here with white dudes playing linebacker and a dude like Hunter Renfro playing wide receiver because Dabo is looking at that dude through a different lens and is like, yo, people don't give this guy an opportunity. But it is, I think, again about opportunity. It's about people looking at these guys and saying, not even he can do this. Well, let's just see if he can. And then when they do, he's your best wide receiver. You ride that thing out.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's about time, you know, white guys start looking out for each other.
SPEAKER_03: Yes, yes. But, you know, but this is actually an interesting case where I do firmly believe that white dudes are underrated because the assumption walking in the door is that they can't do it. And then when you see them do it, it's like people think it must be a trick.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it sort of is a trick in the sense of here's one simple trick. Try to evaluate someone based on their actual potential rather than what you assume their potential to be. And that's what I find so compelling about Bomani's observation, because it suggests that there is something really wrong with the way that we evaluate talent, which in turn has some pretty big implications for the way we dole out opportunities.
If we recognize that all these other forces play a role in success, maybe we then have to rethink how we nurture talent and where we look for it in the first place.
Looking at a talented player, someone who made it, you have to ask, what was it about that particular situation that allowed them to flourish?
SPEAKER_03: They did a documentary about it called Something in the Water. And I still don't think it really came down to it, you know, to an actual answer because the title of it is Something in the Water, which you throw out there when you have no idea why it is that this happens.
SPEAKER_00: We are. OK, we're going to strike something in the water off the name of possible names for this episode. This is Good Sport from the TED audio collective.
My name is Jody Avager.
Today's episode, talent, nurture and nature. Yeah, it's not very good. Let's go with open door, closed door. That name kind of sucks, too. You know what? Screw it. We're calling it Something in the Water. You don't control us, but Monty Jones.
SPEAKER_00: This is the part of the first episode of a new podcast series where I tell you who I am and what we're up to. My name's Jody. I've reported on politics, culture and sports for a long time. Even better when all of those combine. I hosted a podcast called 30 for 30. I've done stories about the NBA and Olympics and World Cup soccer. I'd like to think I'm wired a little bit like Bomani Jones, arms crossed, head cocked, curious about a small question in sports that might get at a bigger point about the world.
Because for me, every big life lesson I've learned has come through sports.
How to channel my competitive fire. How to be a supportive teammate or boss or partner. How to focus on what I can control and try to let go of what I can't. I've learned all of that by playing sports. I'm not saying it's the only place you can learn those lessons. It just happens to be where I have.
And now this is the part of the first episode of the new podcast series where I tell you that the sport that most taught me all of this is Ultimate Frisbee. For some of you, you'll be like, OK, I get it. Ultimate, real sport. Let's keep it moving. Some of you may be reaching for your podcast app to find a different show to listen to. What can I say? That was my sport. I played in college and club and even pro for a couple of years. I was on sports. It was serious for me. The only thing that mattered for like two decades. That's where I learned my lessons, including, I should say, lessons about talent and opportunity. So yeah, from time to time in future episodes, there will be some Ultimate Frisbee content. I'll win you over. You'll keep listening.
Welcome to our first episode, Something in the Water. Yeah, that works. Bomani Jones is here and we're asking the question, what does it take for someone talented to get a real shot?
SPEAKER_03: Baseline talent has to be there and then we go from there. And yes, after that point, we are talking about nurturing. We are talking about belief. We are talking about affirming within people. This is something that you can do. And I am going to train you to do this excellently because you can, in fact, be excellent at this.
SPEAKER_00: And the sort of corollary to giving someone opportunity is also giving someone multiple chances. And so often I feel like it comes down to how short is the leash for screwing up? You know, and that's often what it takes. It takes faith in the real deepest way.
The point is you do need more than pure talent to get to the top. You need all those doors being held open for you on your path, all those chances to prove yourself worthy. All the times someone leaned in close, looked you in the eye and said, it could be you.
You need, let's coin a phrase here, you need an opportunity pipeline.
SPEAKER_03: Now, if I were to connect that to my own life, I am a graduate of a historically black college, Clark Atlanta University. And one thing that you learn and figure out very quickly going to an HBCU is if you look at the stats of like who goes to medical school and who goes to graduate school, like studying for Ph.D.s among black people, the sample is disproportionately HBCU grads. And so what I knew from my own experience at the HBCU was what I was more likely to receive at the HBCU was the attention that comes from somebody who believes that you're special.
If the sample is then all black people, then a lot of the head trash that comes in about what black people are and what black people are not, you kind of have to throw it out, right? Like the control is set for race. Everybody there is the same. You're going to have a harder time bringing that stuff in and saying this person isn't this, this person isn't that because you're going to see them all together. And those who are are going to rise without all these things that come in and mess up your mind in the process.
SPEAKER_00: At B
There's an equivalent to that in sports, hotbeds, pockets of the country that have found a way to produce a particular kind of great athlete over and over to the point where you almost do have to wonder, man, could there just be something in the water?
These are places like the area around Belglade, Florida, also known as muck city home to brilliant wide receiver after brilliant wide receiver, including San Antonio homes and Anquan Bolden. That's one hotbed or think about swimmers from the Bay area or sprinters from Jamaica, baseball players from the Dominican Republic. That's opportunity pipelines. I mean, the big one to me is basketball in Kingston, North Carolina, which is the hometown
SPEAKER_03: of Jerry Stackhouse, Cedric Maxwell, Andrew Wiggins, Father Mitchell, Reggie Bullock and Keston. I want to say as a population of 20,000 people, I forget what the exorbitant odds are for most schools in terms of producing players who go to the NBA, but it's one in however many thousands.
Like Kinson High School, it is an absurdly high rate. That one hugely fascinates me. He's right.
SPEAKER_00: The odds of making the league if you're not from Kinson, North Carolina, are like three in 10,000. In Kinson, it's about one out of 50.
Incredible. There are legends about what makes a lot of these hotbeds work. In the part of Florida they call muck city, which produces all those NFL receivers. People talk about how during the late summer harvest season, kids chase rabbits in the local sugarcane fields. That's how they get so fast and agile and eventually turn into great football players.
Those are all something in the water explanations, but there actually are a number of ingredients that seem to make an opportunity pipeline work. Maybe there's a formula of sorts. So grab a pencil. Let's make a list. You, me, Bomani.
One ingredient, intense competition. Take a place like New York City basketball in the 80s and 90s, a hotbed of generationally talented point guards.
SPEAKER_03: I contend that the advantage that New York basketball players had over everybody else is how easy it was to get a game against great players, right? Like you were a subway ride away from a, if you are a Kenny Anderson, New York legend coming up, you can go play against anybody, even if you're in Queens, right? It might take you a while on the train to get to where you going, but you could go play against anybody and sharpen your skills in a way that is far more difficult. If you from a small town or far more difficult, even if you're from a mid-sized city.
SPEAKER_00: Okay. Competition is on the list. Another factor coaching, you hear stories about certain coaches who move from one part of the country to another, and then all of a sudden, all of the great players, the quarterbacks, the hockey goalies, whatever, they're all coming from that area now. So good coaching, a competitive cohort, and I mean, let's be honest, money has to be on the list. People pour massive resources into things like youth football in Texas, Texas produces
SPEAKER_03: overdeveloped football prospects. Like all the money has been put into infrastructure and everything else.
SPEAKER_00: Going back to the muck city example, local role models seem really important. You know, you're a rising eighth grader and all of a sudden you'd look up and there's Anquan Bolden and Centennial Holmes playing in the Superbowl. And they're from your little town of 20,000 people. And you're like, that could be me, you know?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. And there are people coming back and they're saying, oh, it can be you. And the person coming back might be Anquan Bolden.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah. So our hotbed formula, coaching, competition, cash, inspiration, and what the hell? Let's throw chasing rabbits into the mix as well.
SPEAKER_06: Team coach Ann Morris has a playbook with daily steps for fixing work problems fast.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. So it's Monday through Friday. Each day has a distinct agenda that builds on itself. And the headline is that you build trust and then you earn the right to sprint.
SPEAKER_06: Ideas about upending the workweek. That's next time on the Ted Radio Hour from NPR. Subscribe or listen to the Ted Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_00: Bumani and I have some ideas about what makes a hotbed, but we're just two dudes with a microphone and itchy brains. To really answer this question of what makes a talent hotbed tick, we went where one always goes for answers to life's most vexing questions. A strip mall in Milpitas, California. Walk with me into a squat, boxy building that could very well have been a car dealership not that many years ago. And you'll find yourself staring at a row of photos. Seven table tennis Olympians. Okay, so this is like our kind of a normal lobby area where we have all our display of
SPEAKER_01: our Olympians. You see Olympians. So anyone comes in the building, a new person, when they see this professional table tennis Olympians and national team member training, you know, they are impressed.
SPEAKER_00: Rajul Sheth runs the table tennis program here at the India Community Center in Milpitas. And this is his wall of fame. Pictures of table tennis greats, all of them trained just down this echoey hallway. Let's follow Rajul there into a massive gymnasium about the size of three basketball courts, row after row of kids playing table tennis.
At 11am on a Tuesday, over 100 kids are playing around dozens of ping pong tables. And Rajul, I promise that's the only time I call it ping pong. The kids are stabbing at the ball, serving, rallying, while their coaches look on, calling out encouragement and advice. Two advanced players face off in one corner of the room dancing around their table, the ball blurring between them.
This is what we came here to see, the inner workings of a bonafide hotbed, a place that has sent at least three players to every Olympics since London a decade ago. And what's most impressive about it is that 15 years ago, when it came to table tennis, Milpitas wasn't even on the map.
Rajul Sheth put it there as a coach and an administrator, but it's worth noting he's also a really good player.
SPEAKER_01: So my style playing table tennis is considered to be a kind of a defense player. I used to block the ball, so I never used to attack too much. I used to make a lot of rallies and with the opportunity for my opponent to make a mistake. You know, that's how I used to play.
SPEAKER_00: Is that reflective of your personality in any sort of way?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's what it is. To play that kind of a game, you need to have a lot of patience.
SPEAKER_00: And to be a coach, you need to have a lot of patience. So that helps.
SPEAKER_01: You're absolutely right.
SPEAKER_00: Rajul was born in Badodara, a city on India's west coast. In India, table tennis is huge. You know that thing earlier where I had to justify my obsession with ultimate frisbee to you? No one needs to do that with table tennis in India. Its top players are regular contenders for Olympic medals against some of the true giants of the sport, China and Japan. Rajul was on the Indian national circuit for 14 years.
SPEAKER_01: In India, you have a lot of advantage and benefits by playing sports of table tennis. Like in America, if you are good at basketball or, you know, some mainstream sports, at the age of 18, I got a government job because of table tennis. And those kind of jobs in India helps you to play more. So basically you don't go for work. You just play table tennis two times and you're paid for it.
SPEAKER_00: But in 2002, despite a life in which part of his job was to play table tennis twice a day, Rajul decided to leave the sport, leave India and make a new start in California. He wanted to work on a mechanical engineering degree.
SPEAKER_01: So me and my wife, we both came to USA. And after coming here, we realized that at that time, economy was very bad. And we realized that practically it's not possible for both of us to go to school. So my wife started doing her masters and I started working.
SPEAKER_00: Rajul put in 80 hour work weeks, working retail in the day and pumping gas at night. It was a grueling schedule. And he found himself reminiscing about all those years on the table tennis circuit, perhaps thinking to himself, you know, there was a time not that long ago when part of my job was to play table tennis twice a day.
And then one night, randomly, he saw a guy at the gas station who had some table tennis gear. They struck up a conversation and eventually the guy agreed to take Rajul to a local tournament.
SPEAKER_01: And when I went there, I saw some players training there and one or two players training there were on a US junior national team. And I just went there with my old paddle. And I just played a little bit with those junior national team members. And you know, I found out that I'm, I'm too good for US table tennis, you know, level. And all of a sudden, I had a lot of kids and parents approaching me that, you know, are you coaching table tennis anywhere?
SPEAKER_00: So Rajul starts teaching, gets himself a part time coaching job at the India Community Center in Milpitas. At first, the ICC has just a couple tables, a few kids here and there. But within six months, the program doubled in size 30 players training regularly with Rajul.
Not long after that, they start going to tournaments and winning.
All those Olympians on the wall, they came from Rajul's program at the ICC. It's also produced dozens of national team members.
Last year, they took home 56 medals at nationals. This is a hotbed. So how does it work?
SPEAKER_01: Lot of people, even cricket or a lot of Indian sports people, they come and try to follow the same formula which I follow. And even in East Coast and everywhere, people come to reach out to me, and how did you do it? And I just give my formula to all of them.
SPEAKER_00: So what's the formula? Grab a pencil. Let's make a list. You, me, Rajul.
One ingredient, same as on the list that Balmani and I made, coaching. Rajul employs a top coaching staff, people who played professionally overseas.
SPEAKER_01: We started hiring coaches from India and China. And in 2012, I think we got some coach from Europe as well, some senior coaches here. And I think they helped us a lot.
SPEAKER_00: He recruits them to the US, helps get them places to live and steady work and eventually, hopefully green cards. Along with the coaches, Rajul also imports players who function like sparring partners for his students. Competition. He runs leagues where top players from around the Bay Area can face off every weekend. They hone their skills, learn how to compete, push each other. Kind of like the New York City basketball vibe that Balmani mentioned.
SPEAKER_01: That is very important, probably where we identify, you know, who is strong mentally, who is progressing consistently, who is doing what.
SPEAKER_00: And probably the most important part of the formula for Rajul? Volume. Bringing in as many kids as possible and giving them all the chance to excel.
SPEAKER_01: You know, this is what you do. Get the volume, give the quality.
SPEAKER_00: To get the volume, he uses another key ingredient to the formula, marketing. Rajul markets the program like hell, handing out literally thousands of brochures to local school kids every year. The ICC offers other programs like Taekwondo and dance, but then he adds free table tennis lessons to the package. He started a summer camp to bring hundreds of new kids into the building every year. Of course, table tennis is part of the summer camp. Rajul will make anything into an opportunity to bring a new kid to the program. He will even crash your local farmer's market.
SPEAKER_01: Every Sunday, there was a farmer's market in Milpitas where there were a lot of people used to come there. We used to rent a booth there, put a ping pong table there, and a coach there, and a
few pedals. And anyone, you know, walking there, can you try? You want to try a little bit? And then we used to try to promote that if you want to play more, there is a place here in Milpitas. Did any Olympians come from the farmer's market? Oh, no, not Olympians came from the farmer's market, but at least we got a lot of visibility and a lot of recreational kids came from there. Rajul says all of this, whether or not it leads directly to a superstar, is crucial
SPEAKER_00:
because it generates the volume.
SPEAKER_01: So our goal is to get volume for table tennis because when I see an entire summer camp, I may end up getting around 400 kids, you know, introduced to the table tennis. Out of those 400, maybe 50%, 200 kids will continue after camps are over. Out of those 200 kids, again, we may end up having, say, only 50 kids, little talented,
you know, so from that 400, we came back to 50. Then out of those 50 little talented, maybe we narrow down to another 8 to 10 kids who
has that quality to become an Olympian or a national team member. And then we start working with those 8 or 10 kids in a very specific way and end up getting one or two Olympians out of oil.
SPEAKER_00: And I love that math. I mean, it almost sounds, and I don't think you're using it as a euphemism.
It sounds like you've sort of come up with a formula, right? It's 400 to 100 to 50 to 8 to 1. And I think this gets at something that I'm just so curious about, because I think when people think about finding talent, they think about, oh, it's just the one and you find the one and they pop out and you just have to pluck them. But you're sort of really playing it like a volume game, like a numbers game.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. If you don't play volume, it's very hard to find consistent talent. Okay, one off you can find by luck or from small volume. But if you want to hit, for example, 2012, that was the first time we produced three Olympians and then we maintain that in 2016, we had four Olympians, 2020, we have four Olympians. If you want to be a consistently, you know, produce national team members and Olympians, volume is very important.
SPEAKER_00: As Bomani pointed out earlier, a big part of making an opportunity pipeline is keeping those doors open for as many people as possible, as long as possible. And then seeing who walks through.
Oh, yeah. On our hotbeds list funding, pretty critical to between rent for the Milpitas facilities, salaries for the staff sponsorships for their most promising players. Roger's program now costs well over a million dollars a year, but the more successful the program is, the more willing people are to help out. And the more he can sponsor kids who have promise, but may not have resources. We used to raise like, you know, 100,000 average every year to sponsor talented kids.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, we have to pay the rent, we have to pay salary to our coaches. So, you know, lucky again, we have a lot of people, you know, ready to support us.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll just say, along with the training and coaches and competition and funding, one of the key things Rajul is doing here, one of the most important things is building community in the truest sense. He takes care of his coaches. He provides other activities for athletes. He invests in his players daily life. Sure, he's trying to find top players, but he's also trying to make his project vital to the families in Milpitas. It's a community center after all.
So who ends up with their picture on that wall at the ICC? Take for example, Lily Zhang, one of the most successful American table tennis players and a product of the ICC.
SPEAKER_01: Lily ended up playing 2012 Olympics. She ended up playing 2016 Olympics. She ended up playing 2020 Olympics.
SPEAKER_00: That's in large part because Lily got put into the formula.
SPEAKER_01: She got opportunity, you know, because we got some high level players and coaches for her from India and China funding. We sponsored her entire training for kind of a free plus even in 2012 to encourage them to play more table tennis. We even came up with a stipend system for them.
SPEAKER_00: Rajul saw the talent Lily had and did everything he could to make the system work for her.
SPEAKER_01: The problem in 2010, 2012 or 2014, you know, parents, they didn't want their kids to play more. You know, they didn't see much benefit in sports at that time. And when we were telling them, you know, your kid has a chance to play Olympics, they didn't believe us. So keep them motivated to play. We made entire training free for Lily.
SPEAKER_00: So you can see the pipeline worked for Lily Zhang, but it wasn't just the formula. Lily had more. Something else worth considering as we think about opportunity. She had, and I'm sorry to be cliche here, but Lily had it. That cluster of qualities that makes someone great at a particular sport. And Rajul spotted it in her.
SPEAKER_01: The first thing I noticed in her is her mental game. She was very strong. You know, sometimes you go on a floor, you have too much pressure on you.
You know, people watching your matches, the tournament. Even if you tell them to do something, when the rally starts, they are not able to, you
know, follow your instructions. So at a young age, you know, try to follow all those things. You know, whatever you tell them, they just follow that, you know, right away. Not everyone can adopt that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm fascinated by the it factor. Of course, all the players that make it to the end of a pipeline from Milpitas or Kinston or wherever, they are really good. But we don't gravitate towards the really good. We look for the great, the singular. I might be obsessed with that distinction because I was really good, but I don't think I was great. And there have been times when that's eaten me up.
It might be something that eats Rajul up as well. Towards the end of our conversation with him, he brought up another player he's worked with a ton, maybe even more than Lily Zhang, his own son, Vaid.
SPEAKER_01: So when I say not everyone can adopt that, I can just give example of my son as well. Now when I talk about my own son, I still feel that he's not talented.
He's a very hardworking, very hardworking, but not talented.
SPEAKER_00: Vaid is really good, but he's not checking every box. He may not be the one.
And you can make that assessment with a lot of different kids, as you've said. Was it particularly hard to see that with your own son?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. Yeah. You know, so when it comes to my son, I tried my best to teach him, but see, it depends
on each and every kid, how much they can adopt that.
Now he has some other plus qualities. He's very hardworking. So he's hardworking. He has a very good mental game. He is kind of diverting all his time to table tennis. He listens to the coach, everything, but now he missed something, you know, the talent.
You have a very high level of professional Olympian or a Olympian medal winner kind of player. You have to have everything in them.
SPEAKER_00: So yes, not every kid is going to be Lily Zhang. But what Hoppeds demonstrate is that if you give every kid a chance, if you get your own assumptions out of the way and give them the resources and the training and give them your faith, if you keep sticking your foot in the door of opportunity before it fully shuts, you never know. Not everyone can become a great athlete, but a great athlete can come from anywhere.
Yes, I just stole that line from the final monologue in Pixar's Ratatouille. Instead of listening to this whole episode, I probably should have just told you to go watch Ratatouille.
So that's it for the first episode of our new podcast, Good Sport. But if you're still listening, I should tell you that this is the part where I point out that what we just did, that's pretty much what we'll be getting up to all season. Each episode of this series will explore a phenomenon from the world of sports. What makes a hotbed? Why stadium deals go wrong so often? How sports debate shows got so out of control? What comes next for athletes and us when our bodies age and our careers are over? All of these, I think, help us understand larger forces in the world we live in, from politics to relationships to culture and media and more. Because it's my argument to you that when we look at the larger world through the lens of sports, maybe we can see it more clearly.
So this season, we'll carry that lens of sports around. Sometimes we'll turn the lens on ourselves, make it into kind of a mirror. Sometimes we'll use it as a magnifying glass and hunch over to examine something small but fascinating. Sometimes we'll use that lens as a telescope, a way of looking at something distant but full of promise. Sometimes we'll take that lens metaphor and stretch it to the point where you're not really sure what the hell Jody is talking about anymore.
All that and more this season on Good Sport. Let's do it. Go Sixers.
SPEAKER_04: Up next on Good Sport, I channel my inner sports debate bro.
SPEAKER_00:
And then you have the single most iconic moment in NBA history, Allen Iverson stepping over Tyronn Lue.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, and you're not wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Incredible.
SPEAKER_02: It's an iconic moment.
SPEAKER_00: And why the way we argue about sports seems to be the way we argue about everything.
Good Sport is brought to you by the TED audio collective. It's hosted by me, Jody Avigan. This show is produced by TED. This episode was written and produced by Isabelle Carter. Our team includes Camille Peterson, Poncey Rutch, Sarah Nix, Jimmy Gutierrez, Michelle Quint, Banban Cheng, and Roxanne Hi-Lash. Jake Gorski is our sound designer and mix engineer. Fact checking by Julia Dickerson. Thanks to Mumble Media's Jamison Katsoufes, who was our eyes and ears on the ground in Milpitas. Special thanks to John Cox, Keith Romer, and Katie Clark. And very special thanks to Bomani Jones. Make sure to check out Game Theory on HBO for more of his excellent observations.
We'll be back soon with more Good Sport. Be sure to follow the show and your favorite podcast app so you get every episode delivered straight to your device. And leave us a review. We love hearing from our listeners. See you soon.
