Bomani Jones isn’t into poses. Earlier this week, he told us that being disingenuous in front of your audience actually offends him. With HBO’s Game Theory (back tonight on HBO at 11 following a brief hiatus), Jones is here to consider the oft-colliding worlds of sports culture and the news of the week, ask questions, and make cases. Not takes, cases. There is a difference. One is more challenging than the other, demanding discipline and dedication. Jones craves the challenge.
For most, the results of this approach don’t come fast; sometimes they don’t come at all. But for Jones, whose show is in the middle of its second season, it seems like everything is coming together as he cuts through the noise, popping up in your feed when he stands in against a Jake Paul tantrum and when he casually reminds the world about Karl Malone’s tainted legacy. He’s also opening up discussions about Overtime Elite’s compensation model for teen athletes and the effect of the NFL’s activism. These moments, in particular, speak to the style and substance of Game Theory, a show that he’s trying to turn into an institution.
Uproxx spoke with Jones about those efforts, the marketplace of ideas in sports media, his reaction to Paul’s loss last Sunday, whether the destruction of the Brooklyn Nets will cool teams on the notion of super teams, and why he is all in on owners actually spending money in baseball.
So, how’d Jake Paul do?
It was funny, man. Walking through the office with the fight coming up and people telling me like, “Oh, you going to watch the fight?” I’m like, “Of course not.” Like, I’d never watched this dude fight before. I have no interest in watching him fight, and I don’t have an emotional attachment enough to want to watch him lose. But yeah, it did not go in an unexpected fashion, shall we say.
I enjoyed it afterward when the excuses just came down like rain for why he didn’t make it. “I was sick. My arm hurt.”
Yeah. You know what’s funny about it is, as much as he can talk about (how) he makes money regardless and all of that, which is absolutely true, in the end, nobody wants to get their ass kicked on television. And when that happens, you kind of need to explain it. And so he did what anybody else would do in that situation, whether they’re making the money or not.
Very true. So that interview (with Paul) was a moment, obviously, and then the Karl Malone thing obviously blew up. Is it starting to become clearer to you how much of an impact on the conversation you’re having? That it’s continuing to climb. What’s it like when that happens?
It’s interesting because I don’t really traffic so much in the TikTok space. But that Karl Malone video got something like four and a half million views specifically on TikTok, a couple million more on Twitter. And the part that gets me is I don’t have a great handle on what the thing is going to be that people are really going to latch onto and decide it’s going to be the one. Because with that, if you go back and watch me and the way I sound in there, it’s not like I’m giving some passionate screed. I guess maybe the observation that the NBA probably thought it would be safer to have them show up than not have them come there, maybe that’s uniquely insightful, but when those things happen and people are like, “Oh, man. It’s like a new Hannibal Buress moment,” I’m like, “Ah, that’s interesting.”
I think to answer your question, I come back around and start asking myself, “Wow, was this thing really such a thing?” And I mean, I guess it’s not my place to decide, but I mean, I did figure out a long time ago that it’s different when I say things than it is for a lot of my colleagues. I know who the people are that get nervous when they hear that I’m talking about something that they’re into. I’ve seen people put out releases because they’ve seen me put stuff out. And it’s just always weird because I’m like, “Dude, does what I say matter that much?” And I guess to some people on some days, it does.
Why is it different, in your opinion?
People respect where I come from, and I think they respect my sincerity when it comes to these matters. And so not everybody obviously, but there are going to be some people that when they hear that I am talking about something, it takes on a different importance because they don’t think I would talk about it in those terms if it wasn’t something that was important.
You’re not saying things just to get attention. Like you said with the Karl Malone thing, you weren’t making a play for it. It was just an off-the-cuff remark that kind of blew up.
I don’t believe in the idea that attention is good for its own sake. What are you looking at me do when I do this thing for attention? And I’m just not shameless enough to be in a place to be like, “Ooh, watch, once I say this, everybody’s going to be all over it.” No, I’m actually looking for the least hot way to look at something possible because I’m trying to find a space where the discussion gets to the things that are inarguable, as opposed to the things that there are for us to fight about.
Because of your view on that, do you have a harsher view towards people that are more inclined towards attention for attention’s sake?
I have a harsher view towards them depending on what it is that they’re willing to do in order to get that attention. So for my colleagues, once you’re willing to say something that you don’t believe, I’m out. That’s the biggest thing. I’m never going to say anything that I don’t actually believe. And yes, I do incredibly harshly judge the people who say things they don’t believe because I believe that that’s disrespectful to your audience. You don’t believe this. I will never make an argument to people that I, myself, would not believe. And once you do that yourself, I just feel like you are patronizing the people who consume your product in a way that I just find to be offensive.
Do you feel like you have an innate or learned ability to pick up when that’s happening with your colleagues?
Well, I mean, it’s not hard to figure out who doesn’t mean it, right? People can say whatever they want about Skip Bayless. Skip Bayless means every word that he says. There’s nothing that he says on television that he does not absolutely mean. My buddy, Nick Wright is in the same space. He gets out there and he says what he’s talking about. He means the things that he says. It’s not that hard when you listen to somebody to figure out like, “Oh, man, they’re just doing a routine.” They think this is the thing that’s going to get them over. The thing that’s so ironic about that to me is nobody has made their career off of that one thing they said, but plenty of people have broken their careers off of that one thing that they’ve said, and I wouldn’t be willing to take that risk.
Skip might be a little choreographed when he does the jersey burn video with Dak Prescott. I feel like that might have been two or three takes.
Now, that part I think is fair. I think that some of the antics are certainly choreographed, but the sentiment, he means it.
So, one thing that came out before the All-Star break was obviously Kyrie going to the Mavs, Durant getting traded to the Suns. What’s the legacy of whatever happened in Brooklyn with the super team (with those moves) and GM Sean Marks almost losing his job? Is this a ghost story to scare teams off from trying this kind of thing?
Nah, it’s a ghost story to scare teams off from Kyrie. Look, there isn’t a single general manager who if given the opportunity to get three players as talented as James Harden, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Durant, isn’t going to do it. There isn’t a single one, and anyone who wouldn’t should probably be fired. If there’s a lesson to be learned from it that is larger, it’s not about the assembly of the team. It’s you got to rein it in early when you feel like you got somebody like Kyrie who actually thinks he’s in charge here, and he told you from the very beginning that he thought he was in charge, and they didn’t do enough to hold that up. They just kept crossing their fingers and being like, “Hey, it’s talent. Hopefully, it’ll all pan out in the end.” And so the vaccine thing comes around, “Hey, we’re going to cross our fingers, hope that the law changes and everything else,” and at every turn, they probably should’ve let him go.
Now, maybe they did not because they didn’t want to offend Kevin Durant, and that’s where these things get to be extra tricky. But this is without question the biggest failure that any NBA franchise has ever embarked upon. I don’t think there’s any other way to look at that, but I don’t think it’s in such a way that it’s going to change the direction of basketball. Now, Kyrie Irving and his general tendency to not want to play games and not show up to work and everything that came with that, oh, that’s going to come up in the collective bargaining agreement. Stephen A. Smith has been saying that for a long time, and I’m inclined to believe him when it comes to these matters, and I think he’s probably right. But just the particular idea of the super team, nah, people going to keep trying to get as much talent together as they possibly can. I mean, Phoenix just went and got Kevin Durant to put him with Chris Paul and Devin Booker. Nobody’s turning down good players.
I know you’ve got an episode coming up where you discuss the economics of baseball and Steve Cohen’s spending on the Mets’ payroll. I’m curious, we always see the details for every single player contract, but with ownership, we don’t know a thing about revenue and what owners make. How much do you think that influences the narrative where people get pissed when a player makes a bunch of money, but don’t really seem to have much reaction to owners pocketing revenue sharing and not spending?
Oh, I think it influences everything, especially since owners are good to pretend like they’re losing money. The thing that owners very often pass off, and it happens right when you see a collective bargaining thing come up, is the, “Well, we’re actually not making any money right now” play. And of course, that’s accounting tricks and the lies, and people generally understand the idea of accounting tricks, but I don’t think they really know them by and large.
And so yeah. If people knew just how much money these leagues were bringing in… And what’s interesting is there is a way for people to get a pretty good idea of this in the NFL, and it’s because the Green Bay Packers are publicly owned and therefore have to put out an annual report. And that is how you get an understanding of what their revenue figures are because you can go and work backward from there. But I also think that part of the discord comes up that people in this country inexplicably just side against labor. They tricked them far enough back in the past into believing that the unions were the commies, and then it just all carries out from here. It just blows my mind at every turn when these things happen, they root against the players every single time. And I think part of it is they feel like rooting for the owner is like rooting for the team, and they do in fact have an affection for the team.
It’s just shocking to me that fan bases aren’t more up in arms when owners don’t spend money to improve the product.
And that’s where Cohen and (Padres owner) Peter Seidler come in. They become interesting in this case, because what I love about Cohen and what we want to explore is the rest of these owners are so threatened by the idea of Steve Cohen. And I think the threat in that is not even because they’re like, “Oh my goodness, we’re not going to have any chance to win.” Even Cohen understands that once it gets to the postseason, it all gets randomized, basically. Nah, he’s just going to embarrass them. He is going to shame them, and he has so much more money than them that I think it just tweaks at their egos, the fact that he’s willing to put all this money in. And when I look at Cohen it’s fair to ask the question, is this him angling to try to get himself a casino, is this him trying to rehabilitate his image after what he got busted for with all the white-collar crime stuff? But in the end, why would you own a baseball team if you didn’t want to blow money on it? If you’re worth as much money as Steve Cohen is worth, why do you get this other than to blow money on it? Right? The idea that I’m going to buy a baseball team because I want to make money from it seems like the dumbest thing in the world to do if you don’t need the money. I am just all here for baseball owners who just decide, “You know what? I want to spend a lot of money and have fun with this baseball team.” Which again, is what you see happening in large part in San Diego.
It’s just fascinating how long these (other) owners can continue to game the system, put money in their pockets, and not spend this money. Or they commit to the rebuild. I will never, ever understand fan base enthusiasm for the idea of a rebuild.
It’s basically the Ricky Bobby philosophy. If you ain’t first, you’re last. And so people just believe, “Well, if you’re not winning at all, then you might as well just bottom out.” And I don’t know. Myself as a sports fan, it’s definitely bitter when your team loses, but there’s a lot of fun to be had along the way. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that. And so for me, it’s wild when you look at the Astros, now, part of this was when they had trouble with their cable provider, their cable deal, before they got this thing back on track, they were turning in literal zeros on ratings, where nobody in the city of Houston was watching the game on television. But bless their hearts, when the time came, they had a plan and they figured out how to turn that around. But I would not want those awful years. I just don’t know if that’s a fair trade.
It’s just, I look at baseball like an entertainment product, and it’s like, I wouldn’t want to watch a TV show that was like, “You know what? The next three seasons, we’re going to take all the lead actors out of the mix. It’s going to be a bunch of unknowns. The scripts are going to be terrible but have faith. We’ll get better.” I don’t understand why would I invest my time or money in that?
It’s interesting. I grew up with the terrible Braves, and then one day they were the good Braves and they were good for 15 years. It was only one championship that came in that run. There was never a point at which I was mad that there wasn’t another. Right? There were just the years, I was like, “Oh, man, it looks like we might get another one here.” You know what I mean? But you didn’t, and then you go on from there. So to me, the idea that the only thing that matters is the championship is ridiculous to me. The thing that I would want to have is a sustainable team. Sometimes we’re going to be pretty good, sometimes we’re going to be fairly bad. Sometimes we’re going to win a lot. Just take the ups and downs and go with it.
‘Game Theory’ airs Fridays at 11PM ET on HBO
