All this and a mail bag

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Friday is the hour of the mailbag!

Before getting started with the bag, a request from me, please check out my new exclusive podcast, Wins and Losses, which now has three episodes that will delight you.

Jason Whitlock, editor and commentator for FS1, and Shannon Terry, leader in serial sports media, and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, head of Rivals and 247Sports. These are long conversations and I am delighted to see them grow up.

So go see them here.

Ok, let's go with the mailbag.

And it's gone:

Paul writes:

"What do you think when a star player gets hurt and can not participate in the finals …

If an asterisk was next to the team that beats the team with the injured player … let's face it, would Toronto really beat the Warriors if KD played every game … ..How many teams beat a team with their best player on the bench … sometimes the second best wins the crown … maybe it's part of the game and it does not matter … "

The Raptors won the title, but if both Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson are in good health, I think there is a good chance the Warriors will sweep the series.

Damn, if Klay Thompson did not tear his ACL, I feel that the Warriors would have had a pretty good chance of winning the title even without Kevin Durant.

I think the truth is that most people will remember the wounds of the warrior in a decade or so more than the title of Raptor.

It's also fair to note that the Warriors have already had injuries from other teams – Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love in 2015 and Chris Paul last year – but I think the difference with these injuries was that the Warriors were still best.

But I think the most memorable part of this final is the unprecedented injuries sustained by Durant and Klay in consecutive games.

Matt writes:

"Hey Clay,

I know you hear all the people who say that women can compete with men in sport. But I still have to ask, after witnessing this historic defeat of Thailand by the American women's football team, do you think it could compete with the American men's football team?

Put in context the fact that the US men's football team is not good at the moment and is less well off than when they missed the World Cup Cup last year. Watching them give up three goals in a halftime in Venezuela was pathetic and hard to watch. Am I crazy to think that the current US women's team could at least fight against the American men's team? "

American women are not very close to American men when it comes to football. In fact, women are closer to a good high school team than a men's world cup team.

Do not believe me?

And they are two of the best women's teams in the world.

I think that almost all the big football teams of the big schools, state champions, would beat our national women's team.

This is not intended to insult women, but simply to emphasize that it is not fair to compare men's sport – or even high-level boys – to women's sport.

The American men's football team would be favored by 20 goals or more if they played against women.

As for the question of whether women should receive equal pay, it is simply an economic impossibility. The Men's World Cup has grossed more than $ 4 billion recently, while the Women's World Cup has grossed less than $ 100 million. In fact, women derive a greater share of the income generated by the women's world cup than men for their own world cup.

The truth is simple: while many members of the left want to argue that America is a terrible place, we care much more about women's sport than the rest of the world and compensate our female athletes better than anyone else.

I understand the frustration, but arguing that the World Cup women's team should have the same salary as the men is like arguing that the best players in the WNBA should receive the same compensation as the NBA. There is no comparison possible with the amounts produced by each team.

Matt Smith asks:

"What three changes would you make to the US sports calendar? (that is, the NBA moves back a month, the NFL repechage moves to the Masters weekend, etc.) "

If they made me name the American sports calendar, I would make the following three changes:

1. The NBA season begins at Christmas and ends the first week of August.

2. University basketball starts on January 2nd and ends with May Madness instead of March Madness.

3. The NFL sets up a week or two more and ends its season on President's Day weekend, which means Sunday's Super Bowl becomes a national holiday by default, followed every Monday by one day holiday.

In non sports news, I would do Halloween on the last Saturday of October each year instead of always making it fall on October 31st.

And I would also put an end to the time savings – I would return the normal time – and set the whole of America on two time zones: east and west, east in the center of the city all the time. year and the west. in the mountains all year round.

In this way, we could start every major sporting event at 7 o'clock on the east coast and at 6 o'clock on the west coast, so that all children and people like me who get up every morning at 4:30 am are not deprived sleep. .

"Many of you on Twitter and by email, how do you see the free agency of the NBA falling apart?

Given their injuries, I would be surprised if Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson leave the Warriors. Assuming they stay, the big question will be this: Will any of these guys be able to come back in the playoffs next year? If they do, all that matters is whether the Warriors will play in the playoffs, not at all, because if they can play alongside Steph and Draymond, they will probably remain the best team. from the moment.

But that supposes that they come back and that the Warriors let them play.

My bet is that the warriors are not going to play another guy until he is ready to go.

Elsewhere, it looks like Kyrie Irving is going to Brooklyn, but I do not see that that would have much impact on things. It would be the same for the destinations of Jimmy Butler and Kemba Walker.

So, for the best talent, Kawhi remains the most important free agent to watch. If overseas markets are an indication, then Kawhi must essentially stay with the Raptors or join the Clippers. Strangely, it is possible that the Clippers are the favorite to win the title next year if Kawhi joined them.

The only other drama is the one where Anthony Davis will be traded. Looks like the Lakers are the favorites right now, but given what the Lakers will have to give up to have, I do not think the Lakers will be as good, even if they will. Plus, I do not think LeBron and Anthony Davis make much sense. In fact, if Klay Thompson was in good health, I would prefer that Klay Thompson of the Lakers play alongside LeBron rather than Anthony Davis.

I just do not see LeBron and Anthony Davis agree so well. If anything, Davis would seem to further clutter the way for LeBron and Davis is not an excellent shooter from outside. This combo really does not make sense to me.

Anyway, after all that has been said about the free will of the NBA, it turns out that the situation of the injury of the warrior will be much more important this season.

A group of you asked for a version of this question:

"Why do television ratings matter to you?"

The ratings are the dashboard.

We live in a time when we are constantly surrounded by opinions. What's up? What goes up, what goes down, what grows, what goes down, has never had access to more mass opinion in the whole history of humanity.

But how do we base this opinion in reality?

For me, there must be a factual basis.

So I think that ratings of television are an important part of what people are watching.

And what do people watch on TV?

Sport, basically. More than ever, honestly, for most sports.

Watch how much the NFL dominates this chart!

Still, I feel that much of social media is preaching that the NBA is about to catch the NFL. When, in reality, it is not quite true.

In fact, the NFL is not only more popular than the NBA, so is college football.

Just this week, one thing really surprised me in sports ratings: the NHL, which almost no one rents on social media and who receives almost no national television coverage, set an audience record for the seventh game of Bruins-Blues.

It's possible that Bruins-Blues was the most watched NHL game in America.

It's never, never.

The most watched match of the NBA dates back to 1998.

This year, 20 million fewer Americans will attend last night's game 6 between the Warriors and the Raptors compared to Jordan's Match 6 against Jazz in 1998.

This is despite the fact that there are 50 million more people in America today than in America in 1998.

While listening habits have changed in America, but the NFL and college football have set audience records in recent years and the NHL has just established one.

Meanwhile, the NBA is down.

On the contrary, the popularity of the NBA in America has steadily declined over the last twenty years. Still, if you access social media, you think the NBA is about to challenge the NFL.

It's just not true.

It's counterintuitive, but the data tells us that the NBA was much closer to defying the NFL in 1988 and 1998 than in 2019.

In fact, far from embarking on a new paradigm of influence, the NBA was much closer to the NFL in the 1980s and 1990s than today. Even today, the ratings of the NBA TV are about the same as those of 1980, before the Magic Johnson and Larry Bird era made the league relevant in the US market.

Now, you can certainly say that the future of the NBA world is better than that of the NFL, but I am skeptical that the NBA will earn a lot of money in foreign countries.

This is mainly because time zone problems are quite significant in most parts of the world where you could potentially make a lot of money – Europe and Asia – and I think that in the end, as we enter more in addition to a real era, you will need to mass-produce audiences in prime time. (The EPL, which probably earns more money internationally than any other professional league, benefits the United States because its matches can be played in the morning on television here, but the finals of the NBA, for example, were announced at 4 am in Europe.)

That's why I think the success or failure of the NFL and the NBA can be summed up in their American performance.

So, what will dictate this success or failure?

How many people are watching, that is, the ratings of the television.

Everything except the ratings, is only an anecdotal discussion.

And my thesis is this: the NBA is vastly overrated and overlaid on social media – as well as on television, as a result of the massive outperformance of ESPN and TNT for league rights – and the perceived strength of the league, which is not even very strong historically, is actually rooted in weakness – it's based on people who care about LeBron and the Warriors.

Unlike the NFL, where the Super Bowl attracts a wide audience, no matter the player, the NBA is player-driven.

Well, be careful, LeBron is only two years old in his career and the Warrior dynasty may be over.

After Michael Jordan, the ratings of the NBA have hit and it took a decade to become respectable again.

I think we may see something similar when LeBron leaves, especially if the Warrior dynasty also stops. Right now, the NBA is skyrocketing and the hike is not that high. In fact, it is lower than ever in the Magic-Bird and Jordan days.

So, in the age of anecdotes and opinions, factual data are dear to me, and historical rating data is as close to a set of factually representative data as we have.

…

I hope you have fantastic weekends and a good Father's Day.

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