Burack: It feels like a WWE feud. That's probably why people are so interested.
Wilbon: Yes, exactly. That's a great way to look at it. Enough. Both of them.
And, look, I am a father, too. Let me let you in on some inside baseball, Bobby. And you probably know this. But "PTI" did not talk about Bronny. We never did. All the Bronny talk that our network did was pandering. It was for clicks and eyeballs. I refused to participate.
You can go back and look, "PTI" didn't cover him, except for maybe the real news, like the day after he was drafted. Those other shows, it was every day. Bronny. Bronny. Bronny. What the hell is this? It was a disaster waiting to happen.
I have a 17-year-old son, so this matters to me. I am particularly sensitive to it. I'd do anything for my kid, and I would hug LeBron for what he did for his kid.
But as far as coverage, no. There were shows that talked about Bronny every day. You know what shows I'm talking about. I don't care if my bosses get mad. They would try to get Tony and me to talk about it. No, we were not going to do it.
Burack: There was a story somewhere about how ESPN and FS1 covered Bronny more this season than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the frontrunner for MVP.
Wilbon: That's right. I didn't even think about that. It's true. They talked about him more than Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. That's pandering. It's all pandering.
Let me be clear: our business is a piece of shit a lot of days.
There is nobody enforcing standards or having tough conversations. This is what happens when you no longer have functioning newsrooms, because everyone is working from hotel rooms, from their bedrooms, and maybe even from their beds.
People are not in newsrooms anymore or a studio, where you can call them out on their bullshit. That's a problem.
Instead, there are a bunch of 20-year-olds pitching stories while spending all day on social media and reinforcing each other's bullshit. It's 100% pandering, and I hate it. You know this, Bobby. You see it.
But again, I was not critical of LeBron as a dad, at all. I feel differently about this than most. I get it. However, Tony and I didn't need to talk about it publicly. Tony understands it too. His son, Michael, works for him. But we aren't talking about Bronny every day. Hell no.
This isn't about Stephen A. It's the entire industry. That's what I want to remind LeBron.
Our business is just shit some days. It just is.
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