Sherman Alexie has won many literary prizes and also played pickup basketball against John Stockton. In this pod, he humors all my questions about Native American life, riffs on Draymond Green’s situation and recounts how competitively angry the Utah Jazz legend gets in person.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit houseofstrauss.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit houseofstrauss.substack.com

Anthony Slater has always been great at this job, to the point of changing it for everyone else. The cinematic Warriors-Kings (Or should it be Kings-Warriors?) series is a perfect excuse to have an in the weeds conversation with The Athletic veteran and now new father. This podcast discusses but is not limited to the following topics:

* Who else? Draymond Green

* Slater should write a book about what’s happening

* What was it like being 23 years old and covering the Oklahoma City Thunder?

* Why does Slater appreciate that Russell Westbrook is an asshole to every media member?

* Warriors GM Bob Myers has more than one foot out the door

* Did Myers sort of screw the Bay Area media by complimenting their soft coverage of Andrew Wiggins’ absence?

* The difficulty of discussing a players’ personal issues

* Covering Thunder GM Sam Presti vs. Warriors GM Bob Myers

* How Slater changed the industry for everyone and quite suddenly

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit houseofstrauss.substack.com

I kept hearing it from some unexpected sources in my life: You gotta get Grant Cohn on the pod. With the NFL Draft coming up, it was finally time.

No person in the sports media appears to have more disdain for the sports media than Grant. And that makes sense, even if his father Lowell was a longtime local columnist. Cohn has made it outside the mainstream circuit, pitching his bold takes to a Youtube audience. He’s been publicly attacked by multiple 49ers players, dismissed by other media outlets and yet, his channel just keeps growing and going. We get into it all.

This pod includes, but isn’t limited to discussion of:

* Grant thinks I’m more controversial than he is?!

* We recall a past lunch wherein Grant confessed he was struggling to make it professionally

* What happened to turn his career around?

* Why does Grant have disdain for the sports media of today?

* The Javon Kinlaw incident

* Why did the media take Kinlaw’s side? Why did they call Grant a “troll”?

* 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan is a fascinating study in coach psychology

* Why do the 49ers care so much about his takes?

* Andrew Wiggins being rusty cost the Warriors in Game 1. What’s up with the absence of commentary?

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit houseofstrauss.substack.com

Amin is back and taking this 1 hour 47 minute podcast into unexpectedly fraught territory. Beyond examining however my persona has evolved, we touch on some landmine topics. Discussion in this podcast includes, but is not limited to:

* We riff on whether it’s moral to eat lion

* Amin has thoughts on my (political? apolitical?) persona and how people assess it

* We reflect on how normies vs. extremely online types reacted to the Rachel Nichols situation

* We talk about, yes, the trans sports issue

* We hear what Amin would tell his daughter per that particular issue

* The MOM Rule, which is different from the DADD rule

* We honestly discuss Warriors GM Bob Myers’ foray into podcasting and whether it’s working

Matt Klinman is a) My best friend since Middle School and b) the Co-Star of High Science, a new show on HBO Max that features Paul Bettany as an educational talking bong. Matt’s also something of a tech critic, who’s facebook-is-killing-comedy.html">gone viral with his explanations of how Facebook killed a once thriving digital comedy scene.

Beyond his show premiering on 4/20, this was an ideal time for us to chat, given recent Musk vs. Substack machinations. We get into that, while also arguing a lot.

This pod discussion touches on, but is not limited to:

* High Science as the show where it’s fun to learn

* Trippy marine science facts

* Matt thinks Musk attacked Substack because he “does things that suck because he sucks.” I demand a more granular explanation and we argue

* Glass Onion is the most salient Musk satire. It’s also highly annoying to me

* Matt lashes out at Matt Taibbi for being Gen X

* Matt thinks our artistic nadir is more related to economics than Wokeness. I think Matt’s onto something but also in denial

* Will AI kill us all? Do the nerds want to make it kill us all?

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit houseofstrauss.substack.com/subscribe

HoS pod is quite happy to welcome Blocked and Reported co-host Katie Herzog. I’m a big BAR fan and believe it to be somewhat misunderstood, especially at this juncture. We get into how the podcast has evolved into a more journalistic and narrative driven product, plus touch on the ways an Old Public Radio golden age fell apart.

This discussion touches on, but is not limited to:

* Katie allegedly knows nothing about sports but somehow knows the relevant details of Meyers Leonard saying “kike” while gaming.

* Shouldn’t the dumb jock defense help Leonard here?

* White American NBA player politics

* How Prestige 2000s Radio fell apart and why those carrying its torch are the people public radio hates

* When you realize that the truth won’t set you free, what happens next?

* Katie’s lost friends over what she’s written but I, oddly, don’t seem to have?

* The challenge of sports with a lot of homophobia among players trying to advance Pride Nights

* The Bon Appetit vs. Reply All Latinx Standoff Ouroboros

* The Great Katie vs. Jesse debate about his leaving Twitter

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit houseofstrauss.substack.com/subscribe

Rob Perez, otherwise known as World Wide Wob, has a million Twitter followers based on his ability to share viral content fast. That means always being on the job, including the segment we’d blocked out to record this podcast. In this case we were delayed because, stop me if you’ve heard this excuse before, Rob had to Twitch stream a car chase involving a stolen police vehicle. Coming off the high of that police chase wrapping up, we got into how Rob does what he does and why.

Discussion on this pod includes, but is not limited to:

* What’s a “fur missile”?

* Moral issues in doing play by play of car chases

* Rob regularly watches up to nine NBA games simultaneously, at full volume. How?

* Why the International NBA fans are getting burnt out on the sport’s controversies

* What the hell was NBA Top Shot?

* What specific NBA stories did Rob turn viral?

* Is Rob the pig, or is he Gwyneth Paltrow?

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit houseofstrauss.substack.com/subscribe

Damon Bruce and Ray Ratto were delivering great ratings in drive time at 95.7 The Game when, boom, they were fired out of nowhere. Nobody seemed to see this coming and it speaks to an overall instability in the radio industry. I had Damon on to discuss this shocker, look at his career in the Bay, talk about the radio industry and give us an indication of how he’s going to move forward. Discussion includes, but is not limited to:

* What’s with the surprise firing?

* Does Damon miss solo hosting?

* Going toe-to-toe with Steve Kerr on James Wiseman

* Damon vs. Gary Radnich, what happened there?

* Talking about the long arc of Warriors success

* How did having a stroke save Damon’s life?

* Would Damon ever go back to KNBR?

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit houseofstrauss.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit houseofstrauss.substack.com

We welcome back Big Wos and Nate Jones, two of my favorites in the NBA business/culture space. Today we discuss a range of hot button issues, including this forbidden zone that is the Andrew Wiggins situation.

* Air fryers? A perfect life hack or a monstrosity?

* Wos “Žižek” Lambre on why sports ceasing to care about fans is, indeed, capitalism

* Wos with a take on the cringe/fake way LeBron becoming an owner would be advertised as representationism

* Nate speaks on how the surrounding NBA organizational pressure is why players miss games that fans want them in

* We get into the Andrew Wiggins situation with the Warriors. What expectations are fair and under what circumstances?

* Are the NCAA women’s players more famous now than the men’s players?

* Nate with a theory on how the NCAA women overtook the men

* We get into how NIL changed the women’s game

* Is the selling of sex appeal a problem for the NCAA? Or a benefit to those sports?

* The “hoop dollar” vs. the “horny dollar”

* Nate talks about what recruiting athletes for NIL is like.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit houseofstrauss.substack.com

I once worked with expert NBA writer Rob Mahoney in what felt like impossible circumstances. Looking back, I want to know: Did he really handle it as easily as it looked from the outside? We get into that, take a look back on the industry and discuss his burgeoning podcast power. The episode touches on but is not limited to:

* How did NBA writing become Rob’s life?

* Why does he still do it?

* Our insane experience of working at Bleacher Report in 2012

* When the robots demanded that we say LeBron and D-Wade “choke because they’re mentally weak”

* Did we experience the Chat GPT future in 2012?

* How Sports Illustrated fumbled the bag

* Who is the new Al Horford?

* Can Rob explain Denver Nuggets title contention to a normie?

* Rob’s Top 3 TV shows

* Is Rob a nerd or a cowboy?