Felger and Mazz - Creating False Naratives one day at a time
- Thread starter HomeBrew1901
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Another impressive job of trolling today by these simpletons.
They decided to make a tier list of all the championships and have already decided that the Celtics are in the lowest tier, like with the 2011 Mavericks or the 2019 raptors or whatever.
Never mind they're historic record. They're incredible, young age, etc. Having the executive of the year, going 16 and 2 in the playoffs. Potentially, 80% winning percentage. Nope, doesn't matter. They've only won one one assuming they finish the job so they're on the lowest tier.
I need the flaws are obvious and occasionally a color will point it out but then they just " well I can't go into a time machine and see the future so..."
Which is why the entire exercise is ridiculous.
They decided to make a tier list of all the championships and have already decided that the Celtics are in the lowest tier, like with the 2011 Mavericks or the 2019 raptors or whatever.
Never mind they're historic record. They're incredible, young age, etc. Having the executive of the year, going 16 and 2 in the playoffs. Potentially, 80% winning percentage. Nope, doesn't matter. They've only won one one assuming they finish the job so they're on the lowest tier.
I need the flaws are obvious and occasionally a color will point it out but then they just " well I can't go into a time machine and see the future so..."
Which is why the entire exercise is ridiculous.
I saw a clip on twitter where Felger says "we are here to talk about the celts clinching their 18th title, and let you bask in it. We wont try and ruin it too much for you...but the program being what it is I cant promise you anything." That really sums them up perfectly.
Guy says to customer, "I am going to shit on your head." Customer removes hat and places his head below the guy's ass to make it easier for the guy to hit the target. I dont get the appeal.
I go back and forth...Ill throw them on for a segment on way home from work occasionally. But as entertainment only. There are times where their takes can be such troll jobs to that it's straight up comedy to me. There are also people in my real life (aka not the internet) who spout F&M nonsense as if it's actual knowledge, so it's nice to be able to form the counter arguments ahead of time...which is where SoSH is so valuable!
People who take them seriously are not to be taken seriously.
Mazz joins Kidd in trying to drive a wedge
mazz joins kidd in trying to drive a wedge between tatum and brown the morning after they win the nba championship
Was listening for a bit earlier and they played this montage of the Cs coming up short the last couple of seasons and Stephen A calling a Mavs upset. - Remarkably Mazz calling Dallas in six didn't make the cut.
Felger was clearly bored by the game and got fixated on the fact that Tatum did 'stat padding' in the 2nd half, got the coveted Lisa Salters walk off interview and that a Tatum-voiced Nike ad aired as soon as the game ended, but didn't get the MVP. He found that fascinating for some reason. No one else in the studio cared.
Think I was also listening to this segment where he also talked about how it was also weird that after a Pats SB win Brady was immediately featured in an ad talking about the win.
Made me think a little bit about how (at least this used to be) in baseball they'd have t-shirts made up for the ALCS/ NLCS winners that the players would throw on in the locker room during the party and that the loser's t-shirts would be donated to a 3rd world charity never to be seen again.
They do this in every sport, there used to be 19-0 official Patriots gear that would show up on ebay
Don’t turn it on today. Opening segment is talking about Brown and Tatum leaving the Celtics.
TATUM IS A LAKER FAN. HE DOESNT WANT TO BE HERE LONG TERM!
BROWN ISNT HAPPY WITH HIS MARKETING IN BOSTON! IT’S TOUGH BEING THE NUMBER 2.
Gave it 1 day before going full troll.
TATUM IS A LAKER FAN. HE DOESNT WANT TO BE HERE LONG TERM!
BROWN ISNT HAPPY WITH HIS MARKETING IN BOSTON! IT’S TOUGH BEING THE NUMBER 2.
Gave it 1 day before going full troll.
These guys are just actors. It really *is* the people listening and regurgitating that are the miserable shits.
I'd love to see Wyc or Stevens grant the flagship an "exclusive" appearance and then just rip them to shreds.
"Trouble in bed, mike? Or is there another reason you're so angry?" "Nice insight Tony, you gonna pay the drunk guy at the bar you stole it from."
I don't follow the NBA closely enough to know or understand contracts or their salary cap stuff, but from what I can find Tatum is signed for two more years and Brown is signed for four. How is the universal response to their trolling not "that's a 2026 problem, not a 2024 problem" followed by silence?
And reports are saying Tatum is signing a supermax this offseason. It’s not even close to an issue.
I cant listen to these guys for more than a few minutes. I find their need to suck the joy out of sports with their incessant trolling insufferable.
Yeah... I now occasionally tune in to see what's going on, and over the past couple of months in particular I've tuned out after about 5 minutes. I've mentioned it before in this thread that I don't think they know fuck-all about basketball. Their takes on other sports are alternately antagonistic, annoying, or contrived but sometimes there may be shred of detail about how the games are played; the basketball/NBA discussion has crossed into being just flat out offensive and disgusting to me. I don't know much about the game at all, but I am interested in style of play, in-game team adjustments, individual player adjustments, team composition, player development, and the commitment to defense as well as offense from a team's stars. F&M are incapable of talking about any of this at even a basic level.
Interpersonal tension will continue to exist because Jaylen Brown's marketing team sucks? Tatum makes too many commercials and it annoys you, so the team dynamic is fragile? Joe Mazz is weird and unorthodox? Fuck outta here with all of that...
Interpersonal tension will continue to exist because Jaylen Brown's marketing team sucks? Tatum makes too many commercials and it annoys you, so the team dynamic is fragile? Joe Mazz is weird and unorthodox? Fuck outta here with all of that...
I think they really got exposed in that JJ interview. JJ was a dick for sure, but the narrative they were trying to push was so laughable, talking about shooting too many threes, when this is what the team does, and this is how they won all season long. They don't even watch the games.
agree. This afternoon right now actually Murray and Mazz shitting on Duran. Not a dynamic player. He’s not nearly as good as Judge. Or Bryce Harper. Or Ohtani. So he can’t be an all star. I wonder if either one of them even watches games any more or are smart enough to understand what they are watching if they do. Too bad Shertenlieb isn’t on in the afternoon too
What they actually said(Mazz did) is that Duran is a good player but since the Red Sox have been irrelevant in the baseball landscape the last few years he's not getting the recognition. That's all true by the way.
Rich had Tom Caron on this morning, and opened the interview with (paraphrasing) ‘We’ve all been following the Celtics run in the playoffs so much that we haven’t even discussed the Red Sox. In fact, you’re the first guest we’ve had on specifically to talk about the Sox. Can it be that they’re actually pretty good? Catch us up on the Red Sox 2024 season…’
It wasn’t exactly earth-shattering analysis from Caron, but at least it was refreshingly objective. Unlike the garbage that Mazz spews. Shame on him. He knows better.
It wasn’t exactly earth-shattering analysis from Caron, but at least it was refreshingly objective. Unlike the garbage that Mazz spews. Shame on him. He knows better.
Mazz couldn't hack it at the Herald.* That's right. The Herald.
*I read that on the internet.
Felger is insufferable today, but it’s actually funny. You can see him in physical pain over this feeling of joy and happiness in the city today.
He's desperate. A championship in June leaves them nothing to dive into about why it failed and with the Red Sox being sort of decent and a boring Pats team that doesn't start it's preseason for 6 weeks he's got little material to drive up controversy.
Next hour: Looking back on the San Antonio pick swap: was Derrick White really worth it?
So tomorrow they'll be discussing why Bob Kraft fired Jerod Mayo this coming January? Or perhaps bemoaning that Joe Mazzula should still have his job come June 2025?
If they are so good at predicting the future why are their sports takes so dogshit?
I think the more interesting phenomenon is the people listening to them.
Guy who gets paid to say outrageous thing said something outrageous and I'm outraged. I'll listen even harder tomorrow to teach him a lesson.
In the year of 2024, there is just so much more interesting, insightful, educational, and better things to listen to. What is it with these guys? The Howard Stern effect (what do they say next?). People too lazy/don't understand podcasts? Or are they just super duper popular in their listening area? Or maybe I'm in my own bubble where I only see the hatred they get (here, twitter, other social media) and there are actually fanboys out there that love and support them and will listen no matter what.
This all started the night before on BST, Shaughnessy was on the panel saying Cora has done a very good job this year, he'll have plenty of options/suitors "IF" the Red Sox do not extend him/fire him.
So now Felger had turned that into ownership will fire him/not retain him.
Fellowship of the miserable indeed.
It’s always been odd to me that Boston still has a subset of miserable sports writers.. with Borges, McDonough, Shaugnessy it sort of made sense.. but Felger’s career has basically spanned the entirety of Boston winning a ton of titles.. and he somehow stays continuously miserable.. at some point his schtick should wear off.. for me he became irrelevant in 2004. He’s a cheap copy of Dan.
That's pretty complimentary as CHB quotes go. Still don't know how people don't see right through Felger.
I know what you're saying, but I'd argue (and I'm sure Felger would too) that he's not being "miserable" he's simply being a contrarian and that he's just calling bullshit when he sees it. Which, I think to an extent, that's what he does and he's pretty good at doing it. The problem with Felger (and his ilk) is that after a while being a contrarian just to be a contrarian kinda leaves you without a center. Deep down, what does Felger* believe in? Probably nothing, which is fine, except if you're just being a nihilist and saying everything sucks (when there are times when it clearly doesn't) then you sound dumb and more than a little crazy.
I like writers and commentators like Craig Calcatarra who punches up and cuts through the bullshit. Felger does this sometimes and Shaughnessy does this too, though way less than even Felger.
* My guess is that Felger is not how he acts "in real life". My guess is that if you held Felger down and made him answer you truthfully, he'd tell you that the Michael Felger on air for four hours is a character. He'd also tell you, and I've heard him say this a bunch of times, that a four-hour "We are Family" show is not great for the ratings and he has to heel it up (to use wrestler parlance) for people to engage with him. There's no one better at doing this than Felger and I think that the dude works hard but like you say, he can be a lot.
Like last night on Boston Sports Tonight, he was talking to the Globe's Chris Gasper about the Sox. Felger said that the Sox should unequivically go for it today, start cashing in chips and start preparing for the post season. Gasper said something like, "The Sox had similar records the last two years and crashed and burned. I don't think that the Sox FO is going to go for it." Felger got all pissed off and was yelling at Gasper, "When your team is in position to go to the postseason you have to go for it. You have to." And Gasper was saying that he wasn't wrong but in his opinon, the Sox FO isn't going to do it. He was being subtle but he was agreeing with Felger but saying that the Sox FO doesn't and they're not going to chase a dream with a dumpy team.
Felger wouldn't let it go and Gasper was like, what do you want me to tell you.
It was a pretty interesting discussion and I could see both sides of it. But Felger's pretty good at that, I guess. Better than the other people on the radio in this market anyway.
Yeah.. at some point it's just not interesting to me. I get that everyone loving the local teams gets boring, but so does always being negative about the local teams.. I get that he's a contrarian, but I can't think of all that many people that I like that are always a contrarian just to be a contrarian. Besides that he also congratulates himself for those takes... saying things like 'I'm not a fanboy' or whatever to try and justify his takes. There's a market for intelligent talk about sports in the Boston area, but nobody is really looking to fill that void.
Which is fine. But there's room for a little bit of We Are Family. And without listening I bet it lasted maybe half of the show after the Celtics won? And then they were on to well, anyone can win one. This is a dynasty? Let's see it. These guys hate each other. (And from listening to Rich he went heavy on the Perkins thing as an example of how dysfunctional it really is over there and these guys are still a bunch of babies. Wahhhh! They said something mean about us Wahhhhh.)
And if they did that he would immediately go into "why are they trading these guys? We've been told how they need to rebuild the farm system, how can they do that when they keep trading these guys (and draft picks?) Don't they believe in their youth? Which is it? What's the plan?"
"There's no plan, Mike"
"Right! It's these nerds that are in charge that don't know anything about how the game is actually played"
"The nerds are ruining baseball!"
The only way to win is to not play.
One thing to bear in mind is Felger isn't a local guy. He's been in Boston since college but he grew up in Milwaukee. He didn't grow up watching and rooting for the Boston teams. He's only ever interacted with them as a "neutral" member of the press. I can see where his contrarian schtick developed because while there are curmudgeons like Borges and McDonough and Shaughnessy, there are also a lot of homers in the Boston media (particularly radio). He saw his lane as the unbiased outside observer poking at the homers. I think the biggest problem with him is he doesn't have someone to spar with to keep him sharp. I think he needs a homer with a bit of pollyanna-ishness to their point of view. Instead, he's got a fellow curmudgeon as a co-host. So he's gotten lazy and stale, especially in the face of all the success the city has seen.
I don't disagree with any of this. And I agree, aside from maybe 10-20 minutes a day, it's not really interesting to me. What I find kinda perversely interesting is how he takes a positive and spins it into a negative. I don't think it necessarily takes talent, but he's pretty decent at it and it makes me laugh most times.
I will push back on the whole "there's a market for intelligent sports talk in Boston". We've been saying that since the 90s and I don't think that there is, sports talk radio is always LCD bullshit. Sean McDonough tried doing it in the early 00s but the signal he was on was terrible. And believe it or not, out of the shoot F&M did it, but they didn't get successful until they got into the swamp. I think that people just want to get angry and yell. I don't think that people are capable of having an intelligent conversation every day for four hours.
I agree. Sports is supposed to be fun and when your team wins or is winning, that's the most fun time to be a fan. But Felger and his ilk suck the joy out of that with their takes, like I said I listen maybe 20 minutes a day, a few times a week. I don't know how someone could turn on TSH or EEI in the morning and listen all day to this shit. I'd stab a knitting needle in my ear by Tuesday.
Boston Sports Tonight is pretty good if you're looking for some Felger push back. Michael Holley is probably the most articulate, rational sports voice in the region. Yes, he does have his blind spots, but for the most part he seems like a good dude, with interesting thoughts and knows that it's just sports. He tells Felger that he's full of it all the time and Felger just goes back and moves the goal posts. And Holley tells him he's crazy then and Felger might chuckle. It's better than his radio show where Mazz and Murray roll over for him like good doggies.
BTW I'm not saying BST is appointment TV or anything, I'm just saying it's decent sports talk and it's an hour.
I don't think think Felger is a contrarian if he's just always negative. During times that everyone agrees the the Sox are bad, does he come out shouting about how things aren't as bad as they seem and the fans shouldn't panic?
I suspect Felger would argue he's "just calling bullshit" because it obfuscates the simplicity of his schtick and makes him better than the subject, whatever it is. To me, calling bullshit all the time is a lot like meeting assholes all the time.
Yesterday they were going after Don Orsillo and the fans for continuing to care about the drama of his departure and with Remy.
Like are they seriously not getting it? In 9 years I can't remember a single thing Dave O'Brien has done.. I didn't love orsillo as much as some of the other fans, in fact I really liked McDonough. But you just can't deny the fact that fans loved him, he was there for nearly two decades. And there was no reason to remove him.
He was local, he wanted to stay, the ratings were great. Back that it's about to play by play guy and it's a relatively low stakes thing so it makes it all the more curious why they ditched him.
Still don't know exactly why, I wonder if there was something personal between orsillo and luchino or something. Never call the former nesn program director or whatever used to mold online all the time complaining about Orsillo.
Now that there's no Remy and no Eck... Nesn broadcasts are a drag. At least if you had some of those familiar people that were beloved by the fans, it was a little easier to endure mediocre seasons..
Like are they seriously not getting it? In 9 years I can't remember a single thing Dave O'Brien has done.. I didn't love orsillo as much as some of the other fans, in fact I really liked McDonough. But you just can't deny the fact that fans loved him, he was there for nearly two decades. And there was no reason to remove him.
He was local, he wanted to stay, the ratings were great. Back that it's about to play by play guy and it's a relatively low stakes thing so it makes it all the more curious why they ditched him.
Still don't know exactly why, I wonder if there was something personal between orsillo and luchino or something. Never call the former nesn program director or whatever used to mold online all the time complaining about Orsillo.
Now that there's no Remy and no Eck... Nesn broadcasts are a drag. At least if you had some of those familiar people that were beloved by the fans, it was a little easier to endure mediocre seasons..
Just saw a pic of World Class D-Bag Jim Murray from today's show wearing a "Hawk Tuah '24" baseball cap. He's got his finger on the pulse of 2 weeks ago.