Are athletes trying too hard to generate “aura”? Is Aaron Judge too big to be cool? Is a decidedly unc wardrobe an asset or liability for Jalen Hurts? The inaugural PTFO Coolest Athlete Draft reveals all. Further content: • Toward a Unified Theory of Uncool (Ock Sportello) https://www.neverhungover.club/p/toward-a-unified-theory-of-uncool • Subscribe to the Mina Kimes YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@minakimes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What does it mean to be cool in sports?
I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale. Exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities. Please drink responsibly, because today we're going to find out what this sound is.
Are any of us cool? Do you think if people did the exercise we're about to do, they would say any of us are actually cool?
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Do you know this one friend who just comes out of bed in the morning and then doesn't come out of his grin? Who is even in front of the first coffee, shamelessly well-groomed and shines around the world with the morning sun? Terrible. Disgusting.
How can you just be so... Restless? Very simple.
Train your sleep and become a morning person. With the Galaxy Watch 7 or the Galaxy Ring and the Samsung Health app.
This is a nice Around the Horn off-ramp. I get to hang out with you guys. I'm finding myself missing companionship.
Wednesdays is usually when I do Around the Horn. I was thinking about that, actually.
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Chapter 2: Are current athletes trying too hard to be cool?
Which I think is cool. Don't get cooler than that, guys. I think that there are some people out there who think that the three of us are cool. I think there are more people who would laugh at those people.
Have you ever been cool? Was there ever a point in your life where you felt like you were cool?
Hmm.
When did you peak in coolness?
Probably like third grade.
Third grade.
Yeah. Wow. Mina, what are you—you're picking college?
It's definitely college for me, 100%. But a lot of that is because how cool you are is a product of your surroundings, right? And so going to college for me, my cool factor on a relative basis skyrocketed from high school to Yale. David's nodding like he had a similar experience.
Absolutely. Davidson? I went to school with a bunch of dorky white kids, a small liberal arts school. I was the coolest guy around.
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Chapter 3: What defines an athlete's aura?
His show is really good.
All right, fine, let's start the actual show. So the thing I wanted to start with, guys, is, in fact, a case study in Cool. And it started on Substack, which is not the coolest place for things to start. But there's an anonymous author who goes by the handle of Ox Portello, which is, I believe, a reference to Inherent Vice. Already setting sort of like the highbrow kind of illusion standard here.
We know we're harkening back. When we asked David to read this, David, your initial review of the piece was, in brief?
I don't. know like half the references that he made in the article so there's i had to look up what is uh what's the the vape thing that everybody's internet i don't know what that was i didn't read the cut article that was referenced in there it was like a subsection of the internet that i'm not familiar with at all you know white people have culture too david Thank you, Mina.
That's sort of where I was.
It was a very much like... All cultures matter. All cultures matter. But the thing that got this going viral around the NBA internet, at the very least, was one statement in particular that I think is consensus. And it was articulated thusly, quote, For as long as I can remember, the NBA has served as a cultural North Star. These NBA playoffs portend a crisis of cool."
And he goes on to analyze Jalen Brunson and Tyrese Halliburton and Shea Gildress Alexander, categorizing them as uncool, which I would like us to discuss. Anthony Edwards sort of sticks out as, quote, the exception proving the rule.
of cool, that actually he is somebody who is so alone in his coolness that the others who are variously, I would say, try-hard meme lords who seem to be imitative of previous imitations even, there was a bunch of that. And so I just want to start, Mina, by actually articulating What do we mean by cool? How do we even define this?
Because yes, it is one, I believe, white blogger's opinion that the categories flow as such. But I do think there's something he's getting at here that's worth talking about.
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Chapter 4: How do college experiences influence perceptions of coolness?
LeBron's like an iPhone. Like, he's too, no, he's like too much of a monolith. It's like Taylor Swift. You know, like it's too big to be cool.
He's a literal corporation who is also trying very hard at all times. But if you just go through the list of like Kawhi Leonard, LeBron James, James Harden, Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, Paul George. I'm going through just like all NBA caliber guys. It's not like we have been dealing with a bumper crop of the previous generation where it's like, man, those guys check all the boxes, you know.
I mean, we can get in the second apron and players moving around and stuff like that. But I think a lot of the players that we all thought were the coolest were not necessarily the best players in the game, right? Rasheed Wallace. Like, yeah, there's the Rasheed Wallace. There's like, you know, like J.R.
Ryder and the between the legs dunk or like, you know, Harry Payton, who was all, you know, this all NBA was never like the best player in the world. He was just a cool ass player. You know, Baron Davis, Steve Francis, like those type of dudes. were always really cool. And we loved them. We collected their basketball cards. We like did all this stuff that, you know, we loved about them.
The Clippers, the like Quentin Q. Rich Clippers and all that, Darius Miles and them. Like those are people that we love that were not necessarily the best in the world. And I think that like, it's kind of shortens our list and like the potential of who we're going to pick if we're only looking at all NBA players. That's never always been the case about who we think is great.
And it's also good to note, That like we did have a draft and neither one of us really picked an NBA player. Like we kind of picked like a Dame who's not going to play and Aja Wilson who's not in the league and Ja who's like.
The guy's argument checks out. Yeah. Like it does. Our picks kind of illustrate it for him. Baseball's very top heavy.
I mean, I think the question.
Do I get to pick first?
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