SI

The NBA Is Trying to Make Its Schedule Release a Thing, but It’s Not Working

Also in Traina Thoughts: NFL preseason game beats ‘Sunday Night Baseball’; Manti Te’o doc looks good; college football player stars in tremendous commercial and more.

Jimmy Traina

1. The NFL gets away with making its schedule release a big deal because 1) it’s the NFL and 2) the NFL schedule is unique each year.

The NBA is now trying to make its schedule release a newsworthy event, but it just isn’t working. We told you in Monday’s Traina Thoughts that the Christmas Day games leaked, and that’s fine because people care about the games that will air nationally that day (even though the NFL has been preparing to take Christmas Day away from the NBA).

However, the league wants its fans to wait with bated breath for 3 p.m. ET on Wednesday to get the full schedule.

When your season is 82 games long, a schedule release is not a big deal at all. Outside of opening night and Christmas Day, nothing else is significant.

This isn’t exactly breaking news because a lot of NBA fans were also baffled (and even ticked off) that the league went with this approach.

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2. Speaking of the NFL’s dominance, this tidbit is pretty wild. Saturday’s Seahawks-Steelers exhibition game that aired on the NFL Network generated 2.16 million viewers. Yankees–Red Sox, which aired on Fox, generated 2.08 million viewers.

3. I don’t want to oversell this, but this is amazing footage. It appears that White Sox manager Tony La Russa actually had to get strategy advice from a fan in the stands during last night’s game against the Astros.

4. Nebraska wide receiver Decoldest Crawford is taking advantage of having a great first name by starring in a commercial for an air conditioning company.

5. Netflix has released the trailer for the upcoming season of Cobra Kai.

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6. Speaking of Netflix, its Manti Te’o documentary dropped today, and it looks like a must-watch.

7. This week’s SI Media Podcast features two interviews plus our weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment.

First up is Linda Cohn from ESPN. Cohn, who recently re-signed with the network, talks about being at ESPN for 30 years and anchoring more SportsCenters than any other host in the show’s history. Cohn discusses how she got started in the business, being given an ultimatum after her first two years at ESPN, her love of hockey and much more.

Following Cohn, former WWE head writer Brian Gewirtz joins the podcast. Gewirtz, who has a book coming up next week titled There's Just One Problem, shares inside stories from his time writing Monday Night Raw from 1999 to 2012 and talks about what it was like to collaborate with The Rock, Mick Foley, Chris Jericho and more.

The podcast closes with “Traina Thoughts.” This week, Sal Licata from WFAN and SNY and I talk about Hard Knocks, a recent must-watch show from ESPN and why you can’t do back-to-back naps.

You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Google.

You can also watch the SI Media Podcast on YouTube.

8. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: Madonna turns 64 years old today. I’m old enough to remember when she went on David Letterman’s show and said the f-word a million times, and it was a huge scandal across the country.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.

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Jimmy Traina
JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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