Share & Cool & Tell with David Dennis Jr. and Mina Kimes
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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? Right after this ad. You're listening to

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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. As someone who didn't attend the Around the Horn conference, there have been a lot of tributes, I should say, to a show that we owe a lot to. I don't think I went to an Around the Horn conference call in a decade.

So as long as we can skip that part, I am down to refashion what we missed into this. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know when I stopped attending the conference call, but I definitely, Pablo was like the bad example to me. I was like, why am I doing this? Pablo's not doing it. I'm also on West Coast Time. This is, by the way, this is how David realizes, oh, I could have not done the conference call. The whole time. Oh, I knew the whole time. But, you know, hey, I'm just like, you know, being a good steward. I'm just the, look, as we will get into, I'm just the cool guy.

I'm Bart Simpson, you know, just skateboarding, spray painting stuff. 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? Well, we did last gather to do an entire episode about the X-Men animated series reboot. Which is 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? Or when did you peak in coolness? Probably like 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

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. I'll just say that I went to school with a bunch of dorky white kids in a small liberal arts school. I was the coolest guy around. Am I cool now? Yeah. The pendulum swang so drastically from high school to college. I didn't know what to do with myself.

This is also where I need to remind people, Mina, that David Dennis Jr. is a former beer pong partner of his classmate at Davidson, Steph Curry. So he is both observer and participant. He wasn't cool when I was there either. He wasn't cool until like the last two weeks of my time at Davidson.

But David Dennis Jr. was the original Splash Brother. This is a fact. This is real. This is not an exaggeration.

Also, I am now banning officially Nick Wright. I just want to say, f*** you, Nick Wright. You're off the show. We can get into that a separate time. Based on cool, you're banning him because he's not cool? Well, Mina, also because he did this to you today. Do you have any other media beefs going on right now at present? For the eighth straight year, First Things First was not nominated for Best Studio Show Weekly at the Sports Emmys.

When I saw the list of nominations, I don't remember all of them, but one of them was NFL Live hosted by one of my media rivals, Mina Kimes. And when I saw they won, I was very happy.

because I think that they do a really good job, and I think Mina's excellent. Obviously, I don't think she's as good as me at anything, but I do think she is excellent, and I was happy she won. Is this why he's trying to grow his hair like Mina's, or is that a different...

Nick Wright has been trying to do this whole rivalry thing with me now for four or five years. And honestly, it's like, I don't know.

What's a good comp? It's giving Kobe Stopper, Reuben Patterson era Kobe Stopper. Oh, wow. Wow. That's what I'm getting from it. I saw a tweet when Brock Purdy signed his contract where they were like, Brock Purdy joins like rivals Josh Allen. Maybe that's... Brock Purdy's great. Nick's great. But like, come on. Let's get real here. Yeah. Both Mr. Irrelevant, I dare say.

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. Yeah, we know what we're getting here.

We know we're hearkening back when David, 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 I had to look up.

What is, what's the vape thing that everybody's doing? Zen. Zen and Zenternet. 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 this is… 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 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 says,

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. So cool is a perfect term.

debate subject because no one can actually define it. Cool is truly in the eye of the beholder. However, when he says something like, Therese Halbert and J.L. Brunson are not cool, Anthony Edwards is cool, I imagine we all nodded as we read that because it immediately reads as correct. So, starting from that point, it's not just about play. I think we can all agree upon that. There's a certain vibe, what the kids call aura. I would argue this piece gets at something that is...

both true and does actually help us arrive at a definition of cool. When he talked about how a lot of these guys, and he mentioned Halliburton and, of course, Tatum, their sense of what is cool is just kind of memeing other things, right? It's derivative. I think cool is original. I think part of the reason why Ananthi Edwards feels cool is because he does not seem to be emulating anyone either in his...

sense of self, the way he speaks, what he, in fact, he thinks he's better than everybody. Which doesn't, that in itself, you don't have to be super egotistical or whatever. But he was almost too cool for basketball. I mean, he was a quarterback, right? He played football. He was like, football is actually the thing that I'm great at for a while. He was too cool for Barack Obama.

Hussein Obama. He looked at Obama and said, stand down, son, like he was a 12-year-old child. Hey, yo, K. Labonte. Listen, are y'all talking to this young man? Because he just keeps on...

Right now, he just said he's the truth and all that. The truth, the whole truth of nothing but the truth. That's what he said. You asked him, you tell him the whole context of the situation, though. You asked him what he think about this young man, and he said, I'm okay. I said, I'm the truth. He's the truth. That's what happened. What's wrong with that? So funny. So funny. But I think that if I had to isolate one variable, it is authenticity and originality. Would you guys agree with that?

Yes, yes. I would add one wrinkle, David, which is also, and I resemble this at times, and I am trying to be self-aware about this at times, try-hardness. Like somebody who really wants to be cool, effort, transparency of effort feels like another anti-cool sort of aspect here. Yeah, what would you add to that?

Yeah.

And like we're sort of missing this packaging of how players are supposed to be kind of cooler than they may or may not have been. Right. Like there are a lot of these dudes are like you guys who just play basketball for all, you know, for a lot of time, which is different than like some of the guys from the 90s who also just went to school and like hung out with friends and like created their own culture and came from different regions and different regionality with different cultures.

and these guys just play basketball all the time. And I think there's this belief that if we just see them on social media, we get to know the real them, which I didn't really get to know the real versions of a lot of these dudes. What I saw was these cool package Nike ads or Reebok ads or slam covers and this way that cool was disseminated to us. Think about somebody like Reggie Miller, who you got the choke and he was like this

kind of like kind of annoying dude but like he had this quote unquote aura and then he gets like unfettered mic time for three hours on TV as a color commentator and everybody's like shut up Reggie Miller we hate you you know what I'm saying like that's you know Reggie Miller's great and all that stuff but like that's kind of what it became because like he had this like barrier and this

packaging that created cool in a way that a lot of these athletes do not have right now. We just get their social media personalities and they're mic'd up and we like see Jalen Brown being like, we're not wizards. We're Harry Potter. I think I'll be playing with the energy. They the magic, but they know we really got the magic over here. No Harry Potter. You know, like we get a lot of that where we didn't get before.

There's also one thing, Mina, I think, which is that we are, look, the NBA has this like cultural barometer of cool as the piece sort of leads with. Part of that is as these things become increasingly corporate, as these things are like, you know, lineages that are increasingly formalized, as David was alluding to, we also get further away from what might be the fundamental tenet of cool that we haven't mentioned yet, which is I think that you have to be kind of anti-authority

You kind of have to be subversive. So like to me, the coolest figure when it comes to the modern NBA that we have been sort of circling implicitly without naming him is Allen Iverson. So that brings up the question. I have a question for both for both of you, for all of us to ask, which is sort of a central part of this piece. Like what when you guys think of coolest athletes that you've ever experienced, who comes to mind?

I love this question. Iverson's definitely up there in basketball. My football example, and I think this cuts to Pablo's theory, I think Marshawn Lynch is probably the coolest. He might be the coolest human of his generation, but definitely the coolest football player. Just everything about him from style of play to the anti-authority aspect to the way he spoke and carried himself to the lore around him.

I would contend that Ken Griffey Jr. is on the Mount Rushmore of cool athletes in any sport of any generation and you hit that apex because he was actually one of the best of all time and had this glow about him where...

you just saw him and you wanted to be him. Granted, we were the target generation for that. But there was just something about him, the way he played, the joy with which he played, the way he swung his bat, the way he wore his hat, the way he moved on and off the field. The way he played for the Seattle Mariners for Mina Times growing up. Okay, I actually asked Cortez for a clip. I want you to watch this and tell me that any athlete has ever looked cooler than Ken Griffey Jr. looks in this clip. Here's the pitch. There's a drive.

I'm sorry, but if you ever need to define aura, just play that .5 second clip. Right there. The dolly shot pushing in on Ken Griffey Jr. winking and breaking, shattering the fourth wall with a wink is... Yeah. No athlete has ever looked cooler than that right there. This reminds me, this article and this whole idea reminds me kind of like when I was coming up in the hip-hop blogs and I was like,

I was reading like the New Yorker and there were like older dudes writing about like telling me what was cool and like what like Lil Wayne rhymed like Nigerian hair with whatever and like you should like him and it's like well you know and so I think what would fundamentally as humans you're going to always think is cool are people who are older than you who grew up like yeah who you grew up admiring and who you grew up wanting to be like and I think for us as near 40 year olds

I don't think we can really determine what's cool. Or, like, none of these athletes are going to be cool. Like, no 20... I don't think that any 24-year-old is cool. There's not going to be a 24 or 25-year-old that I will ever think is cool ever again. Like, my dad is never... My dad is never, like...

Michael Jordan is cool. He's like Elgin Baylor was the coolest basketball player ever because that's who he wanted to be. I think there's young football players who are cool, actually, David. But to your earlier point, some of that is limited exposure, right? Like we don't really see them as much. They are naturally kept at a little bit of a distance from us. The helmet, they're not as present as basketball players. They don't talk as much. So I think that helps their cause. I do want to do a thing.

in a second here where we are going to draft the coolest athletes across at least the three major sports in the present day.

So we're going to put this to the test. I'm going to see that in your brains. We don't have to do it just yet, but we will answer and test David's theory about whether we are just afflicted with clinical old head-itis and cannot possibly actually consider a young person cool. I also want to add a wrinkle as we assess the criteria here for the committee of our audience to judge us. Because...

On-field play, right? So are we saying that that is clearly not separate and apart? It is involved in the calculation, right? The reason why on-field play matters, and as we do this cool thing, or try to figure out who the coolest guys are, is there's nothing cooler for a professional athlete than being unbelievable at your sport and then backing it up with how you present yourself. And I think when we talk about the top guys,

Griffey, Iverson, Lynch, they hit that. It's a very elusive, very elusive bar. Yeah. But so just the greatness though, right? Like what does that get you? So Michael Jordan, I think is a very reasonable answer. A very popular, might be the number one answer when people think of the coolest basketball player of all time because he both as a marketing vehicle was unprecedented for

for the obvious Nike, et cetera, reasons and every other sponsor thing, right? For our generation. Also because when it came to be the most pressurized moments, he had the greatest legend and arguably the greatest performance. So there's that. But then we get to, for instance, like to discern a bit of the lineage when it comes to Kobe, right?

I'm like, I think there are lots of people who think that Kobe is cool, but I see an imitation of Michael Jordan. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to dock points for that. I think Kobe is, was as great as he was a legendary try hard by the time that he became the guy who was branding all of his Mamba stuff, which is to say that I think the answers to the draft as we go around in a, in some sort of order, David, there's a, I know it when I see it definition as opposed to like some strict criteria for

for better and for worse. Can I dump out a hot take real quick? I'm not sure Michael Jordan was that cool. Like, when you watch The Last Dance and you're like, this dude is like talking to this baseball bat and he's like jamming to Anita Baker before the playoffs. Like, this dude is not that cool. Like, I remember way, way back, he did an interview and this sticks out to me so much. Like, he did some sort of interview and they were like, what is your favorite artist? I mean,

this age is poorly, but, you know, for other reasons. But he was like Robert Kelly. And I was like, who calls him Robert Kelly? Like, who did, like, I don't know. Like, there's just so many things about Michael Jordan that I'm just like, it was all ads, all this stuff. Like, is Michael Jordan actually really cool? And by, you know, extension of that, is Kobe Bryant even less cool because he wanted to be like Michael Jordan who is not even really that cool? And where does that leave Tatum? Who's doing the third round of beaming? I think you hit on just like the more we see of someone, then it's just, there's an...

Absolutely an inverse relationship between exposure and coolness and no amount of, no matter how cool you are, the more we see of you, the less cool you're going to be.

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For the three biggest sports. So we each pick one. So we're each going to draft our pick for who we think the coolest is. And if someone has drafted them, we cannot take them. And we will show our results at the end. Because I love a draft chart results. So I'm going to say this one. And…

This is a player who I've gotten a lot of grief from their fan base because I consistently have him behind two other quarterbacks in football votes and whatnot. But I think Joe Burrow is incredibly cool. He has the nickname. No, yeah, right. But he plays cool. He has these like credible big moments. He's ice cold. And the way he presents on and off the field is legitimately cool. I really believe that.

Counterpoint. Counterpoint. I don't think Joe Burrow saying stuff is cool. I don't think Joe Burrow says cool stuff. I think he does cool stuff on the field. I think he says cool stuff. Does he? I disagree. Yeah.

He knows all the words to get the gat from his time at LSU. So I think that's pretty cool. The championship picture is one of the coolest pictures ever taken of him smoking a cigar. But I would say, like, he—the way he talks when he's interviewed, he's not very—he limits his exposure, which is what cool guys do. When he speaks, like, he puts pressure on his organization to do stuff. He's pretty plain-spoken. I—yeah, I—

Like, I think Lamar Jackson is the coolest football player to watch, but I don't think he has enough of a persona for me. So Lamar gets, okay, so I'll go next, second. Lamar has the anti-authority thing going. The fact that he doesn't have a conventional agent, for better and for worse.

I don't know if that's cool in the classic sense, but it's sort of like a f*** you to the way that football and business tends to operate. So the case for Lamar is strong. But I think I'm going to go Jalen Hurts. Oh, terrible choice. David. David. Horrible choice. Tell me where I'm wrong. Tell me where I'm wrong. Pablo. Okay, you go. Mina, go. Go for it. Go for it. I don't know.

Can I use the word "unk" first of all? I need a ruling from my compatriot here. Jalen Hurts, I think, is an amazing person and I'm a huge fan of his in a million different ways, but he is not cool. Like, he dresses and acts like a 45-year-old man.

He leans in to 90s fine. Like, that is his whole personality. Like, he is living single era, fine man. So far, I'm waiting for the problem. I remain waiting for the problem. Again, I grew up thinking that's what Gould looks like. Have you heard him in interviews? He speaks in cliches. He speaks in, like, football talk. He has no—he has the ultimate— It's funny because he just did something that you could say was anti-authority. That's what I'm thinking about. Yeah, but for the most part—

The man, when he was in college, I believe said he related to Nick Saban. Okay, that's uncool. That's pretty uncool. I didn't have that in my oppo research file.

The thing that helps Jalen Hurts is that now he stands next to Saquon Barkley for the rest of the season. And by virtue of that, he is going to be the coolest dude because he is anti-Saquon Barkley. And I think that that's going to elevate him way further than he would have been otherwise. The thing that will get Jalen Hurts that the test is, and I don't know how this has not happened yet.

How is he not going through the Jennifer Hudson tunnel yet? Because he has good management who will not reveal that to the world. That's going to make or break him. When he goes through that tunnel, we'll see what kind of cool— I don't think any football players have gone through that tunnel, right? No, I don't think we have one yet. He's going to go through that tunnel. Oh, my God. Hold on. There's a reference I'm going to pull out and Google while David answers. Have you guys thought about what you would do if you had to go through the tunnel? First off, that is a show that I only know, of course, because of the tunnel.

It's I don't know what else happens on the Jennifer Hudson show. I assume good stuff happens. I just know it as the tunnel. I did see recently Randall Park go through the tunnel. If

If you recall him, Asian dude, and he proceeded to like do a mixture of, we'll show this in post, a mixture of like sort of like popping and locking where I was like, I would aspire to do that and not be nearly as good. Asian dudes who can dance constantly go viral for crushing the tunnel. This is my algorithm. Like the dude from the White Lotus, Guy Talk, crushed it in the tunnel. Oh my God, Guy Talk.

Here's the thing about the Jennifer Hudson tunnel that is fascinating is that they managed to know the algorithms because I don't think I've seen a single white person go through the tunnel. And then when I talk to white folks about the Jennifer Hudson tunnel, they just like reference white people went through. I'm getting Asians and like the hot guy from Lion King. Right. I don't know. I did see Usher go through it on skates. And I was like, comment section. Okay. Sorry.

David, what's your pick? Yeah, what do you got? My pick here, Lamar Jackson. Just like, I was thankful that you guys had picked Lamar Jackson. I love Lamar Jackson. Just because I think there's also this, like, unfiltered interview that, like, is part of it. And also, he has an unfair advantage. His name is Lamar Jackson. Like, it's like, come on. Style of play gets him, like, 95% of the way there because he is clearly the coolest guy.

The NBA.

David, we're going to snake draft it. Go the other way. Are we doing NBA or are we doing basketball? Because here's the thing that I also got out of this article that we started this whole thing from. This seems to be a male-centric problem because there are like 15 or 20 cool-ass WNBA players that

I'm obsessed with at all times. And so if I had to pick all of basketball, my number one pick would be Aja Wilson because she's like the coolest person in basketball, I think right now. She's like an incredible interview. She won the championship and talked about all the tequila shots she was going to drink. You have to take four shots. Children take shots of ginger ale, but you got to take four shots before you pull up to the parade.

and drink responsibly. She has the new shoe out, which helps. She has the, like, really cool internet soft launch, hard launch, bam out of bio thing going on. She's the best player in the world by a large margin. And...

I just don't think that this article really applies to women, really. Like, there are so many cool-ass women athletes, and there's a larger thing to discuss, I think, about, like, women and how they, you know, drive the culture and, like, make stuff cool in a way that guys kind of are not doing, which goes to the zen and the manosphere and all that stuff. But, like, there are so many cool-ass WNBA players that are so much cooler than NBA players, and AJ would be my number one pick in basketball by far. They've also been cool for a while, right?

I think is the other thing, right? Like this isn't like, oh, wow, all of a sudden we have this like cool new generation. Obviously, the WNBA is exploding popularity, but Diana Taurasi is one of the coolest humans to walk this earth. By the way, an awesome at a microphone does not give a fuck. It's incredible. But meets the parameters I established earlier. And the greatest of all time. Goat player. Yeah, one of the goat players backed it up. Great on the mic.

She might be up around Rushmore of cool. Great at social media. All these WBA players are great at social media. Like, the more we know them, the more we get to like them. So, Steph, not even a consideration for you. Like, you're like, no, not even, no. Like, because Steph is the ultimate example to me of playing style getting you on the list. Not number one, but just, like, on the list. And I think he is absolutely one of the coolest players. He has a cool celebration. He's, like, probably the most, like...

Old school. I'm gonna text or call somebody when he's doing something dope even though he's an epo baby even though

Even though he's a nepo baby. But like Steph has always had this like, I think the arc of coolness has shifted more towards him. Authenticity, again, is kind of the driving force. Yeah, I think that's fair. Influence, he's been so influential. I was just at a friend's house who has two small boys and they're both into basketball, like six and four. And I asked them, which player would you want to play with and play like? And both said Steph. And it's like, wow, we're still on, it's still going. You know, they're not saying...

or Ja. But... Well, that brings me to my pick because my pick is Ja Morant with an asterisk. Yeah. I think that's... Look, the unsaid thing in this article... It's right there for him. So sad. It was... Everyone was ready. I had a friend who worked on...

It's part of the Nike campaign that they were doing for Ja as all of this stuff was unfolding. And they had to blow it up and make it less cool because they had to make it so that actually Ja Morant was more palatable to an audience that expected him to be a massive f*** up who loved playing with guns. Like there is a line beyond which you go too far.

And as much as the anti-authority thing is part of it, like he, at a certain point, you gotta know when to just stop. And that's where it became untenable.

I think John Moran is fine, guys. Like, I just think that, like, if he played better, it'd be fine. Like, you know, like, if he came back and was healthy and they had, like, deep playoff runs. Yeah. Like, I just don't think you're going to get a whole bunch of people who are just going to get too upset about, like, people liking guns in this country. You know what I'm saying? No. People have forgotten and forgiven way worse than all these sports we're talking about. Exactly. And, like, we're not going to finger wag at a dude.

and his love of guns and the bad... And, you know, there's a lot more... It's more complicated and complex than that. It's more like, can you stay on the court is my concern. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if he came back from this thing and the Grizzlies... If the Grizzlies are playing now, for instance, right? And he's playing in the conference finals, I think he's fine. And, like...

Whatever, you lose your Nike campaign, whatever. I think he's still in a point where he's one of the coolest dudes ever. The problem is you're still doing this like anti-authority celebration when you're not like that good or good enough to warrant it right now. I think that's probably the big problem. I do think the anti-authority aspect of him, it feels, it doesn't feel as...

Cool? I mean, for obvious reasons. But also, it just doesn't feel... It feels a little bit, and this cuts to the original premise of this piece, is a little bit cosplay-y in a way that I think is something we sniff out with a lot of people. Whether they're cosplaying, you know, gestures or Kobe imitators or being anti-authority, there is a sense of like, is this really you? Like, what you doing, bud? My pick is, I think, to certainly...

corroborates the thesis of no younger players is an older guy. I'm going to go Dame. I think Dame is one of the coolest athletes alive. Obviously, he is at the end of his career. What do you think of

I think of the hardest NBA photo, one of them of all time, which is the game winner OKC looking at the camera. I mean, I know I said earlier that no one has looked ever cooler than Griffey. I was going to say, Mina has a clear thing for who she thinks is cool. It's looking into a camera. Yeah.

If you do something cool and look straight into a camera, you're probably cool. But David, that photo, I mean, come on. It's... Yeah, I mean, that's... When I think of cool... I mean, also another great celebration. Yeah, another great... And the very, very rare accomplishment of being an athlete who raps and people still respect you. Like, that's one thing that...

That is hard. Yeah, that usually docks off a ton of points if you're trying to rap, but he got Lil Wayne on his album. I am also realizing a lot of my picks are really handsome guys. Like, shit.

Also, it does make you cooler. I mean, I picked Aja Wilson, so I get it. Samesies. I mean, Jalen Hurts, guys, is clearly a beautiful person. He is. A beautiful, objectively beautiful person. Okay. So, baseball. Are we ready to move on to baseball or any other takes we want to get off? One side, actually, one side brief postscript take about the NBA. Okay.

Because, David, you were hinting at this before, and Mina as well, like, as much as the current generation of NBA players might be starving for cool in the way that bloggers and others will approve of, if you go through, like, is LeBron cool? 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

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 did all the stuff that we loved about them. The Clippers, the Quentin Q. Rich Clippers and all that, Darius Miles and them. Those are people that we loved that were not necessarily the best people

in the world. And I think that, like, it 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 guys...

Argument checks out. Yeah, 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? Nina goes first, and there is a question that I'm wondering if she will ask out loud as she makes her first pick. Well, there's two guys, I think, who are clearly the two coolest guys in baseball. That's how I feel. So I'm deciding between the two of them. I'm taking Mookie here. Mm-hmm.

He's just so cool. He is a joy. He's an amazing player. He's a joy to watch. He seems like a legitimately awesome dude, but he's funny. And he, to me, is the closest thing in spirit to Griffey in this generation. He's also really good at bowling. And I want to unpack whether that makes him cool or not. Because he is like a professional caliber bowler. He's bowled a perfect 300. Yeah.

Another wildly attractive person. He knows to keep that hat on, you know? He's playing the right sport. That's true. I am taking only hotties. I wanted to say, speaking of hotties, Julio Rodriguez, but I can't. The Homer allegations would be too strong. Are we saying definitively, because Mina brought us to the team in question, like Shohei Otani not cool? I think he's cool. I think he's cool. I think Shohei is. Yeah, he was my other...

He was my pick. Shohei was my pick. Don't want to skip over you Pablo. He's my pick. I think just virtue of being I think that sometimes it's virtue of just being good as hell and the dopest at your sport like goes a long way and we also have a barrier where we don't know that much about him. His mysteriousness. His mysterious dude who just goes out there and does better than everybody. Does he have a crippling gambling addiction? Yeah.

You know, these are ongoing mysteries. Yes. He also, even when he is not playing, just watching him like move in the world, a lot of this is carried by just his how physically imposing he is. He is enormous. He has like star power and he's incredibly handsome. And watching other baseball players react to him also makes him cool because it is like, Otani is like when Beyonce walks in the room.

Yeah. Right, right, right, right. People are in awe of the sound that the ball makes off his bat. People are in awe of his physical stature. People are in awe that he can do any of this. He also is, I think to the earlier point, like so private that it creates this aura of its own. Being private is cool.

I think we're learning that too. Like being less online on some level actually does in this era. Yeah, it creates the intrigue that I think rates as cool. I think I got to go with, I'm looking up his age right now to invalidate David's theory about how we can't really respect young people as we continue to draft some young people. I'm going Ellie De La Cruz.

So he's not like, again, household name necessarily, but he should be if you like baseball in any vague way. He stole a zillion bases. I think it was 25 and 65 was the first shortstop to ever do it. And that dude playing in the Cincinnati region. I'm like, yeah, I think that feels like conventional. Like that's just an all-time athlete doing cool stuff. And I select him. Aaron Judge. Not cool.

I want to say I think Aaron judge and uh, yeah, I think I think there's kind of a there's almost like a parallel to like sneaker sales to me where like the guys who are too large aren't as cool. Like no one's really I mean the big man Aaron Aaron judge is too large. I think to be cool.

Jazz Chisholm, though, on the Yankees is cool and has like, you know, speed and flair and all that stuff. Yeah, being... Okay, this actually connects to Steph and Dame and being small and being really, really good elite at a sport is a real fast track to being cool because there's like an underdog aspect to it that...

instantly makes you cool. And just the style of play. Just like crossing people over lends itself to more like acrobatics. Like the people I mentioned, Baron Davis, Steve Francis, those guys, like we grew up loving those dudes. Like point guards. Point guards are just going to lend themselves to being cool nine times out of ten. Is Jokic cool? Is Nikola Jokic who...

Oh, Mina's shaking her head. No, immediately. He doesn't care. He's not effortful in the way that we expect athletes to care. But he's also clearly, yeah, I think he's one of the most skilled players in NBA history. Why isn't he cool? Big man? Is it the big man thing? Yeah. I think part of it's the big man thing. Part of it, I think, is that

I don't think people, you know, as superficial as it sounds, I don't think people aspire to look like him. You know, I think there's like this feeling of, yeah, he shows up to work.

and he just kind of doesn't care, and he leaves and goes, does his horses and everything. I think there's something to that. I actually think if he were a little bit worse at basketball, he'd be more popular. I just think, like, he's almost, like, too good. It's like, you know, like— What a great take. Because I think, like, when I think about, like, Shaq, right? Like, Shaq, one of the things about Shaq that was so relatable, to me especially, like, is that this dude was dominant.

But you always felt like he could be a little better if he just didn't want to breakdance and rap and DJ as much. But he kind of wanted to breakdance and rap and DJ a little bit more. So it'd be like if Jokic were a little bit worse. If Jokic wanted to play Genie in a movie. Right. Yeah, if Jokic were a little bit worse, he'd be more popular. He's just too good to be popular. So I want to recap what we've done here today. In the NFL, the three coolest players as appointed by...

The three of us, number one, Mina Kimes, took Joe Burrow. Number two, I took Jalen Hurts with, and in parentheses, I went next to it, with Kangol.

Kangol is essential. And number three, David Dennis Jr. took Lamar Jackson. What did we do for the NBA? Who remembers what we did? Oh, David, right. It was David Dennis Jr., number one, Aja Wilson. Me, number two, John Morant, asterisk. Number three. Your picks have asked. My picks are great so far. Number three, Mina Kimes, Dame Lillard, looking into the camera like f***ing Jim Halpert or Randall Park. And then baseball, number one.

Mina took Mookie Betts. Number two, I took Ellie De La Cruz. And number three, David Dennis Jr. took... Shohei Otani. Shohei Otani, yeah. Damn, how did David out-Asian us? Yeah, wait, how did... David ended up with Lamar Jackson, Aja Wilson, and Shohei Otani. He kind of bodied this draft. I wound up with a Kangol and potentially future gun charges, which is suboptimal, I guess.

Yeah, I want the graphics to have each of the names by, you know, who we picked. And so that it could be in graphic immortality that I spoke to you guys in this draft.

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At the end of every episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out, we go around and say what we found out today after having a, I would say, pretty in-depth discussion of cool. Mina, what did you find out? I found out that...

that I didn't have time to get in a mention of my podcast with David Dennis Jr., but I'm going to talk about it right here, y'all. If you're still listening, David and I have been doing this Love is Blind pod now for a couple years. We've done three seasons now, David. Is that right? Yeah. And it's a YouTube show, and it became a podcast, and we enjoyed doing it so much that we are expanding into an ongoing general TV and entertainment show.

which you can watch on youtube.com slash at Mina Kimes or you can subscribe to. The new name of the show is Viewer Discretion with Mina Kimes and David Dennis Jr. Thank you. I like that. The first show we will be recapping is the upcoming season of Love Island, but we are going to be doing non-reality shows, non-romantic shows as well. However, Love Island recently

Really, last season was one of the greatest seasons of reality television ever made. For those who don't know, Odell Beckham Jr.'s brother won. What? Cool. An absolute cool dude. Cool person. What's his name? What's his name? Cordell Beckham, who's now kind of more famous than OBJ in certain circles. But anyways, go check it out. Viewer discretion. You can just look up my name. You can look up David's name and give us a subscribe rate and review.

What I found out, David, is that Mina also showed up to today's episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out with multiple clips. And so there is a clip from, I believe, one of the reality shows in question that Cortez could not be more excited about. And I have no idea what this is. So I'm about to find out right now. Do you ever get told you look like a celebrity? Yeah. I do. I do, too. All the time on the plane, I get one person. And it's just because I have dark hair and blue eyes.

But I don't see it so don't get excited Say it. What's he writing down in that notebook? I don't even know if it's MGK's wife or his girlfriend Megan Fox? Are you saying he looks like Megan Fox? It's just because I have light eyes and dark hair. That's the only reason there's nothing else At least I'm assuming so. I mean... Listen, buddy. What'd you say?

So I guess I should, it's been whispered into my ear because I didn't realize this until Rob whispered it. They can't see each other at that point. Yeah. Because there is a wall that's the whole blind. He's going to propose to Megan Fox. Yeah. And so I am told now reliably we have the reveal when they can't see each other. Oh, God. Oh, no. Sort of like hit on looks, but. Not for you.

She definitely lied to me on some how she looked. Chelsea told me she looked like Megan Fox. I'm so sweaty. But, you know, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. I'm very attracted to her. I can work with that.

What an emotional rollercoaster. That guy ended up being cool with this. I'm so sweaty, it's the cruelest edit I've ever seen in a reality show. You also didn't get to see when they meet, there's a moment where he has a Jim Halpert look to the camera right after meeting her when they hug. That is one of the most themed moments in Love is Blind history. David and I have probably spent no less than three hours breaking down the Megan Fox moment. If you're into that sort of thing, if you like listening to two people who treat these shows like they're...

the game tape that it deserves to be treated like, check out our podcast. Thank you both for helping me find out more than I bargained for. You're welcome, Pablo. Staring into the camera and wink.

Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Averoma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McRae, Rachel Miller Howard, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, Chris Tuminello, and Juliet Warren. Our studio engineering by RG Systems, our sound design by NGW Post, our theme song, as always, is by John Bravo, and we will talk to you next time. ♪

Thank you.