Good Morning! This is Max Krupnick, back with another guest edition of The Remix. Here’s what happened in the world of sports on Tuesday, April 22… but first, let’s begin today with a story about sports media and why it feels so negative.

Every afternoon in middle school, I came home, popped some ciabatta bread in the toaster, and turned on our toaster-sized kitchen TV. My afternoon snack was perfectly timed with ESPN’s Around the Horn. 

Unlike ESPN’s news-based shows (such as its flagship SportsCenter), Around the Horn was purely an opinion-based program. Responding to the news of the day, four talking heads faced off, earning points for takes the host deemed interesting and losing them for stances the host thought ridiculous. 

As I savored my toast, I loved listening to these sparring personalities. They felt like my friends, who constantly bickered about Cardinals baseball. 

Around the Horn worked because it was scaffolded by news programming. I could keep up on sports current events by tuning in a bit earlier or later. But throughout the past decade, that scaffolding has disappeared. Twitter is a constant stream of sports shouting. And the best sports news often exists behind a paywall. 

Now, sports media feels overwhelmingly negative and increasingly untethered from the truth. What can be done? Two online creators—one new, one experienced—are trying to bring some respect back into sports media.

Adam Doucette’s story mirrors mine. Returning home from middle school, the Wilmington, MA native popped on the TV to watch Felger & Mazz, a popular Boston sports talk duo. “Those guys are incredible at what they do,” Doucette tells me. “They’re really good at drawing storylines out that a normal person wouldn’t see.”

“But,” he continues, “they’re really negative.... They come off like they hate everything. Nobody’s gonna win, and this guy sucks.”

Doucette, a 2023 Northeastern graduate, wanted to launch a media start-up but knew he needed a hyper-specific idea. So, he thought back to Felger & Mazz and reflected on the dearth of positive sports news. Thus began “Default Positive,” Doucette’s social media account that has accrued 40,000 followers throughout the past year. 

Every few days, Doucette sits down at his desk, turns on his camera, and unleashes his smooth Boston accent on a major sports story. He introduces you to the characters, assuming little prior knowledge, and, over the course of a minute, convinces you why you should care about his subject. Just like Around the Horn, you can learn something that you can share at the water cooler. But unlike Around the Horn, Doucette builds his subjects up rather than tearing them down. His voice, scoring, and storytelling make for a mesmerizing watch. 

Doucette grew up a Boston sports fan and, therefore, was blessed with great teams. But the rhetoric he heard on TV often didn’t match those impressive rosters. “We go to these games because they’re the best at what they do in the world, not because we want to yell at them that they suck,” he says. “They don’t suck.”

One creator wanted to put that notion to the test. Joon Lee started his sportswriting career at Bleacher Report and spent four years at ESPN, before getting laid off in June 2023. For the next two years, ESPN continued to pay him but restricted his writing and videomaking. Now released from that contract, Lee launched his YouTube channel this month with a video called “I Faced an MLB Pitcher. It Changed How I Watch Sports.”

“I've spent years dishing out hot takes everywhere from the cafeteria to ESPN,” Lee writes in the video’s description. “But I’ve never actually stepped foot in the shoes of a professional athlete... until now.” Lee often appeared on Around the Horn and loved it. So, he clarifies in an interview, he does not hate hot takes: it’s just that “we’ve over-indexed.”

Since Doucette and I were in middle school, hot takes have thrived. Lee ascribes this shift both to the rise of social media and legacy media’s deprioritization of journalism. Two years after ESPN laid Lee off, for example, the network signed First Take star Stephan A. Smith to a 5-year, $100 million contract. 

The type of longform reporting Lee did at Bleacher Report is hard to find at traditional media outlets these days. But it’s thriving online. So, Lee grabbed a camera and squared off against 15-year MLB veteran Adam Ottavino. I think you can guess the result. 

In his new venture, Lee does not want to restrict himself to positive stories. But he wants to find the line between a hot take and a legitimate criticism. Take Lebron James Jr. (“Bronny”), for example, who was drafted by the Lakers to play with his legendary father, but mightily struggled to start the season. “There’s a way to criticize LeBron and be fair about it. LeBron definitely created the circumstances for Bronnie to be put in this unfair position a year after a heart attack,” Lee says. “Bronny is just not good enough—that’s a fair criticism.” 

But repeating that criticism over and over again, continuing to dig in, does not strike Lee as fair. “Media is working under a capitalist system. People want traffic,” he says. “The way legacy media is structured can create a situation where the show needs to get viewers and needs to get buzz...so they dive into these topics.” 

Lee hopes to see “balance,” saying, “You have to be fair. You have to point out when things are wrong, or someone has done something bad, or someone has failed at a big moment. But there’s a line between saying Aaron Judge dropped a ball in a crucial moment in the World Series that led to the Dodgers winning versus calling him the biggest choker who has ever lived.” 

How does your sports media diet make you feel? It’s not a question I consider when mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or thumbing through my inbox. But perhaps an audit is in order. Do we read because we’re drawn in by the big stories, or because the hate machine keeps us coming back? 

Here at The Remix, I think it’s the first.

NBA

The Athletic released their annual anonymous survey of NBA players, asking questions like who should win MVP, which team has the best management, and who would you least like to fight. My favorite answer came from the question “Who is the league’s most overrated player?” Two players replied, “No one who reached the NBA is overrated.” Talk about some positive sports media!

I doubt Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton cares that he was dubbed the most overrated player, given that his squad defeated Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Bucks 123-115 to take a 2-0 series lead. In OKC, the Thunder continued their trouncing of the Grizzlies, bringing the series to 2-0. 

Editor’s note from overseas: I told you the Timberwolves wouldn’t keep shooting 50% from three! Despite this otherworldly dunk by Anthony Edwards, the Lakers beat Minnesota 94-85. Also, “overrated” Tyrese Haliburton had this to say about the Bucks: "We don't like them, they don't like us and that's just what it is. And I think they live for this, we live for this, so I could [not] care less. I'm out here just trying to help my team win a game." Temperatures are rising in the midwest!

NHL

As kids, my brothers and I played sports in our St. Louis backyard. Though we bickered, we were by no means destructive. Elsewhere in STL, two brothers were competing so hard that their parents had to replace their basement windows with plexiglass, resistant to slapshots. So, it’s no wonder that the Krupnick brothers restrict our talents to the recreation fields while the Tkachuks fight for a Stanley Cup. 

Matthew Tkachuk already had his moment in the spotlight, helping his Panthers take home their first Stanley Cup in 2024. But his little brother, Brady, has played 500 regular season games—and lost at least one tooth—for the Ottawa Senators without yet reaching the playoffs. Until now. 

In the second period last night, Brady logged his first career playoff goal, which ricocheted off a defender’s skate. 

But his big brother had to show him how goals should be scored. Matthew returned to the ice last night for the first time since mid-February when he injured his groin competing for the U.S. in the 4 Nations Faceoff. He didn’t miss a beat.

Five minutes later, Matthew launched another shot into the goal, which somehow evaded the skates of three Lightning defenders. 

Matthew: 1, Brady: 0. (I guess it’s Matthew: 2, Brady 1, but you get the point...)

Matthew’s Florida Panthers defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning in that series’ opening game, while Brady’s Ottawa Senators lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs and are now down 2-0. But if each brother leads their team to victory, they’ll face off head-to-head in the next round. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Elsewhere, the Caroline Hurricanes took a 2-0 series lead over the New Jersey Devils, and the Minnesota Wild tied things up against Vegas with a 5-2 victory over the Golden Knights.

MLB

Rosters are starting to take shape for next spring’s World Baseball Classic, a 20-team international tournament that takes place (technically) every five years. If the tournament sounds familiar, it might be because the 2021 rendition took place in 2023 due to COVID. Bonus bonus baseball! 

Aaron Judge announced he’ll be captaining the USA squad (whose general manager, Michael Hill, I profiled last year), while Francisco Lindor will lead team Puerto Rico. Harrison Bader yesterday announced he’ll join Team Israel, while Mark Vientos with his four nationalities (USA, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Nicaragua) is being courted by Team Nicaragua. 

In other roster news, two Dodgers pitchers are making their way back to action. Future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw pitched three innings for the AA Tulsa Drillers (whose first two Remix mentions come back-to-back), and Shohei Ohtani will throw a light bullpen session today before advancing to a full bullpen this weekend. LA is off to a hot start at 16-8, but is within one game of both the Padres and the Giants, so may appreciate the reinforcements. I, for one, am excited to see Ohtani do Ohtani things again.

NOTEWORTHY NEWS

Congratulations to Peyton Pritchard of the Boston Celtics, winner of the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year Award!

TODAY’S BIG GAMES (all times Eastern)

NBA PLAYOFFS ROUND ONE:

• Magic (0) @ Celtics (1), 7:00 P.M.

• Heat (0) @ Cavaliers (1), 7:30 P.M.

• Warriors (1) @ Rockets (0), 9:30 P.M.

NHL PLAYOFFS ROUND ONE:

• Canadiens (0) @ Capitals (1), 7:00 P.M.

• Stars (1) @ Avalanche (0), 9:30 P.M.

• Oilers (0) @ Kings (1), 10:00 P.M. 

MLB:

• Can Rangers rookie Kumar Rocker notch his second career win? He’ll try against J.P. Sears and the Oakland (Sacramento?) Athletics at 10:05 P.M.

“I go to work every day with two missions. No. 1: how can I make my bosses more money? And No. 2: how can I get some of it?” –Stephen A. Smith, ESPN’s $100 million hot-takes man

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