The War On Tanking
Hang Up and Listen
Joel Meyer
4.6 • 986 Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2026
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hosts Alex Kirshner, Lindsay Gibbs, and Ben Lindbergh examine the NBA’s growing tanking problem and the league’s ongoing struggle to make the All-Star Game competitive. Then they’re joined by sportswriter, Neil Paine, to discuss the rise of Connor Zilisch, a young NASCAR driver drawing comparisons to Jeff Gordon. To close, Hang Up vet, Josh Levin, returns to talk all things Winter Olympics and what he’s looking forward to in its last week.
Ben also has an Afterball on the Snoop Dogg-ification of the Olympics and sports in general.
On the bonus episode, available exclusively for Slate Plus members, the panel talks about the NCAA's messy player eligibility lawsuits.
NBA (2:39): The race to the bottom
NASCAR (20:40): A new young phenom racing to the top
Olympics with Josh (37:38): Levin crosses the hog line!
Afterballs (01:00:14): Ben drops it like it's hot
(Note: time codes are only accurate for Slate Plus members, who listen ad-free.)
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Podcast production and editing by Kevin Bendis, with production assistance from Patrick Fort.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It is Tuesday, February 17th, 2006. |
| 0:09.9 | Welcome back to Hang Up and Listen, the sports podcast here at Slate. |
| 0:13.5 | Back with you again this week. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Alex Kirshner. |
| 0:15.5 | I'm a contributing writer for Slate, and I co-host the National College Football |
| 0:19.1 | podcast Split Zone Duo. |
| 0:22.3 | This week on the show, |
| 0:27.6 | we're going to talk about the NBA's crises of caring, how to make an all-star game that players care about, and how to get teams to not just throw away games and seasons, two issues that were |
| 0:32.7 | very much at the forefront of the sporting landscape this weekend. We'll talk about a new |
| 0:37.0 | prodigy on the |
| 0:37.8 | scene in NASCAR, who is generating more hype in that sport than any debuting driver in perhaps |
| 0:43.0 | 30-plus years. Old friend Neil Payne will join us to talk about it. And hang up and listen, |
| 0:48.8 | Hall of Famer Josh Levine will join us in virtual studio to share his impressions from leading Slate's written coverage of these ongoing Winter Olympics. |
| 0:57.3 | As usual, joining me this week for all of it is Lindsay Gibbs, women's sports lead at CBS Sports, co-host of Burn It All Down, and the publisher of Power Plays, a newsletter covering the key stories of the hour in women's sports, Lindsay. |
| 1:10.4 | Happy Tuesday. Happy Tuesday. |
| 1:11.5 | Happy Tuesday. |
| 1:13.0 | Glad to be here. |
| 1:14.1 | Loving the Olympics. |
| 1:15.6 | Excited we get to talk about some today. |
| 1:18.1 | And, yeah, missing my Charlotte Hornet. |
| 1:20.6 | So excited the NBA's coming back. |
| 1:22.6 | They'll be back in a flash. |
... |
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