At the start of the 2023-2024 NBA season, two of my basketball content idols, Shea Serrano and Jason Concepcion, teamed up for Six Trophies an "a-world winning" podcast in which they "comb through all the NBA news from the past week and then hand out 6 pop culture-themed trophies for 6 basketball-related activities".

Very fun.

At the end of each episode, each host gives out 3 more "small trophies" for things they "want to mention but don't need to get all the way into". Here Shea and Jason let their creativity flow with new trophies each week, perfectly matched to the winner's context.

Going in, I knew that Shea loves the Spurs and movies and rap music. Jason loves the New York Knicks and fantasy worlds. 

But I wondered, what else can we learn about these two from the trophies they give out? We're now a full NBA season into the show, 216 trophies across 37 episodes, which seems like plenty of sample to draw some conclusions about their random passions. 

Little Trophy Honorees

In the big trophies, Shea and Jason cover major topics everyone in basketball is talking about; with the little trophies they get to choose who to feature. There have been 42 repeat winners among the 216 little trophies:

Jason's NYC fandom is evident in his hometown trophies: 6 to the Knicks, 2 to the Liberty, and 2 each to Knicks players Josh Hart and Julius Randle. 

He's also given 1 trophy to a Knicks fan (for sparking a great Jalen Brunson performance), 1 to owner James Dolan, and 1 to Jalen Brunson (just for continuing to play great). 

Shea has given a total of 2 trophies to New York, one recognizing Josh Hart's impressive endurance on the court, the other recognizing Nets player Mikael Bridges' impressive endurance off of it, after it came out he eats Chipotle for lunch EVERYDAY.   

After NYC pride, perhaps Jason's second most evident quality is his proud status as a hater.

He's dumped the haterade widely, but no one has been in the splash zone as much as Doc Rivers. Jason hasn't liked Doc since he coached the Boston Celtics (Knick's rival) to the 2008 championship, and he took advantage of Doc's mis-adventurous midseason return to the NBA as the head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks (Knick's main competitor for the two-seed in the East)  to get in some digs.

Jason started by giving Doc the Simple Plan "Worst day ever" trophy for saying he wouldn't wish the Bucks head coaching job (which he's getting $40m from) on anyone and the Superbad "People don't forget" trophy for saying former-Bucks coach Adrian Griffin should coach the Eastern All-Stars. 

Then Jason came at Doc directly with the Office Space "It's a problem of motivation" trophy for Doc's "all-time excuses" about why his team was playing bad. 

To be fair, Jason did acknowledge improvement in awarding Doc the Denzel in John Q. "I am not gonna bury my son. My son is gonna bury me" trophy for the Bucks' 6-0 run post All-Star break.

Jason paid a tribute to Bill Walton with back-to-back-to-back trophies in episode 34, the first after Walton's passing. All were awarded simply to honor some of Walton's greatest calls on air through Grateful Dead-themed trophies, like the times he improvised about the moon or described Steph Curry as a combination of Mozart and Steve Jobs.

Shea has taken more of a mainstream approach to his little trophies, awarding 5 to Lebron James (the face of the league), 2 to Steph Curry (the other face of the league), 2 to Kevin Durant (the other other face of the league), 2 to Anthony Edwards (the future face of the league), and 3 to the NBA itself (the... league).

The Lebron trophies are:

• The Jennifer Hudson "You're gonna love me" trophy for demanding more fouls be called for him

• The Lloyd in Dumb and Dumber "I'm ready for a commitment Harry" trophy for saying his son Bronny is already good enough to play for the Lakers

• The Doug MacRay in the Town "You're not letting me or not letting me do shit" trophy for substituting himself out of a game

• The Jessie Pinkman "He can't keep getting away with this" trophy for always dominating the Warriors

• The Jay-Z "Well we don't believe you, we need more people" trophy for supposedly not being involved in the Lakers head coaching search

Good mix of on-court performance, off-court quotes, and just funny things that Lebron can do because he's Lebron. Cool. Love it.

But, Shea's hometown bias is evident as well with 2 trophies handed out to the Spurs including the Irene Cara "I'm gonna live forever. I'm gonna learn how to fly" trophy for ending an 18-game losing streak. Those 2 trophies are the same number he gave to the NBA champion Boston Celtics despite having 4x more wins than Shea's Spurs.

Shea also gave two trophies to Jaime Jaquez. As a proud Mexican, Shea loves when Mexicans do cool stuff, especially in the NBA, so he's acknowledged Jaquez with the Steve Buscemi in Desperado "And in walks the biggest Mexican I have ever seen" trophy for just being good at basketball and the Mo'Nique "I would like to see it" trophy talking about seeing Jaquez in the dunk contest.

Finally, apparently Shea's a Brodie fan! He's given Russell Westbrook 3 shoutouts for challenging a fan to a fight (the Pimp C "You gon' smell my cologne" trophy), building affordable housing in LA (the Jake Gyllenhaal in End of Watch "Follow me into the house dude. I wanna be a detective" trophy), and coming back from injury (the Rafiki in the Lion King "You won't find him here Ha Ha. The king has returned" trophy).

Little Trophy References

And what are these winners winning? About half of all the trophies have been movie references, a quarter more reference music, and the remaining are split between TV, internet memes, the episode where all the trophies were Oscar themed, and New Orleans Pelican player Jose Alvarado winning the "Hey, how's Jose Alvarado doing?" trophy.

Movies

Perhaps to be expected given Shea wrote a whole book about them (& other things), most of the little trophies have to do with movies: titles, scenes, and especially, quotes. 

Comedy movies take the cake, with 32 little trophies alone (plus 15 more comedy TV trophies). Shea and Jason love a good laugh. My favorites include:

• The Kip from Napoleon Dynamite "It's pretty cool I guess" trophy to the Dallas Mavericks for going on a 30-0 scoring run... and still losing

• The Game Night "What are you doing with my egg?" trophy to Julius Randle for making fun of the Bucks-Pacers game ball mix-up

• The Mean Girls "Get in loser, we're going shopping" trophy to Steph Curry for scoring 60 and then giving his jersey to Lindsay Lohan's son

• The Matthew McConaughey in Tropic Thunder "Please don't fire me" to Warriors rookie Brandon Podziemski for saying 4 of his current teammates are the best players of all time 

• The Ryan Gosling in Barbie "Doesn’t seem to matter what I do, I'm always #2, no one knows how hard I try" trophy to Kevin Durant for always exiting the playoffs before Lebron (even when Lebron loses 5 games in)

Drama and Action movies are also popular, partly from Shea rewatching them and then deciding that all of his trophies are going to be End of Watch or A Bronx Tale themed that week.

Superhero are Shea's wheelhouse (see: Action Hero Scouting Report), so it makes sense he's given 7 superhero trophies:

• Rorschach (Watchmen) to Duncan Robinson for doing something cool on a basketball court

• Peggy (Captain American) to Jordan Clarkson for doing something cool on a basketball court

• Juggernaut (Deadpool) to Micah Parsons for doing something cool on a (all-star) basketball court

• Demi Moore (GI Jane) to comedian Hannah Einbinder for defending the WNBA and all the cool stuff they do on a basketball court

• Joker (Dark Knight) to the Portland Trailblazers for giving Jerami Grant too much money relative to the amount of cool stuff he does on a basketball court

• Domino (Deadpool) to a bettor hitting a 19-leg parlay

• And the opening scene in Blade to the Phoenix Suns DJ for turning a Steve Kerr soundbite into a techno song

Fantasy is Jason's world, having recorded literally hundreds of hours on different series on his Binge Mode podcast. He's given:  

• 2 Star Wars trophies (Emperor Palpatine to Anthony Edwards, Kylo Ren to Adam Silver)

• 1 Harry Potter trophy ("I solemnly swear that I am up to no good" to the Hawks Mascot Harry)

• 1 The Lord of the Rings trophy (Sauron to the NY Knicks)

• And 1 more each from Godzilla, Blade Runner, Contact, and Highlander

Kids movies clearly play more in Shea's house (he's got 3 kids), with his trophies including 2 Lion King, 1 Coco, and 1 Finding Nemo reference. Shea's also given 2 Zac Efron awards (for his roles as Troy Bolton and "the DJ in that DJ movie") .

Jason's one kids trophy referenced back to a movie from when he was a kid, with the Jiminy Cricket "When you wish upon a star" trophy to the USA Men's National Cricket Team (yes this is still a basketball podcast).

Music

Shea also wrote a book about Rap (& other things) and clearly loves DMX with 4 DMX-themed trophies, all having to do with players or teams getting embarrassed:

• The "Hey yo I'm slipping, I'm falling, I can't get up" trophy to both Chet Holmgren and Dillon Brooks for getting their ankles broken respectively by Andre Drummond and Steph Curry

• The "Oh you thought you was raw. Boom! Not anymore" trophy to the Celtics for blowing a 30-point lead

• The "Let's take it back to the streets. Motherf***er" trophy to Draymond Green for trying to "yank Patty Mills' head off"

• The "Don't you ever in your motherf***ing life know when I got a gun come at me with a knife. Aight" trophy to Jeff Green for trying to take a charge and getting obliterated by Isaiah Joe

He's stuck to the 90's and 00's with the rest of his rap & R&B trophies, referencing Jay-Z, LL Cool J, Pimp C, Cam'ron, Nate Dogg, Jennifer Hudson, Joedci, and Boyz II Men. My favorites though may be the older and newer references:

• The Albert King "If it wasn't for bad luck, you know I wouldn't have no luck at all" to the terrible Detroit Pistons losing to the Heat on a Bam Adebayo 3, just the 12th of his 7-year career 

• The Chance the Rapper "You don't want zero problems big fella" trophy to the Miami Heat fans for chanting "We want Boston" then getting blown out by Boston

Jason has taken the Pop and Rock references, giving out 23 trophies, amazingly without duplicating any artist. His music references include 1 trophy each named after a song by Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Doja Cat, Coldplay, Major Tom, Passion Pit, Black Eyed Peas, Icona Pop, Spice Girls, Harry Nilsson, Curtis Mayfield, Elton John, Arctic Monkeys, Faith No More, Fleetwood Mac, Simple Plan, Ace Frehley, The Knocks, The Ween, Foo Fighters, Hall & Oates, and the Grateful Dead. 

Some highlights include:

• The Fleetwood Mac "Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies" trophy to Ivica Zubac for saying his teammate Paul George did not get totally dunked on by Lebron after Paul George got totally dunked on by Lebron

• The Justin Bieber "The hold on tight. Yeah they hold on tight" trophy to Adam Silver for sharing that he wears Skims

• The Elton John "Don't let the sun go down on me" trophy to the NY Liberty for beating the (previously) undefeated Connecticut Sun

• The Curtis Mayfield "Move on up" trophy to PJ Washington and Daniel Gafford for switching from the lowly Hornets/Wizards to the Western Conference Champion Dallas Mavericks midway through the season

Oh, and they both like basketball and the players who play it. They close each episode of Six Trophies by saying the names of underappreciated old basketball players, so I'll close this story with one final analysis.

Here are the most appreciated, underappreciated old basketball players: