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This is the down labor part show with this got Sparkasse. Put her on the pole, please, at Le Batard show, have you spilled more food and broken more glassware in the last six months? Yes or no, because I read an article about this happening more over the last six months because everyone is under a bit of duress. We will get to that in a second. We've got three deaths over the weekend. John Thompson, Cliff Robinson, Chadwick Boseman to get to.

We will talk about that as well, people.

Are going to want this parade of gasbags that Chris Cody has put together. How strong is it? Because it's one of the most popular things we do when we take media members and remind you of their words after the games have been played. Chris, how do you feel about this particular parade of gasbags?

I feel really good about it going into it. I wasn't aware that all these people were getting out there with their pro Blazers anti Lakers take, but apparently everyone was doing it. So it's a lot of fun.

I would really enjoy I would really enjoy. You know, a lot of people are doing a victory dance about NBA ratings being down, which I'm assuming has a great deal to do, even though I haven't looked at the numbers with the number of one and two o'clock games that are, you know, while people are working. But I do think as it relates to the NBA ratings that people listening to me don't understand that they don't matter at all. It's about getting the games on television and getting that money.

And whether they're being watched during a pandemic or not is not going to affect the next collective bargaining agreement for all you people out there who want the fans to matter. I do find it interesting that a home court hasn't mattered at all in the first round.

I'm not sure it's going to based on how the first round went. Sure. Chalk one and and two. I don't think the audience understands that NBA ratings down doesn't mean anything like it means nothing. They don't care whether people are watching or not. It's about getting that television money, whether people are watching or not. The sponsors might care. Right. ESPN and TBS might care some. But in terms of what the NBA is doing here, the fan and just sports in general, the fan does not matter.

U.S. Open, it's all about grabbing the television dollars.

The NBA, I'm certain, would like the numbers to be up. They want them to be as high as possible all the time. So when they do pitch to television networks and advertisers, they could feel confident about what it is that they are pitching. But I do wonder, Dan, as this thing progresses without fans, because it doesn't at times feel like the NBA playoffs and even some of the players have spoken about that and lends some credence to that.

I do wonder if the numbers will go up as we start to see some of the match ups that we've been anticipating the entire season.

I know you guys have heard me hyperventilating about this Utah Denver series, but it is quality quality basketball and we will get to that in a second. But the place I'm beginning and I can't believe it's where I'm beginning, is freedom fighter Greg Cody of the Miami Herald. Well, I can't believe what he has tweeted by way of promotion of the Greg Cody show featuring Greg Cody podcast. He has tweeted. New episode 26 is out now what's left of it?

I spent six minutes on the controversy at the Miami Herald over colleague Armando Salguero tweet and the tempest it has caused. But you won't hear it. Because my company, The Miami Herald, chose censorship over transparency. Now, I don't know if Greg Cody gets in trouble over that. I do think it would be funny if Greg Cody got in trouble and Armando Salguero didn't. I'm guessing Greg Cody knows by tweeting that that he's not likely to get in trouble.

But let me let me tell the audience what is happening there because. It's layered and interesting and it's very much America right now and Miami right now, OK, because if you've seen I've told you before that the only place numerically, scientifically where Donald Trump has improved his poll ratings since 2016 is with Cuban Americans. And part of that is because Cuban-Americans tend to make understandably, with the post-traumatic stress disorder that comes from fleeing communism to get to freedom in this country.

Their number one issue is freedom, period. And they view Cubans do the Republicans as protecting those freedoms in a way that Democrats don't when they normalize relations with Cuba. So through that prism, Armando Salguero reacted. And this was something to watch because Ryan Tannehill has spent his entire career saying nothing interesting on purpose like he's taught us. He talked to us openly, transparently about how he sort of fakes his way through interviews to make sure to say nothing that is in the way of interest.

He's the best ever and say nothing. He's not the best ever, but he's pretty good at it. And so why does everything have to be the best ever dog?

Okay, put it on the poll gamble. Is Ryan Tannehill the best ever at doing nothing? So he was standing in front of his team and matter of factly saying that the United States is built on racist ideals. And this led Armando Salguero to go down a path after having already called Colin Kaepernick Satan and making his feelings known on this go down a path. What racist ideals are you talking about? And obviously, this puts The Miami Herald in a bad position because you've got canceled culture.

You've got people who are mad and don't want the espousing of what feels like racist opinions. And the Miami Herald publisher initially said, we give columnists a wide berth on opinion. And then since then, the pressure has been so stark and heated that the Miami Herald publisher has had to come out with an assortment of tweets sort of denouncing what Armando Salguero did. And Armando Salguero himself came out with a statement in which he didn't apologize, but he clarified that he finds racism abhorrent.

Mike Ryan, why are you why are you smirking there?

It took a long time for that Armondo statement to come out, and it left a lot to be desired. There wasn't really an apology in there. It was one of those. I'm sincerely sorry to those who may have been offended, but it wasn't intended that way. And also, I'm a Christian. I'm a Christian. I'm a Christian.

There wasn't and I'm sorry in there. And I find a number of things about this interesting. And I will tell you. That Cubans have a bad history with race relations, and so some of this stuff, I don't think that Cuba historically is any any better than America on some of this stuff. And so that prism complicates things here. I'm not someone who very often believes that something is a fireable offense. I don't like a climate where we are willing to end careers and end people, everything they've done, libraries, bodies of work over decades and decades.

I want there to be some leniency there. But I understand why everyone is mad at Armando Salguero. I find interesting the pressure, the obvious pressure being applied on the Miami Herald. And it is something that, as I'm watching it happens to guys because I'm a little heartbroken at what's happened with my hometown paper. Miami is a corrupt town. Miami very badly needs a newspaper keeping checks and balances. Miami doesn't need the newspaper industry falling apart here so that our local corrupt people can just take advantage of everything that is happening here.

And this is a source of duress that goes to the very highest places at the Miami Herald. But I'm not here. I can denounce the behavior without wanting a firing. Right.

But the Herald was keeping this town in check. Keeping it in order is that was helping? It was. How do they agree with what you're saying, by the way? It does just need some checks and balances. Look, you know how heartbreaking I find everything that's happening in newspaper journalism and the fact that, you know, these places are dying because the money you've got to situations to God. When I was coming up in journalism, the money never contaminated the editorial content.

And now that wall has been totally dismantled. And when you get the money involved, the money starts contaminating and corrupting everything you're doing. You can't do it without bias. You can't do it objectively. You can't do journalism purely if you're going to be sitting there worried about the money.

I mean, to your point, the Miami Herald has a very proud history of exposing corruption and has been like the leading investigative arm for getting some really big things. Well, this is the Epstein thing. That was the Miami Herald.

This is what the publisher of the Miami Herald, I believe her name is Mindy Marquez. Forgive me for not knowing off the top of my head. I think I've got that right. She was tweeting out, look, these are some of the articles or investigations that we have done covering the subject of race because people don't care about your body of work. It's just fire the racist. It's fire the racist. They don't care about anything else happening there.

I understand why that would be your viewpoint in this instance. In this time, I understand why that would be your viewpoint. And I would say that it is right to condemn what it is that he said on Twitter. But I do think there are degrees and exit ramps between someone being wrong and something feeling like a fireable offense. And I understand why people disagree on where those exit ramps should be.

Yeah, I'm with you there. It's just maybe make the apology better.

Well, it felt like the apology was just simply public pressure with publisher pressure, with get this off of us.

And I don't think the apology made it any better. When you need your bank, Capital One is right in the palm of your hand so you can check your balance deposit checks, pay bills and transfer money from your phone with a top rated app, and when you're done banking, put it back in your pocket. A banking experience built around you and your life. This is banking reimagined. Get started online any time. What's in your wallet? Capital One and a member FDIC.

And now another edition of Obvious News from Geico. A study says that soft talkers do not make great radio personalities. We asked local librarian Steve Sage about this. And here's what he said.

Honestly, I don't buy it. I think I think very captivating writing is also an obvious news.

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I love the Geico and I use it all the time. That's all this news from Geico is using.

We are back on ESPN News on whatever fragmented state it is that we're in. Many people on the television side are invasive and getting in the way of everything we do around here. Migraine is already defeated while we're basically 20 minutes into returning to television for the first time in about six months.

Yeah, and it's sort of like a watered down version of this, like because of social distancing measures, we don't have make up people.

And we're looking I mean, we look bad generally, but holy hell, man, this is bad. This is looking rough. I got a floodlight in my face and no makeup.

This Italian Zonies. Well, you're also vain and handsome.

Oh, yeah. Well, both those things. Thank you. I'm sure the audience is be gentle with our physical appearance that.

Oh, they got this they got this overhead camera view on me and I'm looking at myself. And gravity has taken its toll over the last six months. And maybe the hair is receding a little bit more. I'm not a fan of that shot, Bill. You can do that.

Shot a recent gravity, OK? That's what we're calling it. We will get to the passing of John Thompson with Bomani Jones here in about ten minutes. And we have a parade of gasbags to get to. But before we get to the parade of gasbags, stat of the day is what we want to do here. Mike, please give me the short version.

Stat of the day, stat of the day in this year. Stat of the day, stat of the day, start of the day in this year. Stat of the day. Start of the day, start the day. And this year. Start of the day. Start of the day and start of the day is the start of the day. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. This is courtesy of Greg Rosenthal on Twitter at Greg Rosenthal.

He's verified the Jags drafted Leonard Fournette over to Sean Mahomes because they had Blake Bortles Tony's head just dropped into his hands in what can only be described as mortified.

Shame we went through the last seven top 10 picks that Jacksonville had. All of them are no longer on the team. Some of the names are laugh out loud funny. They had seven top ten picks, a handful in the top five and they blew most of them. And again, none of those guys are there and neither is Leonard Fournette. They were also, if not for the cowardice of Tom Coughlin and Marone, shrinking up sphincters in the second half just to play from the Super Bowl.

They had New England beat and they had the best team in the league that year, an overwhelming defense and it is all gone to hell. And now they're trying to get Trevor Lawrence to replace Dukes of Hazard that they've got in the backfield there. Let's get to the parade of gasbags as well before we get to Bomani Jones. You guys always enjoy when we do this. Look at all the people who were wrong questioning the Lakers.

This is going to be a nail biter, the blazes are not going anywhere. The Portland Trailblazers, they might have a chance to beat the Lakers.

Well, the Lakers and LeBron, they seem to be in a little bit of a funk. This is who the Lakers are like, you know, from the great Denny Green. Like they are kind of who we thought they were. They are missing more wide open shots than any team in the bubble. If you can make shots and you have elite guard play, you can beat the Lakers, the Lakers on the other side, they got two good players.

And I don't even know if it's fair to call it a rest of them guys. A bunch of dudes. They just got two good players and a whole bunch of cross fingers. The Lakers are Two and a Half Men. I mean Kyle Kuzma comes in and he has some good minutes. It's not good enough and I look at this and go Do the Lakers have enough after one game. Yes I'm asking it. I'm not, I'm not weighing in yet.

Even if LeBron turns it on, what happens if no one else does? I look across this roster outside of Davis. I don't see solutions for the problems they have. The Lakers were peaking when the shutdown occurred and now they have to refine themselves.

This is not the same team. Damian Lillard is the best player in the National Basketball Association right now, plain and simple. You combine that with the fact that the Lakers can't seem to shoot. OK, and ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem in L.A. I'm concerned about the Lakers.

They may go down in history as the as the third team to lose to a seed in the first row, because this is this is the best seen that the NBA has ever seen in NBA history. OK, Lakers in five, in case you were wondering, by the way, Michael Wilbon is still just asking, not quite ready to weigh in just yet. He's just asking, totally hedging, putting some feelers out, sort of that just sort of testing the temperature, but not even putting a toe in the water, thinking about putting a toe in the water, but might not doesn't know yet, has not weighed in, is simply asking.

Those are two different things. Well, it's lucky he didn't jump in. I mean, good job. Way to go.

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Odor eaters destroy food odor with the best in odor defense. Before we get to Bomani Jones, however, I'm sorry, Christine, we interrupted you, Dan, and finally, according to page six, Brad Pitt's new girlfriend is reportedly married, but she has an open relationship. Geez, that should work well.

All right. Yeah, well, be careful with the commentary, Lisa. You're there for objective news gathering. We don't need your opinions and your judgment because it's a mistake. Brad Pitt might be a swinger, might not be as strong as I mean, Brad Pitt just doing his thing.

The wife has an open relationship. I read about that. She's married to a 68 year old restauranteur who's been married like four times, has five kids. And he's totally fine with her being with Brad Pitt.

OK, thank you, Christine. Bomani Jones, the right time. As I told you as a podcast, you need to be listening to John Thompson passes away at the age of 78. I remember him being very intimidating. I remember him being a giant of a man. I remember him not being afraid to stick his face in the media. Buzz saw at a time that people weren't doing that. I remember that time, first off, a very respected man, but at that time was such a great time in terms of coaches in the big years with John Thompson and Lou Carnesecca with the sweater and Rollie Massimino.

I mean, he just had some of the the legendary names and coaches coaching all in the same conference at the same time. Bomani Jones has turned 40 now and he's become an ESPN historian who can help us go through the layers of someone's legacy. Thank you for being on with us, Bomani. What for you is the legacy of John Thompson?

So I think the part that gets forgotten in this, because we kind of pick it up with him, with Patrick Ewing shows up in 1980. What? He had a job at Georgetown in 1972, and he takes you back to a time where a high school coaches were parlaying this into college jobs, right. So I think it goes to St. Anthony's in D.C. and then, you know, make the Jesuit run and then goes Georgetown, a slow start in order to get it going.

But they ultimately got it going in a way that I think is easy to lose sight of the fact that Georgetown is not a school that should be good at basketball. And it made the Elite eight before you got there in 81. So you went there. They go to three Final Fours in four years. They didn't go to the final four again. But I want to say a couple more Elite eight runs in the 80s and then one with Iverson in 1996.

Like this is a pretty staggering level of success at a place that had never come anywhere near having that success. It honestly hasn't had it afterwards. Now, in terms of legacy, it all really past race. And the idea that John Thompson made us think that Georgetown, the historically black college, like that's how dominant his personality was over the program that we had there and the fact that for whatever reason, he just recruited black dudes. And I think that people of a certain age can't quite grasp the magnitude of how black those teams were, because all the teams are wall to wall black.

You go back and look at the North Carolina teams of that time, Duke, Duke, well into the 90s and the 2000s. You go all over the place like it was a much wider presence at college basketball at the time. The thing that always hung over times for people is how come you don't know what to do when the white dudes on the team and regardless of whether or not that's a legitimate question, let's just deal with the idea that John Thompson had a team at Georgetown University that was so black that people thought that that place was a black college.

Right. How he got the power to be able to pull that off. That's the part that I find to be as amazing as anything else.

Well, help me understand in terms of blackest programs ever, in terms of attitude, University of Miami, Georgetown University of Miami football, like what are the programs that are thought of that way? Because the manicured Coral Gables campus isn't exactly the place that you associate with black people, but those University of Miami football teams were the same kind of teams.

Yeah, I think that those same teams and also, you know, V with Tarkanian, but obviously the difference between Miami and Georgetown was the blackness of Miami. The picture of it was the players like that was a program that especially after 1988 that the players were in charge of. The coach was absolutely in charge of the program at Georgetown. Right. Like what happened in Miami is Jimmy Johnson gets a hold of that after Stanley Berger and he lived with those dudes, were doing what he just thought it was amazing and entertaining.

And then it the players tell him, OK, this is what it's going to be. Nobody ever tell John Thompson, OK, this is what it's going to be. So like I look at those teams that we met today are Fab Five. Michigan comes up there. There's another one. Oh, Nolan Richardson is Arkansas squad. Like those are the ones that I think that you largely think of. But again, with Thompson, it was different because Thompson commanded a certain level of respect and you could not really dismiss the blackness on the things that the players did on or off the court.

Now, you could say that was the on. The players are so intimidated. Everybody was always afraid they were going to be ready to fight it, to give up what was for somebody my age I can't tell of. Those dudes are really try to fight or if that was just white people doing stuff to white people to do.

Was John Thompson polarizing for reasons that had to do a lot beyond just being black because he carried himself in? I don't give any bleep kind of way as well. Yeah, but I don't. So this is the thing to me about the idea of Thompson as the Intimidator, right? I met John Thompson one time in my life. It was in 2008, and he was covering the NCAA tournament for Westwood One. Word was that he had worked it out.

We would one day he would get to cover whatever the Georgetown games were. Right, because that's what his son was coaching or whatever. So I saw him walking out of the press room. I want to say it was after Georgetown had lost a date to Steph Curry and I'm walking out. And so my brother had seen one night on TNT, which I thought was calling games for daddy that I didn't know where I forget. What have somebody got dunked on it?

Danny Yates is on TV and I quote, Glory be to.

So me and John Thompson could not stop laughing because Danny Ainge is, quote, the P Funk operation on radio. So I think that's what I'm trying to find a way out, try to find a way to, like, break it up to him. So I'm walking out, he's behind me, and I hold the door and I say something. I forget what it was, but I joked about it, about being a gentleman to hold the door or something like that.

I was like, no, but I got a question for you. He looks at me, he goes, Oh, OK.

So you would try to be an old gentleman. You was just trying to bully me.

Yeah. Which of course I was right.

Like, there's no way around that. But I also picked up pretty quickly. I was like, this is a test I got to do is hold strong and everything will be OK. And I held strong and he kind of laughed it off and he said he didn't remember it and we kept going, which is to say I to push you around if you let them right. If you were so shook walking in there once he said something like that, you could handle it the would do that if you didn't let them everything change.

Well, I marveled at the way that Allen Iverson and Alonzo Mourning and Mutombo talked about him. Those are three different worlds that those guys came from. And they spoke of him in the highest possible terms with the father figure stuff with the teach me how to be a man stuff. I mean, they do call them the biggest dope dealer in DC at the time, I totally believe Alonzo Mourning a. Called him into the office, and I think people may make the argument that, you know, they thought the arrival of me produce of DeJohn after the earthquake, like getting away with doing that to John Thompson in D.C. 1988.

I like that. That's not an option. That's like that's never going to happen. He commanded that level of respect. And to another level at this, to me at least, is what he had going is very particular to D.C. in the 1980s. Right. Like this is the height of Chocolate City at the time. So that dude had juice that went just beyond Georgetown. But what he means to black people in Washington, D.C., is an entirely different level against a black man is the most visible face at Georgetown University to stop think about that most visible face probably in the Big East.

But they also have like they had like that team and their coach. They have like the perfect rival in St. Johns at the time with Lou Carnesecca, Chris Mullen of 2010. It was it was a it was an amazing Don.

You know, I had not thought about the Bill Wennington Angle that I did not I made like that up. I yeah, I guess that would be that.

But again, that points to what we're talking about. It's that like I got those two Alucard a second I want to be clear, but lucrative second in New York City could have had 12 black dudes on his basketball team.

Wanted to write is a whole lot of places where you look at dudes who they seem to have as many white dudes as they were required to have by whatever social forces were around their program.

So like you look at a basketball team at USC, for example, in 1980, what I said. Right.

And that was with a coach who walked into the door with the player that I'm going to integrate this program. Thompson skipped all of that stuff.

It was just like, nope, we getting all these black here, by the way. We go get them ball into Georgetown regardless of what the backgrounds of each individual happened to be. I'll go set up a program that makes sure that these dudes graduate because there's no way they're going to be able to say that we don't graduate our players. And I doubt that anybody had a better pipeline and plan to allow Georgetown University to provide education to black people in a way that John Thompson did via basketball.

Bo, good talking to you again. Check out the right time with Bomani Jones. We appreciate the time, sir.

Right. Have a good. Hey, it's your homey sorry, it's your home. I know you don't like it when I call myself your old man, so I have some favors to ask you. Could you get rid of a few chairs in the living room? My floorboards are tired.

Another easy thing.

We could save money if you bundled your home and car insurance with Geico. One more thing. I know you love lavender scented candles, but could we try to find vanilla? I think it would fit my vibe better. Geico for bundling made easy.

Go to Geico Dotcom today. So we are doing more and more digital only content that appears outside of this 10 to noon couple of hours that we have on terrestrial radio live today on the postgame show, you will get Stewart's weekend observations. And we will also during the radio show here between Magnis for Magnason and everything else we've got going on, we're going to have Stewart's is messy. It is late, and we will deliver that to the audience. A lot of.

People over the weekend who got. Were hurt because pieces of their childhood have died, not just John Thompson, Cliff Robinson, many of you remember us having Uncle Cliff, your Uncle Slithy on the show because he went into the marijuana industry because those teams he played on were trailblazers in more ways. They were blazers in more ways than one. And Cliff Robinson got into the cannabis industry. We lost Cliff Robinson. And then the one that stunned people the most is Black Panther, the Black Panther.

Chadwick Boseman out of nowhere to go. I don't know. I marvel at this. Right. And I know many of you do. The fact that he was able to keep that physique and keep quiet, that he was dying of colon cancer, that no one found out about it, and then he kept making movies at that rate, movies that required his physique to be in that kind of shape. It was startling to see him pass in his early 40s.

And what you're seeing on HBO right now with a couple of Watchmen was one of the shows. What you're seeing is permission that Chadwick Boseman, with his success, had with Black Panther. He gave people permission to test the boundaries here on how it is. Some of this stuff could be made in order to explore racial topics like Black Panther did in a way that isn't quite overt and is just symbolic. I haven't quite gotten into that show. Is it Love Land Country?

Because I just started it and it's a little confusing to me. But he gave shows like that permission. One of the things to look 2020 has been cruel and impossible ways. It began with Kobe Bryant dying and you didn't know how it could feel much worse than that. And it's gotten terrible since then. And Kobe Bryant, one of the things that I thought Kobe Bryant was going to be able to do in a way that was willful and different and amazing.

Is use his power. To create art content. Applying the will he had to basketball to making stuff in his 40s and 50s and 60s, he had already won an Oscar, right? He was better. He was already winning awards that people who have lived in the content business for a long time had never won and he was just getting started. Now, keep in mind, Kobe's Kobe so giant, he was so giant in Hollywood that even LeBron it is said that even LeBron James, the king, will never be able to be in that town, even with a championship or championships.

What Kobe Bryant was and he had Hollywood, he was going to be able to sort of make black art in a way that Chad Chadwick Boseman made. And now we've lost both of them. This year. They had the power and the success to get creative things made that said something. And it's just a piece of the heartbreaking grieving that you saw this weekend where people there were such a cool viral clip making the rounds where. Chadwick Boseman was hiding behind a curtain with Jimmy Fallon and a fan of the Black Panther who had never seen anything like that celebration of blackness and black power in film through superheroes.

Fans were talking about what it is that it meant to them. And it was so moving to see Chadwick Boseman appear from behind the curtain as they were talking about this. And the first guy in the video that I saw just immediately started bowing and saying my king, like, was talking about because I imagined Stewart. Imagine what it's like to have never seen yourself portrayed kids or young people or people who can be influenced before they've been formed to see something on the screen that speaks to them because it speaks to their experience.

And you've never seen it before. I mean, mean unpossible talk about this all the time. The Asian characters you see in American films, they're they tend to be the same. And so it's so empowering to see a black superhero and it gives Jordan Peele and other creators the success and the confidence to have a trailblazer that pushes them into the creative realm. Really kind of a heartbreaking morning weekend.

Did you know Geico is now offering an extra 15 percent credit on car and motorcycle policies? That's 15 percent on top of what Geico could already save you. So what are you waiting for your dentist to actually believe you and your flossing every day?

Absolutely. Great. And you're cutting down on your sweets, of course. Wonderful. Then I don't even need to look in there. Great.

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