Some day, Charles Barkley is going to go into politics. And Kenny Smith is going to go into coaching. And Ernie Johnson is going to find some plum network gig and find his way off of cable television.
But none of that has happened yet. And until it does, the TNT Sports NBA studio show is the best thing on sports television right now.
(Better than "Real Sports with Bryant Gumble?" Yep ... one can only take so many stories about coaches diddling the shortstop on their Little League teams. And don't even get me started on that new Bob Costas show, which looks like such an insufferable egofest, it's amazing Rosie O'Donnell isn't involved.)
TNT — or more specifically, its on-air talent — has reinvented the studio show in the same way "Monday Night Football" revolutionized sports event coverage and "Saturday Night Live" changed televised sketch comedy. It's everything the NFL pregame shows should be — analysis without predisposed loyalty, entertainment without scripted attempts at pathetically forced humor. What's unconventional about it is the vibe — it's like Basketball Deities commenting on the follies of men, but doing so at a neighborhood barbershop. I half expect Cedric the Entertainer to come out and start riffing on John Stockton's short shorts.
In a way, this is our "Coach's Corner" on "Hockey Night in Canada": A no-holds barred look at the game and the sport from an insightful pro (Ron McLean up nord, Kenny Smith down sud) and a curmudgeonly loudmouth (their Don Cherry, and our Charles Barkley). The comparison doesn't end there: McLean and Grapes are decidedly "old school," as are Barkley, Smith, and Magic. There's something very refreshing about a studio show that cuts through the BS of modern athletes and their idiosyncrasies. This is where Smith is great: he has an intrinsic ability to decide who the real players are and who the knuckleheads are.
One of the things I love about this show is the way it's shot. The set seems larger than most studio shows, and the mise-en-scene creates an interesting dynamic: bitter old baller Barkley to the right, slightly less bitter Smith to the right center, the decidedly non-partisan Johnson in the middle, and the decidedly sunny and pro-player Magic on the left. It's like "Crossfire," with Charles Barkley as Pat Buchanan. (I hope I just gave someone a heart attack.)
One last thing about the TNT show: Ernie Johnson is the glue for this thing. He interjects with purpose. He's both the punchline and the set-up to numerous jokes on this occasionally hilarious show — the kind of goofy white dude that can take it as much as he can dish it out.
But it's his ego, or lack there of, that makes this show work. He's a lot like Phil Jackson and Pat Riley: the stars outshine him, but he knows how to win with talent.
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There seems to be this strange David Stern backlash from some NBA fans. I don't understand it.
Perhaps you Stern critics need to be reminded that it could be worse...
... remember that Gary Bettman was once his No. 2 man.
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Do you think when Reggie Miller looks in the mirror, he boos himself?
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I love that countdown thing the NBA is doing with the rotating billboards under the scorers' table.
In case you haven't seen it, they have numbers going from 16 down to 1 on the billboards, and players spray-paint giant "X's" on each number after their corresponding victory.
Maybe next season, the Atlanta Hawks will have numbers starting at 69, so they can count down each of their losses on the way to the top pick in the draft...
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Racism and the MVP Award
I thought this "controversy" was cooked up by Dan Lebatard of the Miami Herald, a brilliant writer who all too often gives in to this Bill O'Reilly-esque proclivity for making big-message mountains out of otherwise benign molehills. But then SportsCenter gave it a segment. Then talk radio picked up the story — the kind of beautiful melding of magnetic personalities and hot-button issues that will forever guarantee the phone lines will light up.
I have to admit that race was the last thing I considered when Steve Nash was announced as the NBA's MVP over second-leading vote-getter Shaquille O'Neal. How could I waste my time on some crackpot Al Sharpton-like conspiracy theory that implicates over half of the 127 sportswriters who vote for the award as closeted Klansmen? You know, those same racist bastards who voted a black man MVP for 17 straight seasons beginning in 1987? (And Michael Jordan was only five of those.)
It drives me friggin' bonkers to read columnists like Kevin Scarbinsky of The Birmingham News casually float the race card. He brings up Nash's racial profile before he mentions a single statistic in a recent column:
Nash is a terrific player enjoying a terrific season for a terrific Phoenix Suns team that was terrible before he arrived as a free agent.
The point guard stands out for a lot of reasons. He's a small man in a big man's game. He's an unselfish man in a game overpopulated by men who would rather look in a mirror than out a window.He's also a white man in a black man's game. Not that his complexion had anything to do with winning this election. Did it?
Just wondering. Hey, it's okay to talk about race without starting a riot. Charles Barkley said so in his new book.
That's just irresponsible journalism. It's all irresponsible, from ESPN to the Birmingham News to any sports talk station that helped stage this pseudo-debate.
If you are convinced that Nash had an advantage over Shaq because of the color of his skin, you are wrong. Why? Because Nash isn't white ... he's Canadian. And many of the same people who vote for the MVP award are the same xenophobic hate-mongers whose only objective in life is to see the National Hockey League fold before they're in the ground. The only thing NBA beat writers loathe more than Canadians is the WNBA...
Of course, the issue remains whether Nash deserved the MVP award. It's complicated debate. Did Nash make his team better, or was his team pretty damn good to begin with? Where would the Suns be without Nash, but with a point guard like, say, Tony Parker? Do we reward the most vital piece of a machine, even if his statistics (15.5 ppg, 11.5 apg) wouldn't make him a first-round pick in a fantasy league? (The writers certainly didn't give Isiah Thomas any MVP love when he was the heartbeat of his a machine-like team in Detroit.)
What about Shaquille O'Neal? Would his season be anything close to "MVP" status if Dwayne Wade didn't blossom into an All-NBA player? Did Shaq have something to do with that transformation? Is elevating a team to the top of the Leastern Conference really all that spectacular an achievement? (The writers certainly didn't give Jason Kidd any MVP love when he made the Nets a conference power after being a divisional doormat for years.)
I've always subscribed to one litmus test for the MVP Award, which is "Where would Team X be if you took Player Y away from it?"
Magic Johnson won the 1990 NBA MVP on a Lakers team that also featured James Worthy, Byron Scott, and A.C. Green in the starting lineup. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia 76ers were Atlantic Division champions for one reason: Charles Barkley, who averaged 25.2 points and 11.5 rebounds per game playing next to Mike Gminski. Sir Charles received more first-place MVP votes (38) than Magic (27), but lost the award to the Lakers' point guard.
Take Nash away from the Suns, and that team might still be in the postseason. Same for the Shaq-less Heat, especially when you consider that state of post play in the conference and the emergence of Wade.
But where would the Sixers be without Allen Iverson? The toilet. Last place. More Ping-Pong balls than a South Korean Olympic training facility.
Iverson won his fourth scoring title, and basically willed his team into the playoffs with a roster that probably couldn't have beaten most of the Sweet 16 this season. Watch him play the game, and you wonder how the hell he hasn't snapped his spine driving the lane.
Yet he only received two first-place votes.
Two.
Just incredible...
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And finally...
A: "Lois Lane, Marion Barry, and Kwame Brown."
Q. "What are famous D.C. busts, Alex?"
Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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