Green Light with Chris Long - Steve Kerr on a Possible NBA Return, Michael Jordan & a Carson Wentz Tweet.

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

0:52 - Open and Social Justice. 8:44 - Steve Kerr on the NBA under Quarantine, the return of live sports, The Last Dance, Michael Jordan, and meeting a pre-teen Chris on a jet ski. 1:00:55 - Chris and Steve on Social Justice. 1:14:19 - Quick Hitters with Steve Kerr. Green Light with Chris Long: Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more including hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. 🌍🏀🏈SUBSCRIBE NOW ⚾🏒⛰️ http://bit.ly/chalknetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Happy Friday, Greenlight Pod. I'm your host, Chris Long. This is one that doesn't need a lot of introduction. I got Steve Kerr. If you don't know who Steve Kerr is, you don't do sports or you don't do championships. He's won plenty of them, eight of them to be exact, in the NBA as a player and a coach. And there's a little plot twist here when it comes to myself and Steve. We are linked forever after a jet ski ride in the 90s.

We'll get to that and more. So I just want to hit some heavy stuff before we get to Steve Kerr. I know I touched from this last pod. You might have to sit through it two pods in a row. It's been a weird week to talk about sports. I'm excited to have Steve on and we'll certainly hit the heavy stuff as well. On the tail end, maybe if we get to it, he's really outspoken and is not afraid to grapple with subjects like equality or police brutality. The George Floyd thing has been tough.

The imagery, the video, the reality that, you know, those police officers not. just the one who committed the heinous act of murdering George Floyd in broad daylight is sitting at his house right now. I assume he's going to be charged relatively soon, but that guy should be in handcuffs already. And it's been a hard week. And all those guys that stood by and allowed that to happen in uniform should be ashamed of themselves and they should be charged with those crimes. This has been a tough week. The Band-Aid just keeps getting ripped off. The Band-Aid needs to be ripped off. Again, let me reiterate. This is nothing new. This is just we have cell phones now. And when you look at an officer like the guy

who killed George Floyd, you look back at his track record the last 10, 12 years. He's done a number of questionable, awful things, it seems, and has not been reprimanded very much. And I think that we see this often when it comes to these cases where an officer has not answered, if we're believing the bad apple thing, those bad apples, are not being picked. They're not being plucked. And eventually it leads to this and we say, oh, shit, why don't we see this coming?

Because there's no accountability. And I think that's why people have trouble trusting the police as an institution. So this Band-Aid needs to be ripped off. Not only do I want to see as a citizen of this country, you know, the good cops that we keep hearing about, who I know a few of them speak out on this stuff. But we need athletes to talk about this stuff. We need white voices.

We need people to say. stand together right now and be on the same team on this thing and just call it what it is. And in sports, for whatever reason, there aren't a ton of white athletes who feel comfortable doing that. Now, I've played with a number of guys that I've talked about this stuff with at lunch tables in the cafeteria or at the practice field. The locker room in the NFL is a sacred place. And there's some wonderful conversations that elicit real growth that go on between players of different backgrounds. But a lot of times, you know, I found myself late in my career talking to other white players and they say, yeah, how do you feel comfortable doing what you do?

It seems like a minefield. It's tough. It's tough task to speak on this stuff. But again, you know, lean on a teammate, lean on a friend that knows what it feels like to not look like us and get some guidance on maybe, you know, how you might be of assistance. I think that eventually we're going to see more and more players talk about it, but it's been disappointing to see a lack of white players weigh in on this stuff. And Shannon Sharp hit it this week. We need bigger voices. You know, he mentioned me in his monologue, which I thought he did a great job, as he

usually does in talking about these tougher subjects. And I was very humbled that he would mention me. But again, I don't deserve a medal for pointing out the obvious that something as obvious is black lives matter being controversial. We have a problem in our country when that's a controversial hashtag. We have a problem when we have to actually. fight for equality or ask that, you know, officers of law are held accountable for their crimes. It doesn't mean it's an awful place to live. That doesn't mean, you know, that doesn't mean I'm ashamed

to be white. You know, the fact that I have privilege or that, you know, my life's pretty good, doesn't reflect poorly on the person I am. We just need more white people talking about it. And that includes athletes. And Shannon Sharp brought that up. He talked about the big names, the quarterbacks, and the dominoes will fall when guys speak out. And we had a new voice emerged today and I was very, very, you know, it sucks when you're moved when somebody says the obvious, as I mentioned, like just comes out and says something, just anything. It sucks when that got me excited, as excited as it did earlier. But I saw Carson Went step up today. Shannon asked for Tom, for Aaron, guys that have been in a league a long time, have big brands. And he should be asking,

you know, where are these guys on this thing? And I think eventually they do step to the forefront. But who's going to be the first white franchise quarterback, big name in our sport that can move mountains to come out and talk about this stuff? And we've had people talk about this stuff before. But Carson Wentz, a fucking guy from South Dakota who's got like five Labrador retrievers and spends half his time in a duck blind and probably never met a black person until he was 18 years old. He's a good dude, man. And he's a genuine article. So I wasn't surprised. I was invigorated to see him speak out and share some thoughts on the George Floyd situation.

And I'll just read the tweet, which was a longer tweet because it deserves the exposure. Carson Wentz did a good thing. Here's what he said. Been thinking about the George Floyd situation and thinking of the words to say and coming up empty. All I know is that the institutional racism in this country breaks my heart and needs to stop. can't even fathom what the black community has to endure on a daily basis. Being from North Dakota, I've spent a large part of my life surrounded by people of similar color, so I'm never going to act like I know what the black community goes through or even

has gone through already. I'll never know the feeling of having to worry about my kids going outside because of their skin color. However, I do know that we are all equal at the foot of the cross and Jesus taught us to value others' lives like they were our own, regardless of skin tone. So this might seem like a ramble, and perhaps it is. I don't understand the society we live in that doesn't value all human life. It's heartbreaking and disturbing.

My prayers go out to every man, woman, and child who has to endure the effects of racism in our society. Well fucking done, Carson. You want to talk about a Christian? That's a real Christian. Thanks for having the balls, man. Like, I'm prouder of Carson Wentz right now than I ever was watching him make an unbelievable throw or play through an injury or seeing him, you know, do various charitable initiatives. This is the hardest thing he's done. And it shouldn't be. It should be more normal.

But with the help the help of Carson Wentz, it won't be so hard when the next guy talks. And the next guy speaks his mind. And that includes some of the guys that we've looked up for years that have been the face of the NFL. Take notice. Younger guy, you know, guy from South Dakota, a guy that you would probably, if you didn't know him, if you rank the likelihood of a quarterback speaking out on these issues, you would put him pretty low on the totem pole there. And he spoke out. And he spoke out eloquently.

And I thought he did a really nice job. Not just to say, hey, I'm disturbed at the George Floyd thing, to mention institutional racism by name, you know, to acknowledge that he doesn't know how it feels to be black. None of us do. But that shouldn't stop us from speaking out and talking about this stuff. And I know some of y'all might be sick of this shit.

I'm just so proud of my former teammate. I really am. He did a good thing, and I hope that it leads to another good thing. And then we can get this ball rolling and be a part of the solution. Because far too long are we looking around saying, Chris Long is the best we got here talking about this shit, being outspoken about it? I mean, like, listen, I'm a name, but we need some heavy hitters. So I really appreciate that.

Carson, you're the man. That's all I got on the serious stuff. We'll get to Steve Kerr. So this is a great guest on the Green Light Pod. I think this is the first coach I've had on. So eight-time NBA champion. How many is a player? Three as a player in Chicago, two as a player in San Antonio,

and then three with the Golden State Warriors. I've got coach Steve Kerr. But most importantly, the dude I wrote a C-Doo with in the 90s. Steve, do you remember that? When we wrote a Jetsky, this is my claim to fame. I do. Flathead Lake. I was visiting Larry Christoviac, who had a three-on-three basketball tournament,

charity basketball tournament. And what's the town that is attached to Flathead? Paulson. Yeah, Polson, that's right. So Larry was a teammate of mine in Chicago, and he invited me to go to the tournament. I ended up hanging out with Frank Percowski because Larry was kind of busy. Frank was trouble, as you know.

Always. Still is. Yeah, still is. And what I remember most is Frank and I up on a cliff, we were doing some cliff jumping into the lake. And you rode up on your jet ski and you just kind of sat there. How old were you about 10 maybe? Man, this had to be preteen years. And yeah, the fact that I was riding a jet ski, that was pretty redneck that I was out there operating a piece of personal watercraft at 10.

But yeah, I rolled up on the – you were at the cliff. I know the cliff. Yeah, I was at the cliff and I'm sitting there nervous as hell and then I got this this little 10 year old on a jet ski like sitting down there like, well, what are you waiting for? I mean, making me feel like really like a wuss, right? Well, listen, you're more ballsy than me, Steve, because like during my career, I totally shut down the outside physical activity. I know like the 90s were different as far as guys going and doing their own thing. You know, nowadays football players get in trouble. They play pickup basketball basketball.

basketball. So I stared at that cliff for 11 years during my my career. So the 10-year-old me should take note. I never, I never graduated to actually jump in it as a pro athlete. Smart. Smart. You were wiser than Frank Prakowski and me. We both jump. Yeah, man. No, Frank, Frank is always trouble and he's always going to get you into some shit. And I always remember, because he's still got that same place. And I remember it used to be crazy because Phil would be out at the Lake Jackson. Scotty Sciles would play pickup on the blacktop in my dad's back yard, actually. You rolled through Larry, obviously, who I saw recently because they do the top 100 camp

in Seabell. So he rolled through. It was good catching up with him. But Frank, I talked to him today. And he said, when you talk to Steve, make sure you mentioned that my mom walked out that day when we were all standing on the dock. And my mom motioned to me and asked me who. my new friend was thinking you were a teenager.

I think I was like 28 at the time. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So came a long way. I got my 406 hat on here for the people listening. That's the Montana Area Code. That is God's country up there, a beautiful, beautiful place.

I hope I can get up there this summer. Right now, okay, we're all faced with all the leagues, all the teams, athletes. I mean, this is unprecedented. As I sit, sit back and think about, being a player, if I were a player right now, you're always responsible for your time and yourself in the office. I think one of the biggest differences between college and the pros, but this is unprecedented. And this is going to challenge a lot of not only players and coaches, organizations.

How are you guys handling this time away? Is basketball you think one of the easiest leagues to, I know it's not easy, but relative to football and hockey to pick it up and go if you guys get a chance to go again? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, there's two different sets of challenges. One is the obvious, the health issue, the safety issue for the players. The other set for us, unlike football and baseball, is that this happened during the season.

And so Adam Silver is trying to weigh everything, trying to generate some kind of situation where the players would feel safe, you know, everybody involved would feel safe and healthy, but that we could also pick up the season where we left off, what, 10, 11 weeks ago now and have some kind of finality to the year. For us, obviously, you know, we were already eliminated from the playoffs. So, you know, this is, for us, it's kind of a non-issue, but, you know, there's so many teams that are fighting for a championship and all of a sudden, you know, the suspension

happens. And so if we rev it back up, I mean, I don't even know how as a coach, you could just kind of restart everything three months later and get your teams going. But, you know, everybody's in the same boat. Well, I figure, and we were parsing through this as players on the pod the other day was like, you know, if we were, if we were a football team and you've been on some Zoom meetings, ironically, with Pete and Doug had you pop into the Eagles, Zoom as well, which is kind of messed up because the Seahawks and the Eagles are probably two of the top teams in the NFC. You're dropping knowledge on both. If I was a player right now and I had Zoom meetings, not only would I freeze the picture like Ferris Bueller and leave the room.

But I'm joking, by the way. I guess I would struggle with how you keep people together, how you do, you know, install new systems. We got Tom Brady heading down to Tampa. I think a lot of people assume that it's a foregone conclusion with the quality of that roster. You go down to Tampa, you know, he's got Bruce Ariens, got those wide receivers. Why wouldn't they win 10 games? Well, I just think in general, in football, as much as anything, these are new systems you need to install. You need to have people on the same page.

Hockey's talking about coming back. I talked to some hockey buddies. It's going to be a big challenge. The Stanley Cup playoffs is the most physical thing in sports. I believe that wholeheartedly. It's like a marathon and very physical. And you can't replicate skating. I figure of any sport, and I learned this from watching that horse thing go viral, all these dudes have courts at their houses.

I mean, how much can they effectively work together in this time? And how have y'all done that? Zoom meetings, pseudo practices, that sort of thing. Yeah, we haven't had any practices. We've had a few Zoom. You know, it's different for every player. Steph Curry lives in the suburbs. He's got a court at his house.

He can be out there shooting as long as he's. once all day long. We've got five or six of our young players who are in condos in downtown San Francisco who don't have access to a court. And then of course, you know, every city's different based on city regulations, state regulations. So some NBA teams, their practice facilities have already opened up. And right now there's guidelines in place from the league where players are able to work out individually with coaches, but not as a group. But our practice facility, for example, has not opened up yet. We're hoping that it's going to open up next week. But I think there's maybe eight out of the 30 team that have not opened up yet. So everybody's kind of on a little

different schedule based on regulations and that kind of stuff. And then it's up to the players if they can't have access to a gym or if they don't, to just do what they can and ride stairmasters, get on peloton's, whatever they can do to stay in shape. Would this be infinitely tougher in the 90s when you were a player? That's a great question. I think it might be easier because I think there was, because of the lack of social media,

players back then probably would have been able to sneak out to high schools or, you know, black tops and get shots up and and find a way around, you know, the regulations. These days, you know, every, every move you make is being filmed, being watched. And so I think it's, I think it's tougher now, or in every which way. Well, they got Tom Brady for a B&E, essentially. First off, he walks into Byron Leftwich's house to get a playbook, which he's not supposed to be doing.

And then he's breaking into a, as they framed at a high school field, to just try to throw some balls and they tell him, hey, listen, we're going to enforce the rules down here in Tampa, and you got to go home, which is crazy to hear the goat get told that. And I think there is like, you and I think are both on the same page when it comes to, like, we have take this serious. I know there's an entire subsection of the population that's politicized this or, you know, kind of minimize the 100,000 deaths in a couple of months,

which is crazy to me. But I think there's a way you can be safe and get shots off or whatever, you know, the things you're referring to. But to your point, if you head to a gym, you're setting a bad example if somebody catches you without context. It's tough. I look at it that way. So there's the health part of it. But then there's like the league execution part, which you hinted at. I know they're floating a bunch of different formats for getting back to work.

The NHL is going straight in the playoffs. What do you say to a team? And you're in a position right now, uncharacteristically, with your teams where. you're looking up, if they do come back and play a few games before a postseason, I know Dame talked about this, Lillard, you know, I don't know if I want to play meaningless games and risk my health in multiple ways. I mean, you know, leading into a playoff that there's going to be maybe more injuries, there's going to be more rust to shake off.

How would you motivate a player to take the court amid these safety concerns and the fact that it's probably futile for some teams? Yeah, it's a good question. I think it's going to vary from one player to the next, you know, in terms of what each guy wants to do. I think for me, for our team, if the NBA just said, hey, we're going to start it back up, we're going to bring every team back. For sure, what they would do is they'd give us a few weeks to practice. And we'd get everybody, you know, back in the bay or maybe they would send us off to a site. I'm not sure how the league's going to approach it.

But we would go through the practices, and I think we'd be able to gauge where each player is physically. Where we are right now, we wouldn't do anything crazy. So there's no way anybody would be playing 40 minutes a night. Right. I think given that next season is most likely to be pushed back to about Christmas, it's a really long time to go without playing much basketball, you know, from March all the way to, to,

late December. That's forever. So I think we would almost look at it like a mini-camp. I know you guys in the NFL have kind of off-season minicamps and stuff, whatever you call them. I think that's how we'd look at it. You know, we get some practice in, get some game minutes, and this is a good way to at least bridge the gap between March and next season. Do you see like I've seen floated, and by the way, It's a great point because you guys do have the flexibility, move it back a little bit. The NHL, again, a very physical league. They're talking about taking a month break and going full speed ahead

into a 21 season. That's 82 physical games. And you guys do a hell of a job of, you know, I know that there's load management and that sort of thing. But it's a marathon for y'all too. I think they have to consider that stuff. They've talked about a one through 16 type tournament

where you eliminate the conferences. The West has been ridiculous, this millennium. Do you look at that and you think, oh, that'd be interesting to maybe play an Eastern conference team the first round, say we were in this thing, or do you look at it and say like that doesn't change anything for me? I think, I know the NBA has tossed around various scenarios going forward, not just during this COVID-19 crisis, but even before, the league's been looking at different ways to

have their playoffs, maybe have some, you know, some kind of a play-in tournament to get in the playoffs. Yeah, like World Cup style. Yeah, exactly. And they've talked about starting later so that we're not competing with football in November and December and, you know, maybe starting around Christmas and pushing the season back into July. There's been a lot of this stuff that's discussed in the past. To me, now is the perfect time to try any of that, right? You almost have a blank slate because of what's happened. It's made everybody, whether in the sports world or any other business, it's forced everybody to be really creative. And I think we're seeing that, you know, around the country as you look at people operating, whether it's, you know, restaurants or

or some kind of, you know, business and figuring out how can we operate without, you know, the violating regulations. So you start thinking about all the different ways. Well, if you have this blank slate in the NBA and we're going to be doing some crazy stuff anyway, why not try out some of these things you've been thinking about for years anyway? Yeah. So one of the things has gotten us through this crazy time and the normalcy that it brought was pretty palpable. And all you had to do was get online was the last dance. I mean, and you and I had talked a little bit about it, getting yawned to talk about it. I loved seeing you featured heavily in that thing and your story, which I knew, that was illuminating for a lot of people. And you were very

vulnerable and honest, which I thought was awesome. Speaking of vulnerability, one of the things you took away was that Mike was more vulnerable. And sometimes you wondered if he was a robot. I know you said that before that he was a machine. Did you enjoy watching it? Like, what was that like for you because I know you don't know what's going to happen. I mean, you're to a degree like the rest of us. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was really interesting to watch.

You know, I watched with my kids. They were toddlers when all that was going on. So that part was really fun because I had never seen most of that footage. So to go back in time and see what my life was like for my kids, you know, just watching it with them was amazing. And then it brought back a lot of memories and it opened up some old wounds too. You know, and it was a really powerful documentary. I thought Jason Hare did a phenomenal job directing it. But, you know, stuff happens, right?

You just, it opens up old wounds. Guys start thinking about stuff. Certain guys aren't featured. You know, I was a little disappointed that Luke Longley, who was our starting center all those years. Ron Harper, starting guard. We barely heard anything about them. Although Ron delivered one of the best lines of the documentary. Which was? It was dealing with guarding MJ in the Cleveland series when he hit the shot over Craig Ilo.

It was something laced with profanity, something in effect, fine, you want Craig to guard him, Craig can guard him. That's right. That was a good line. Yeah. It was good. But, you know, there was some of that. You know, watching it was good because we got reconnected. We ended up, I ended up talking with a lot of teammates and texting them and just sharing old memories.

And that part was fun. But, yeah, it brings up a lot of good memories and bad ones and everything in between. And I think there's a reason teams generally don't want cameras behind the scenes, right? that stuff is really personal. And you guys have had hard knocks. Were you ever on a team that did hard knocks? No, and I prayed that I never was, Steve. Because we, you know, and you can identify with this.

What y'all had is cool, especially if you're MJ, because you have the locking key on the editorial last, the last set of eyes on it. And, you know, but to your point, you know, throughout my career, I was on some bad teams. My first eight years of my career, most people remember me being a champion late in my career, but I played in St. Louis on really bad teams that were often in the running.

If we were more entertaining, if more people cared, it's bad when you're bad and nobody cares. If you're the Cowboys and you're bad, cameras will flock. You know, we flirted with it. I was nervous about it. I know the Eagles had, you know, that Amazon thing this year was kind of all access. I was very glad. I talked to my friends. I was very glad that I was not a part of that team. Just for that reason, I would have loved to keep playing. but, you know, it would have put me in a weird bind. You don't know how to act when the cameras are around. And that's why, like, part of it, I know people are saying, like, yeah,

I was unprecedented access. And yeah, it felt real. But when athletes are in a locker room and there's a camera on, you're never getting the true, you know, back and forth. And I could feel that a little bit. Yeah, I think so. And although I will say that after a while, you know, they were there every day. And after a while, it was almost like,

you know, they just blended in. You know, the first, the first couple of months, it was really weird. And especially because Phil Jackson had always been a coach who felt like the locker room was sacred, you know, that you couldn't just have anybody walk in. And so our locker room was really private. And then all of a sudden, we go into that season at 98. And Phil says, well, there's going to be a camera crew all along us around. We're all like, what? What the hell? But I would say by mid-season, say by mid-season, it was kind of like, you know, they're just, there they are. And they're also following Michael around the whole time. So they were easy to avoid if we wanted to. And, and I think after a while, we just, we just, they just kind of blended in. So it wasn't too intrusive.

There were almost three functionalities to the series for me. And one was for the young people now who watch first take and just digest comparisons all day. They don't even know who they're comparing LeBron or Kobe, God rest of soul, too. It's one thing to look at stats, you know, it's one thing to look at highlights, but to live it as a sports fan, which I got to, it was really cool. But even for somebody my age, the first three Pete was ancient history to me. I'm six years old when they play the Pistons. So it was illuminating for me in the middle. It was illuminating for younger people. And then for older people, it was a blast in nostalgia. And you arrived right before Mike came back, a year or two before Mike came back, yeah? Yeah, yeah. And those were the two years. He went

and played baseball. And it actually, that period turned my career around because I was in about my fifth year, but I was kind of on my way out of the league. I was a free agent. I had no offers and the Bulls offered me a spot. And part of the reason I played so much that year was because Michael was gone. You know, he left a void and a lot of minutes. And so I was able to kind of resurrect my career while he was gone. And then when he came back, it was like incredible just to realize, okay, now, you know, we are, we're going to get a chance to compete for a championship.

And what that means individually, you know, I don't know, I'm sure it's different in football, but in basketball, you know, when you're competing for a championship, and the titles are generally driven by your best, you know, two, three players, right? So we knew Michael was driving these championships with Scotty, and obviously they had, you know, Dennis Rodman taking care of the glass and those three guys were upstart. But the thing with basketball is you always have a chance to have a moment, you know, where you're going to get the ball and you're going to be in big moments. And even though you're not driving the championship run,

you're going to be able to play a part in it. And that was really exciting, but also nerve-wracking. You know, you didn't want to screw up. And so that was a big part of learning to adjust to play with Michael. He was such a big star. And we didn't really know him that well. But, you know, if he threw you the ball, you felt he felt his... the right thing with it.

And you did it. You did the right thing with the game six. I loved. I love seeing you. He was like, yo, like, keep this, keep this on the low, Steve. Like, here's what we're going to do. And you're like, yeah, yeah, I'll do that. You're like screaming to the game.

It's so great. But, I mean, when you show up on the scene, you're hearing about the lore of Michael Jordan. I'm pretty sure he's in Birmingham. He's not visiting the team until BJ asked him to come back. Which I thought was really cool. BJ seemed like a really good teammate. He seemed like he was a,

a nice force to have in a locker room. But I figure you're sitting there and you're hearing about Mike, what was that lore like? What were people saying about him? And did you ever have a sense? Was it like a foregone conclusion that he was just gone for a bit and that he was coming back? No, we didn't really ever sense that he was coming back. To that point, you know, a lot of us had played against him,

but most of us hadn't played with him. And so BJ and John Paxson, who was a player, was a teammate for a year and then became a broadcaster and a coach. But he was a really good mentor for me. So those guys kind of shared with me, Bill Cartwright also, kind of what kind of guy Mike was and what it was going to be like to play with him. But I thought BJ said something really interesting in the documentary, which was that, you know, the guys on the first. first three Pete came up with Michael before he became Michael Jordan Global Superstar. And so they got to know him a lot better. For us on the second three Pete, he was already this icon.

And we never got to know him that well because he was always being swept away by his security guys to write to the hotel, to his suite. You know, we never really went out with him and had dinner with him and beach. made that point. I thought it was a really good one. It was almost like we were, you know, teammates with this icon instead of this human being. And so it was hard to relate to him. I noticed that. I mean, like the one thing, and this isn't a bad thing, I think that level of greatness and isolation from a competitive drive standpoint, from a mentality standpoint, and the things he'd been through, the burden he'd shouldered. Because I can only imagine,

if he, if MJ is playing now, he waits eight years with first take on every day, it's going to be exhausting, you know, hearing about, is he ever going to win the big one and that sort of thing? And then the way the media spun that whole thing with his dad. So I can understand why, you know, he was kind of a lonely, it seemed to me, in a healthy way. I mean, he's on an island. He played himself and competed himself onto his island. And I noticed one funny thing about him was his friends were interesting people. They weren't, I mean, like he was friends with his teammates, I could tell. But he found friends. It was like he's an old soul, whether it was Gus, with the security guards,

whether there was guys that didn't need anything from him other than, you know, they're working for the team, their familiar faces, guys he could trust somehow. Yeah, he felt comfortable with those guys because they protected him, but they were older. And I think they handed on the documentary that they almost were father figures to him

after he lost his dad. But it was interesting. We rarely went out with him or something. I saw him out. I do remember a night where we were in Phoenix. We went to a, to play pool, like maybe four of us. And it was a Tuesday night. It was like nobody's in this pool hall. And maybe there's 15 pool tables, 20 pool tables, and they're all empty. And I'm with like, you know, Bushler and Tony Koo coach, Luke Longley. You know, we're playing pool. We're the only ones in this place. And Michael walked in. with his security guys. He loves to compete. He loves to shoot pool. He walks in and he goes, hey, what's up, fellas? We're like, hey, how you doing? He goes to a table in the back. I'm not kidding, Chris, within half an hour, the place was packed. Yeah. And people were hanging outside, trying to get in, snapping pictures. And this was kind of before cell phones, right? So this was not

like some guy sees, sees him and tweets it. This is like the guy at the bar goes to the pay phone and sticks the quarter in. Unbelievable. Yeah. The way the world, it was like when he unretired, or I couldn't remember it was retired or unretired, and he's at Kamiski throwing out the first pitch. And I'm saying to myself, today,

everybody's getting that alert at the same time on their phone. You know, a big Michael Jordan announcement. Yeah. And I had to spread organically. Like people just tapping each other on the, it's just the way things were. And one of the funniest things to me was, after y'all got in that scuffle,

which I want to ask you about, was he said he called you and he didn't have your number and i think you know fans on the outside were shocked by that but i'm saying to myself like team sports i mean it's not like college okay like you you love your teammates you you go to war with them you're you're you compete your ass off for them but guys have their own lives too and so you know i'm imagining him going through a rolydex trying to find your number and then calling you on one of those big ass car phones did he call you on a car phone or a house phone? It was a rotary, I think.

I don't know. You're right, though. Back then, you know, you had to either memorize somebody's number or you had it in a roll of decks or like your address book or whatever. Yeah. But, you know, I didn't know anybody's number other than my mom's, you know. I had to look for everything. Right.

But there's, yeah, it was just a different time. And, you know, I'm definitely feeling old. now with this conversation. It's all good. I'm not trying to make you feel a little bit. It's funny. You talk about the fight and people made big deals about fights. I don't know how it was in the NBA in the 90s.

I'm sure there were a lot more than there are now. But guys fight. I mean, I was in fist fights. There's fist fights in practice. Guys make up and they go back to work with each other. And I thought, you know, but that theme, you know, of earning respect, being tested by the alpha. That's something that's real in every sport. And I thought, yeah, I wasn't surprised that you didn't back down from him.

But I guess, you know, that entire process, whether it was game six shot, the fight, talk about him earning or making guys earn his respect. And I guess my burning question would be, did he leave a mark when he hit you in the eye or did he get you solid? Did you get a Shiner at all? I got a Shiner. Really? Yeah.

And after it happened, Phil Jackson came over. Phil, see, I had a different memory from what Michael described on the show. So he said Phil kicked him out of practice. My memory was that Phil had gone upstairs to his office while we were scrimmaging because he had to take a phone call from the league or something. And that's when we got into it. So Phil came down and say like, you know, see what was going on. And I remember him coming over to me.

He goes, you're going to have to clean that up. And I go, my eye or my relationship with Michael? That's unbelievable. Yeah. When people like, nobody mess with Michael Jordan. Okay, Michael Jordan is a, is a, is a lion. I mean, he's got the heart of a champion. He's, he's, we tell you, borderline sociopathic with the competitiveness.

But that doesn't mean he can kick everybody's ass. You know, guys fear him because you can't go back at Mike and punch Mike in the face. What happens if you punch Mike in the face? Are you on the next bus out? Well, I guess it depends who you are, but I don't think anybody was ever going to do that. But to go back to your original point, we had probably a couple other fights that year. Generally speaking, back then there were more fights than now because we scrimmaged a lot more. Just like I'm guessing, there were more practice with pads in the 90s and the 80s and

NFL than there are now. We've gotten smarter, so we're trying to protect players' bodies now. But back then we scrimmaged all the time, and so there was constant competition. And on every team that I played on, there was usually a fight or two during the season. And like you said, you make up, you move on. And it's just part of competing. It's, you know, people don't get to the NBA without being unbelievably competitive. or the NFL. And you're also fighting for your career and a lot of money and your life and your family and everything else. So you got to fight for everything. It's true, man. I always tell people that training camp, it's hot. People are, their jobs are on the line. And in football,

not everybody's getting paid like they get paid in basketball. I'm not minimizing the struggle of the last kind of roster in basketball team. But it is a desperate situation. Guys are living in extended stays. It's not, you know, not everybody's a millionaire, you know, a couple times over. It's, it's tough. And it's, I always say it's like rubbing two pit bulls, noses together. Eventually, there's going to be a scrap. And, and that's what happens. But I thought it was really cool, the recount of it. It's universal in any sport, you know, leaders test guys in different ways. And I thought with his leadership style, you know, everybody, everybody wants to be MJ. You know, everybody wants to lead that way or, you know, that's what it takes to be a champion.

I got a different spin on it as a player. I was a leader on the teams I was on. I've been a captain. I was the older guy. I think there's different ways to skin a cat. I think, and I think if you try to be somebody you're not, that's the number one problem when it comes to being a leader or assuming that role.

I really believe that had somebody else tried to be MJ, not only first, that's a tightrope because you have to be perfect to be that demanding of people. And guys would, if the eighth guy on the roster acted like MJ, and this isn't a slight of MJ, you can't just snap your fingers and say, I'm going to lead like MJ.

You know, what are people missing about that? I mean, because I feel like everybody thinks you could just turn that on. Yeah, authenticity is the biggest thing for sure. And, you know, I went straight from Chicago to San Antonio after my days with the Bulls.

And Tim Duncan was like the complete opposite of Michael. He was quiet, unbelievably competitive, but he was just going to come in and get his work in. And he was humble. He was funny. He set a great tone in terms of the work ethic. But, you know, you just felt really comfortable by his side. And I would say Steph Curry is a lot like that, too. You know, great sense of humor.

You know, you come to the Warriors, you're going to feel comfortable because Steph Curry is going to make you feel comfortable. And both Steph and Tim are amazing leaders. And so, but what makes them amazing is their authenticity. And that's the key. Michael was being authentic. And so everyone respected that. And, you know, I think his fire and the way he led, I would argue was more important for his. his own game than it was for hours.

You could tell it. I don't think I don't think I played any better because he was putting all this pressure on me. I think I think he needed to keep pressure on everybody to keep that edge that he had and that he felt. And he wanted our team to keep that edge, which I think was a valid point. Did you guys, and first of all, I just want to commend you because I knew about what happened to your father. And I didn't know the details. You haven't been one that's talked at length about it often, but I was incredibly moved like everybody else.

And I thought you were awesome and vulnerable. And that was one of the most touching sequences in the whole thing. I never put that together, you know, with you and Mike. Had you guys really never talked about that? No, no. We never talked about it. And again, it was, it kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier.

We didn't get to know him that well. He was already this global superstar by the time that second three-peat team came around. And so every night while we were getting to know Scottie Pippen, you know, Ron Harper, Luke Longley, we were all getting to know each other because we were going out to dinner or seeing each other or, you know, having a drink, whatever. Michael was in his room because he couldn't go outside without being mobbed.

And we didn't have, so we never had that kind of a relationship where we would be able to talk about something so personal. Now, you, Jerry Krause came up a lot, okay, and I understand why he takes a lot of it on the chin. And he's not here to defend himself. So it's delicate that way. And I think a lot of people realize that an episode or two in. I think is it possible to be one of the best GMs of all time and also one of the worst and make some of the worst moves of all time?

Can those two things be true? Yes. Yeah. No, they can. They can. Because, you know, Jerry built the team and hired Phil Jackson and, you know, drafted Scotty Pippin, who was basically unknown at the time, traded for Dennis Rodman, you know, signed all the free agents. Michael Jordan was there, but he knew what he was doing.

He traded Charles Oakley for Bill Cartwright in an era where you had to guard Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon and David Robinson and eventually Shaq. And so Jerry was a brilliant GM in terms of making moves and building a team. You know, what I said in the documentary is how I felt and how I still feel. He just couldn't get out of his own way. You know, he needed more credit. It's interesting. Somebody had a line, I think maybe in the documentary, he deserved more credit than he got, but he wanted more credit than he deserved.

He deserved. Because I think if you're in Jerry Krause's position, the way to go is you say, we got Michael Jordan. We're winning championships because we have Michael Jordan. We're lucky to have him. And then you let everybody else talk about all the moves you've made, you know, to build the team around him. But he just wasn't.

comfortable enough in his own skin to be able to allow for that. It was actually kind of sad. It really was because he actually did a great job putting that team together. Yeah, I felt for him. I mean, he definitely took a lot of shit from everybody and definitely took a lot of shit from MJ. MJ liked the short jokes when it came to Jerry. But I thought Jerry was, I mean, all the things you mentioned, people remember the last thing. And, you know, it's the saddest part to me outside of the real life stuff from a basketball standpoint. You could feel it. It was palpable when Mike was talking was the what might have been at the end, the way they tied it together was you're really sitting there thinking.

And as a kid, I'm watching you all play. And as a kid, you just watch what goes on in the court. You're not knowing what's going on in the front office. That's a different time. And I'm just considering, you know, right now, if that had happened. and you blow something up like that, the pandemonium that would ensue. Yeah. I've had so many people ask me that question, like, how could that have happened?

And it's really impossible to explain because it shouldn't have happened. But it just did. It felt it felt over at the time. the relationship between Phil and Jerry was done. The team was exhausted. But what should have happened is Michael Jordan should have kept playing basketball for the Bulls somehow. And I think you can blame anybody for that. But that should have happened and it didn't.

And it's just crazy and it's impossible to explain to. to anybody why that happened. And you could feel the sadness. I mean, Mike powered through a lot in that whole thing, heavy topics, but you could tell he got emotional. To your point, it was almost like he's a machine. Only a couple things made of emotional, and that was the disbanding of that team.

And his standard for, if you don't want to play that way, don't play that way. I mean, and evidently, that's 45 minutes into the interview, or one of the first questions they asked him. So pretty remarkable. And to your point, it was great to see him. be a little bit more vulnerable. I wanted to hit you with some quick stuff to finish, but first, I got to hit the heavy stuff.

So I'm looking at your stint in the only place you ever went that it didn't turn to gold was Phoenix. I mean, that was, you know, in the early years, you weren't a part of winning there. But the Phoenix thing, your 4A into the front office, GMs, your GM, your, your, your, your, your, your president of basketball operation. Do you take a lot from what Jerry taught you? And who did you like, who did you model your MO after as a front office guy? Because you got Jordan as a player, other leaders, you've got coaches. This is in the middle.

Yeah, yeah. To be perfectly frank, I got that job 2007, straight out of the broadcasting booth. and it was brand new. I had never spent any time in a front office. I hadn't even coached. And so it was a big step. And I made a lot of mistakes. And, you know, I think it was one of the best things I could have done to help prepare me to coach later on

because I was able to really get a look at the dynamics of a front. front office and the relationships, how important the relationships were coach, GM, owner, best player. I saw all that up close, but you have to experience it, you know, before you can really know how to handle it. And so it was an incredible experience for me, but I did not do a great job. There were, yeah, sure, there were some obstacles, but, you know, I could have handled things a lot better. We had a, we had a really good. team, a championship contender, kind of right at the tail end of the team's run with Steve Nash and Sean Marion and that crew.

It was a fun group. It was a really fun group. Really fun team. And you didn't, like, I know you're, like, we get it. You could have done some things better, sure. But I see players go into this front office world all the time in a bunch of sports. why do you think that it's not as easy for players to transition to that world as it is coaching? I think the answer might be obvious, but lend some light on that.

Well, I think coaching is so much done on the court. And so if you played for as long as you played, you got an upfront look at what your coach was teaching you, what your team felt like, what the locker room felt like. like what the culture was. And meanwhile, you had no idea what the GM was doing upstairs. Right. And so there's very little training unless you get into, you know, a front office at a lower level and really experience it.

And I think that's what I would recommend to anybody who's, you know, looking to get into the front office from, you know, to make that transition. is you really have to do it as a consultant, as a lower level person, and understand it and learn and find mentors. I think finding mentors and people who can help you learn is just crucial in any field. And that's something that I really searched for in coaching. And I had some built-in mentors, the guys I played for. but I also found some guys including Pete Carroll who were instrumental in me figuring out my voice.

He was, really? He was great. Yeah. Yeah. And I spent a couple of years preparing to coach and visiting. I went and visited Bill Parcells in Saratoga, New York, had lunch with him. It was incredible. Yeah.

Very different than Pete. Totally different. And that's the thing is there's so many different. You talk about cultures. I mean, in the NFL, and that's a follow-up there would be, it's got to be harder to build a culture now in the NBA with free agency with the way things are just in general than it was in the 90s. Yeah, or no? Yeah, I think so because there's more player movement. I think the, I think if you are lucky enough to have a core group that sticks together for a few years, that's really how you can get it going.

And for us, we were incredibly lucky because, you know, we had some really great players with Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Blake Thompson. And then obviously Kevin Durant coming along too. But we just had guys who were who just embodied what we were searching for. You know, we wanted to to compete and we wanted to enjoy things. We really talked a lot about enjoying the whole process. and Steph Curry embodies joy as an athlete better than anybody I've ever seen. And so we had a lot of built-in advantages and things have really taken shape for us. But when guys leave, you know, it's tougher to keep that culture intact.

Yeah, well, you've got your glue guys like Draymond. You've got, you know, your stars and your leaders and that sort of thing. but the introduction of a brand new force in like Kevin a few years back. I mean, most people are like, yeah, it's automatic. It's a super team. It's that sort of thing. But what people miss on the outside is you have to maintain that culture and you have to make guys work together. And it's challenging.

I mean, because everybody on the floor in the NBA is a superstar. I mean, that's just the fact. Pretty much. And relative to football players, we play behind a mask. We're, you know, there's 53 guys on a roster. How do you balance that when you get fresh blood? in to an existing, you know, culture that's working on the dynasty. I think it all just depends on the makeup of the team and the roster.

You know, I think the makeup of your roster is so crucial in the NBA. And I imagine it's similar in the NFL. You know, you really need a good balance of young guys and veterans and you need mentors. If you have all young guys who are fighting for playing time, fighting for shots, fighting for money. It's a recipe for disaster. So how you build your roster is crucial. I'm interested, though, from your perspective as a player, you've got 53 guys on a roster, another, how many on a practice squad, 5, 10? Ordin you can count and, you know, 5, 7 guys and they're rotating in and out.

You know, there are times admittedly during the year where you might not know everybody's name on the team. I mean, that's very, especially the older you get. I mean, and when I, Steve, when I tell you, I played in St. Louis and guys were coming and going. I mean, there was on bad teams. There's a lot of turnover. I play with a thousand guys. So it just call everybody, you just call everybody bro or. Like a buddy.

Buddy. Brother, buddy. I mean, one of the B words. And you know what? I mean, like, I think all that matters is that you treat people with respect as a leader. I think, you know, how you treat the 53rd man on the roster is, is, is, is, you know, is, just as important as how your stars get along because as a leader, all you're doing, you're not only, it's carried or stick, but it's also, I think, instilling hope in people,

incentive. And, you know, you really, for the bottom of your roster, and this is something that a lot of great coaches I've been around believe in, and I'm sure you do too, is like the bottom of your roster has to be just as strong because on Sunday, I have to count on that guy. Jeff Fisher, who is a big part of my life as a football player, and he's taking his lick. you know, in coaching, it's tough. He's been to a Super Bowl. He's had bad years, whatever.

But he taught me so much about leadership because one of the first things, we used to have the rookies come in and, you know, sing and, you know, we'd throw stuff at them and you'd haze them, not like the haze back in the day. But the first year, Jeff came in, and we had a very salty defense, very salty group that would, we'd be tough on rookies. but I always had the belief to treat them like people, you know, because they're grown men. I'm not going to demean you that we're going to haze you. But we were like, hey, you get up here and sing.

Everybody's going crazy. The rookie's starting to walk up. Jeff stops the meeting and said, hey, I don't want to hear that ever again. You know, I'm not going to make our rookies do stupid shit. We need to, we need to depend on them on Sunday. And you need to treat them like you're going to depend on them on Sunday. and I thought that was profound. And we tried to do that anyways,

but just cutting out some of those things and just realizing that the fourth corner could easily be the first corner, the way injuries go on a Sunday. And when a game comes down to it, it's one guy screwing up. You really do lose so many games with that guy who thought he wasn't going to play

is plugged in. So your job as a leader in the NFL, I think, is exhaustively. to make everybody feel a part of it. How many leaders would you say the average team has on a football team? Good leaders? Yeah, yeah. I think if you average it all out, maybe two, two or three, but two or three.

But to be a leader, you have to lead by example too, so you have to be able to lead from the front. There's veterans and there's leaders. So, you know, I always said this in the tail end of my career. And yeah, it's a bit selfish in free agency to say, hey, I need to know. what my role is going to be. I'll work for it, but because I can't lead from the back. You're telling me on one hand, hey, I need you to come here and be a leader. But the way I am is I have to be out there proving the guys that I put my equity into this

thing to on the field. Because my words are more hollow if I'm not making plays. So I think when you're on good teams, you have more good leaders. In New England, we had a bunch of them. Tom wasn't it. Tom was the tremendous every man leader relative to being, like you said, Michael, he's a God. I never thought to detect. Next, Tom, I mean, Tom and I talked every day.

I mean, he was different than Mike. You know, when I arrived, I was a good player, but he stopped me in the hallway and said, hey, Chris, I'm Tom. I'm like, no shit you are. You know, but I never thought to hit him up and have a beer with him. There were guys from that team like Dante High Tower, Matt Slater, some of the best leaders I'd ever encountered. And fans often see who goes out to the coin toss, the stars, but there are guys on every

roster who are kind of those hidden leaders. but they have to be contributing, at least in the NFL, in my opinion. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think basketball is similar. You generally have, you know, one or two guys who are your leaders for us. You know, Steph's our quiet leader, and Draymond is our loud one. Yeah. I think what's really crucial for us is having guys on the bench who get it,

who understand that their role is going to be. they're going to play one night. They're not going to play the next. But they've got to be ready the whole time. That's a really hard job, but it's a necessary one. And so if you can get your guys 10 through 14, there's usually a couple of rookies in there. Maybe they're not ready yet.

But if you can get a couple guys in that area who are good enough that you can count on and professional enough that you don't have to play them all the time to keep them happy. It's gold. It's amazing. It's valuable that is. No, it sounds, it sounds like it last, last, last thing on, on MJ, pretty much. Do you think guys could handle his leadership style today? Yeah. Yeah, I do. I do. I mean, the reason it worked is not because of, because it was a great leadership style. It's worked because he was Michael fucking Jordan. Yeah, we touched on that. I mean, if Mike's out there, you know, eighth guy on the roster with that kind of, you know, attitude, it would have been tough. So, yeah, I agree with you.

I think it's overblown. The guys are soft nowadays thing. I'm watching the thing. And one of the things that jumped out of me the most was that, you know, Mike played golf with who was it before the Celtic series? It was Danny eight. I'm thinking to myself, like, do you know how bad a player in 2020 would get fried for getting caught doing that? Yeah, you get crushed. So anyway, you have been incredibly outspoken relative to coaches and players, white players, white coaches.

You've been a player. So I think you've been in locker rooms when it comes to these tough subjects. How much is being a player separate you as far as feeling confident and comfortable enough tackling these tough issues? Social justice, you know, you've talked about gun control, equality in our country. I know it helps me having spent time in locker rooms with my my brothers, you know, like guys that I suited up with and grew up different than me. I think having played and gotten to know so many different teammates, guys from different backgrounds, different countries, I think all that matters.

You know, I think it matters that I traveled as a kid. and lived overseas for five years out of my childhood, lived in in places where, you know, there was, you know, abject poverty and totally different cultures. And so I was lucky I got a chance from, through my parents, to really see the world and to meet a lot of different people

and to kind of get a, have a different worldview than maybe your average. kid growing up in the United States. So all of that has been helpful in it in making me feel more comfortable and speaking out on the things that I think are important. On a week like this, where obviously it's hard to talk about sports right now. I mean, I know that George Floyd is not the first person to die at the hands of police brutality by any stretch of the imagination, but now we have camera phones and now we have

sort of this vantage point that we didn't have 10, 15 years ago and beyond, like, what's this week like for you? Do you look at something when this happens and do you look at it as a responsibility to weigh in every time? How do you pick your spots? How do you, do you have somebody that doesn't look like you that you call and say, hey, am I missing the point on this? Or do you just shoot from the hip? I've got friends who are in the thick of it, in, you know, in the inner city who are really fighting hard for equality, for the lives of people who are impoverished. And I've learned from them. And I tend to call them and ask, what can I do? You know, I think that's the biggest thing is that, and I know you've been, great and you've been outspoken and you feel similarly in that you just want you

want people to be respected you want our country to to be better so what can we do as as white guys you know it's a it's a totally different vibe and that's there's a it's an interesting dynamic Chris because we you and I have the white privilege, right? We can say anything. And basically, people are going to listen or we might get some criticism, but we get less than, then, you know, our teammates or friends of color. Yeah. But, you know, this is just this week, right? I mean, we just got done talking about Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. And I know that every single year that I've coached, you know, I'm asked one month about

some mass shooting. I'm asked the next month about, you know, race killing, you know, a case of police brutality. Like it, this stuff is, this is not the exception. This is the rule. This is happening in our country all the time. And so we have to decide as white people, like enough is enough, right? We can't just point it out on Twitter or whatever like you and I do without following up and doing something, right? So what is that step?

And I think that's what I'm trying to figure out now in my life, you know, where kind of I go, how can I actually make an impact, not just raise the subject, but actually make an impact? Yeah, I'd love it if we got to a point where raising the subject was fairly normal. I, you know, I've always been uncomfortable with praise people have given me, and I'm sure you feel the same way at times because saying that somebody being gunned down in the street for being black is wrong is not something you deserve a medal for. I'd love it if we got to the point where, you know, people that look like you and I. And by the way, the craziest thing about is you said I call my friends and I say, what can I do? Literally 1007 last night, text message to

Malcolm. What can I do, bro? Happy to help if you got something police-related related coming off this. So I think that's the best question and that's my follow-up to you and maybe it's already answered is how do you advise white athletes? Because I'm sure you've had some white players who might have confided in you and said, I don't know how to talk about this. I understand to a degree why some guys don't because it is it's a minefield even somebody who's well-versed like you or somebody who's been involved with legislative stuff like myself or you know played with in a d-line room i'm the only white guy i mean like i'm the minority of my d-line room so i might have had 11-year career of those experiences but still sometimes i feel like i'm tiptoeing and i don't know what to do and i think

that's i think that's something white players white coaches influencers should hear it's not like i just had this conversation with Carson Wentz. I shared with you that tweet. I was very moved by that because you heard Shannon Sharp talk about that this week. He said, you know, who's going to step up? We need Tom Brady, Aaron Rogers. You know, it's great that we've got X, Y, Zs of the world, but we need the big name quarterbacks and that sort of thing. So to see that that happened, and he said, he said institutional racism. He typed those words out. That was really important to me. And I got chills. thinking about it because it's so bare minimum, but that's all we need. We just need guys to address it. So what's the advice to white players and white coaches around the league?

It's to address it because I think that the, when I think of it in terms of, you know, big picture our country and our nation's history, I think the, the real problem is that we've never really reconciled our sins from the past, right? We have. We have. haven't really, you know, and sometimes I will, you know, I'll hear people say, well, slavery was abolished 150 years ago, you know, that you, you know, it's like stop it. You know, if you can't see the repercussions of the slavery. Slavery was only replaced in different iterations and different ways throughout our history, you know, and the impact, the generational impact on families and, you know, basically. Basically, the only way for us to reconcile the sins of our past is to address them. And, you know, I think it's been at least a start the last few years to bring down some of the monuments to the Confederate leaders.

I read an interesting story the other day about a lot of the military bases that you and I have read the names of many times. Fort Bragg, for example, in North Carolina, I believe. These are actually named after Confederate. Yeah, I saw that same piece. And to most people, I'll admit, and obviously I live in Charlottesville. I live three blocks from what you saw going on a couple years back. To most people, you walk by these things to white people, I'll admit, I never thought twice about it. You know, I certainly get pissed off when I see somebody with a flag draped over their pickup truck or, you know, in their front yard. I, you know, I want to flip them the bird. But I, I never thought about it. And, you know, if you're such a historian, consider, if you like the history,

moving into a museum. You know, we have museums for that reason so we can learn from the past. Move the monument, you know. But consider how the black family walk in their kids to school. Like, I walk my kid to preschool and walk by it every day feels. It's incomprehensible to somebody like you and me. So I think your historical points right on, I think, you know, not just slavery, but we've had our really high points as a country. I mean, we've had some really wonderful people that I'm proud to call Americans. We've stepped up at different points.

How can we have the intestinal fortitude to beat the Nazis? And then, you know, guys come home and they don't have. rights. Like, America has never been great yet. Let's get there. I think you're hitting on a really important point because, you know, some of the backlash that I get when I point any of these things out, you know, the sins of our past is, oh, you hate our country.

You know, you hate our country. Like, no, no, I love our country. I live here. I love it. I live here. And this country has done some amazing things. And it's been what an incredible place. for my family and me to live and thrive and, you know, the history of our country is filled

with all kinds of wonderful people and accomplishments. But we can be better. That's the whole point. You know, we can be better. And you just said it. It's an incredible place for me and my family. It's an incredible place for me and my family. I wanted to be an incredible place for everybody. America is great for me. I want it to be great for everybody. And I think one thing for anybody listening that hasn't turned it off yet, because you hate hearing anything that you deem political because you don't agree with me or Steve. I appreciate you listening this far, but I would say that, you know, for somebody who wants to get involved, admitting that there's racism or that you might have a leg up doesn't make you a bad

person. Right. You know, it doesn't mean you haven't worked hard. It just means that it's harder for somebody else. And, you know, like, let's just even the playing field. So I hope that more people are like Steve Kerr and hopefully we can we can inch by inch, you know, claw away to a place that we can be comprehensively proud of the country we live in because I am proud to be an American, but there's a big asterisk next to it if my buddies that I play with. And this is another thing, you know, whether it was cap or a black athlete who gets up and talks about this stuff, like, you're a millionaire, you don't have to deal with any of this stuff. Their skin is black. It does nothing. You had an NBA player get a gun pulled on them

in a parking lot recently in a gas station parking lot. That money does nothing for you. Well, it also infers that you only care about yourself, that you don't actually care about any person around you or anything that's going on around you. This argument that, well, you make millions, you should be happy. It's so short-sighted, you know, and look, there's, I mean,

this is something that I think because of the era that we're living in, It's being exposed now more than ever. And this stuff has been going on throughout our country's history. But it's being so exposed now and it's difficult to read about. It's difficult to watch. But collectively, we have to try everything we can to help end this. kind of police brutality, racism, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, it's, I'm proud of, you know, the people out there who are doing the work

who are really searching for answers. And I think that's what I try to do is latch on to them. You know, I'm no expert on any of this stuff. Exactly. I'm trying to latch on. Just hop in the passenger seat and say, let's roll. I think that's the biggest thing for anybody out there listening. Like, you don't have to be an expert.

You know, I know that had to be intimidating for Carson to send that tweet. I always know he had that in him. I know that a lot of my teammates had that in him. Just because a guy's silent doesn't mean he's not a good person, but right now, silence is not enough. So I hope people step up. Let's hit some quick hitters and get out of here, mailback quick hitters.

Number one, give me one future NBA coach that's playing in the league right now. That's a great question. It's funny because the guys, Some of the guys I think of are making too much money right now. Yeah, right, the incentive to coach. But it's even worse in football, Steve. Like the hours are brutal. Why would anybody want to coach in the NFL?

Why would I want to do that, you know? Yeah, it has to be a single guy. I think the first guy I thought it was Andre Agadala. I mean, the guy is brilliant and witty and funny and smart as hell and would be a great coach. But he's, you know, he doesn't want to deal with all that stuff. He's a tough dude. I love him. He's one of those guys that I feel like could play in the NFL. I just feel like he's got that mentality. That's my next question. One guy you've coached that you think could be a football player. Well, I would say Dremont Green, but one of the- I don't know if he's got the body type.

He's got the body type. He's got the competitiveness. He's got the fight. But the problem is, is every year we show one clip of Dremon playing in the spring game at Michigan State. and he jumps off sides as a tight end and then he drops a pass and we show that in our film session once a year just to make fun of them. I don't think I can say dream on it. Okay. Coming off the dock, you have to quarantine in a nice house. We did this on the pod the other day. By the way, I drafted you three. We drafted people you'd have to quarantine with for two months from the dock.

It can be anybody, but I guess we'll limit it to players. give me three guys. Now these aren't your best friends. They're people that you know are going to, you got to count them to do laundry, you got to decide on a meal, that whole thing, you can't leave the house. Give me three guys you played with

that you'd want to quarantine with two months. That I've played with or that I'm, that are playing now? That you played with. That would have been in the dock. Tim Duncan, Larry Nance, who was awesome.

Yeah. Yeah, one of my favorite teammates. And maybe, Danny Ferry just for comedic relief. Danny Ferry. I drafted Chuck. I drafted John Sally because he had a cameo. You were three. And I think I stole, I don't know if you saw the Pacers lady that got really viral. Oh, G. Karen, as they're calling her. I think she could cook some like mean lunches, bag lunches for me. And she wouldn't take any shit from anybody. So that's a good list. Give me Steph Curry's most clutch shot.

Probably the one near half court that beat Oklahoma City in a regular season game. They've got two bangs out of Mike Breen, which was a first. I'd never heard him do the double bang. But that was sort of the height of that season. He was the MVP that season. that season for the second year in a row.

And I think he got, he was a unanimous. Yeah, that's like his What More Do You Want Me to Do moment. Yeah, that was the moment where. How does he, how does he, he's a slight guy, you're a great shooter. How does he, I mean, he can hit like a 40 footer like it's a jumper, you know, from a standpoint of release and that sort of thing. How does he get the power to take a shot that looks like it's a 15 footer from all the way out there? Well, incredible hand-eye coordination and relentless work ethic to work on its body, his strength and his balance and his core.

Yeah. He's an amazing athlete in every sense of the word. Chicago sports, you spent a couple years there. Do you put ketchup on your hot dog? What do you put on your hot dog? I do put ketchup on my hot dog. Good man. I know you get killed in Chicago for that, but whatever.

I know. Favorite road arena. Madison Square Garden. Awesome. Okay. I'm a Knicks fan. I'm a suffering, long-suffering Knicks fan.

Yeah. It's been a rough go. It has been. It's been a rough life. And you guys started it because the only time, and by the way, I didn't like that 99 team that you guys drug in the NBA finals,

but that was the team that finally got there and you guys just kicked the shit out of them. So thanks for that. Bulls and Warriors, give me one player who would fit in on either team from the other. the best. I'll just say Scotty because Scotty was the most versatile player I've ever seen in my life. Two-way player can play every position offensively, defensively, and an incredible teammate.

He would have been, he would have been an amazing player for any team. Last stop here, a quick game called Pop or Phil. Okay, I'm going to give you a couple activities and you got to choose who you want. wanted to join you. Babysit your kids. So, oh, I got you. Okay, pop or Phil? Baby sit my kid. I'll go Phil. That's a shocker because you don't want to come back and then be like rigid military. You come back with Phil and they'll be doing like hot yoga in the backyard and

wearing like headbands and stuff. That's the point. I'm thinking maybe he enlightens them. Yeah, I would think so. A little of that Montana. a vibe he's got going go to a concert with pop okay that's it again that's an upset for me um there's going to be some wine involved and you got to have a little wine before what kind of wine does he like he's i think he's mostly a cab he he likes to start out dinner with a nice chardonnay and then yeah and then he turns to the caps a chardonnay what a hard ass the drinks a chardonnay Like he just, he just kind of just, you know, nice and cool.

Uh-huh, uh-huh. All right. Do a home improvement project with. Oh, God. Neither. Because one can't and one would drive you insane. No, neither can. Oh, wow.

Okay. I would peg Pop as being handy. Cross-country road trip. I'll go pop. Okay. Last one. Who would you do? a podcast with? Well, Pop would refuse to do a podcast. Yeah, I could see that. But say you had him

dead to rights and he had to. He had to. Yeah. God, they'd both be so interesting. I know I'm skirting the question. They are both, they are two of the most interesting people I've ever met my life. And that's one of the reasons they were so powerful as coaches. So they they would both be fascinating guests on a podcast. Well, you've certainly, you've been around some great ones. You're a great one yourself. I really appreciate it. And by the way, last thing, you and I didn't just share a CDU ride.

We're one of a few players to win back-to-back championships on two different teams. I think you're one of two until somebody did in 2019. I'm one of only a couple. So, Steve, thank you so much. You went Patriots Eagles? I went Patriots Eagles, which was wild because then we play each other. So yeah, yeah. And you were part of an even rare group. You got a lot more jewelry than me, but we share that in common. Steve, thank you so much for joining me, man. It was a pleasure and

keep leading, man. You're the best. Chris, thanks for having me. And you keep doing the same, man. I love following what you're doing and enjoy retirement. You're off to a great start. I'm loving it, man. I don't miss it too much. I don't miss the soreness. We'll talk soon, brother. Sounds good.