The Ariel Helwani Show - Frank Isola

Episode Date: November 4, 2021

One of Ariel's favorite sportswriters joins the show to tell the story of his media journey, which began when he covered the elite New York City high school basketball scene. Then, Isola discusses landing a gig with The New York Daily News and the magic of covering those '90s Knicks teams. Plus, he tells Ariel how his relationship with the Knicks eventually soured (39:17), why it's harder for reporters to fairly cover the NBA today (55:32), and much more.Frank Isola is an American sportswriter who covered the New York Knicks for The New York Daily News from 1995-2017. He then wrote about the Knicks for The Athletic. Today, he co-hosts a SiriusXM radio show, serves as a Nets studio analyst for YES Network, and is also a regular contributor to ESPN's "Around the Horn" and "Pardon the Interruption." He is also the author of the 1999 book, "Just Ballin': The Chaotic Rise of the New York Knicks."You can follow Frank on Twitter and Instagram @TheFrankIsola.For more episodes of The Ariel Helwani Show, please follow the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast app.To get more from Ariel, subscribe to his YouTube channel, read his writing on Substack, watch his work for BT Sport, and follow The MMA Hour or The Ringer MMA Show.Theme music: "Frantic" by The Lovely Feathers

Hey everyone, it's Ariel Helwani on this Thursday, November 4th, 2021. Hope you're doing well. Welcome back to a brand new edition of The Helwani Show. And thank you very much to my good friends, The Lovely Feathers, for their amazing theme song. It is called Frantic. I'm so happy that you guys are here. I'm so happy that you're enjoying the podcast. I think you are.

I'm certainly enjoying doing these each and every week. And I'm very excited about this particular interview because this is a man that I have been reading for a very long time. In fact, when I was a young boy growing up in Montreal, 90s, teenage years, I was a huge Knicks fan. I've talked about the Knicks many a time. And growing up in Montreal back then, there weren't a lot of places to get Knicks coverage. There weren't a lot of places to get NBA coverage, if I'm being honest. This is, you know, mid to late 90s. The Raptors weren't

really a thing. NBA wasn't really popular. But I found a dépanneur. A dépanneur in Quebec is essentially a bodega slash corner store. I found a debt planner, maybe a 10-minute walk from my house that sold the New York Post and the New York Daily News. And this was very exciting for me because pre-internet, I couldn't get any Knicks coverage whatsoever. And so I would walk there after all the big games, anytime I wanted to read about the Knicks, and I would pick up both newspapers and I would devour them. I would read them twice, anything about the Knicks. It was just so foreign to me to get any kind of coverage of that team. And as you may recall, in the 90s, that was an incredible team. That was an incredible time for the team. And so one of the guys that he used to read all

the time, he worked for the Daily News, he was one of their beat writers. Was a man named Frank Izola. And I think he's one of the all-time best NBA writers. And he's an absolute legend of the game. And he worked as a beat writer for the Knicks from 1995 to around 2017. He doesn't write anymore. He's actually a morning co-host for SiriusXM NBA Radio,

great show called The Starting Lineup with Brian Scalabrini. He also works on the Nets, Yes, post-game and pre-game shows. And he does some work for ESPN as well, Around the Horn, PTI, et cetera. Prolific writer, very honest, very raw. I love his takes. And his career has been somewhat similar to mine because he has not been treated very well by the entity that he covers, the New

York Knicks and Madison Square Garden, which is somewhat reminiscent of my career as well. So I was really looking forward to this interview. And I think you will enjoy it as well. It's a great conversation with one of the all-time greats, the one and only Frank Izola. Enjoy. The first time that we met was a very kind of New York moment. We met right in the middle of Times Square because you had been on, I believe it was, was it a Duke? I Hate Christian Laettner. It Duke? I Hate Christian Leitner.

It was the I Hate Christian Leitner documentary. I actually thought you, I had no idea who you were. And I was watching. I thought you were really good. And you were being pretty reasonable. And then I'm in Times Square, leaving the Times Square studio where I was doing, I think they were shooting Around the Horn. I walk out on the street and you're out there with some camera crew. And I was like, oh, look who it is.

That's the guy that was on the I Hate Christian Laettner documentary, which I thought the documentary was very good as well. So I walked right up to you. I was like, I was. You were a fan of mine. Yes, because I wanted. I thought you were very good on that. And I liked it.

I think in the documentary, you might have had your exposed cap on. Right. Or you had something. We showed Malcolm X. I used to wear Malcolm X gear. Yeah, that's right. They showed you as a little kid. Yes, that's right.

So then that's right. We started talking about Montreal. And I had mentioned how when I covered the Mets a million years ago, went up to Montreal, which was great. And you're talking about newspaper stands. The Sheraton that's downtown, which is pretty close to St. Catherine Street, it was a great newsstand there. And when I was there with a bunch of the Met writers,

we would walk to the newsstand to get the New York papers. And the gentleman working there, he knew who we were, which is hard to do because back then there's no Twitter. We're not on TV. But once he knew we were the writers, every time that we went there, he would have the papers rolled up for us, ready to hand all the New York. Obviously, we're paying for the papers, but it was great. It's always good to go to a town.

I always say this. The first time I was ever in London, it felt like an old newspaper town because you still have the newsstand there with all the different newspapers and the headlines and the back page and everything. It was really exciting. Okay, so that leads me to get right into it. You currently work for SiriusXM. You do the great starting lineup radio show with the White Mamba, Brian Scalabrini. Excuse me. I listen to it every morning. I love it. You had someone on as a caller a couple of days ago saying you guys are the greatest morning show of all time.

I think that's a little bit much. That was my brother. Right, right. But it's a great program. You also do you know the nets coverage for yes and and you work for espn as well you don't write anymore i know and how do you so i'm wondering just off the bat i mean i learned about you as a writer i read the great book ballin co-written by you and mike wise by the 1999 new york knicks uh i i followed you to

the athletic etc etc but for the last couple, you have not written consistently anymore and you got into this business as a writer. How do you feel about that? I definitely miss it a lot. There is something about column writing, which I more so than doing like long form stories and features on guys. I like reacting right off to, you know, right after a game, which is really what we're doing on a morning radio show because the games happened at night and we're doing on a morning radio show because the games happened at night and we're kind of giving our take in some ways right away. I miss that part of it. I really do. Now, I did write last year in terms of writing a book. I wrote a book with Charles Oakley, so that occupied most of my winter, which was a challenge in itself, but it was also

pretty cool going back down that road with him, getting back into some of the things that did happen in the 90s, the early 2000s when he was in the NBA. But the writing part of it, I definitely miss. You know, you get to write and it's something, there's something about being on radio, which is exciting. There's something about being on TV, which is exciting. But writing this, it's different. I almost feel, and I don't mean this,

I'm not going to anybody on TV or radio. You almost feel that people take you more seriously when you write, especially when I wrote for a newspaper. Do you, do you foresee a time where you'll ever go back to writing or do you, I mean books one thing, but like consistently like you were before, not on the beat, but would you like to get a gig where you're able to write columns again?

A hundred percent. I definitely would. Cause I think there's a lot, there's a lot of fun stuff to weigh in on. There's a lot of trends to weigh in on the whole thing with these players today, complaining, the NBA players complaining about the way the game is being called, but you have a lot of people coming out saying they like it better. Draymond Green has come out. Steve Kerr has come out. Kyle Kuzma has come out. I know on our radio show, myself and Brian Scalabri, we liked the NBA a little bit better this year because it's more physical. That would be a fun thing to write write about look at what happened with Russell Westbrook last

week but this whole you know end of the game protocol that you should have when he got mad at Darius Baisley for dunking the ball in the final seconds of five and what happened on Friday in Staples Center Dwight Howard hit a three 40 seconds left in a blowout win and there's Russell Westbrook on the sideline laughing, jumping up and down. So which one is it, Russell? Right. How does it work? It's only when you want to celebrate and have a good time.

But the Oklahoma City Thunder, to me, there's so many great. The NBA is a great writing sport. Baseball is a great writing sport. The NBA is a great writing sport. I think soccer is that as well. As you know, boxing is probably the premier writing sport, boxing, MMA, because it's about individuals. It's about people and things like that. Football is a little bit tougher because I think football is such a television sport. It's

not a great writing sport, but NBA and basketball in general, college basketball, high school basketball are great writing sports. Do you remember the first time when you had the epiphany that this is what you want to do for a living? You want to be a media guy? When did that start? Definitely at a young age. So there was a gentleman who lived not too far from me, who was a sports editor of the New York Post. His name was Jerry Liskren. He was a big boxing guy. So every once in a while, I'd be at his house and he would have a room and he worked. This is when he worked for Murdoch. So Murdoch first started out at the Star, which it became a gossip Hollywood kind of paper. But at first it was sports and news. And he was one of the sports guys.

So I'd go to his house and he would have pictures of himself training with Ali. He had a lot of stuff like that. It just looked like an exciting lifestyle. Plus, I love sports and I like to write. And at a young age, we all dream about, I'd love to play for the Knicks one day. I'd love to play for the Mets one day. But when you get to a certain point in your life, you realize you're probably not going to become a pro. So what's a great way to stay involved in sports is being part of the media, which is what I did. And no one, I mean, your dad was a cop, right? Like you didn't have people around you who are media guys. No, not at all, which, you know,

which, but what everybody had was a love of sports. So at an early age, kind of realizing why wouldn't you want to be around this all the time? Because, you know, when you work at a newspaper and they always call the sports department, the candy store, right. Because it's not, you know, it's not the most serious thing. I know there are serious issues. It's a fun job. As you know, there are things that people are never going to understand about the job, which are stressful, which are difficult. It's not the easiest job, but for the most part, it's not that important what we do. It's fun. And you're staying around sports. You're staying around young people. And, and the great thing about sports, everyone always has a story. The

people you cover are all different. That's why when analytics got into sports, which is fine, but the games are still played by people. And those are the stories that I like. That's something that always attracted me to wanting to be in the media, cover sports. It's really the people that play the games. So what was your first gig in media? Covering high school basketball for the New York Post, which RL, to be honest with you, it's probably no different in some ways than starting out in the G League as a professional basketball player. Because if you cover high school basketball in any big city, New York, Chicago, DC, Philadelphia, wherever the case may be, the worlds are so connected because the high school coaches are connected to the college coaches who are connected to the NBA scouts and NBA general managers. So, you know, you'd go to

these games and there would always be college coaches there. And there would always be kind of the street agents that they like to call them. But it was a great way to get in with those guys. You know, I covered Lamar Odom when he was in high school. I still remember meeting Lamar Odom at the Neptune Diner. There was a guy that was a very good source for me. His name was Rob Johnson. And, you know, they used to call him a street agent. And Rob's big thing was, why do they call me a street agent?

Just because I'm a black guy. I get along with players. I talk to them. I have relationships with coaches, whatever the case may be. So we met at the Neptune Diner once in Astoria, Queens, and we had lunch. Years later, at the NBA Finals, there's Lamar Odom. He's holding court. When everything breaks up, he says hello to me.

And I said, hey, remember that time we had lunch at the Neptune Diner? And I'll never forget it. He just looks up and he says, the Neptune Diner. Man, I got a lot of paper bags with money at the Neptune Diner. It's kind of like that world. I'm telling you, you're covering, you know, I covered Jamal Mashburn. Within a minute, Jamal Mashburn is at Kentucky playing in one of the greatest college basketball games of all time was when they lost to Christian Laitner and Duke.

And then before you know it, he's on the Dallas Mavericks. And then before you know it, he's on the Dallas Mavericks. And then before you know it, he's on the Miami Heat playing against the New York Knicks. And I'm covering Knicks Miami Heat. And there's Jamal Mashman. The worlds are so close. If you're covering in a huge city where they play basketball, it's very closely related.

When you're a high school beat writer, are there some unspoken rules that you cannot or transactions that you cannot write about? Like that you can't be that guy. that for example the paper bag with the money i mean i'm assuming there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes would you be blackballed from the scene from the beat if you spoke about or wrote about certain things i'll never forget when grady high school which was right across the street from lincoln high school in brooklyn coney island lincoln high school is where stephan marbury went to school it It's where Marv Albert went to school.

And it was immortalized in the movie, He Got Game. The Ray Allen character is at Lincoln High School. But Grady that season had the best team in the city. And after they won the city championship, I went to the Sports Page Pub, I think it was called, on the Lower East Side. And some of the players on the team were there eating. None of them were drinking. But there were college coaches there and college assistant coaches,

which at the time technically wasn't legal. There was no way I was going to write about that. It's not worth it. They're celebrating. They just happen to be – you could say they just happen to be at the bar. But my biggest rule about that, back then, as you know, a big thing was about getting the SAT score. So if you didn't qualify, that was the Prop 48, they called it back then. I never wrote a kid's SAT score. I would always say they're being recruited by this school, that school, or he's got it narrowed down to these choices, or he wants

to go to this school at all. I would just say pending his academic status. I would never. There were people that would write their SAT score. We got a 690 on the SAT. I'm not going to do that to a high school kid. That was like my own rule. My paper never said you need to put that in.

I wouldn't do it. I thought that was unfair to do to young kids. So do you go from high school sports to the Mets to the Knicks? Is that the path? Exactly. So what happened was the Post was having financial difficulty. So a lot of guys were jumping ship and going to the New York Daily News. The Daily News started raiding the Post sports department and picking out some of the people.

I think one of our baseball, you know, two of our baseball guys left to go to the Daily News. So now it's like early, it might've been February 1st and spring training is February 14th. They called me in and asked me if I would go to spring training to cover the Mets. I think I was young at the time. I had no idea what I was doing. And I was like, I didn't even know how am I going to get down there? I mean, I don't want to fly, but I'm saying, who do I call to get a plane reservation? What do I do once I get down to Port St. Lucy? I don't know what I'm doing. So even that was overwhelming for me.

And I got down there and I really didn't have any idea what I was doing. But I got better as a writer and a reporter because baseball, the sport that, you know, that I covered for a lot of years was basketball. And it's tough, but it's 82 games. Baseball is spring training for six weeks, and you're getting up every day and you're in the clubhouse at 8 o'clock in the morning. Being a sports writer is a nighttime sport. So all of a sudden you switch to getting up early,

getting to the clubhouse because it's New York, it's the tabloid wars. We're all going to war at 8 o'clock in the morning. So you work like a dog for six weeks, and then the season starts. 162 games. You're not covering all 162, but it's a bear. Covering baseball is, out of all the newspaper jobs, the guys who cover a baseball beat, that's real work, real hard work. So how old are you approximately at this time?

Back then, can I have been like 24 maybe? 24. And of this 162, how many are you traveling to? Because it was my first year, I figured, you know what, let me try to do as many games as I can. And I covered a lot. I mean, put it this way. They were in Port St. Lucie then they went to Washington D.C. to play at old RFK Stadium to play the Yankees my office made me go to that game so instead of even coming back home because they were going to open up against the Colorado Rockies at Shea Stadium I go to Washington it's pouring rain the darn game never gets played to begin with. And then I ended up going home. I covered so many games and Ariel back then Friday night was a night that a lot of the beat writers would take off and their backups would cover. I would try to get to every Friday

night home game because by then, now I'm starting to know the players. So I figure now's a good, because the backups are just kind of there. They don't want anything bad to happen. They just want the night to go quickly. And that's when you really could work the locker room because none of your competition was really around. So that year I worked a ton. So was that part of like, you know, I think to be successful in this business,

you have to be somewhat of a maniac, right? You have to be a workhorse. You have to be supremely competitive. Is this your competitive spirit coming up? You wanted to crush the competition and be there when the others weren't. Absolutely. Well, what did Woody Allen say? 95% of life. 80% of success. 80% of success is just showing up. That's really what it's about. You have to be around.

When they did the great documentary on Jimmy Breslin, the famous daily news columnist, and Pete Hamill, New York Post columnist, and he went to the Daily News as well. And Jimmy Breslin was a columnist. He got out on the street. That's where he was getting his stories. And I think that's the difference today with a lot of people who write blogs. And there's nothing wrong with doing that. But a lot of people just writing it from the comfort of their home. They're watching something on TV or they're reading stuff that other people write. To be there, that's how you get to know stuff. And that's how you get to develop sources. You know this from being around.

You're in that locker room every day. Eventually the players, that's how you gain trust. With the Mets, and the Mets had a tough group, like Eddie Murray was on that team. And Eddie Murray didn't talk to the media, but there was a player. So Eddie Murray was number 33. Chico Walker was number 34.

Now, I'm not necessarily sure they did it because of numbers, but Chico Walker was very good friends with Eddie Murray. Every single day I was in the locker room, there would be at least one moment. Maybe it'd be 10 minutes, maybe one minute. I would go to Chico Walker's locker and we would talk. Chico Walker told me way back when he said, I got a nephew who plays basketball in Chicago and he's a great player.

He's going to go to Kentucky and he's going to be in the NBA. I covered high school basketball. How many people tell me that? He said, my nephew's name is Antoine Walker. He goes, you got to remember that name. Wow. So we're always talking about basketball. Eddie Murray is a huge basketball fan.

I can tell that he's listening to us, but I'm not going to bother Eddie Murray because, A, I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of turning me down. Plus, I want him to be more interested. One day Chico Walker comes to me and he says, Eddie says that you're the one guy that he'll talk to. Wow. Now this is going over months of talking to Chico Walker. So the Mets are in Houston and I talked to Eddie Murray. And even then he kind of made me work a little bit for it. Right. He was giving me one word answers and then eventually opened up. I turn around and you know how this works. I see like two reporters standing behind me.

And it's awkward. But I had to say, like, guys, we're like and he even said, like, told people to back away. I invested a lot of time to get to get to talk to this guy. Don't think now you're going to piggyback on it. You know, and that's being around. Again, it goes back to the point we were both trying to make. When you're around, that's how you develop sources. That's how you gain trust. When I covered the Knicks, Patrick Ewing, he didn't say my name for, I think it was like a year and a half. All of a sudden, one day we're in Dallas and Don Nelson had been fired by the Knicks and got hired to run the Dallas Mavericks to be their coach.

We're in the locker room in Dallas, the visiting team locker room. I hear Frank. Frank. And I know it's Patrick Ewing. And I figured he must be talking to somebody. He then hits me on the back. He says, isn't your name Frank? And I'm like, I can't believe Patrick Ewing knows my name.

So I turn around and he says, your boy's coaching the Dallas Mavericks. Because he knew because he and Don Nelson butted heads a little bit and we all covered it. It was just his way of kind of he wanted to joke around a little bit. But that's why you have to. And Patrick Ewing is one of those guys. I had a relationship with him. He talked to the media. He'd take a shower, come back to his locker.

And if I needed something that I wanted to ask him by myself, he would give me that, you know, 30 seconds to a minute. Well, I had I had a great story when during the playoffs, when the stories were coming out that the Knicks might have met with Phil Jackson. This is back in ninety nine. And so I went over to Patrick Ewing after everybody had left and I brought it up to him. He said, tell Phil Jackson to take his ass back to Chicago. Come on, man. It's a pretty good quote. Wow. That's from Patrick Ewing. Yes. This is during the whole in 99 Van Gundy's on the outs or chanting his name. Yeah. This is the just bawling ears. Right. Right. And that's why that's the thing about Patrick. And you can appreciate this with athletes you cover. People think the first day I meet them, I'm going to shake their hand. I'm

going to tell them who I am and they're going to remember me. You know how many people are going around these guys nonstop and some fans, people when they go to a restaurant, they're not going to remember you. You need to be around and you have to gain their trust somehow. Once you do, then you're okay. And it took me a long time, Patrick Ewing, to even acknowledge who I was and to gain his trust. And we were always cool. We're cool to this day. Patrick is great.

I love covering him because he didn't talk all the time, which was good. It wasn't like you covered Charles Barkley where every day you basically have to sit in his lap because he might say something crazy. I kind of liked that Patrick had certain days that he spoke. I was good with that. Okay. So this is a perfect segue into the Knicks. You get the Knicks job in 95, right?

They're freshly off the finals. This is the midst of their incredible run, that incredible decade. The Garden is on fire every night. Great players like Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley, John Starks. When you get that job, does that feel like you have reached the mountaintop? Like it's one thing to do the Mets, but I would imagine the Knicks at the time being the only basketball team in New York City with those stars, with those wars, with the Bulls and whatnot. That to me feels like the primo job in New York City. Did it feel

that way to you? Yeah. And you know this going back then. So the Rangers won in 94. The Giants were very good, but both baseball teams were down. The Nets were the Nets, and the Knicks almost won in 94. So then they lose in 95 to Indiana. Pat Riley leaves. The season starts. The finger roll game, exactly. I get a call, again, getting called less. I'm at the Daily News now, and it's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. So the other guy covering the beat, he got taken off the beat abruptly. So they said, we need you to go to Cleveland. You got to cover the Knicks. And I said, well, am I going to be covering them from now on? They're like, yeah, we'll figure it all out, but you got to get to Cleveland. So I fly into Cleveland on a Tuesday night. The game is

Wednesday. I walk into the locker room before the game. And I remember introducing myself to a couple of guys. I introduced myself to Monty Williams and I squeezed his hand and he had injured his hand and he said, oh, damn my finger. So already I'm making quite an impression. And the locker room in Cleveland is kind of small. So it's a little awkward. And they won that night. And then on Saturday, so they were off Thursday, they were practice Friday Then Saturday, they played the Houston Rockets. And Hakeem got kicked out of that game. He got ejected. But that was a big thing, beating the Houston Rockets.

It was a Saturday afternoon game. But when I told I was covering the Knicks, I was like, wow, this is big time. Because I know what basketball means to people in New York. It's the Knicks. It's something I've always wanted to do. It was overwhelming, but it was also exciting. It did kind of feel like in some ways, even though I hadn't done anything yet, it kind of felt like I had arrived. So could you, I mean, allow me to, because I will never like a group of guys, a sports team, like that's my team, right?

More so than anything. I will never have fonder memories than being a fan of that era. And those guys to me were so i remember march 11th 1995 were you were you on the beat march 11 1995 is that the jordan game no march 11 1995 is not a significant moment but it's the first time i ever went to the garden okay the date is ingrained in my brain i was i wasn't on the i i wasn't on the beat and i would always fill in as like a backup because okay so you started thanksgiving of 95 thanksgiving of 95 okay that would have been fun and we're in the same building but anyway it was nick supersonics it was just a really big deal for me flew down from montreal to

go see a game ewing had a great game but got injured in the fourth alas could you give me some good memories from the lot those guys to me feel so far away they almost feel like you know these mythical creatures starks oakley ewing i've never met ewing like what are some great memories from being on the beat on the road in the locker room i'm putting you on the spot here but is there anything you can share no there was definitely there was definitely something when you first walk in the locker room and you look and there's patrick ewing there's charles oakley there's john stark's really the core of the team but there's anthony mason and then of course there's derrick harper who really was core of the team but there's Anthony Mason and then of course

there's Derek Harper who really was kind of like the vocal leader and was such a great guy to deal with there was a toughness about that team the listen they played unbelievable games at Madison Square Garden but for me being with them on the road they loved the idea that the fans didn't they embraced the whole idea that even though none of them were from New York, except for Anthony Mason, they loved the idea that people hated New York, hated the Knicks. They thought they were thugs and all this other stuff that actually brought out the best in them. The more hostile the crowd, the nastier the crowd, they became that nasty. It was really incredible to watch they weren't

shrinking violence it was the opposite like you want to greg anthony had the great quote in um in uh dan cloris's documentary on reggie miller winning time when he said we were either going to win the game or we were going to win the fight we were getting out of there with a win and that kind of was the mindset of those teams throughout the 90s. And just being around them. One of the stories that still sticks out the most was right around the time. In fact, it's up in Canada where things changed a little bit. Because the Knicks had lost to, this is in March, almost a year to the day after you made your debut at Madison.

So the Knicks lose to the Clippers at home. It's a really bad loss. They go up to Toronto. Now, everyone is starting to question, is this going to work out with Don Nelson as a coach? He and Patrick Ewing aren't getting along. They play Toronto. They win the game.

After the game, Don Nelson, it's a back-to-back. Don Nelson starts criticizing Patrick Ewing. And I'm like, wow, they just won the game. Why would he be criticizing the star player on the team? So the Knicks announced afterwards, we have practice tomorrow on Thursday in Philadelphia. It's very rare that after a back-to-back playing consecutive nights that the team will practice. So myself and a guy by the name of Thomas Hill, he was living in Brooklyn. I was living in Brooklyn. We were like, I'm going

to the practice. So he said, if you want, I can give you a ride. So we drove down together. We're the only two people at practice. We go up to Don Nelson. I said, are you at all worried that the way the team is going right now, that your job can be in danger? And without skipping a beat, he's like, hey, if they want to fire me, go right ahead and fire me. That's fine. So the post in the Daily News, I think our back page was something about, like, fire me or Dunn-Nelson. It might have been Dunn-Nelson, question mark, as in, like,

Dunn-Nelson, Dunn-Nelson. And the next morning, we get a call. The Knicks have relieved Don Nelson of his duties. So we're in Philadelphia. And now Mike Wise from the New York Times had come down. We sprint over to the Rich Carlton Hotel. We find out where Jeff Van Gundy's staying. We knock on his door because he's now the coach.

He lets us in. And here's like the three of us with, at the time, the youngest coach in the NBA. And you could tell that he's kind of in shock, but he's excited. Probably like the way I felt when they put me on the beat and it was pretty intense moment. And I always still bust Jeff's balls about it that night. They played the Sixers and that Sixer team was crap and they lost.

So they lose Jeff's debut game. The whole idea, the other team's not going to rally around Jeff the The next day they had practice back in Westchester. So think about this now. Tuesday game at home, Wednesday game at Toronto, Friday practice in Thursday. I'm sorry. Thursday practice in Philadelphia, Friday game in Philadelphia, Saturday practice back in Westchester because they're playing the Bulls on Sunday. And this is the 72-win Chicago Bulls.

They must have gone for three hours. The gym opens up. We talk to the players, talk to Jeff. And a bunch of the players were saying it felt like we were the Knicks again. There's a different sense of the team. The next morning, Jeff has a shoot-around at Madison Square Garden. This is for a 5 o'clock game. Remember, NBC would always have like those five o'clock games and the Knicks would always

play the Bulls on Selection Sunday for the NCAA tournament. It was their way of kind of going up against the Selection Sunday show. I go to shoot around and Derek Harper is there and he says to me, he goes, Frank, I don't know if you gamble. He goes, but if I were you, I would put everything you have on us winning this game tonight. Cause I'm telling you now this is all off the record. He's not saying, he said, I'm telling you, we are going to win this game tonight, but today. So I could, you know, once again, I'm like, whatever. I love Derek. And I, I did believe, but I'm thinking Michael Jordan,

the bulls are going to kill you guys. So back then we're sitting courtside and Derek Harper in the third quarter, fourth course, having a great game. At one point, Phil Jackson calls timeout. The building is erupting. They're playing go New York, go New York, go. Derek Harper walks back out onto the court to get ready for the bulls inbound the ball. He bends over, grabs his shorts, and he happens to look right at me because remember we're sitting courtside and he winks. He what's up frank because he knew what he had said to me and i was like man that's this is like pretty cool you almost feel like you're in the middle of it in this kind of like bizarre way and of course they did go on to win that game and then two days later jeff is in dallas killing phil jackson because phil had campaigned for the nick job and we're there and jeff says after our interview with

him he goes turn off your recorders so let me ask you guys a question. What do you think of what Phil Jackson did? So we're like, well, I don't know. And Jeff started murdering him. And then he said, in fact, you guys can write that if you want. We were like, oh, this is going to be good. What a legend. Could I ask as a small tangent, I want to stay on the Knicks for a second, but could you do what you guys did? You find out that Don Nelson has been relieved. You say you go to Jeff's hotel room. Could you do that in 2021? I'm not sure if you could, because I think the teams have so much security. I'm sure you get yelled at. I think you should try to do it. And I think the reporters today, they want so badly to maintain a good relationship with the team, the people they cover.

And the best explanation to that is, you know, if there is a murder somewhere, unfortunately, reporters will knock on the door of the victim's family. They'll knock on the door of the suspect who might have been arrested. Why can't we go knock on the door of a basketball coach or an NBA team? Like you have to still the essence is you're a reporter. And at that moment, this young obscure assistant coach gets the job. The Knicks did not have shoot around that night. We're reporters. We don't care. We figured out where his room was. You know what? He can just say, I'm not talking. That's his job. Our job is to ask. That's like. People say that all the time. Oh, that was a dumb question that they asked. Well, not really. If you don't ask it, you never know what they're

going to say. Sometimes you just have to ask something. That's the only way you're going to get an answer. That's our job. So all we can do, and you have to do it, is knock on the door. If Jeff wants to answer the door, if he wants to speak to us, that's great. And that's what happened that day. 95, 96 were kind of lackluster, 97 up 3-1, and then they blow it. 98, 99 against the Heat, the Brawl, Allen Houston. Do you hold any of those? And then of course it starts to get into the 2000s, which we will get into in a second, but any of those moments, teams, seasons you hold in highest regard? Because that's really when, you know, the garden was, was on fire. Honestly, I think all of them in a lot of ways, because they were winning. We would, we would be critical of the players. There might be sometimes when Charles Oka wouldn't

talk to you for a couple of weeks, Patrick would be mad, but he would talk. But the way that they interacted with us, it was very professional and they, they conducted themselves like a big time team. So it was hard not to like a lot of guys on the team and when they made the big moves to get Chris Childs Alan Houston then Larry Johnson and Larry Johnson I hit it off right away and to be tight with Larry Johnson was huge because he was the one guy in the team that every faction liked whether it was you know later on whether it was like Camby and Latrell Spiegel, Patrick Ewing, a veteran, the Alan Houston, Charlie Ward kind of click.

Larry was kind of the – he sat on like the emperor's throne. He really was the leader in a lot of ways of that team. But 97, the final night of the season, which tells you all you need to know about the NBA, the Knicks go to Chicago, final night of the season, where if it were today, the top 10 players on both teams wouldn't play. Jordan is out there. Pippen is out there. Patrick Ewing is out there. And the Knicks win. Pippen shoots an air ball at the buzzer, and that seals the win for the Knicks. The Knicks then

go on to beat Charlotte in three games. They then take the first game off of Miami. So if you go back to the regular season, they're on a seven-game winning streak. Going into game two against Miami, they lose that, but they win the next two at home. And we're thinking not only are the Knicks going to win game five, the NBA is going to start the series against Chicago, Eastern Conference Finals on that Sunday, however the days fell. So we packed for going to Chicago for almost a week. The Riders did.

I was convinced that Miami had no reason to beat the Knicks. They just weren't better than them. Now, to Miami's credit, they outplayed them in game five, and then the whole thing happened late where Oak set the hard pick on Tim Hardaway. Morning came over after Oakley stepped over Hardaway. They start pushing and shoving. They both get ejected or the Oak got

ejected. Then the free throws and that started the whole fight. And that's that team. It's a shame that that team never got the chance to play the Chicago Bulls. And as much as I love the guys on that team, I wouldn't bet against Michael Jordan. If you're telling me now that that year they split two, two, if you're telling me in a sevengame series, I tend to think that Jordan would find a way. God bless him. Jeff Van Gundy, Patrick, those guys, Alan Houston, they're convinced that they would have won, which is what makes sports great.

That one was tough because I felt like that was Patrick Ewing's, in terms of him being healthy, that was his last great chance to win an NBA championship, and it got taken away by stupid things that happened in Miami in game five. By the way, what is it like going in the locker room after a moment like that, after like a brawl? Are you even allowed? Yeah, that one, they'll keep the locker room closed

for a longer period of time. I'm sure they're trying to get their story straight. They're probably trying to tell the players what to say, what not to say. But when you went in that locker room after game seven and Starks was suspended for that game, as was Larry Johnson, I still say to this day, remember the way they did it? Yeah. Because there were so many players suspended.

It went in alphabetical order. I'm still convinced to this day if either game six or game seven, if Ewing and Starks could have played together, they would have won. I thought that really messed up the team. That's because Ewing was suspended for game six. Starks was suspended for game seven. So they never got to play together for one of those last two games. I thought having those two out there would have made a huge difference.

I grew up in a household filled with Bulls fans. All my friends loved the Bulls, et cetera, you know, 90s. And I was the biggest Ewing defender. He's my favorite athlete of all time. Always had to defend him, defend him, defend him. And then sometimes stories would come out, doesn't sign autographs on game day, doesn't shake hands with sick kids. He's grumpy with the media.

He's not really a nice guy, all this stuff. What is the true story on Patrick Ewing? Was he like that? hands with sick kids he's grumpy with the media he's not really a nice guy all this stuff what what is the true story on Patrick Ewing was he like that what was he actually because you know there are stories out there about some guys who are just you know angels of course we know no one's truly an angel but it always felt like there were negative things that I had to defend about Patrick Ewing of course not even knowing the guy but always trying to spin it what was he like you said the story where he said your name but like on a day-to-day basis yeah i remember he would wear the bathrobe i remember those msg shots he's sitting there always very short with his answers what was he like yeah he was he could be a pain in the neck

to deal with absolutely didn't talk all the time but you know if you go back and you look at patrick's life all right so here's a guy from Jamaica. His mom moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and she's going to try to make enough money to send for the rest of the family. So Patrick, his dad, the rest of his family, they moved to Cambridge. He becomes a huge star. Mike Jarvis tells the story. Patrick's walking around. I think he's in the seventh or eighth grade. And Mike Jarvis says, son, where'd you move from? He says, Jamaica. He said like a U 17. He couldn't believe that Patrick was still a young kid. That's going to play for the varsity. So Patrick becomes a big star in Boston. And then he announces he had it narrowed down to Boston college and Georgetown. He picks Georgetown.

Now he starts going to high school games and people are throwing banana peels at him. The holding up signs that say Ewing can't read all this stuff. He goes to Georgetown, starts going to high school games and people are throwing banana peels at him, the holding up signs that say Ewing can't read, all this stuff. He goes to Georgetown his first year. And I went back and looked up this stuff. At the Big East tournament, Patrick's freshman year, the athletic director of Georgetown got up at a press conference at Madison Square Garden to confirm that Patrick was indeed matriculating at Georgetown. So people were talking, like, you think about that. You

think about the way we treat athletes today. People were talking about his intelligence, whether or not he even belonged in school. This is as he's a, what, an 18, 19-year-old freshman. How crazy is that? The New York times covered his college graduation. They were there. And I still remember the line in the story where like Patrick refused to be interviewed. Like, can you like, come on, man, people are questioning your intelligence for about four or five years. And the day you graduate the New York times is there just to kind of talk

about the biggest name in college basketball graduating. And he's going to be playing right for the – no, they wouldn't have known he was on the Knicks yet, but they covered his graduation. He doesn't want to talk to anybody. So I think for him, he didn't trust a lot of people. I'm pretty sure he didn't think that everyone had the best intentions. So I think naturally that made him a little uneasy around people, a little untrusting. I think it manifests itself by people constantly asking him to do stuff and him sometimes saying, you know what, I need to pull back a little bit.

I'm not making an excuse for him. No, no. I just think that that's, I think that has a kinship with you because your story reminds me a little bit of my story in that the team, the organization that you are covering, you do not have the best relationship with. However, I think that has made you better at your job. And I think it's made me better at my job. My story, of course, being with the UFC, you with the New York Knicks. When do things start to turn in a negative way between you and the organization? It's funny, right? When you say that, because when you do have, when you do like

the people that you're covering, you have good relationships with them. I remember after the lockout, you know, when Patrick Ewing was heavily involved in the 99 lockout and the Knicks played an exhibition, when the lockout got settled, the Charles Sprewell is on the Knicks. His first exhibition game is against New Jersey at Madison Square Garden. They only played an exhibition game. When the lockout got settled, the trail speedball is on the Knicks. His first exhibition game is against New Jersey at Madison Square Garden. They only played two exhibition games. They played the Nets in both. And the game is played, and Patrick is horrible. And I remember writing in my story about how Patrick was all thumbs and love handles because he looked like he had put on weight.

And when he saw me in New Jersey a couple nights later and he brought that up to me, I felt bad. I was like, man, maybe I shouldn't have said that. You always question, oh, man, maybe I was a little too hard on him, even though I meant it kind of as a joke. But there is something to be said when you have a good relationship with the team you cover. So back then it was we were judging them on being a championship team,

and if they fell short, the tone of the coverage was like, you know what? Yeah, the Knicks are good, but they're still not good enough, and they kind of accepted it because they wanted to win a championship. Jeff Van Gundy leaves. You have these lean years where the team is dysfunctional. They're losing games. And I'm just covering what's going on. I'm not dictating the results. I'm not dictating the dysfunction. I'm just covering it. And then it became this idea where they would get upset at the negative tone of the coverage of it. What does the negative tone mean? You're winning 20 games. My job isn't to, I don't work for the Knicks. My job isn't to spin things the way you want it done.

And then when the owner came in, he did not like seeing his name in the paper. He did not like seeing his name in the paper if you were not like seeing his name in the paper. If you were being critical of him and then really, you know, Mike Lupico is working at the daily news and he had done a bunch of critical stories about him. So it was all kind of coming down on me where they were, you know, they didn't want players talking to me. They would give emails. They would send emails out to every writer practice at 12 tomorrow, be there by 1130. They wouldn't send me those emails. I mean, how petty is that?

Yeah. Come on. Did they ever ban you? They tried to. They would try to take credentials away. The best was the time when, so after every season, it would be dysfunctional, and they would try to kind of repair their relationship with me,

which wasn't like we didn't need to have a good relationship, just be professional. I'll cover the team. I mean, if you guys win 50 games, like they did in the year with Carmelo and Mike Woodson, it's going to be covered. Like it's a good year. So they would be really nice to me. Like right before the season started as if like, let's get the season off to a good start. All right. And I'm still going to cover what happened. So I found out that Jim Dolan had driven into, tried to drive into the garden and a security guard stopped him. And he told him, I'm Jim Dolan. He said, no, but I was told everyone has to show their ID. And Jim Dolan didn't have his ID. So there was this big blow

up. Somebody who was there told me about it. And I wrote about it and they completely freaked out. So the first game of the season, I walk in the locker room and two garden security guys who I know they work for the guard. They're almost like henchmen. I could see them standing in the locker room. You've never seen them in the locker room. And I could see the guy kind of nudging the one guy like going like that. That's him over there. That's him over there. So I, so I did like this weird experiment. I was like, I think these guys are like looking at me or maybe even following me. I walked out of the locker room and they followed me out. I walked back in, they came in. So then I walked upstairs to go to where, you know, the media room is on the sixth floor of the garden. I walk up the steps, and Andy Miller, the agent, is standing there.

And it's an agent of Claire, so I stop, and I'm talking. And I'm saying to Andy, I said, you see these two guys right here? These guys are following me. He's like, no, they're not. You're so paranoid. The stuff that you probably go through as well. I said, no, I'm not. So I walked away, and I turned to both of them.

And I felt like the character in Goodfellas, the Robert De Niro character, I looked both of them i said hey if you guys want i'm gonna get something to eat first and then i'm gonna come back out here in about 10 minutes and one of the guys started laughing because he because the poor guy was probably thinking how absurd is this yes to follow this knucklehead around and they did such a great job covering it within five minutes i knew what they were trying to do i said i'm gonna go inside for like 10 minutes i'm gonna come back out at any point does this get elevated to the the basketball writers association to where you can't do your job properly or if they're trying to ban you i would imagine it kind of did but it never like you know it's funny people talk about harassment bullying and all this stuff what do you think was happening to me i was getting absolutely destroyed

in the ultimately no one cared even the league would yeah, Frank, we know what's going on, but it did. You're dealing with a billionaire owner and then just some guy that, that covers the team for the daily. So, you know what, in some ways it was fine. It made it, it was stressful at times to go to work when you knew like all the time they were trying to make it hard for you. You knew anytime they got a new player, they would tell the player, this guy's awful. Don't talk to him. And it would take a long time to build up trust. I still remember being on the – it might have been Tyson Chandler's second year, and he called me over.

We were on the court in Milwaukee. And he goes, hey, man, I know what, like, goes on around here, and you've been really cool to me. I just want you to know I have no problem with you. I said, listen, man. I said, you don't have to worry about me. I said, things get crazy here. I'm able to do my job. And really, it comes down to as well, they, their big thing was we got to cut off his sources, right? That was what they were trying to do. But you know, this it's

a lot of times it's a friend of a player, a family member of a player, the agent, there's always people talking. What'll happen as well as a player on the Knicks may tell a player on another team something that happened. I have a relationship with that agent. They tell me, I do a little digging and sure enough, the story turns out to be true. They were so obsessed. I always used to say it all the time. They were more obsessed with the media than they were with winning. And it's almost like they never got it because it's run by a corporation where everything is about spinning. Sports is nothing to spin. Every game, they keep score. And if you have a better score than the other team, you get the win. And all those wins over time and all

those losses, they measure up and then you have the standings and you have playoffs. That's what determines it. It's not the coverage of the team. That's why I left. I'm not going to name names, but you watch some of the media and some's why I left. There was some, you know, I'm not going to name names, but you watch some of these, some of the media and some of these markets, their teams are terrible, but you can tell they're getting all their stuff from the team. Now we've got this guy next year is going to be better. And this guy's growing, this guy's developing. And then every year you look, it's the same crap with them.

Just cover the team. So you were off the beat in 2017, right? Yeah. So at any point, I mean, that's a long stretch, 95 to 2017. At any point you say to the bosses, like, this just isn't fun. I mean, who wants to go to work every day where you're being treated like this? Did you ever consider leaving because it just got to be too much? It was weird in my own way. I was stubborn. I kind of felt like I didn't want them to think

that they beat me down in some ways. But I also think in the long run, I probably made a mistake. I probably should have gotten off the beat a couple of years early just for my own sanity. I should have done it. But then Phil Jackson came on, and there was a certain arrogance to him and the whole thing where just because he won with the Bulls, and I always just say he's going to sprinkle magic triangle dust on the team, and they're going to be good. And I always felt like – and listen, I have unbelievable respect for Phil Jackson as a coach. I mean, come on, man. He won all those titles or there's something to be said for coaching great players and winning with them. There, there is a talent in that too, but I just didn't feel like a rookie GM who'd never done this before. And it's not really going to work that

hard. It's going to be able to turn around the Knicks. And I was also a little turned off by his press conference because the Knicks had to give him a ton of money to convince him to come out of retirement, which is also that's never going to work. And his whole press conference was about my relationship and my link to the Knicks and Red Holtzman and Wolf Razor and the guard and Willis Street. I'm thinking, yeah, but it still took you about 15 million a year for you to come work for them. So it really wasn't the nostalgia. It was really the money that did it. And then he got up there and he said, I'm going to change the way things are done here. And I need the media's help.

And, you know, things are going to change. And at the press conference, there were, I think, four daily news reporters there. Myself, Philip Bondi, a couple other guys. We had our hands raised. Never once did we get called on. Wow. So right then and there, I said, nothing's going to change. And sure enough, nothing changed.

What is your relationship like with the Knicks now? Well, I mean, I've known Leon Rose for 20 years. Yeah. I know World Wide West. I've known Tom for 25 years. I'm good with those guys. I hope they do well. What about the PR?

No, I haven't really dealt with them in a long time. The PR director that was there, who's no longer there, I probably didn't talk to him for seven years. That's Jonathan, right? Jonathan. I didn't say one word to him. There was no reason to, which was fine. His job was to try to destroy me.

So what am I going to do? Say hello to him every day? Right. Ask him for his help. Tell him, hey, I'm working on a story. Let me give you a heads up on what it is. It was no reason to. So at this juncture, because there's all these guys, I mean, a familiar face, Tom Thibodeau returning after being an assistant coach in the nineties. And I know he was accused of being one of your quote unquote sources. Which by the way, I know you can't reveal your

sources. You can get my phone records, which I'm sure the Knicks have, and I would give you all my emails. Tom doesn't say anything. Tom's one of these guys. What do you got? What do you hear? What do you hear? What do you hear?

When Tom was getting the job, I'll tell you something. So Tom is the assistant coach in Boston. It's the NBA finals, and I think he's already taken, it might've been the year before he hasn't had the, he doesn't have the job yet in, uh, in Chicago that comes the next year. So I tell my boy, Dave Wallstein from the New York times, we're up there covering. It's going to be the day before game one, all the, I said, Dave, ask Kobe Bryant about Tom, what he knows about him. Cause I knew the story, but Dave was like, why? Cause Dave was looking for a story to do on Kobe Bryant about Tom, what he knows about him.

Because I knew the story, but Dave was like, why? Because Dave was looking for a story to do on Kobe. I said, ask him that. He'll give you a story. So he asked Kobe Bryant about Tom, and Kobe starts to, oh, he's the guy that taught me this move. He starts going on and on. Because when I was a high school kid, I'd go to the sixer practices and Tom would stay around and he'd work with me on my game all the time. He'd let me practice with the team.

So Tom's relationship with Kobe had gone back years and Kobe's even joking around. He knows all my moves. It'll be interesting. He's going to, he'll be able to tell everyone in the Celtics, my tendencies and everything like that. So Dave ended up getting a good story out of it. But my thing was like, I knew that this story will help Tom. It'll increase his profile. So if anybody was like kind of operating behind the scenes, it was probably me a little bit, but Tom, Tom never, that's not the way he operates. He comes from the Pat Riley kind of Jeff Van Gundy

school. Like they were like, that's like really tight knit. Those guys are all about like work and they have good relationships with the media. They're willing to talk to you. But Tom, if anybody thinks that Tom is going to talk to me and say, can you believe that Don Chaney is doing this or can you? There's no there's no chance. You don't know who he is if you think that. And you know what? You're trying to make excuses for maybe you failing at your job because that's nonsense.

It really is. So you could go to a Nick game now. You could cover a Nick game now. I guess. I haven't tried to yet. I guess I could. I mean, if you have a good relationship with Leon, with World Wide West, with Tom, I would imagine.

I talked to Tom after they beat Chicago, and Brian Scalabrini had said he was in the restaurant after the game, and Tom was there with all the players. So I said, I'm going to bust his balls on this one. So I hadn't spoken to him for about probably two weeks, and I called him up, and he answered the phone in New Orleans. I said, let me tell you something right now. Pat Riley, after an October win, is not popping champagne celebrating.

Just remember that. In your opinion, what is the difference now with this team because it seems like perhaps you tell me if i'm wrong uh jim dolan is less hands-on and things are going well the culture is is better people want to play for the next 100 what what changed i think they're letting a tom coach the team and b i think it also helps because you need stars to win in the NBA and the Knicks are going to have to get one. I think they know that, but without like any really true stars on the team, even though Randall wasn't all-star I voted him, I think fifth and the MVP, I think they have a group of guys that all want to get better that play for one another that kind of

play the way the nineties fixed it, but without the superstar player, like they had in Patrick Ewing. And here's the thing about Tom and you, but without the superstar player like they had in Patrick Ewing. And here's the thing about Tom and you, you know, you've heard Brian talk about it as well. You know, Tom is detail oriented. He doesn't run the players into the ground in practice. He's going to help you get better. Listen to what Derek Rose says about players want to get better because if

you get better, you, you win and you get paid. That's what the players all want. So players around Tom really who, who are the guys that like playing for Tom? Derrick Rose, Larry Johnson loved him. Jimmy Butler loved him. It's always the same kind of guy. It's the hard-playing guy who wants to get after it. And those are the guys that are usually successful.

Look at the lunatics up in Boston. Kevin Garnett, Kendrick Perkins, Rondo, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen. What do they all have in common? They're all like relentless, tireless workers. That's how you win in the NBA. And that's what Tom has out of this group. I still think the talent is a little bit short, but that kind of team resonates with the New York fans. They love the fact that they go out there and fight. Remember how many comeback wins they had last year. Now this year they keep blowing leads late in games, but you know, it's, it's a team that people identify with and it has, there is a link there. There is a bit of a Pat Riley to Jeff Van Gundy. Now to Tom Thibodeau, they're all connected. And when you hear Tom talk about Pat Riley, he like, you know, Tom talks about three coaches, a certain way, Pat Riley, Bill Belichick, and his buddy, Tony La Russa, who we got to know when he was coaching in Chicago, you know, those guys all have like a little something in common, just the way that they, you know, their teams play and the culture that they create around the organization. In your opinion, can the Knicks win a championship with Jim Dolan as owner of the team?

If, if he stays in the, if he stays in the stays in the background, he can't be impulsive like he is. He can't be at a Knicks-Cleveland game two seasons ago, and I believe the game was in November, and the Knicks were getting blown out in the game. And I got a text from someone who was with him that night, and they said, Jim's going crazy right now at halftime if they lose this game he's going to make the gm he's going to make steve and scott perry apologize and i was like i was like no chance that's happening sure enough they lost the game

and steve mills and scott perry got in front of the media see how nervous they look yeah yeah and like you can't you tear apart the you tear apart the fabric of the team when the coat when the players know that the coach really isn't in charge it's never going to work you just can't be that way and you can't be the kind of guy that let's get rid of this guy let's you know i don't want this guy around anymore it doesn't work like that they have the right coach here but who knows like i don't know if things will change like a loss like last night does is that is he sitting there thinking we were supposed to win this game uh what is this guy right coach here, but who knows? I don't know if things will change. A loss like last night, is he sitting there thinking we were supposed to win this game? What is this guy doing? He's probably working them too hard. I have no idea, but thus far, Jim Dillon's been really good.

It looks like he stayed out of it. If you're an owner, it's your team, and you have a right to be involved to a certain level, but hire the right people and let them run it. That's why Mickey Harrison, think about what they have in Miami. It's Pat Riley, the rest of the front office, Eric Spolstra. It works like that. Those are the organizations where it works. In your, I consider you sort of like the Don of NBA journalism. I mean, you've been doing this for so long. What is your take? You're only saying that because I'm here, but go ahead. Absolutely. I'd say this to Woj as well um what is your take on on nba journalism

in in 2021 because yeah you know you know what i'm getting at right i mean like there's there's journalism and then there's just like you know the the scoops i i gotta be honest from afar there's not a lot of sourcing there's not a lot of crediting which i don't like yeah i find that to be a strange thing but in your opinion like what's your take on the relationship between the media, the players, and just the state of NBA journalism in 2021? I think the NBA does a much better job kind of controlling the press a little bit, and especially now, COVID and post-COVID, where everything now is done on a – they bring the guys up to a podium. And so now you can't work the locker room before a game, after a game. Perfect example, Boston gets that ugly loss to the Chicago Bulls. Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown don't even meet with the media,

which tells you all you need to know. But I do think a lot of the young writers, I think what they've seen is a lot of them love the analytic part of the game. I think a lot of them, when we came into the business, I think a lot of us asp when we came into the business, I think a lot of us aspired to be one day become a columnist. And then all of a sudden this TV stuff started, but I don't think a lot of us, when we started out, probably weren't smart enough to think we should be trying to get into TV, but you would think I'm going to go from being a beat writer to a columnist. I think a lot of the young guys come in and there's nothing wrong with it,

but I think a lot of them think I want to go from being a basketball reporter to working in the front office. So I think when you go in with that mindset, you're not as critical of the teams you cover, the GM, the coaches, and then your stories are more about like the trends and the corner three-pointer and all that stuff. That's their way of covering. I don't necessarily agree with it. I think the coverage is way too soft. I think I thought the coverage last year on Kyrie Irving when he missed two weeks was incredibly soft. I mean, the guy blew off his team for two weeks. I mean, I'm on the YES Network, which does the games,

and I wasn't going overboard, but I was being critical of the guy. You can't just ghost your team for two weeks. So it's little things like that where I think, because everyone wants to be a lot more sensitive to the players, which I totally get. But when stuff is being done where they need to be criticized, there's nothing wrong with critical analysis. Just because you criticize a player today doesn't mean tomorrow you have to criticize him, even if he didn't do anything wrong. You know, I always talk about I love watching the guy and, and you know Roy Keane, who used to play for Manchester United. He's on the BBC, former player.

And this guy is a legend. You should hear him talk about the players. It's just the way Charles Barkley does. They give, they're just giving their honest assessment in this moment. And you know, listening to our radio show, we went after LeBron a lot, but I would say we praise LeBron probably 95% of the time. But when the 5% where he deserves to be criticized, I'm not going to give him a pass. That's the part I don't

understand. I think the writers today, they just don't want to go down that road because the players can respond automatically on social media, which has something to do with it. I think if the criticism is fair, you have to be critical every once in a while. If somebody's not mad at you, my boy, Joe Sexton, who used to work at the New York Times, first thing he told me when I covered the Mets, and he's now at the ProPublica, and they won a million awards, Pulitzer Prize, the whole thing. He said, if somebody's not mad at you, you're not doing a good job. I think that's true. You mentioned the the book with oakley comes out february of 2022 i can't wait i think the darkest day in nick's history wasn't when they didn't get you know kd or losing

this game the darkest day is when they dragged him out like a piece of trash in front of the the crowd and and i mean this guy's number should be in the rafters let alone you know dragging him out what was that experience like writing the book with him and are there things in the book that we don't know about those? You know, I, and please, I don't want you to give away anything, but like the shots at Ewing over the last few years have been hard to take. I agree. Oh, I agree with that. I think, I think that part of it, that's the way he feels. Yeah. I don't feel that way. Like my, you know, I tried to tell him this, and this isn't coming from Patrick, it's coming from me, but I said, you know, I tried to tell him this, and this isn't coming from Patrick, it's coming from me. But I said, you know, Patrick Ewing is coaching Georgetown. And the Big East has a relationship with Madison Square Garden.

I think the fact that Patrick's not coming out and destroying Madison Square Garden, I get that. But like he also works for a university that plays in the Big East. So I think like, you know, I think Charles sometimes doesn't like see the big picture when it comes to stuff like that. But I do know this. He goes to Chicago and he gets a nice ovation. He goes to Toronto, as you know. People up there love him. And I think part of him will never admit it because he's just too much of a tough guy.

But how can that not bother him? Like this guy, I still found it so symbolic that a guy who was known for giving everything he had, diving on the floor for loose balls. I got kicked in the head once by him jumping over the scores table to get a loose ball. And where did we last see him at Madison Square Garden? On the floor and getting dragged out. I thought it was horrible. And there's no way that he went there that night knowing that he had a ticket right behind Jim Dolan. And there's no way that he's there that night, knowing that he had a ticket right behind Jim Dolan.

And there's no way that he's going to start a fight with you. The whole thing started really even before the game began. So I don't get the whole thing. It never should have come to that. And for him to be such a great player and mean so much to the city and the way the whole thing was handled, it was really despicable. And think about what's gone on in this country the last year and a half. That happened before that.

You think that would have happened today? They would take the team away from the owner of the team if they did that to Charles Oakley, dragging him out in handcuffs. It was horrible. Do you think they fix it? Do you think he gets welcome back? I think they want to. I think he's been really hurt by the whole thing.

I know it created some issues for his mom who got really sick because of all the stress that she was under. I think that part of it is going to be really hard for him to come back from. Because I think the league wants it to end. I do think that Jim Dolan maybe at this point wants it to end. I just think that he feels the way the whole thing was handled, number one. Then Jim Dolan went on the radio station and talked about Charles having a drinking problem. And you would think that Jim Dolan would be a little bit more sympathetic, even though Charles is saying that's nonsense.

Jim Dolan has been a guy, and to his credit, has dealt with his own issues off the court. And I think that part of it really, really bothers him. Last thing for you, and again, thank you for the court. And I think that part of it really, really bothers me. Last thing for you. And again, thank you for the time. From everything from the Mets to the work with the Knicks, breaking through on television, PTI. I mean, that's a small club that gets to go on PTI. That's a very prestigious club and it's a tremendous show. It's a legendary show. What are you most proud of? What is, when you think about this is my crown jewel achievement, what is that? Yeah. I mean, you mentioned all of it. I mean, certainly getting the call from PTI was pretty cool. And the people at ESPN have been great to me, the guys around the horn. It's still probably

writing for a newspaper. There is something about that. Cause I grew up, I delivered the daily news as a kid and, you know And there'd be the big fight, Ollie's fighting somebody. And of course, we're not getting direct TV in our house. And you're just waking up in the morning, you look at the back page and you wanted to see Mike Lupica, Dick Young, some of these great columnists were writing. So there was something really cool about doing that. So from a professional standpoint, that personal standpoint, obviously my kids, which I still say to this day, and you'll see this as you get older, it's so cool. Like I got to see Usain Bolt. I say this all the time. I got to see Usain Bolt

win the hundred meters in London. It's incredible. I got to see Michael Jordan hit that last shot against the Utah Jazz. So, you know, I've seen some incredible, incredible thing, but for me, still watching my own kids play, I still would take that. There's just something more exciting about it. And at its most basic level, it's just sports and having fun. But that to me is the most fun I've had. You give me chills when you say that because in my world, Saturday is the most important day, right?

That's when the fights are. And I have noticed in the past year, you tell me about any massive fight on a Saturday in Vegas, at the garden, anywhere. Do you want to be there? Or do you want to be at the park watching your eight-year-old playing soccer? Any day, like without question,

the joy that I get out of watching that and the pain that I get for having to miss that is immense. Yeah. And so I know exactly what you're saying. And you pain that I get for having to miss that is immense. Yeah. And so I know exactly what you're saying. And, and, and, you know, Ariel too, because there's always going to be, because when your kids get to be 20, 25, there's still going to be other fights. Like that part is never going to go away. This part of it does go away. That's why you, you know, that that's what makes it more special. Well, what a way to wrap this up from the kid who walked to the corner store to buy the paper to read you. Now we're talking about kids and your great achievements of writing in the

paper. This has been a huge honor for me. Thank you so much, Frank. Continued success. I hope you get to cover the league for many, many more years. Starting lineup on Sirius XM, NBA Radio, the Yets, the Yets, the Nets on Yes, pre and post game. I'm so flustered. I'm so, you know, starstruck by your presence. And, you know, of course, the stuff that you're doing on ESPN is great. Every time you pop up, dare I say, I don't want to get you in trouble. I think they should use you more if I'm being honest on ESPN. But that's a different discussion for a different day. Thank you for doing this. And I appreciate everything you've said. Say hello to your family for me. I'm happy for all your success. You know, like I said, I came up to you on the street running up like, I said, I think that's Drake. Oh, no, no. It's

the guy from, it's the guy from the, I hate Christian Leitner documentary. By the way, you hate Christian Leitner? You're like, I grew up hating him, but now, I mean, he seems like a pretty nice guy. Just grew up hating that team, you know, the 90s Duke team. But now he seems cool. When I was in London for the Olympics, the tube stopped, door opens, who gets on? Christian Laettner. Wow, look at you name dropping. One of the all-time great name droppers you are is what-

From your radio show. I mean, it's just constant, but I like it. Hang on. It wasn't better than the elevator stopping in New Orleans. Oh my God, I'm going to forget her name now. The girl that used to date Amber Rose. What's her name? That's better?

I mean, Leitner walking into the tube is better than Amber Rose. Come on. How about Gabby Union in San Antonio when the elevator door opens? Not bad. Not bad. Not bad. That's going to be my next book, when the elevator door opens. Thanks for doing this, Frank.

All the best. Thanks, Ariel. All right. Well, that was great stuff. I could have talked to Frank for another two hours just about Nick's stories I mean those teams I looked up to them I loved everything about them I followed their every move the fact that he was in the locker room that he was traveling with them that he had a relationship with them uh it's just it's so amazing to me and uh I wish I could have lived in that time where I was you you know, an adult covering a team.

I would cover that team and it sounds like it was the best time. And he's a very lucky man for getting to do that. And I think he's evolved amazingly. You know, some people are pigeonholed as just writers. He's been able to evolve into a radio host, a TV guy, a pre and post game guy. Really done an amazing job at this point in his career. I have an immense amount of respect for what he's done, how he conducts himself,

the fact that he doesn't hold back, he doesn't pull punches, just a really, really great media member. If you're not a fan of his, if you don't listen to his radio show, consume his content, I highly suggest that you do. He's one of the very best covering

the National Basketball Association. So thank you very much to Frank. Thank you to all of you for your continued support. Please continue to rate, download, subscribe, and review. Follow us as well. Check out the full video interview on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Ariel Helwani. I appreciate you more than you know,

and I'll be back next week for another brand new interview right here on The Helwani Show. Have a great weekend. I'll talk to you next week. Thank you.