The Kevin Sheehan Show - Thom Wants House Cleaning

Episode Date: May 20, 2023

Kevin and Thom today with Thom's pitch to Josh Harris to clean house when he takes over the team starting with Jason Wright. The boys also discussed another Jimmy Butler repeat takeover of the Celtics and Jim Brown's passing.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You don't want it. You don't need it. But you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin Chean Show. Here's Kevin. Saturday podcast for you with Tommy. Tommy is here, and he wrote a column that really generated some response yesterday. I know I promised a special guest, a more special guest.

Come on. Tom, you're not a guest. You're a co-host on this podcast, two to three days a week. just one day a week, but on average, two days a week. And I had promised a guest for yesterday, and we did have a really good guest, Eddie C, with his preteness preview, but not the guest that I was thinking that we would have. And then I said yesterday that there was a possibility we would have that person today, and that person is still not available. So I'm hoping to get that person for next week. And that's going to be all of the conversation about that particular guest

and the idea of having that guest on because I'm not going to be accused of teasing something that I can't get, that I can't deliver on anymore. How are you today? You know, I'm doing okay. Doing okay. I had a busy day yesterday. Get ready for my event on Monday night.

Cigars and Curveballs, the fundraiser, for the D.C. Grays, a reminder of everybody at Shelley's backroom. You can buy tickets, go to D.C. Graze.com. We're getting all kinds of new stuff in for the auction. Just got ten tickets to a game at the Regency Furniture Stadium for the Southern Maryland Blue Crabbs down in Waldorf, great Atlantic League baseball. So we've got lots of cool stuff for the auction.

And then on Sunday, the Bowie Bay Sox are hosting D.C. Gray's Day. and there's a link that I sent out that you retweeted for me and I appreciated where if you buy tickets, a $15 ticket for that game on that link, a percentage of the money goes to the grades. Plus, we are going to be there conducting the 50-50 raffle that day on Sunday at Prince George's Stadium. Oh, that sounds like fun. That's a great day, yeah.

So I was, I'm busy running around, setting all that stuff up, and then I went to the Nats game for a while last night. Oh, you did? Boy, they've had a rough week. It's almost like right when we started talking about how, you know, how well they're playing and the young guys and the pitchings, you know, the pitching's coming around. They've just lost four painful games in a row. All of them pretty much winnable, including last night against the tie. Tigers who were in town and they lost 8 to 6. Last night, when they're down 8-0 and come back to 8-6, still don't win.

Yeah. So we're going to get to your column. We're going to get to the NBA. I actually want to get your thoughts on Jim Brown, who passed away yesterday as well. I wanted to mention where I was last night. I was down at Gonzaga. What a community to Gonzaga community is. and I was down there for the Caleb Cares Foundation launch here in the area.

And the Caleb Cares Foundation is the Caleb Williams Foundation, as in the Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Caleb Williams, who played at Gonzaga is D.C.'s first and only Heisman Trophy winner. And great turnout last night. If you want to find out about the Caleb Cares Foundation, which, you know, the pillars of that foundation are mental health, anti-bullying, and youth empowerment. I can tell you that I would bet that he is phenomenal in front of young people. And I'll mention something about him here in a moment. But the Caleb Williams13.com website has all of the information about the Caleb Cares Foundation.

It was great to see so many familiar faces down there. By the way, congratulations Joe Rata on your daughter graduating from the University of Wisconsin. Joe is the athletic director for years down at Gonzaga. And it was a fun night. And I was going to mention you and I have had a chance, you know, because of what we do, to interview and sit with a lot of people, you know, primarily athletes, like 99. percent athletes. And we kind of know when somebody's kind of got it or they don't. Well, Tommy, Caleb Williams, he's got it. Like he's got the it factor. He is, first of all, thoughtful,

excellent communicator, and he has got kind of this charisma to him. And if he ends up being the player that I think everybody thinks he's going to become. You know, he's the projected number one overall next year in the draft. I think he's going to be just a massive star if he ends up being a really good quarterback, which he really looks like he's got a chance to become. But anyway, it was a fun night, and he just seems like a really grounded young person. and Caleb Williams13.com. By the way, I asked him the obvious,

which is if you are going to be kind of the consensus number one overall next year, who do you want to be on the clock when Roger Goodell introduces the 2024 NFL draft? And he was smart enough not to give me a team. He did say I'd prefer warm weather. And I said, we're getting warmer around here. You know, we've got climate change going on. But, yeah, impressive, impressive young person.

I'm looking forward to your event Monday night. I really am. That's always so much fun. Do we know if anybody of note other than Doc Walker is going to be there? Well, I mean, there's a possibility there will be. You know, I don't want to commit because, you know, sometimes things get in the way. Right. But they don't play a baseball game that night.

Right. Right. They don't. Did you schedule that because they didn't play that night? I generally do schedule it on a NAC home off day. A home off day, which is Monday, May 22nd. All right. You want to get to your column?

Sure, let's do that. Okay, why don't you, I'll let you summarize what you wrote a column about. I mean, I can give you the headline. The headline is Tommy wants Josh Harris, the day that he is handed over the football team, to go in with essentially a machine gun and start shooting everybody until everybody's mowed down and gone. And the first office, he wants him to head towards is the team president's all. office. And now you can take it from there. Well, I mean, you know, I've read a couple of stories in recent weeks, quoting Jason Wright

about how, you know, how this business is really going to take off once Dan Snyder gets rid of the team and the team is sold. And he would kind of put in there this disclaimer. I'm not saying anything that Dan doesn't know. And I just found the whole the whole thing about about sort of like

you know this whole thing about like trashing his boss while he's still working for his boss but pretending he's not

trashing his boss just typically disingenuous of him you know just disingenuous is kind sometimes dishonest I think would be a better way

to put it so I think I thought those things needed to be addressed And it reminded me of Don King when in Jamaica, he came to the ring in 1973 with Joe Fraser, who was a heavyweight champion at the time. Fraser got knocked out in two rounds by George Foreman, and King stepped over Fraser's body on the canvas and left with George Foreman.

You know, and that seemed kind of like what Jason Wright was trying to do. so I thought it was worth addressing. And the notion that he is trying to possibly position himself to survive on the other end should be a bother, should be worrisome to commanders' fans. Because this guy has done very little right, and what he's done right is basically the equivalent of cleaning out the storage unit. I mean, yes, he's done some things right. but the bar was so low. The place was such a mess, you know, that I just don't give him a lot of credit for the little that he's accomplished

because it's dwarfed by the public mishats that are on his watch under his responsibility, team president. That's pretty much it. Yeah, it's not pretty much it. There are just some great lines in this column. You know, I've said this to you many, many times in the past, but I think you and Sally are the absolute best when you're on the attack. Because I think it's done, first of all, very smartly. And by the way, based on facts.

And you always have some really good kind of ideas. The first, starting with, you know, you're looking through the staff, directories for the Philadelphia 76ers and the New Jersey Devils to see if Josh Harris had employed a chief blunder officer in any one of those organizations. And, you know, it just, it goes on from there. No, we've talked about this, you know, I, I've said, and we've talked about it together in the last few weeks. I said, I wouldn't call it insubordinate. I think that's a little bit over the top, but like it's been a little bit surprising to me how direct he's been publicly about, you know, and how gleeful he's been publicly about, you know, essentially the wicked witch of the east or west, whichever one

was worse, is dead. And because of it, you know, we're going to have rainbows and lollipops. And again, it's true. We all understand that it's true. It's just surprising to me. that someone would be that open about it. And, you know, God forbid the Harris Group thing fell through and Snyder maintained the team, because if I were Snyder, that would be the first person that would be gone. The absolute first person that would be gone. Because disingenuous, I don't know if that's really the word I would use, but it is a bit distasteful.

But that's a subjective thing. Look, you're right that there is nothing that we can see that they've done that is really good since they took over. And we're talking about on the business side. I'm separating the football side from the business side. Now, what I have heard is that, you know, one of the first things that Jason Wright kind of recognized was there was a lot of dead weight in the building. and we all knew that. And there's been significant turnover. And I am assuming significant turnover means higher quality people, you know, more competence

in the building, less arrogance in the building. You know, there have been a couple of places that, first of all, this is a hard area for us to kind of analyze. It's much easier for us to analyze the football team and the football roster and the game. that that roster plays versus trying to analyze the job that the other side, the non-football side of the building is doing.

Now, the stuff that we've got direct contact with, like public relations in particular, we can certainly comment on from firsthand experience. And, you know, for a long period of time, it was a disaster. It's much better now than it was. And, and, for,

But on the other stuff, you know me. It's hard for me to start calling for people's jobs when I don't know the whole story. I don't know what he's doing there. I don't know what kind of leader he is. I don't know what kind of business instincts. I don't know what's been done on the positive. All I know is that he keeps talking about this trajectory that the team's been on, even with the major obstacle in place in that being Dan.

And let me back up for one second because it is true that anybody that took that job was going to have a massive, massive challenge to build a business with Dan Snyder as the owner. It was almost impossible to do. So anybody taking that job, it was going to be an impossible task to build the business up Without, you know, on the other side of the building, a big surprise, which is Super Bowl contention, like a really good team, which would really start to solve some of the issues, but not all of them. So, you know, even with respect to the name change, my belief all along is no one was ever going to get it completely right. That was really a very difficult challenge. But the things that we've been able to see have all gone wrong.

They've all gone badly. and we believe that all of those things have kind of emanated from the other side of the building. You know, you documented them in your column, and we all know, I mean, going through all of the multiple Sean Taylor debacles, the, you know, the crest mistake, the logo mistakes, the bouncing of checks, the the, the, the guides that came out for, um, uh, what was that take command website with just every piece of information. it seemingly, every third line seemed to be, you know, inaccurate and wrong, you know, misspellings and numbers that were off and dates that were off. Like it was just everything has seemed to be the same as it was before. London Flector-esque, for those of you that remember when London Fletcher was honored long before the Jason Wright and the new group came in. and on the big video screen at FedEx Field, they spelled it Flector. And it was just so typical of the organization.

None of that has seemingly stopped. They are still sloppy and have been sloppy. And then the name thing is the big thing. And I know we have beat it to death here over the last week. But Tommy, I said this on the radio, and I think I said it yesterday on the podcast. I think in addition to the emotions tied to the name and the rebrand conversation, I think one of the things that Jason Wright gets majorly blamed for is not only the name, but the rollout of the name, which, as I said yesterday,

it's like it felt very much like a hit-and-run job done by outsiders to begin with. But then they didn't even try to convince us that, it was the right decision. I mean, Doug Williams looked like he was being held hostage that day on the Today Show, on 2222. I mean, it was a day that really was an embarrassment to the organization. And really, if there was any chance for the name to take hold with a really good presentation of it, I mean, it was horribly done.

So the things that we can see haven't gone very well. but I'm not discounting the possibility that the things that we can't see have been improved. So I can't sit here and say definitively that Josh Harris should go in there and boom everybody day one. But I will tell you that my gut is that cleaning house is probably going to be the result when he does get in there and check everything out. And I don't think he's going to go in there on day one and do it. but I think after he's got time to sort of digest the whole thing he and his group, it would not surprise me if a few months later we have a whole new group of people running the organization. Yeah, as well they should.

Look, let me address a couple of things about Jason Wright. First of all, he did have an impossible situation coming to this organization. Everybody knew that, okay, including Jason Wright. Okay, so he didn't have to, he did not have to take this job. It was a great opportunity to be president. It would have been a great opportunity if he was president of an NFL franchise, but he wasn't. He was the head of a landfill. Okay, so let's not pretend that he didn't have his eyes open when he came in.

Some of the things he's done that people have pointed out to me, well, he started a human resources department. Well, Jesus, how did he get that novel idea? Where did that come from? I've never heard that before. You know? Of course, yeah. Got rid of a lot of dead weight. Well, a lot of guys he hired came and went.

Yeah, that's true. Guys like Damon Jones. Right. Guys like Will Mistletbrook. A lot of the people he hired what turned around left before a year or two. So, I mean, as far as the cleaning house, his own house, you know, the people couldn't, you know, a lot of people left. And here's the other thing. He wasn't a hostage, okay?

Jason Wright had more power and leverage than anybody else who's ever come close to that position on the business side. Dan Snyder was not going to fire Jason Wright, okay, under almost any circumstances. Right. That wasn't going to happen. No. For a number of reasons. Well, number one being first black team president in the history of the league. No.

That wasn't going to happen, not for a while anyway. Right. So he had leverage. So let's not make it seem like he had to sit there and say, well, dad, we shouldn't do that. and Dan says, no, you're going to do it this way, and then he had to carry out the owner's wishes. Okay? He could have told the owner any time we're going to do it this way or I'm walking out the door because he would have been hired within a week if people thought he stood up to Dan Snyder

and took a powder. So all this notion that he was somehow helpless, that he was somehow a victim because of the owner, you know, I don't buy any of that. Now let's get to some of the things that we pointed out that have gone wrong, and I'm going to do one that I had reported about. It's a small one, but it illustrates just the lack of control that he seemed that he had and didn't seem to care about. The team crews, the commander's crews, the first crews that they ever did, okay? a big deal, but it's a connection with your fan base and at the same time a connection with your alumni base, okay, which are all things you want to accomplish, okay?

It's your maiden voyage, so to speak. You want to make sure you get it right, okay? He put somebody, I'm sure, in charge of it, you know, and if you're a team president with something new that has never been done before, you're telling the person in charge of this, keep me oppressive what's going on. Let me know how this thing is progressing. And they're not going to pick a cruise company without the approval of the team president. If they are, then that's just late in mismanagement. I mean, that team president is going to say, I want to sign off on this. and they wound up, you know, making a deal with a con artist. And it took me five minutes on the Internet to figure out he was that.

And I thought that there was just a sloppiness to the way they did everything. And I think Jason Wright is just so impressed with himself. He didn't care about any of that stuff. So it's all meaningless to him. It didn't matter. I think, you know, he dismisses the idea of changing the name now, you know, in part because it's a poor reflection on him, but in part because he doesn't think it's important. And that's obvious he didn't think it was important by the way they handled it when they rolled

it out. Yep. Yeah, that part. So this is on his, this is his bill. This is on his bill. This is the check that he's being handed. To dismiss it the way he has, where's your line in here? about the um hold on for a second um yeah here it is in march right dismiss the idea of a name change

i would focus on the things that can fuel a championship i don't know if that's one of them well you know what um he didn't say it in in an offensive way like many people uh do that are against a rebrand uh he didn't tell you to basically um shut up that you're too stupid to figure out what should be on the priority list. But I, you know, I know that it should be one of them. I know that because I polled 4,400 people and 56% said it's way high on their priority list and 80% said it was on their priority list. And by the way, you can focus on the things that fuel a championship and do other things simultaneously. But when you wrote, it's not important to him, I guess, We saw that from the effort put into 2222.

You know, that's the part where, for me, I don't want, and I talked about this yesterday, Tommy, I don't want outsiders telling us how to feel about this thing. And I really do have this thought that what, you know, resulted in what was an impossible task to begin with. I understand that. I understand how hard it would have been had, you know, you or not you, but me, Andy Polin, Grant Paulson and the junkies and Doc Walker and Brian Mitchell. If we were in charge of it, we still wouldn't have pleased everybody on the name thing. That was a hard thing to do, really hard to do.

I mean, nobody would have gotten it completely right. Nobody would have been able to please the masses. I understand that. But at the same time, this process and this result, for me, it's just always, always been something that reeked. You know, first of all, it was sloppy. I think we all understand how sloppy it was based on the debut, based on the lack of excitement from the people that came up with it. But the other part for me is something that I've mentioned before. It just felt like outsiders coming in and kind of coming up with a name on behalf of a very large fan base that had lived with the same name,

some people for a lot of the 90 years that the name existed, for most of us far fewer years than that. But it wasn't, it wasn't an expansion team's name and an expansion city, you know, and they, they made it feel that way, to me anyway. So I'm not, you know, thrilled when the people that went through a process that felt sloppy and came up with something that didn't feel right to me, then double down and say, this should not be a priority. This really isn't something that you should be focused on. Winning is something you should be focused on. And again, you know, you can do both things simultaneously. I do like the quote that you went back and you do a great job of this always. You know, you had the quote when he was hired in 2020 from Jason Wright. Quote, they shared,

I shared, and I think that transparency, authenticity, and acknowledgement that we had shared values and a shared vision of what makes for a good culture and a good organization made me incredibly excited to jump into partnership with them and coach Rivera. And we had, and you mentioned, well, you're right, that's a man who would say, a man who would say that would say anything. And speaking of that partnership with Coach Ron Rivera, how's that going? And we talked about the athletics, Mike Jones profile of Jason Wright, where Ron Rivera declined to be interviewed for it.

And Tommy writes, I mean, you can't shut Rivera up, yet he had nothing to say about his team president. It's every man for himself on the SS Minnow. And that's your last line in the column. And it does feel a little bit like right now, from afar anyway, that it's every man for himself trying to impress the new bosses when they get here. I mean, Jason's, you know, in the article with Mike Jones, he wants to be on the football side.

I mean... That's stunning. Well, I mean, he's a former player. They've been out-of-the-box hires on football before. Look at John Lynch. You're right. You're right. Who knows?

Maybe that's a better spot for him. Maybe. I don't know. John Lynch with the Hall-name player. I know. I know. All right. What else on this?

Good column. Great read. Oh, thank you. So, you know, you're so good at doing these kinds of columns. And I would ask, everybody should read it. I retweeted it. I retweeted it. And you can find it on Tommy's Twitter account as well.

What? You know, it's just a little inside baseball. I heard from people who are not even fans of the team who are in the business. I'm in. Yeah. About this column. Yeah. how much they liked it.

And, you know, look, okay, a little revealing moment. It gives me satisfaction to hear that, okay, because you always worry about losing your fastball, as we like to say in this business. Well, this column is not an indication that you're, you know, anywhere below 93. You're still throwing heat. But I know what you're saying. And I, God, you need to be loved. No, I'm kidding.

I think if what you're saying, I'm understanding, it's because I think many people perhaps understand that you're spot on with this. It's not just the column, which was, you know, laid out so perfectly with great lines and great quotes and great pulls from the past. it's that it rings true to people who are, you know, close to this situation. And that's why I said, look, I don't know enough about what that side of the building does, nor do any of us, really. We're not there every day. It's very possible that he's good at a lot of things.

And we just can't, and we're not, you know, able to see it. We're not there to see it. But my hunch is, based on, you know, a lot of different things, is that the new group will get in and find that maybe it's best to put in a whole new group of people. I mean, put it this way. How can Ron Rivera and Jason Wright exist together? I guess they can. They've got two completely different responsibilities.

Jason Wright was very clear from the beginning. There's a lot of organizations that people who can't stand each other exist. Of course. Jason Wright was very clear from the beginning. winning, football is not his responsibility area. He is focused on the business of the organization. That's Ron's job. All right, anything else on this?

I'm going to talk about a few other things, including last night's Celtics Miami Heat Game. Okay, let's do it, baby. We'll do that right after these. I watched last two or three minutes of the game at Shelley's. All right. We'll get to that right after these words from a few of our sponsors. The driver drives on Graham Williams and a 15-footer will tie it at 100.

Jimmy Butler last night. Oh, my God, is this guy having a playoff run of clutch fourth quarters as the Miami Heat beat the Boston Celtics last night, 11 to 105? Overcoming a big deficit coming back after, by the way, the guy that I mentioned, either yesterday on the podcast or radio that I thought should. play more, and that was Grant Williams. They did play him last night, and he decided to mess with Jimmy Butler, get in his face after he scored one bucket, and then Butler went off the rest of the way and buried the Celtics for a second straight game. And they've won two in Boston. Tommy, I did pick Boston to win this series, but it was a very reluctant pick of Boston because I just think that there's something wrong with them. I think they are just so poorly coached,

and Spolstra is the best. And I'm rooting for Miami. And so I was thrilled last night that Miami won once I figured out that Boston wasn't going to cover in the game. Jimmy Butler is just, he's so much fun to watch. They're so much fun to watch. They're such an unselfish team. They don't have overwhelming talent with the exception of Butler. And, you know, BAM's a real threat.

as a guy that's incredibly versatile for his size. But man, this Joe Missoula, if I were a Boston fan, I wouldn't mind moving on from him right now before game three. I mean, he is insufferable to listen to after these games. Never takes any accountability for any of this stuff. How you don't double Jimmy Butler in the fourth quarter. How Jason Tatum doesn't have a field goal attempt in game one in the fourth quarter. And then last night, the worst of it is that he taps out with eight and a half seconds to go, down six, two possession game.

Long shot, understood. But you play it out because this is the playoffs. It's game two of the Eastern Conference finals. And this dude takes, you know, his timeouts with him to the locker room when he's needed him in every single game. They scored 46 in game one in the third quarter. Tommy, Miami did the other night. and he never called the time out. And last night with 8.1 left, you've got to call time out, advance the ball,

and try to get a quick three up, and then foul. It's still possible down six. Instead, they come up, they burn all eight seconds, and Jalen Brown just throws up a three-pointer at the buzzer that misses. I mean, that is unconscionable as a coach. You have to play it out. And wilder things have happened than coming from six down with 8.1 seconds to go when you can advance the ball with a time out. We've seen these things happen before.

He just gave up. Pathetic. Pathetic performance really by Boston throughout the playoffs. I don't know how they're actually even here, but part of it is because they played an even worse coach team in the last round in the 76ers with Doc Rivers. I'm so glad the heat are motoring through this, and I hope they can finish it off. Jason Tatum's a wild card, real wild card. He was terrible last night in the fourth quarter again, but he's capable of carrying them. He's the best player, the most talented player, but he's not the best player right now.

Jimmy Butler is. Love watching him. What do you got? Did you see any of the game last night? I'm assuming you didn't. Yeah, I was at Shelly's for the last three minutes of the game, and after I went to the Natch game last night. And it's such a pleasure watching Jimmy Butler work in a game like that.

I mean, it really was amazing to watch him. And you're right. I mean, how do you not start every game, you know, making a strategy, playing the play in the heat, saying, we've got to stop that guy. And that's the only thing we have to worry about. Everything else will take care of itself. You know, but, I mean, Jimmy Butler,

I'm really hoping that the NBA finals are two now, have two of my favorite players, Yokic and Jimmy Butler. Yeah, me too. That would be great. That would be, I mean, it's 2-0-2-0. You know, the old saying, well, in the Denver series, The series doesn't start until the road team wins. Well, Miami's won, too.

So Boston, to keep this alive, is going to have to steal one in Miami. They're capable of winning. They've had big leads in both of these games. It's just, it's really interesting to watch Boston, man. This would be so frustrating if you're a Celtics fan to watch this team. They were close last year to getting a title. but they're also very close to being eliminated by this same Miami team in the Eastern Conference finals in game seven. Jason Tatum's an incredible talent.

Sometimes I just watch him and I'm like, I don't know how you could stop him from getting 50 every game if that's what he wanted to do. And then in these fourth quarters in these first two games, he's gone completely silent. They are expressing their faith in the head coach. Look, the head coach took over with no experience. Okay, so it's not necessarily his fault that he was given this opportunity and took it. Of course, anybody would. But he's overmatched in these situations. We've seen this now.

I mean, multiple times, but their talent's been able to overcome it. But not last night where the heat outscored the Celtics by 14 in the fourth quarter and won by six. Butler does everything, too, Tommy. He does everything. He makes all of the right decisions. He guards the best player at times on the other team. He draws charges. He just, he's so crafty in his ability to get to the free throw line consistently.

And he didn't do it a lot last night necessarily. He did it in game one. But this guy's having another unbelievable postseason run. And he's earned it, you know, playoff Jimmy. And the whole Grant Williams thing, look, Butler answered it so well after the game. He said, I loved it. He said, it's competitive. We're competitors and we're going after it.

But there's no doubt that, you know, Grant Williams probably should have just after he scored his first bucket of the series, probably should have just gone back down on the other end and played some defense rather than sticking his face into Jimmy Butler's face, trying to, you know, trying to intimidate him. Butler does not strike me as a guy that would back down to anything. But, you know, the Celtics didn't lose. the game because of that. They lost the game because they just

you know, the other side is, you know, as they say, playing chess and the Boston sideline is barely getting out a checkers board to play. It's pathetic to watch how poorly coached they are. This is

a little thing that tells me a lot about Jimmy Butler. In March, Paul Gassal had its number retired by the Lakers, and they had played together Gassau and Jimmy Butler on Chicago

for a couple of years. And in between games on the schedule in Miami, Jimmy Butler flew out to L.A. and surprised Paul Gassal at his ceremony to have his

Jersey retired. And if you saw the video, you could tell that Gassal was really emotionally touched by that. I mean, that, That tells you a guy who values teammates. Yeah. You know, he played for the Philadelphia 76 years at one point, and they decided that they'd rather have Tobias Harris.

I know. Anyway. Now, granted, Jimmy Butler was a little bit of a loose cannon. Oh, yeah. No, he was. He was. Yeah. You know, but we've seen, you know, these players of the last 10 years or so,

that have not gone in the top, you know, eight, nine, ten, the Wizards with the top eight this year, you know, from Janus to Kauai to Jimmy Butler, who was the last pick in the first round in 2011. I say the last decade, you know, since 2010. And, you know, you can find these guys. Yokic was a second round pick. You know, you can find these guys.

And sometimes, you know, it's a matter of, really having that unbelievable eye for talent and for a championship heart and a championship sort of, you know, competitiveness. But sometimes you're just lucky because the team that drafted Jimmy Butler was Chicago. He doesn't play for Chicago, you know, and he played in Minnesota, and he played in Philadelphia. And he's had some really good seasons. But, man, his run with one of the best organizations in sports, the Miami Heat, with Pat Riley and a just a wonderful coach who dials it up as good as anybody does. And, you know, the mix of players. You know, this goes to Pat Riley and Spolstra for finding the right kind of mix of players. You know, Tommy,

they have a significant number of undrafted free agents on the team that are kind of contributing in a major way. And I think Spolster said something about Gabe Vincent specifically last night, because Gabe Vincent's one of those undrafted free agents in his third year. And he said something like, you know, it's disrespectful to talk about all of these undrafted free agents on our roster. They are proven veterans now. I mean, I think it's a badge of honor for the player and for the organization.

But I guess I understand the point when it's beaten. to death over and over again. And don't forget, this team doesn't have Tyler Hero and Victor Oladipo. Both of those players lost at the beginning of this playoff run. So this is Jimmy Butler, Spolstra, and some really good veteran high IQ, you know, role players. I hate calling BAM a role player because he's not a role player. But Kyle Lack. Lowry at 37 going on 38 is a champion. And it's just fun to watch them. I just really enjoy watching that team.

In the same way, I really enjoy watching Denver. I actually have enjoyed watching the Lakers in this postseason. I really, I mean, Anthony Davis is clearly a mystery. I don't know how a guy that is clearly one of the best three in terms of talent in the NBA is so, inconsistent. But it's going to cost them, I think, in this series. Didn't cost them in the first two, but it's going to cost them, although the Lakers are five and a half point favorites tonight at My Bookie. All right, let's finish up with your thoughts on Jim Brown. I shared

some of mine yesterday, but I want to hear what you thought. We'll do that right after these words from a few of our sponsors. The PGA Championship is underway, and my bookie's got all of your golf action for the PGA today, tomorrow. They've got matchups. They still have odds on the tournament. Everything you want to bet golf, they've got it at mybooky.com and mybooky. Dot ag. As I've mentioned before, you use my promo code.

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I mentioned yesterday. I did not get to see him play. but everybody that I have always talked football with that is older believes that Jim Brown is the number one, number one of all time and that the conversation ends after talking about Jim Brown as the greatest football player of all time. Are you in that camp? Oh, you know, Tom Brady has given me pause because of what he's accomplished

with all the Super Bowl championships. but if you put Tom Brady and Jim Brown in a room, it's hard not to see Jim Brown as being the only one coming out at almost any age. So, I mean, Jim Brown has always been my number one, number one. And, you know, I'm reading some of the articles and some of the comparisons, and, you know, people compared Earl Campbell to, Jim Brown because, you know, they ran so hard, ran over people. But Earl Campbell, at Earl Campbell's height lasted three years.

Jim Brown led the league in rushing in his last year, you know, and only quit because he was doing the dirty dozen, and the Browns wouldn't let him stay over in Europe for a couple extra days for the filming. I mean, Jim Brown Jim Brown didn't take punishment. He gave out punishment. You know, I mean, when you look at the videos and the film of when he ran, he literally,

I mean, you had to be scared if you were going and tackled Jim Brown because you were going to take the brunt of it, not him. He's considered, from what I've heard and read, maybe the greatest lacrosse player of all time. Right. just a remarkable athlete who one of those guys like a Will Chamberlain

who seemed like he could do anything he wanted to physically but what made Jim Brown unique was power he exuded power not just physical power but a presence of power you know I mean among other men among you could say sometimes it was power out of control

and there were victims of that power and several domestic violence cases against him. But that was Jim Brown. Jim Brown was power. He walked into the room. He owned every room he walked into because every man felt

that they were inferior to Jim Brown. He carried this aura of power. Both physically, this is why he was able to do so much work with the L.A. Street gangs. I mean, you know, he's known for his holding summits with L.A. Street gangs. I know a writer who was going to go, who was supposed to interview him, showed up at his house, and there were all these, you know,

vehicles that, you know, I forget what they called him, but they were, they were street vehicles in the driveway, and a bunch of guys walked out of his house and got in them, wearing different colors. And he had just finished, gang summit at his house. Because he was power. They respected power and he represented it. That's the whole thing. We've never seen, we haven't seen anyone, at least in the athletic world. I mean, George, I mean, Muhammad Ali did not exude power.

No, no, he was finesse. You know? Right. Mike Tyson did, but he burned out quick. George Foreman did, at least the first, you know, episode of George Foreman, but not to the level that Jim Brown did. Plus, he was in the Dirty Dozen, which is the most testosterone-filled movie in the history of Hollywood. There are more tough guys in the Dirty Dousen than any other film ever made, and he was great in it.

I mean, and you know what? Well, not one of my favorite football films any given Sunday, the Oliver Stone film. Jim Proud was great in that, too. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I, I, Earl Campbell was for me, he's one of my all-time favorites.

I think he's really underrated, but you made a really good point. I mean, it was his first three years. He had a couple of decent years after that, but pretty much he made, all of his, you know, he made his Hall of Fame career in 78, 79, and 80. And he was, and was a guy that played similarly to Jim Brown because it was all about power. But at the same time, Tommy, he could outrun you.

And Jim Brown could too. You know, for our purposes here locally, Rigo was, you know, it's always on the list of the greatest power running backs of all time. Brown's always number one. You know, Rigo's not at that level. But Rigo had a lot of that to him as well, that he was going to run over you, but he could also, you know, once he got past you, you weren't going to catch him either. In the group of those 60s activists, you know, Ali and Bobby Mitchell and Bill Russell and Kareem in Jim Brown, was he in that room the biggest voice and the most powerful voice?

Like, did those guys look to him? I think so. I think so. I think they did. You know, I don't think, you know, they were quite in fear of him, but I think the credibility of the room went up when Jim Brown was in it. He was the organizer of it. Yeah.

And we'll just never see anyone like him again. You know, the way things have changed. I don't know if we'll ever see anyone like Jim Brown again. And he was just, he was one of a kind. You know, he's on the cover of Sports Illustrated when he's 47 years old in a Raiders uniform. I remember that. Because there were people speculating that the Raiders were going to ask him to come back to be a running back. Yeah.

At 47. because people That's like Will Chamberl. People believe Walt Chamberl and could still play the NBA until he was 50. That's really the comp for him. It's Will. Yeah. You know, and by the way they both kind of also

parallel each other with the limited numbers of championships, you know, relatively speaking, Brown with just one and Wilk with two, right? Or three? What does Wilde have? He's got two. He's got two. The one in L.A. and the one in Philadelphia? Yes.

Yeah. Although it's much harder in football than it is in basketball. So that's why I say his one to Chamberlain's two is kind of comparable. Maybe if Chamberlain had three. But yeah, I mean, people still swear to this day, my father being one of them, that Wilts the greatest that's ever lived.

Like there's just, there's never been a greater athlete. And he feels the same way about Jim Brown when it comes to football. You know, these are the two that really would be comparable. What's interesting is you've got to go back to the 60s to find those guys, 60s and early 70s in the case of Wilt. Haven't we had players like them in those sports? Well, we've had Shaquille O'Neill. I think we felt Bo Jackson could be a guy like that. Yeah, but a very shortened career, for sure.

Herschel to a certain degree, but Herschel wasn't the NFL player that he was in the NFL what he was in college. And, yeah, I mean, haven't had a lot of it. I mean, Shaq was, you know, an unstoppable force. But, and LeBron in many ways is kind of an unstoppable force. Yeah, I mean, people think LeBron could play in the NFL. Yeah, I mean, sometimes when I watch Derek Henry, I feel like, my God, I mean, this is probably what Jim Brown was like. because there are days when you watch Derek Henry

where it's impossible to tackle him. Yeah. And they just keep feeding him the ball. Yeah. All right. Anything else? I got nothing else for you, boss. All right, I'll be back on Monday.