The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Brian T Smith On Return of The NBA And If We Get MLB

Episode Date: June 5, 2020

Briain T. Smith On Return of The NBA And If We Get MLB

is the Matt Thomas show. 201, Sports Talk 790, the final hour of the Matt Thomas show. One half hour from now, we play the Fantasy 5. Joe George versus me and Beatles. It's going to be like that. Matt should have this one gift wrapped. And it's not even because it's your birthday, Matt. Have we confirmed that Joe's still here?

Yeah, he might have left. I can make his picks. He's probably in the hall of shame right now. Yeah, he's still up here, I think. All right. Let's go to our buddy, Brian T. Smith, was with us every Friday in the show for 10 minutes of quality commentary. Favorite Beatles songs, Brian, go.

Brian, favorite Beatles song, quickly. Happy birthday to you. That's not a Beatles song. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, Matt. Happy birthday to you. So Brian's day drinking today. Brian, you're a borderline alcoholic right now?

I'm drinking sparkling water, and I'm on the kitchen floor playing with my new puppy. What's the dog's name? It's an 11-week-old lab that my wife and I got from a rescue shelter. Nice. I'm very proud of, and its name is Monty. M-O-N-T-Y. It's an incredible dog. I think we have the best dog in the history of dogs. Most famous Monty of all time, quickly, gentlemen.

Monty Burns. I'm going Monty Hall. Montgomery Clift. Wasn't that a famous actor from like the 50s? Oh, Monty Ward. Monty Williams. Monty Williams, pretty famous, yeah. That's very famous.

All right. Let's get to it. Let's go to the NBA first. So, Mike Tantone and Greg Popovich might be too old to coach, huh? Was that what we're hearing? I think Adam Silver has backtracked in a little bit in the last 24 hours. He's definitely backtracking, and Silver gets a ton right, and the NBA has been incredibly careful with its bubble approach. It may be too careful. We'll find out. I think it's going to be interesting if it all works out.

The NBA's back. July 31st, but let's say the NBA, real quick, before you get into coaches, let's say the NBA is playing in, you know, mid-August, September, and college football is back. In college football, you know, teams are traveling, and they're playing inside stadiums with 25% of the crowd, which in 100,000 seat stadium would be 25,000 people, that's going to be interesting to me. If the NBA, and all this is so unpredictable, and it still is, we still have no how, no idea how this is going to end up, but it's an interesting. approach. Obviously, the NBA is taking to the point that when they announce that they're coming back and everyone gets excited and you're talking about having the NBA finals in October, one of the first news breaks is the potential that Mike Dantonie, Alvin Gentry, Greg Popovich, et cetera, the old guys, you know, it's not safe for them to be on the sideline or whatever when you don't have anyone really in the arena to begin with. So I will be stunned if they don't allow their elderly, quote unquote, coaches to coach. Mike Dan Tony is an incredible shape,

but it also tells you how unprecedented, there's that word again for the billion time, unorthodox this whole enterprise is. Yeah, I just don't think it's too, if you want to give them some perhaps some stricter rules. Put my Antony and P.P.E. gear. You know, I mean, I'm fine. Put him in like whatever Dustin Hoffman was wearing an outbreak. Put him in one of those suits. Maybe he'll get more out of heart in that way. but you know, whatever you need to do, but he does, if he wants to be on the sideline, and maybe he has to sign a waiver, but if Mike Antoni wants to be on the sideline,

he should be on the damn sideline. All right, so the league put it together. The owners ratified it. The players, I think, are going to hopefully rubber stamp this today. Get your crystal ball out, because we're going to do this a lot of the next couple of months, but how do you envision sitting down on a particular night and watching an NBA game, at least for the regular season? Yeah, I don't know.

Right? The more that I think about it, and we've been thinking about this for three months, I mean, every time I turn on your show and I'm driving around town, by the way, stay at home. It's been over for about a month. Stay at home doesn't exist anymore. I've been running errands the last two days working on my yard and dealing with puppy stuff. Nobody is staying home in Houston anymore. And Houston looks absolutely normal, which I think is actually very encouraging and positing. positive along with the unemployment numbers, which were very encouraging today. Anywho, I don't know how this is going to go, Matt, because every time I drive around and I listen to you talk about it and I think about it and I've written about it so many times in the Chronicle, we want sports to come back, but now you tell me if I'm wrong. Is it not going to look a little like 10 dudes playing at 24-hour fitness? You know what I mean? Because there's going to be no, you'll have NBA logos, but you won't have anyone in the stands. It's going to be, very bare media.

You're not going to have extraneous people on the bench. I mean, maybe they have people in the first couple rows. You know, I don't even know. And by the third game, if it's, let's say, San Antonio playing Phoenix or something like that during the afternoon, that's not very appealing to me. I mean, it's better than nothing. But I still think this whole bubble approach is going to be so different. And I just don't know.

I think so much of the energy of the NBA playoffs comes from being in the arena with 20,000 fans and the buildup and the TV excitement. And, you know, Matt, you know what Toyota Center is like and all the other arenas. When they're absolutely juiced 100,000 percent, there's not going to be any juice in that building. And they're going to be in real uniforms. And it's better than nothing. But I feel like it's going to look like an exhibition game. You know what? I'm not going to go that far.

because I think when all of us have been talking about how much we crave sports and how we're looking for live action, that it just can't be perfect. And I'm not saying that you think it needs to be. It's better than nothing. But it's better than nothing. And I think that we are in a world where we are missing our sports events so badly that you could put them outside in a park and play with peach baskets, and we would still embrace the game.

We just would. Yeah, we would. And I think what will help is it'll be, obviously, it'll be on television. television and simply having the announcers, right? Simply having the announcer, you know, let's say James Hardin hits five straight threes and, you know, Marv Albert's calling in and that's different, you know, James Harder or Matt Thomas is calling, you know, you know, and you have that excitement, you're not going to have the crowd, you're probably not going to have any noise, but as long as you have elite superstar international talent playing in a highly competitive bubble-like

atmosphere. It's going to be, I guess it's going to be like, I don't know, an AAU tournament with incredibly, you know, the best basketball players in the world playing with the NBA championship. We've never seen anything like it, so I don't think it's to be perfect, but the excitement will be there because the talent level is going to be so good. I had mentioned to the audience late last week that the players and the owners in baseball had until today for us to really jive with a potential 80 or more game schedule. I feel like that's now in the distant. The thought of 48, Brian, makes me physically ill.

I'll watch it. We'll talk about it. But there will be no steam. You know, you're talking about how you were talking about how crazy. The basketball basketball world is going to be. A 48 game season when it's supposed to be 162 with potentially guys that don't want to be there. It's going to be who gives a blank league in 2020. And I think, unfortunately, unless they get something resolved in the next handful of days,

we are destined to be put in that direction. No, no, here's my soundbite for this this Friday, Matt. Look, if they figure it out and it's, you know, 80 or 100, fine. If because of their stupidity, because of their just being so dug in and their unwillingness to compromise at a time, you know, just, you know, you have protests and riots and looting and you have an insane coronavirus pandemic and you have businesses shut down and people out of job. I just saw the athletic laid off 46 people in our industry.

If you have all of that and you can't, and you're making, the average Major League Baseball salary is like $4 million a year and the owner girl billionaires, if you can't figure that out and then when you do, because of your stubbornness, while everyone else is struggling on some level, you end up with a 40-game season for the game season, I'm not going to care. It's stupid. There'll be a champion. It will be a historical aberration. and I promise you now, no one will ever look back if this happens in a 2020 baseball season and say anything positive about it. It will be a historic elaboration. Whoever wins, even if the Astros, it will not in any way feel like a normal season.

And that is the fault of both sides, owners and players, and Major League Baseball. And that includes everybody, no matter if you're a rich team, if you're a poor team, if you're a team, it's a world too. It's everybody. It's everybody. Everyone else has come back, Matt. if everyone else can come back, how come Major League Baseball? Oh, they can't because they're too stubborn and they're too stuck in their ways.

If you're on the player's side, you have to be believing that owners only want to play for 48 because they want to keep, you know, cost low. I'm bothered by that. So what can, what, I hear the dog in the background. Hey, Monny. Money, what's up, money? He's going crazy. They make these, like, puzzles. where you put a bunch, oh, sorry, Parkett.

You put a bunch of squirrels in like a little tree, and the dog gets it out, and he's just loving it. It's really fun. Yeah. Okay. So if we are the belief that owners don't want to play the games, what can we convince the owners to do to get it to 80, to give them as much money as they think they can do without going broke, supposedly, and give us some of a sentence of a season?

Or are we just past that at this point? Isn't the idea of compromise that both sides have to get? give that that's that's that's that's the idea of compromise that's how compromise works it i mean go go look at political history go look at you know what it was the compromise of 1850 right we you know whatever it was we learned that henry clay the right compromiser both sides lose that's the art of compromising both sides lose and ultimately both sides win and the NBA players association the NBA has done that you you had that in the nachel you had that in major league soccer they have a new collective bargaining agreement the players lost the players are getting the same money

Only major league baseball players are basically acting like they deserve the same money, even though there won't be fans in the stand. They have to give and the owners have to give. And that's the only way we get a decent season. It's not happening, is it? It doesn't feel like it. But you've been saying, and I've been saying, ultimately, common sense will prevail, and there's no way we'll have 1994 again. If they do not play this year, there will be major league baseball in 20, 21, but they will have, they will face a worse situation than they did in 94, and they will end up being, I mean, by far, the third most popular sport in America. It will be NFL, NBA. And honestly, college football, number three, Major League Baseball will be the fourth most popular sport in America. And MLS is on the rise, and it will be baseball's fault.

Totally their fault. BTS, you and Moni, have a great weekend. We'll talk with you next week. Thanks, Matt. You'll see you later. I'm not wrong with dogs in play on the show. I got another Monty. Monty Kiffin. Monty Kiffin. Monty Hall.

Monty Ward. Monty Williams. And Monty Burns. There's your goat five group of the greatest monies of all time. And Monty the dog. Thanks to Brian Tee for being with us here every Friday in the show. 2.14 is our time. Those of you on hold will get to you in a matter of moments.

Fantasy 5, where Joe George and I will battle off on the best Beatles song ever. 213, Sports Talk 790.