The Ringer NBA Show - How Dr. J Bridged the '70s to the Modern NBA With Jackie MacMullan | The Answer

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Chris and Seerat start the pod by sharing their reactions to the fight between Erik Spoelstra and Jimmy Butler during the Heat's loss to the Warriors on Wednesday night. They're then joined by The Ringer's own Jackie MacMullan to talk about her new podcast 'Icons Club.' They begin the conversation by detailing the necessary elements to be included in the prestigious group.(5:00) They then shift their focus to the legacy of Julius Erving and analyze the myriad of ways he impacted the history of the NBA and the Philadelphia 76ers franchise.(15:30) Next, they discuss some of the other players that exist on the periphery of the club's core legends like Isaiah Thomas, Giannis Antetokounmpo and in particular, Dwight Howard. (30:48) They wrap things up by acknowledging Dr. J's contribution to the modern player empowerment era and Jackie reveals how making 'Icons Club' has changed her perspective on basketball.(38:53) Hosts: Chris Ryan and Seerat Sohi Guest: Jackie MacMullan Production Assistant: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are you ever curious what's going on behind the scenes in Hollywood? You watch a Netflix show or a Marvel movie and you wonder, why was that person in it? Why did this movie get made? I'm Matt Bellany, founding partner of Puck News, and I'm covering the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. With my new show, The Town, on the Ringer podcast network, I'm going to take you inside Hollywood with exclusive insight

on what people in show business are actually talking about. Multiple times a week, we're going to bring you short, Digestable episodes featuring some of the smartest people I know breaking down the hottest topics in entertainment to tell you what's really going on. Follow the town now and listen on Spotify. Hello and welcome to The Ringer MBA show. It's The Answer. I'm Chris Ryan.

I'm joined as always by Siritt Sohey. What's up, Siri? How's it going, Chris? Special episode today. Jackie McMullen, the legend, is joining us. We'll be talking about her new Ringer podcast network pod icons club, which you can find on the book of basketball feed. Just search that whenever you're going into your podcast platform of choice.

Sir, before we get into talking with Jackie, and we're mostly going to talk about the second episode of Icons Club, which is about Dr. Jay. I thought we could do some of the newsie at the top and just talk about how much my heart goes out to all the folks out there who thought Jimmy Butler was a great teammate. Sorry to find out this way, but he's not. Miami Heat imploded last night.

They were getting their butts kicked by the Warriors at home and then had one of the most entertaining players-only meetings, which also involved their coaches. and everybody else. Yeah, it wasn't necessarily players only. Oh, no. Spolstra was invited to the chat. An absolute like combustion engine took place on the bench of the Miami Heat. I don't know if you've gotten a chance to see it,

but basically Jimmy Butler and Eric Spolstra start arguing during a timeout. It appears that whatever Jimmy Butler said to Eric Spolstra, his response was something along the lines of what do you want me to fight you? And that triggers Udanaas Haslam getting involved. definitely offering Jimmy Butler a trip to the back of the American Airlines Arena to fight. This boils over onto the court. Eric Spolstra throws a clipboard. Jimmy Butler had to be restrained by Bamata Bio.

I love this so much. This was awesome. Of course, it should be noted that the Miami Heat then went on a tremendous run after this happened and almost got back into this game and almost beat the Warriors without stuff. But, Siri, did you enjoy this? Yeah, I did. I thought it was great. you know, I think this is just heat culture.

And I love these moments where, you know, usually this type of thing happens in the locker room, but we all got to see it. We all got to see how the sausage was made a little bit. Yeah, because Jimmy Butler has never orchestrated a public shaming of his own teams ever. You know, honestly, I think that Joelle Embed was probably watching that,

feeling a little wistful, maybe a little bit jealous, a little bit, you know, like, can we get the Embed to Miami train going yet or no? Sounds like they're rolling with this is just what happens behind closed doors. You guys happen to see it. Everything's all good. Everybody just wants to win. We're just lions.

But it was just amazing TV, first of all. I was wondering if you particularly identified with any member of the heat. The clipboard. I'm the clipboard. What about you? It was so carefully picked up by PJ Tucker. You know, like, PJ Tucker was just like, oh, I got to get Eric. Because, like, there's state secrets on this clipboard.

It's like run a pin down screen for Tyler Hero. That's what's on the clipboard. I'm glad that he wanted to save it. And I think that actually just speaks to why this works. At the end of the day, like they can have their tussles, but nobody's bigger than the game. I've personally identified the most with Duncan Robinson, which is just like having no idea whose side I'm on kind of halfway trying to walk out of the situation, but then like tried to walk away and then all of a sudden spolster and Jimmy Butler are facing off.

Like I'm the closest one there. that would just like always try to avoid the conflict that would be me if you guys haven't had a chance please subscribe to the book of basketball feed and check out icons club jackie basically talked with every single important NBA player that she could about the lineage and legacy of greatness in the NBA and this very small select club of players that acquire and pass on knowledge and acumen to one another and the line that goes back from willton russell to today sir i assume you've obviously like listen to the pod, but what's one thing that you've kind of been loving about it so far? I just love the way that you can see the institutional knowledge being passed down.

Like, you know, Bill Russell gives Dr. Jay advice. And then Dr. Jay builds on that advice for the next guy. And that's what we have so far. So I'm just excited to see where this staircase all leads. Yeah, me too. Without further ado, we'll get into our conversation with Jackie and we'll see everybody back here next Friday. listening to the answer. Jackie, thank you so much for joining us today. So Jackie McMullen has a new

podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. It's on the book of basketball feed, but the podcast is called Icons Club. And it's Jackie's trip through NBA history through this very, very specific lens about this sort of fraternity of great NBA players and what they pass on to one another and the things that they share and the way that they've iterated over the years. And it's just an amazingly, deeply reported, funny, dramatic, awesome listen. And I recommend everybody check it out. Jackie, thank you so much for joining me and Siri today on The Answer. It is my pleasure to be here with both of you. So, Syri, why don't you get us started here? Yeah, Jackie, can you tell us a little bit about the Icons Club? Like, one thing I was really curious about is how exactly you built the criteria

for who fits into it. Well, it's sort of just a concept, right? You know, I asked that question to every person we interviewed. We interviewed 40, 42 people, and some of them were icons and some of them weren't, you know. So the ones that were icons, I'd say, okay, you know, the question you just me, what's the criteria? And it becomes very apparent that obviously you have to be a great player, stating the obvious, right? You've got to be not a good player, a great player, or an elite player. And you have to have a really great winning resume. However, one of the episodes we do is, It originally was called Not in the Club. It's now called Icon Enigmas.

But, you know, we sort of floated the idea. Like, if you didn't win a championship, are you still in the club? I mean, my answer is, yes. How do you leave Charles Barkley out of any club? Regardless, you know, and he was a great player. Today's young people don't understand. Like, he was a really great player. He was an MVP.

Carl Malone. We could list all the players. Reggie Miller, they never won a championship. You know, Chris Paul is still in that group. So it's just not as simple. is that. I guess the way we kind of looked at it was, what kind of impact have you had off the court? Now, not everybody has, but that was something we were interested in. If you're Wilp or Russell, you had social impact. You know, they're the OGs of the icons club, especially Russell was a social

activist right from the beginning, and it cost those guys, you know. Now, if you're a social activist today, you're celebrated and you get to host the espies, you know? Right. So that's part of the evolution, isn't it? The price the guys before you paid. So I think I always tell everybody, if you want to be in the icons club, you got to be a great player, really helps if you win a championship, really would recommend you win an MVP, but you don't necessarily have to. It would be great if you had something on your resume beside your basketball prowess, if you had made it impact in the community in some way. And then there's this really funny thing about just people have to like you. Because the world is a

popularity contest. I wish it wasn't because we were all in the seventh grade once and it really sucked, right? If the wrong person didn't like you. But the truth of the matter is, the world is a popularity contest in some ways. And so the players that people really love because of their personality or because of the way they present themselves or because, you know, they were like Jordan and they could fly or for whatever reason. That seems to play a part in your standing in this club. And then the final thing is, you have to want to be in the club, okay? Like Tim Duncan, Tim Duncan, doesn't want to be in the club. Tim Duncan, thanks, but no.

Car Malone, I'm hunting. See you later. Not interested. But, you know, Tim Duncan to me is the epitome of the guy that doesn't want to be in the club. Because I remember talking to Mike Boodenholzer once about Tim. He was saying, yeah, we, like, we didn't even use him right. Because think about the Spurs, this 15-year-long dynasty, and how they reinvented themselves every couple of years from, you know, a double low post team with David Robinson and Tim Duncan.

And then they became, you know, really the five seconds or less team that passed the ball, pick and roll team. And you had this dominant seven foot power forward, arguably the best power forward of all time, who didn't care about shots or minutes or accolades. And so he was the perfect star to go along with Greg Popovich, who doesn't really care about any of that either. And so Tim Duncan retired and he gave it a go, right? He was on pop staff for a year. But it just wasn't his thing, you know. He just wants to be with his family and to be left alone. So even though Tim Duncan should be seated at the right hand of Jordan and LeBron and

Kareem and all these other guys, you don't want to be in the club. So if, you know, if you get the invitation, it's returned to sender, then you're not in the club, man. You didn't fill out the application. respect you know there's this thing that you hear when you're just an NBA fan about this idea that the NBA is a family and I think that it kind of reads like marketing jargon or it's just the kind of feel good thing that maybe the league puts forward to make people think that like there's something beyond sports happening here and I will say that for everything that I'm cynical about with

the NBA like in my you know really surface level involvement with the league as a media member when you go to an all-star weekend or when you go to a playoff series or when you go to anything where there's a congregation of people from around the league from different teams from the league office from scouts to front office people to coaches or whatever, it's real.

Like you really do find out that there is almost this secret society of people working in and around basketball. So I guess my question is really, is this idea of an icons club that there is this kind of VIP area of the week? you can see it when you watch footage from All-Star Games and guys are judging dunk contests or whatever.

But how aware are the players and the people around the league of this thing? Well, I think it's interesting because one of the things I asked a lot of the other players, I mean, we talked to Durant and Steph Curry and D. Wade and Chris Paul. So guys that are, you know, some of them still playing or recent guys. And I remember asking Curry in particular, like, when did you know you were in the club? Like, when did it happen? And, you know, you guys remember that great game he had at Madison Square Garden. they lost, but he went crazy, and Walt Frazier's coming up to him after the game.

You know, Jason Kidd's coming up to him after the game. And he was talking about how, so there's a moment of validation a lot of the time for these guys. Like for Jordan, it's, he scores 63 on the Celtics and Bird says that's God desires as Michael Jordan. That's an obvious one. But he said, like, then you have to sort of back it up. So sometimes you're, the club is looking you over, but they're just not sure yet if you're coming in because if you're in the club, you're doing this consistently. You know, you're not doing this one time.

You're not a one-time all-star. So I think the thing that I found the most interesting was, I think this project started out as one thing. And then as I did the reporting, it was clear to me that there was this whole notion of paying it forward. So Bill Russell, when Julius Zervin was 19 years old, and he's at UMass, Bill Russell goes to visit him. And Bill Russell takes him out for like three hours.

and they're talking about everything. They're not talking so much about basketball. They're talking about academics. They're talking about business. They're talking about racial justice. They're talking about social justice. They're talking about all sorts of things. And at the end of that conversation, when Russell leaves,

he hands Julius Irvin a piece of paper with his phone number on it and says, you know, if you ever need anything, call. And Julius did because at 19, he hadn't been in the league yet. Then he gets into the league and he has questions. So when Michael Jordan's, you know, a 20-year-old, and he runs across Julius Irvin, who is the first really successful black pitchman, right? Julius is in the movie, the fish that say Pittsburgh. He's not just hawking Coca-Cola.

He owns one of the bottling plants. Yeah. You know, this guy's got it. He's taking this a step further, especially for a black businessman, because Madison Avenue in the beginning wanted no part of black athletes. They didn't think they could sell their products for them. And Dr. Jase was the first one that kind of started to move that needle. So he meets a young Michael Jordan, and he says to him,

hey, if you ever need anything, just call. Only Jordan doesn't because Jordan is different. I don't want to bother him. And you know what, this is a solo journey, man. I got to do this on my own, you know. So to me, that was the common thread through so many of these great players who Bill Russell reached out to. Bill Russell is like incredible.

He and Dr. Jay to me are the two most unbelievable people because they reached out to everyone. They were there to help everyone. And if I had to say who's the most beloved player, in NBA history, I'm going to say Dr. Jay just based on my reporting because everybody loves that guy because of the way he handled himself both on and off the floor, because of how much he gave himself to young players if they had any questions and this idea of, you know, if you need anything, give me a call. Interestingly, Michael Jordan met a young LeBron. James and said to him, here's my number. If you need anything, just call. And guess what? LeBron never did.

But we can't hold that against him. He's probably more like Jordan than he is, Dr. Jay, yeah? Do you hear stories about LeBron handing his number to people? Yes. Well, not so much handing his number, but, you know, LeBron and Steph Curry to me have one of the coolest rivalries I've ever seen because they're just so diametrically opposed. And yet they meet each other four years in a row in the NBA finals. But long before that, when Curry's this little baby-faced shooter at Davidson, LeBron James is sitting courtside coming to his games and talking to him after the game. It's giving him advice. So I think LeBron does it a little differently, but I think he's pretty magnanimous when it comes to young talent. And Steph Curry, I can tell you, is now paying it

forward. I said to him, you know, who are you looking at and saying, hey, if I can ever help you? And he said, after they played the Cleveland Cavaliers, he sent a ball boy into the Cavs locker room with this number for Darius Garland and said, hit me up if you feel like it. And Darius Garland did. I mean, Darius Garland's going to be a good one. Yeah, this whole series, it seems like, if you want to boil it down, it seems like it's really just about lineage and the things that really only can be passed down by these particular people. They're the only people that have been in the room. And a lot of the stuff that you talked about right now, that's in the second episode, which I think majority time we're going to be talking about today. And his willingness was really

interesting to me, but also just the fact that a lot of things that he impacted, you can kind of draw direct through lines now to where the modern NBA is. And I didn't really know any of that stuff, or I didn't necessarily make the connections that you're making with this series. Before you went in, did you see the kind of like the invisible impact that those kind of bridge years had between the 70s and, you know, Magic and Larry taking over? Well, you know, I was around Dr. Jay a very little bit because I really didn't start covering the NBA in earnest till the mid-80s. As a reporter, and certainly not as a fan or as a resident of Boston, but I missed the great Sixers Celtics rivalry,

which was, you know, always, I think it's lost in the sauce because Lakers Celtics just overtook everything and it was hard, you know. But I would argue that the Sixers Celtics in some ways was even more heated because they played each other four times a year because they were playing each other, not just for the division championship, but for the conference championship. championship and all those things. So Dr. Jay to me is, I really wanted to include him in this. I just think he's a little overlooked. You know, before Dr. Jay, there was Connie Hawkins, but most people have never heard of Connie Hawkins

because he was involved in a point shaving scandal that's still murky to this day on the details, but he pretty much lost his career to it. He was blackballed by the NBA, which was absurd, but that's a story for another day. But, you know, Connie Hawkins could fly the way Dr. Jay could. But Dr. Jay was, you know, with the Afro and the knee bands and the whole business in the ABA was this incredible phenomenon. Like, no one had ever played like this. We'd never seen anything like this. And, you know, one of the people I interviewed was Doug Collins, who was the number one pick of the Sixers and went up to Cutchers and the Catskills, which is where all the players used to play in the summer and they would work as bellboys.

Can you imagine Wilts Chamberlain as your bellboy? I always love that. That's like something to think about. I like the Coutures was like the Vegas of the 70s. Yeah. for like they kind of had to work and so anyway you know Doug Collins shows up there and he's thinking I'm the one pick like I'm good man I'm gonna fit in with this crew and then you know Dr. Jay comes out he's palming two balls and he dunks one and then dunks the other and then Doug Collins goes oh shit

because no one had ever seen anything like Dr. Jay and you know he played in the ABA for those few years and they weren't on television very much and we didn't have much of a concept of what was going on actually came to the NBA. And it's just so funny, the lens through we view everything, because if you were a huge ABA fan, you knew that he was a champion. It had already won three championships. But then the narrative for poor Julius when he gets to the NBA is like, well, can this guy ever win? Well, I just won three over here. Yeah, but are you ever going to win here? You know, it's so it's funny how much emphasis we put on that, how players' legacies are determined by how much they won or how much they lost. Yeah, it's interesting.

to hear you talk about, I'm curious with as a fan because basically like my fandom starts with Barclay as a Philadelphia and then kind of like really like the peak of it is is Iverson. Right. And he means so much to me personally as like a kind of like the way he changed the way I looked at the

world even. But with Doc it's like he, the Philly is I think the way like I don't know maybe Jerry West is to L.A. Where it's like he's almost a mythological figure. But what's so cool about this episode that you did is you get into some of the nitty-gritty stuff between, you know, his transition from the ABA to the NBA to the NBA, but the amount of control he started to take over his career. And sometimes I think it's easy to slip into,

like, NBA history starts with the decision, you know? But it's interesting to go back. You have a line when you're talking about, like, the moment immediately before Moses Malone gets to the Sixers. Right. And you kind of make it sound like Doc was getting a little antsy. Like he was just a little frustrated. They were losing a bird pretty consistently. They were blowing these leads in the playoffs. How much control did Irving have over who he played for and how those teams were built? Well, a lot less control once he got to the NBA, Chris. I mean, so think about it, right? So in the ABA, I mean, one of my favorite lines in this whole series is ML Carr saying,

the NBA didn't want the ABA. All they really wanted was Dr. Jay, which is probably oversimplifying it. But he was the main reason they were interested in that merger. So Dr. Jay comes in with all this swagger, as we talk about in the episode with Dr. Jay, that he's going to a New York market, so they have to pay a certain amount of money to New York. There's all these fees involved. And everyone's like, this is too much money. Like, I don't think we could do this. And the Sixers have a new owner, and he doesn't really know anything about basketball.

Pat Williams, who most people, I think, young people today know is the guy that was the Orlando Magic GM that drafted Shaq and Penny and all that. And he finds out like that maybe Dr. Jay's available. and he's going to this owner that doesn't really know anything. And he's like, so who is this Julia serving? And he's like, well, he's like the Babe Ruth of basketball. So the guy goes, well, should we get him? And Palo Lips is like, well, yeah, that would be really good. It, you know, it changed everything.

But that's the kind of power of Dr. J had. You know, now once you got to the league and the Sixers are playing in the NBA, you have a GM and your coach. And so many of the players, about like Akim Olajuwon talked about it. You know, when he's playing for the Rockets in the 90s, he's like, if you were a franchise player, you were grateful. They made you a franchise player. And you took the money and then you took the responsibility and you left the rest of it up to the coaches and the GMs. Well, clearly, that's not how it goes today. Was there ever an attempt

by the NBA to try to get Dr. Jay to cross oversides without having to bring in everybody else? No, I don't think so. I don't think that could have worked, you know, because there was millions and millions of dollars involved. There were other players, too. You know, there were other guys, George McGinnis. Rick Barry member played at the ABA. You know, there was some really, really fine players. But Dr. Jay was the transcendent one.

And, you know, the Pacers of the ABA, they were a very successful team. They were a good team, and they drew well. And so those were the kind of things. Remember, the NBA, it's not like they're swimming in millions at this point. You know, in 80, the championships on tape delay. So it's not like the NBA.

It's like, oh, we don't need you because we're doing great over here. I mean, not really, you know? Yeah, it seems like the ABA just hit a critical mass where they were starting to be able to, you know, cut into the NBA's bottom line. And one thing that was really interesting to me listening to it was it seems like as the ABA got more popular and just like, you know, the impact of a guy like Dr. Jay, the fact that he was dunking and then they banned the dunk for reasons that were, you know, unofficially racist, but, you know, definitely racist.

And a lot of those policies, it seems like were there. to keep the NBA looking a certain way. And it was very provincial, and it seemed a little bit boring. And it seems like the ABA was starting to get to this place where maybe they were going to draw a contrast that would have been a little bit too strong for the NBA to compete against. Yeah, but see, the problem with that is, everything you're saying is true,

but they had no television contracts. And all the money was in TV. Like the ABA needed the exposure. I would argue that the ABA was really formed all along. to make the NBA pay their players more money and make the game more exciting. So they're like the third party in an election system. It's like, you know, just pushing. No, I kind of, I really do feel that way.

I really, I don't think the ABA was ever going to survive. You know, when you have to do haltertop night at halftime, I don't like your chances. Yeah, that's on the higher end of halftime entertainment is halter top. They had cow milking. They did all sorts of really, read Terry Pluto's book on the ABA. It's just phenomenal. So the ABA's existence was really to just be a thorn in the NBA side, I think. I mean, that was really probably its purpose.

And the NBA should thank the ABA because, you know, without it, you know, the three-point shot doesn't come to the NBA till 1979. But it was in the ABA long before that. Yeah. I mean, like where's basketball without the dunk, right? Well, they were dunking in the NBA. The colleges outlawed the dunk because Kareem was destroying everybody with it. So the NBA, you could dunk. But the truth of the matter was, you know, most of the NBA players in the very early years were big white stout guys in the post who really were pretty floorbound.

Another one of my favorite parts of the series is when Satj Sanders is talking about Bill Russell coming into the league. And these guys are throwing up these sweeping hook shots. And he's blocking their shot not as before they shoot it after the ball is in the air. Like, do you know how hard that is? Like, he's blocking shots after they leave their hands. And, you know, Satch in this series contends that some of the old-time low-post centers actually retired after a year or two because they were so frustrated by Russell blocking every single shot they took.

I mean, that's pretty incredible. But I thought that the idea of Irving as like a bridge, like as like this person who connects the 70s to the 80s who connects the ABA to the NBA, who in a lot of ways introduces a lot of playground basketball aesthetics to organize basketball, like on a mass level, was really cool. Do you think that Irving himself was aware of that job that he was performing or the role that he performed? I think so. You know, we tell the story.

He's in high school and they outlaw the dunk and they warn him. If you dunk, even in warm-ups, you're getting a technical, you know, it's going to cost your team a point. And he's like, okay. and he went out and dunked him warmups anyway because it was intimidating because he didn't think it was right. So yeah, I do think that. And he talked a lot himself about, you know,

like so many of these guys going to Rucker Park and playing there and watching what those guys are doing and the creativity and the flow and the above the rim and the fancy passing. And I think he's looking at and saying, this is beautiful basketball. Why aren't we doing this? So, yeah, I think it was a very conscious effort.

And then you get his signature play, the reverse layup against the lake. that was awesome. That doesn't happen unless he's, you know, cutting his teeth at Rucker Park the whole time, right? That's exactly right. And, you know,

he was saying they'd watch playground basketball and then they go to practice and their coaches would be like, not here. Uh-uh. Nope. Nope, nope, nope,

not doing that here. That was a really interesting thing, too. I think it was Rick Berry that mentioned it that once the coaches started getting the big contracts, they started kind of, you know, getting their fingers all over the game, not really letting the players just play.

Exactly. I wonder if Irving has the most signature plays of any great NBA player. Yeah, rock the cray. cradle, yeah. Foul line dunk. Hmm, I'd have to eliminate on that. No, Jackie, you have to give me your top five all-time signature plates. How are you not ready for this? I don't know. I just, you know, I've been kind of busy. Yeah, I think you're right, Chris, because it was a pretty much a blank

canvas in many ways. Yeah. Because Kareem, you know, the skyhook to me is still the most iconic shot in basketball. And he did do other things. But no, yeah, I think I'm going to give you that. I mean, because, you know, like there's Dirk's one-footed, you know, fade away. Like there's ones that come to mind. You know, the magic no looks. Yep. Yeah. It's almost funny.

It's like when I look back, I have like vague recollections, maybe more of the celebration or the vibe in the city back then, because I would have been like eight or something, you know, when he was sort of still in his peak. So I had like more of a recollection of what it felt like to be a Sixers fan than watching any particular games back then. And then there is this transition from he and Moses Malone's, team to that Barclay team.

Right. It's like, you know, in that sense, I thought it was a really interesting case study of the icons club because like it's not often that it happens, that kind of thing happens on the same franchise. And for the Sixers, it happens several times. I mean, in some ways you could argue, I mean, Barclay's gone by the time Iverson arrives in town. Right.

But in some ways, like the Sixers have had this sort of changeover several times in the last couple of decades. Yeah. And they're fortunate because a lot of franchises don't even have one. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, and I thought Barkley was so funny talking about showing up in Philadelphia and, you know, Julius is there and he's like, oh man, ditch the warm-up suits, will you? Those are just awful. And they took him shopping. Him and Moses took him shopping. And he went in the store

and they spent, you know, like $30,000 on suits for him. And he called his grandma who raised him. You know, Charles's dad, I'm on. Neither one of them were really around when he was growing up. And he's like, I just spent like $30,000 on suits. she's like, baby, that's more than I've made in the last two years. You know, like it was just mind-blowing to them. But Charles, I think he really appreciated Dr. Jay. But Moses was really his mentor. You know, Moses is the one that told him, you're fat, you're out of shape.

And Barclay's looking at Moses and he's like, I'm not fat, man. I'm chiseled and you're neither. And Dr. Jay, I think you guys, if you're from Philly, Chris, you know this. You know, he was really good to Iverson, too. I mean, Iverson, as you know, had a lot of trials or tribulations. It's unfortunately, IRISA does not play a big role in our series. He could, but, you know, like, I have to stress this, that this is not a history of the NBA, what we're doing. It's this icons club kind of deal.

And Iverson's definitely an icon. No question about that. I just think that he was kind of like this burst. It was like this meteor that, like, exploded in the sky. And then really didn't even probably have a chance to pass it on. But I will tell you this. Iverson's one of those guys when you, you know, you start talking about. him around young players, their eyes start going like, oh, because that's like what happens

with Kobe. That's what happens with LeBron, of course, Jordan for sure. And Iverson did have that effect on very, very young players. He and Irving still have such like a huge presence in Philly. It's interesting when you were talking about that Steph game at MSG. Just the other week when the Nets came to Philadelphia for a night that will not be remembered very warmly in Philadelphia history. It's like, and Irving and AI were there that night. And Irving rang the bell before the game. And it was sort of supposed to be this coronation for Hardin arriving in Philly, but instead it winds up being this kind of like Durant night.

And Durant has this like moment where he dunks like early on in the game and basically starts shouting over towards Irving and Iverson about like, I'm the show tonight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is my night. And I kind of like how sometimes it's not always an invitation-based business. It's like also sometimes you go out and take it, you know? Right. Well, certainly Durant did that.

You know, Steve Kerr says it comes in later episodes that Durant in his mind when he talks to all these grades, because that's what Steve Kurt does, of course, that the one they're all the most enamored with is Kevin Durant. Because as Steve Kerr says, he's probably the most gifted of them all. Jackie, were there certain players in the icons club or knocking on the door of the icons club? Like there's some guys, like you said, Tim Duncan, who don't care about what anybody thinks, right? And then there's the other end of that spectrum is caring what everybody thinks.

But when you mentioned Steph, it made me think about, you know, I think he's kind of in this zone where he doesn't necessarily, you know, care too much. But at the same time, he grew up around the NBA and he has a great respect for the grades. And I think he was knocking on that door and he wanted to get into the club. Like, who are the players that they might not care, like, you know, your average fan or even a coach? what they think about their game, but did seem to care what the other grades thought. I think that's most of them, honestly. And, you know, to me, Steph Curry is inside the club, has his own wing because he revolutionized

the game with the way he shot the ball. It turned the game upside down. I don't think you can overstay how much Steph Curry has changed the game of basketball. So he's got his own little wing over there. But I guess with Dwight Howard, I'll use it in his example. I hate to pick on Dwight Howard. but, you know, Dwight Howard came up and Shaq was his idol. And so he named himself Superman.

And, you know, he just never got there. Now, I think he's a Hall of Famer. He belongs in the Hall of Fame. Again, people have forgotten, right? We have such short memories of how dominant Dwight Howard was. But he never reached that iconic status. I think he desperately wanted to. I don't think he had the right temperament for it.

I don't think he had the right personality for it. You know, I always say you can't fool the players and you never seem to have the relationship with players, you know, the respect or even the affection that you need to have people galvanize around you. Like one of the great joys for me has been watching Janice, Santa Tocompo grow up right before our eyes. And he just seems to me like the best teammate. They all love him. They follow him. They believe in him. We have a nice little vignette in this series about Janus and it has to do with when they just they're voting whether to play you know after Jacob Blake gets shot in the back you know George Hill is obviously visibly distraught we saw that as

you know he showed that to us the day before and Sterling Brown says I'm going to stand by George Hill and we're not playing tonight and you know this think about that moment like those two guys they're not stars they're not all stars and Janice immediately jumps up immediately and says I stand with them I'm not playing either And Sterling Brown says, you know, that's what leaders do. Because he said, if Janus hadn't done that, who knows where that was going? The minute Janus did that, it was unanimous. They're not playing.

And that's what leaders do. It's over. So it's been fun for me anyway to watch Janus develop both on the court, but also off the court. Remember, too, he was born in Greece. He didn't grow up in America as a young black person. So he's probably experienced his own set of things in Greece. But he understood the importance of it. He had a little brother who was going to school.

Milwaukee, not far from the Kenosha. So leadership, we were talking before about what gets you in the club. Leadership's a big one. I should have mentioned that. That's a pretty big one. I have to indulge my childhood fan here and ask another Dwight Howard question. So, like, you know, looking at him in, you know, probably 2009, 2010, I thought the year that Derek Rose won MVP probably should have been Dwight Howard.

He's a defensive player of the year. And, you know, like there were times that his impact was on the level of somebody like LeBron. Like, those magic teams ran around him. They were fantastic. Even then, was there. sense of like, oh, like, I don't know, like, this guy really one of us? Or did that kind of come later on? I mean, I think we'd probably have to ask Dwight, but my recollection was that he just was a guy that was always a little bit on the periphery with his teammates as much, like, I don't

think a lot of the players don't care at all about us. And you know what? The way the world is going, they probably don't have to care about us much longer because they're controlling their own narrative anyway and they're starting their own production companies. And that's a whole other podcast for a whole other day. I remember I did an interview with Dwight once and he was talking about he'd go he'd do workouts and he'd hit like 40 15 footers in a row and I'm like why don't you take him in a game because he had beautiful form you know and he's like yeah but what if I miss and I remember thinking good God yeah you're like a however many time all-star you're worried about missing you know that to me was very telling he used to make all his free throws in practice too

Jared, I have an answer for your question, but it's not because I'm a great reporter. It's just because I watch too much YouTube. But Jalen Rose actually just went on Matt Barnes's show, speaking Jackie, people having their own production companies and stuff. But they were talking and Jalen told a story about when Dwight got traded to the Lakers in 2012. Jalen was with Kobe at like a camp somewhere. And this was like in July. And Dwight called Kobe as the trade was sort of being announced.

And his first bunch of questions were all like, do you know, movie producer kind of, you know, these sort of like lifestyle oriented questions. And according to Jalen, Kobe literally hung the phone up and was like, this shit ain't going to work. And that was as Dwight was getting traded. Right. The Lakers came to Boston. I would try not to do it every year, but probably every other year, I'd sit down with Kobe because we got along pretty well. And one of the times, and you guys can go back and look, I don't remember the year, but you could

probably find it. He just sat down and just ripped the hell out of Dwight Howard all on the record. I was like sitting there going, okay, this is going to work. You know, I mean, you know this thing is on, right? Oh, he always knew what it was on. Yeah, so that's what I mean. And like, it's funny, like one of the other guys that I look at and, you know, the icon enigmas in that chapter that we talk about is Isaiah Thomas, who is clearly a half per first

ballot, Hall of Famer, one of the greatest point guards of all time. And just his peers despised him. not his teammates, the people he played against. People did not like him. So when it came time to be in the dream team club, there's no room for a guy that clearly belonged on that team. The stuff about the Boston Philly rivalry was really awesome just because obviously the NBA was not constantly on television even back then.

And those regional divisional rivalries are something that's kind of faded away. Obviously they've de-emphasized the importance of like, you know, winning your division necessarily, but also I think in general, one of the consequences of player movement is that you just don't see teams made up of the same players, taking four, five shots at each other in playoffs over the years. I mean, like, that was one, what was so cool, I think, in the beginning of the LeBron Heat teams was Indiana just psychologically and personnel-wise, like, psyching themselves up to go up against Miami every season. And I was wondering whether or not going back through NBA history the way you're doing with

this pod. Like if there's things like that, maybe they make you nostalgic or that you miss about the contemporary game, but those kinds of, whether it's a rivalry, whether it's a specific player on player rivalry, because the Doc Bird stuff is so fascinating. Well, it was just so physical. The game was so physical. I mean, really physical. And, you know, they got rid of it with the hand checking. You know, it was no coincidence that the year after they changed the hand checking rule, Iverson won the scoring championship. That's not a coincidence. They wanted the game out from in the trenches back out on the perimeter. They wanted guards to be more involved.

That was by design. The Philadelphia and me wants to point out that Alan Iverson still had to drive the lane against Anthony Mason and get like shoulders thrown into his collarbone. Speak your truth, Chris. You want to talk about why players love Iverson. That's why, right? Because he was so tough. He didn't fear anyone.

The same reason everybody loved Kobe. Bring it at me, MF, or I don't care. I'll take you on. I mean, I think that's, that level of whether it's mental or physical toughness always resonates with players. So, you know, I don't like to be one of those people that's like, well, in the good old days, you know, they played, it was, they were tougher, they were better. I don't really go there. But the thing that surprised me about the Dr. Jay episode was, you know, very famously, Dr. Jay and Larry got into that scuffle, you know, the famous picture of Dr. Jay with his arms around Larry's neck.

And Larry never talks about this. I mean, never. I mean, I know Larry pretty well, and he never talks about it. And now I kind of understand why. So, you know, he was feeling it. He was in the middle of an MVP here. Dr. Jay is, you know, on the other side of it.

He's still great player. But Bird is destroying him and is just talking trash, like to the point where everybody on the court is uncomfortable, to the point where his own teammate, Robert Parrish is like, hey man, you're crossing the line, you know? Yeah. And so for those who are too young to know what I'm talking about, birds on, you know, on this unbelievable tear, I forget how many points he had. He's just destroying him and the Sixers. Then they, you know, they're pushing, they're shoving. That was kind of common in those days. And Dr. Jay thinks that Larry's going to take a swing at him. So he goes to grab him and he puts his hands around his throat. And now it's like a full ball that's going to break out. Moses is holding Anne Barclay, I think, or holding Larry, so Dr. Jay can get like a free shot in. And Robert Parrish, seven foot tall, Robert Parrish, Larry Bird's teammates, whom he won three

championships with, isn't helping. And he says in this pod, which I'd never heard him say before, he deserved that whoopin. What he did was over the line. There's a certain decorum involved with being an icon, right? There's a certain way you treat someone who is an icon, and you cross the line. So if I thought you were really going to get hurt, I might have jumped in, but I decided, I'm going to let you take this weapon. So that was kind of stunning to me. I didn't, you know, I didn't know that's what Robert was thinking. Jackie, one thing I wanted to ask you about that I feel like definitely has ramifications for the current moment was the holdout. I didn't know about this, but, you know, like you were saying earlier in the podcast, it was going to cost a lot of money to get Dr. J. and, you know, the ABA merger in general.

Dr. Jay held out until the Sixers stepped in and paid him what he wanted to be paid. At that time, like, what was, you know, the public's reaction to that? What was the player's reaction to that? Because, like, you know, looking at it, it's like they brought this guy in. Well, here's the thing, Sarah, like nobody was paying attention. That was the problem, right? So you're talking late 70s, right? And the ABA is kind of on its way out.

And the NBA, no one's really paying that close attention. If it happened now, it would be, well, it would be, it would be Paul George, right, who's done it twice. It would be one of these guys that happens all the time now. But no, that was groundbreaking at the time. Like, what do you mean you're not going to show up? What are you talking about? Like, yeah, like, wait, who does that, you know? We just merge these leagues for you.

And he had all the leverage. And what we're trying to do, right, is stake these points for you of the evolution of how these players have evolved into power. I mean, all the way up to today where LeBron James is telling his owners, well, here's how many years I'm going to play, and here's who you're going to have to get me or I'm not staying. Like, that never happened back in the 70s and 80s. Like, never. Now, LeBron, where does that power come from? We can go all the way back to Oscar Robertson filing a suit so free agency exists. You know, Spencer Hayward, his lawsuit. And then Michael Jordan becoming a brand in a way that, I mean, just shattered the mold in terms of how much money a player could make off the court. And then we keep going and

you just keep falling. Think about Kobe's power play. Okay. He's playing an all-MBA level, but Shaq's still on the team. He wants Shaq gone. He wants Phil gone. And by God, they listen to him. And one of the greatest coaches in history, one of the greatest centers of all time, are sent packing so they can pay Kobe. A really bad contract, well, not that one. The next one in 2013 was. pretty bad. The lifetime contract was the tough one. But you know what? It's interesting that lifetime contract. I was asking Brian Shaw about this because, of course, he was a good friend of Shacks and who played with Kobe too. He knew them both very well. You know, at the time, he thought what the rest of us thought like, my God, what a bloated contract. How stupid you've hamstrung your future.

You know, and remember, Dwight Howard was so upset over his relationship with Kobe. He left. They got nothing for him. But the point Brian Shaw made was, and he really noticed it after after Kobe died, but even in like the final year of Kobe, when all these people were flying in from Japan and Germany and Africa to come see Kobe play. And then, of course, when he passed, the outpouring from not just the ex-players, but from people all over the world, it occurred to Brian Schaul. You know, that contract was really not so bad after all. This guy was a phenomenon. He was a supernova in ways that you can count on one hand how many players were. And by wearing that Lakers jersey. He was probably worth every penny of that contract. Oh, yeah. Go to any Lakers game now.

The jersey you see the most is Kobe's. You know, there are people who are Kobe fans, not Lakers fans, you know. Jackie, have you been watching winning time? I haven't watched it yet because I'm so busy trying to finish this darn thing. I can't wait to see it because it's an era that I grew up in, literally, as a person and as a journalist. And Adam McKay is just brilliant. I wonder if you will find it like endlessly entertaining or endlessly maddening. I think it's going to be one or the other. I found it to be a little bit of both. They didn't have to do Jerry West like that. Yeah, that's unfortunate, unnecessary too, probably. I'm looking forward to, but I want to do it.

I want to be unencumbered. I want to sit down and just not have anything else on my mind. Maybe that'll never happen in my lifetime, but I'm very hopeful someday I can sit down and do that. Before I let you go, I wanted to ask you one more question. This is probably a little bit generally speaking, but I was curious whether working on this show for the last however long, like for a while now. Way too long.

Way too long. If it's changed the way. you're watching basketball on a night-to-night basis. Or even reading the game, like, when you see storylines kind of emerging. Like, for instance, regardless of what he's standing for, I would say, like, Kyrie is someone who I think is very influential on younger players, is very, very, very, very powerful as, like, a fan favorite. And he's doing things where he's kind of marching to the beat of his own drum and is, like,

I'm going to do this. Now, I don't agree with what Kyrie is necessarily trying to. trying to accomplish. But I was curious whether or not watching contemporary hoops either on the quarter off the court has been kind of colored for you by going back over the years and looking at these sort of macro trends in the league. Well, it's interesting, Chris, because one of the tenets of this series, one of the pieces of it in our Jordan episode is Craig Hodges, his teammate, who at that time was a social activist, a very vocal one, a decent NBA player, good three-point shooter, not a star. And he was urging Michael Jordan to, you know, dump Nike and hire people from the

Chicago minority communities and design his own shoe and support the minority communities in Chicago. And, you know, right when Rodney King was beaten by police, that was the year that the Lakers and the Bulls were playing in the finals. And Craig Hodges went to both Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan and said, we should boycott this game. We should boycott this game to protest police brutality. We got to do it. And they both looked at him like he had 12 heads and they're like, screw, what are you nuts? We're not doing that. Now, 20 some odd years later, that's exactly what happened. But back then, Craig Hodges considered this kind of like fringe guy that was a little off his rocker. And now, you know, Sterling Brown and George Hill stand up and say that. And yeah, it says, sure. Yeah.

Yeah, and they're allotted as they should be, in my opinion, as very honorable people. So one of the things I look at, like, so Ennis Freedom, everybody thinks he's crazy too, right? Ennis, he talks too much, he's self-important, he's a self-promoter. All those things are true about Ennis. But he also has a really good point for the things he's talking about, which is these people who wear Nike shoes and LeBron and Clay Thompson and Steph Curry and all these people that talk about Black Lives Matter, how can you do that with a straight face

when you don't care about the people of Hong Kong and you don't care about the people of Ukraine or whatever it is. And so I think right now, everyone's looking at it and his freedom and saying, oh, that he's a fringe guy. He's crazy. I wonder if 20 years from now

we're going to say, well, yeah, that dude is right. So that's the best perspective I can give you. Like, I'm looking at everything differently now. Because things that we think are like, oh, he's a little off. I'm, you know, I've learned through history now, maybe, but they, they kind of have a point. I mean, Craig Hodges, people should apologize to Craig Hodges. You know, he never played another game in the league after he said some of those things.

The Bulls didn't, you know, the Bulls waived him. He was never picked up by anybody else. His career was over. Do you think also that sometimes there's like situations where a player does kind of step into the fray like that? And then you kind of get people talking more about their negative qualities, whereas, like, you know, somebody else might also share those qualities as well, but isn't stepping into anything. So no one really feels incentivized to say anything negative about them or, you know, into the media or anything, yeah. Right. And, you know, and like LeBron's an easy target. I mean, LeBron has done so

much for the Black Lives Matter movement. I mean, he's the king of that. He's been a great social justice advocate for the, for Black Americans. So that's why he's the target. So, right, because with great power comes great responsibility and also comes great scrutiny. And that's just like no one else was asking, hey, who are you going to support in the next election and why don't you speak out against this guy who's running for election? Only Jordan. You know, because Jordan was on top. That's just how it works. And how you manage that or how you handle that, I mean, it's just part of the burden of being great. It's everybody thinks being the best is easy. It's just not because you get all the glory when you win.

but you get all the blame when you lose. Ask all your buddies in Philly, Chris. Ask them beat how that feels, you know? Seriously, it's like, you know, you get all the credit when you win. But if you don't win, all the blame, you know, rains down on your head. That's what happened to Barclay. I mean, we can name all the people. There's a million of them.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like the love is unlike anything and the criticism and the hatred is unlike anything. It's like, and it can happen to the same half of a game. Jackie, thank you so much for spending time with us today. Thanks for having me, guys. You know,