When it comes to TNT’s “Inside the NBA” studio show there is rarely a discouraging word, especially down the stretch of its 36-year run under the Turner banner.
The crew is being gifted with a well-deserved victory lap rolled into a thanks-for-the-memories farewell.
Yet that doesn’t mean the show, fueled by Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, and Charles Barkley, is currently acting in the viewers best interests.
Like during the Game 4 Eastern Conference Final pregame show. OG Anunoby appeared for a live courtside interview. Instead of completing the brief chat, Smith took it upon himself to try and cut the spot short.
“Well OG, the last guy who came up here, Mitchell Robinson, went bananas when he came up here and spoke to us,” Smith said. “Hopefully it’s happening the same thing, and you know, get ready for the game. It’s tough to ask questions at this time so I’m going to pass it on to Chuck.”
What? Does Smith have the latitude to bail out of an interview? Does the same freedom exist with the gambling ads he participates in?
Barkley and Johnson stuck with the interview, asking an expressionless Anunoby a few questions before closing the interview. But Smith, not letting go of his point, asked Barkley: “Could you do an interview before a game like that?”
“Hell no,” Barkley said.
Said Smith: “I just don’t want to be the guy who messes his head up. That is a tough time to do an interview.”
O’Neal, agreeing with Barkley, said he wouldn’t do a pregame discussion during his playing days either. Nonetheless, Johnson explained how some players don’t mind doing the interviews.
What was not mentioned is the fact that viewers, who the TNT show and others like it, are supposed to be produced for, might want to see a player being interviewed prior to a big game.
They might want to see how he’s handling the pressure. Or his on-air demeanor prior to a big game.
Apparently, even with all the TV experience, the cast of the TNT show doesn’t recognize that. Johnson came about as close to saying it with his brief soliloquy. Yet even he didn’t factor viewer desires into the equation.
Look, no one forced Anunoby to do the spot. He could have declined. But once he came on the show, Smith should have not have used his time to reveal the “evils” of pregame player access.
On this occasion, that wasn’t his job.
KENDRICK PERKINS’ WACKY INSIGHTS
As questions go, this was a sharp one.
The interrogator was Stephen A. Smith. The recipient, Kendrick Perkins. Smith asked: “Must you make everything complicated?”
Perkins had said a lot about the criteria for being “the face of the NBA,” including off-court requirements like “being married and having a family.” This was just an example of Perkins taking eyeballs down roads rarely travelled by NBA analysts.
Perkins, who sometimes looks like he’s falling asleep at the microphone, has the rare ability to take a mundane topic and bring it to life with his contrarian takes. Yet he balances the zany stuff out with original insight and sometimes even inside stuff he brings to the microphone.
If anyone wants to anoint him the 2024-25 Most Entertaining NBA analyst they will get no argument from us.
MARK KRIGEL’S BOOK ON MIKE TYSON
Mark Kriegel was entertaining us while spinning tales about Mitch (Blood) Green from the friendly confines of the Daily News official smoking room.
These late 1980’s sessions included stories of fighters, gyms, and a playground basketball player. Kriegel called him “White Jesus.” Unfortunately, WJ didn’t make it into Kriegel’s latest book: “Baddest Man, The Making of Mike Tyson,” which drops June 3.
Green did.
So did everyone else associated with Tyson’s chaotic rise to undisputed heavyweight champion/money making machine. It’s a riveting read albeit filled with sadness. This is a thoroughly researched trip from Tyson’s troubled beginnings in Brownsville to his Catskill alliance with his Svengali, Cus D’Amato, that Kriegel, ESPN’s boxing analyst/ essayist and former Daily News sports scribe, cynically explores.
And it goes all the way to June 27, 1988 when Tyson destroyed Michael Spinks in 91 seconds at Convention Hall in Atlantic City on a star-studded night.
Kriegel also investigates boxing’s money game, the Wild West of sports business, including how shock-haired promoter Don King “acquired” Tyson after his original manager Jim Jacobs died.
By then, money had already changed everything for Tyson.
“Quite suddenly, Tyson had become a prize unlike any the game had ever seen,” Kriegel writes. “So valuable, arousing such greed, such ambition, that he had the unwitting effect of tainting, or further corrupting, everyone and everything around him, including, ultimately himself.”
RICHARD NEER BIDS FAREWELL TO WFAN
Richard Neer, a foundation piece at WFAN (he was on a 28-year run, which began in 1988), announced his own departure during his Saturday soiree last week.
With FAN brass going all in on me-me-me screamers, there wasn’t room for a voice who rocked steady. A guy who was known for being the voice of reason in a world full of Gasbags. There wasn’t room for someone who developed a loyal following through his FAN years and, before that WNEW-FM.
Obviously, FAN Brainiacs did not value continuity — and class. With Neer, and his singular style gone (He hoped to be back as a holiday fill-in) so is a chunk of New York radio history. Saturday mornings won’t be the same.
ESPN SHOULD CONSIDER SELLING KAY’S ANGER
And in a far different part of the sports radio world is this: The most entertaining part of Michael Kay’s 880-ESPN show is when he wigs on those who criticize him on social media.
Kay, who obviously is not looking to be “a voice of reason,” goes so off-the-hook, and becomes so defensive, that his out-of-control shtick should be marketable. So, 880-ESPN suits might want to consider sending some of its dollar-a-holler troops out to sell Kay’s “anger.”
Our recent favorite was Kay, the TV play-by-play voice of the Yankees on YES, referring to a social media detractor, as a “cockroach, mouse, moth.” Trifecta!
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DUDE OF THE WEEK: FOX SPORTS
Their decision to revitalize the Indy 500 with top tier talent and A-list celebrities paid off by demolishing the viewership mark of the past 15 years.
DWEEB OF THE WEEK: STEVE OVERMYER
For engaging in some bad taste. The usually reliable Ch. 2 sports anchor went over-the-top while describing Caitlin Clark trying to sell a foul “like she got hit by a sniper.” Overmyer went overboard trying to make a point.
DOUBLE TALK
What Justin Fields said: “I think the sky’s the limit for this team, this offense. We do have a long way to go.”
What Justin Fields meant to say: “Don’t expect much from us this season.”
