We Get What We Get, And We Dont Get Upset!

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to The Jason Smith Show with Mike
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(00:24):
listening to Fox Sports Radio. Greetings and welcome inside the
Jason Smith Show with my bis friend Mike Harmon live
from the Geico Studios, where we are just gonna get
into it and begin because right now, the New York
Mets have the seventh best odds to win the World Series.

(00:45):
This is very very exciting, Mike Harmon, very very excited
about this, joining this now. Yeah, as of right now,
I mean we haven't seen the adjustment for the Colorado
Rockies just yet. But but for you, it's an exciting moment. Uh.
I know you're gonna quickly drive to the desert to
get some action. Oh, metsio, I'm like, you know, listen

(01:07):
with the news that baseball is back. The agreement has
been agreed upon. The Union Baseball have cleared their final
hurdles to restart the MLB season. We now know everything
that's going to happen. And now that we know everything,
of course, the coronavirus is saying, hey, don't forget don't
forget about us, because on the heels of the big

(01:27):
announcement today, we find out that a couple of Colorado
Rocky players, including Charlie Blackman, test positive for COVID nineteen.
Bob Nightingale had that story. So we get we get
major League Baseball is coming back, and COVID nineteen says,
hang on a second, I got something to say about this,
But as it is, it's the best We've been telling
you the best way to deal with everything going on

(01:50):
with sports returning the best thing because I understand it's
all boy. We get this great news, and now we're
still wondering the other shoe was gonna drop. What's gonna
happen Now the Nuggets in Nicola, Kitch is test positive
for coronavirus and he's got to come back to the
United States and what does this mean for him? And
when the Nuggets want to restart. We're seeing Phillies players
they've had now what eleven people in the organization the

(02:11):
last couple of days test positive for COVID nine. Team,
think about it this way. Forget about that for a second,
and just go by the philosophy we told you about
last week. We get what we get and we don't
get upset. You learned it in kindergarten. My daughter learned
in kindergarten. Harmon, your kids learned in kindergarten. You get
what you get, you don't get upset. Really well, you

(02:33):
went to a bad kindergarten, then, well you went into
Survival of the Fittest in Chicago. They seen you. Guys.
Gotta make sure you're not starting fights and shoving people
in lockers in between periods. Okay, otherwise you're gonna wind
up getting the needle. I was the city of big shoulders.
I had big shoulders. I used them. What do you

(02:56):
want me to say? Instead of math, we're gonna talk
about the five ages. Are making deep dish pizza? Okay,
number what put your pens away? You gotta notice off
the top of your little heads. Okay, number one? Cheese?
Number two? More cheese? What was that over there? What's
number one? I'll get out, go to Principle's office. You
know what I think ever since I was tied to
a chair in kindergarten, my world view has changed. Really,

(03:19):
I really think that was the end of it. The
first person to not agree with sausage being in this
deep dish pizza. You're gonna have to transfer schools, all right.
We don't have anything for you here at this school.
You have to go someplace else and learn. Okay, that's
what we have. That is a pretty good rule to follow,
my friend. And if anybody and I got one more,
and if anybody thinks that you could just take a

(03:41):
piece of pizza down to the subway and think a
rat isn't gonna take it from you, that rat will
come up and take it from you. They are coming,
I know it, maybe years from now, but there is
a rat apocalypse brewing, and it will come in. The
first thing they're gonna do is take pizza. Then you're
gonna see cockroaches smoking cigarettes. Right. Then you're gonna see
bigger rats. They can bigger pieces of pizza. And then

(04:02):
they're gonna start taking children down below the subway, and
these kids are gonna be raised by the rats, and
it's gonna look like dances with wolves, except when rats
and then he's they're gonna come up and they're gonna
lead a big revolution against us, and it's gonna be
our fault. Hey, don't you think they haven't been been
enjoying all this stuff, The murder hornets and all these
different things happened in the rats have been able to

(04:22):
operate and the secrecy away from the rest of the world.
The rats are in complete secrecy, but they haven't been
fed very well. Right, if people weren't going to work
and we didn't have the carts and the bodega is
really doing brisk business. Well, they also well, they also
have to have, you know, the the New York Rats
have to if there's gonna be a real big rat apocalypse,

(04:43):
the New York and Chicago Rats have to team up together.
So they're gonna have to send some emissaries from Chicago
to New York. Maybe they meet in the middle Maybee,
you know, may somewhere in Pennsylvania and trying to figure
out who the guy is. That's Nick Fury trying to
get them all together. Right, Right, it's a big rat
that looks like the Rats got the but it's the
year he's got the iPad. Uh so I patched a

(05:04):
leather coat. While the Rats are contemplating taking over the world.
We are going to have Major League Baseball as the
MLB p A and the owners have cleared everything. Here's
what the season is gonna look like. Sixty regular season
games starting around julyeo. So that's gonna beginning of the season,
set to set to debut the week before. Uh, the

(05:27):
NBA starts training camp will start July one, right, so
spring training summer training they're calling a training camp now.
It starts on July one. The trade deadline will be
August thirty one, so we're gonna start play about a
month and a half. Oh, let's make some trades. It's
not working for me and we're fifteen and fifteen. Let's
make some deals. Uh. There will be a universal designated
hitter for this year only, and extra inning games in

(05:51):
order to shave innings and miles off of arms so
games don't go too late, because look, we're playing a
lot of games and trying to jam them in a
short amount of time. All extra inning games will start
with a runner on second base. So this is how
it's going to go when baseball begins. And I know
that we hit the story and and coronavirus COVID nineteen

(06:12):
is up. It's it's reared its head in the past
week in many different ways. But just if you think
about sports that way, whatever we get as a bonus, right,
we went into when when coronavirus that we thought, how
are we going to play sports at all? Right? How
are sports ever gonna play? We had no idea how
this was gonna work. And could people even stand next
to each other? And what kind of virus is it?
Is it ever gonna be airborne? What? What? What kind

(06:34):
of dealer we at? We're not going to have sports? Right?
It was in the beginning, it was it was It
was many people saying, I don't think we're gonna have sports.
And this wasn't being doom and gloom. This was saying, hey,
we're in the middle of a pandemic. We know nothing
about what is going to happen. Well, what have we
gotten so far? Well, UFC has come back and they've
been able to come back and and keep coronavirus at
bay enough to keep going. We have had NASCAR come

(06:56):
back and dressed me. We'll have way more on Nascar
and about fifteen minutes, Uh, now, car has been able
to come back, and as far as the product on
the track, it's been very It's done very well, and
the sport has done. Ratings have been really good. Golf
has come back, and golf has done Okay, we've had
one positive test for coronavirus, but being the solitary sport,
golf is as long as everybody is asymptomatic, it's tested,

(07:16):
golf is going to continue. So already we've gotten more
than we thought we were gonna get in the beginning.
And now it's it's go time for baseball and for
the National Basketball Association. You're gonna have players report in
one week. One week from tomorrow is the beginning of
spring training or summer training. So it's not like, well,
we're looking at this in the abstract anymore. We're looking
at us. This is how it's going to go. And

(07:38):
every day we have baseball, even when there's no games,
that's a good day. Every day we have NBA, even
when there's no games or there's practice going, that's a
good day. And as long as we can, you know,
we put as many of those days together as possible.
Don't worry about finishing this season. Can we play or
can we start. As long as we know we're gonna start,
We're gonna get sports, enjoy it for as long as

(07:59):
we can. Because I'll tell you this is my car,
but I guarrant damn to you this is that these
sports coming back are gonna do everything possible humanly possible
to play out an entire season. I mean, it may
get to a point where boy, COVID nineteen is too much,
but they are going to do everything in their power
and then some to try to play this season. You

(08:20):
know you're gonna be some positive coronavirus tests. We're gonna
isolate right away. We're gonna see if they're asymptomatic. We're
gonna we're gonna protect the players. We're gonna do everything.
They will do everything they can. They may not get
everything right. In fact, they don't expect them to get
everything right because you're dealing with something that there is
no chart for. But they're gonna do everything they can
to play all the rest of this year in sports,
whether it's NBA, major League baseball, when the NFL, college

(08:42):
football comes back. So if you concentrate on those things
and know, hey, let's be positive about this, that's something
that you know, we can enjoy this. We can enjoy
it for as long as it is. And if something
happens and it has to stop, all right, then what's next.
You know, we've we've we've gone this long. We've gone
four months so far without having team sports, and I
think fans have been doing okay, and now we're going
to get them back. Whatever we get is gonna be

(09:04):
a bonus. We're gonna if you think about enjoying it
and think and that's the way, that's the mental attitude
you have towards it, You're gonna have a great time
love and sports when they come back, trust me on it. Well,
it's like anything. You you adapt to the situation, take
in new information, and adjust accordingly. And we've had several
months to work with this at individual businesses. And you know,

(09:25):
I'm on record for for many a month, you know,
raising my hand as to why some businesses were more
equal than others. Uh, the quote essentials among us. Yes,
it comes back to lobbying and politics and dollars and cents.
But when it's all said and done, everybody's trying to
figure out the new norm of doing business until we

(09:47):
can go back to normal right, That's that's it, and
there's some control on this. It's never going to zero.
So anybody that was trying to claim that suddenly there
was gonna be the giant than O Snap and this
was going to disappear, Uh, not gonna happen. So what
do you do? You adapt and try to put in
best practices and take care of business. You mentioned all

(10:09):
the sports as they're working, right. NASCAR even had people
at the stadium this past at the speedway this past weekend.
Right again. We'll get into deeper NASCAR stuff in a
in a bit, but the reality is you're you're finding
a way and for players, I get there's some trepidation.
For the different management groups, the commissioners, there's a lot

(10:30):
of handwringing as they try to figure this all out.
And you go into best practices, right. I have so
many people that asks like, all right, what'd you get
on a plane right now? I'm like, you kid me,
I bet you they're spotless. I think there might not
be a better place to be than on a plane
right now with all the different checks and balances and expectations. Right,

(10:51):
they're limiting capacity on most planes. You get a middle
middle seat that isn't isn't filled by somebody. Think about that.
Think about at Smith. You could go on a trip
right now and someone isn't shoving themselves into that middle
seat and arm wrestling you for that armrest. It's a
beautiful thing, but you go, you go through, and we've

(11:12):
all made choices. We've all had to make choices of
what we're comfortable with, and some players may still opt out.
We had a couple in the in the NBA um
make that announcement yesterday. I'm sure for baseball there maybe
a few players that decide, you know, whether it's an
imminent birth of a child or one that just came
into the world, that maybe they decide this isn't for

(11:33):
them and and they'll adapt accordingly. We're talking about sixty
players get to go to the spring training camp, so
you have, you know, critical massive guys at the ready.
Some teams are thinking about having a taxi squad practicing
somewhere else. I mean, they're gonna get innovative. Right now
is the time for innovation and change. Just like you're
adding rules to the game, you're also you know, gonna

(11:54):
try to be very deft on your on your feet,
right and and be very uh nimble as it were,
to try to figure out, all right, we need to pivot.
This wasn't working. How do we make it better? And
Major League Baseball is reserving the right to move teams
to neutral sites for health and safety if need be,
so they're trying to put as many checks and balances

(12:17):
that they can in and remembering every day we get
up and get moving, we're assuming a risk. Even if
it's just the lego that you stepped on that Zoe
left in the hallway. We all assume some sort of
risk going out and down, uh and into our lives.
And that's the thing for baseball too. And remember it's
not all about just the millionaires and billionaires. Lots of

(12:39):
other people make their livings based on these games being
played in the neighborhoods, in and around stadium, the televising
of them, and so on and so forth. So uh,
it's it's industry on a large level, uh, and a
lot of people that are relying on its return. Twitter out,
how about a Fresca Mike get Swollen, don the Jason

(12:59):
Smith so with icrmen live from the Geico studios and
that's the you know, you hit on the one thing
we need now from baseball. It's all right, this is
a great day, and yes, there there's gonna be questions, right,
what's the relationship going to be like with players and
and and the teams after all of this going on?
But what we need now we haven't gotten. And and
quite frankly, I'm surprised we haven't gotten anything on this

(13:21):
even to distract us from the labor issue. Is that. Okay,
what's Baseball's plan now for COVID nineteen. What's their plan
when players test positive? How are they going to be
taken out put in isolation? What is it going to be.
What's gonna be the plan for players in their home parks,
because everybody's gonna get to play in their home park,
and they're gonna have spring training or you know, summer
training in their home cities. That's the next part that
we need kind of soon, Like I would say, okay,

(13:43):
you want twenty four hours to say, hey, let's take
a victory lap in Baseball is back, But we kind
of need that. And I'm really surprised, Mike that we
haven't gotten in now because you think baseball would have
this part button down going. Okay, Listen, we'll figure out
the labor part of it, but we can at least
do the safety. We can agree on that, and we
haven't really gotten any of that yet. And even if
they wanted to do it just to distract us from

(14:04):
the ridiculous labor stuff that was going back and forth,
you think we'd have some of the Hey, here's what
Baseball is planning to try to be safe for COVID nineteen.
But I kind of need that tomorrow. You know, It's like, Okay,
they've suf on it. Next week is coming, no matter what.
But what what? What? What are the big plans? Because
I know a lot of players are already going, hey, great,
we're happy. What's next? What do we know about this plan?

(14:25):
So you know, both of the players still don't know
exactly what Major League Baseball wants, and the fans and
the meeting, no, none of us know either. Yeah, the
representatives agreed to it, so we know that they've come
to that understanding. Whatever. That laundry list is out of
that original sixty seven page document that we heard about
so famously a couple of weeks ago. I suspect in

(14:47):
the next twenty four hours we get that nailed down right,
make sure that you know you've buttoned it up. You've
taken out any of the extraneous details, that you've clarified
any points that might have been great talking points in
the meetings, right, the zoom meetings or the face to
face meetings or whatever you did to get to those agreements. Uh,

(15:10):
you now have to put those out in a little
more extensive way, right, So there's no ambiguity about it.
So I would suspect in the next we get more
of that, the players, uh will get to Twitter and
Instagram and anything they take exception too, will know about
it tomorrow. But in the interim, I think right now

(15:31):
everybody's just exhaling, saying, okay, we avoided another catastrophe for
the moment, because remember that we were still waiting on
grievances and all sorts of legal ease to start flowing
down and say yeah, yeah, yeah, fine force us here.
We'll see in hell. Uh, and now we're gonna drag
this into court for months and years at a time
and fight you which. Look, they could still I guess

(15:52):
technically go through that those groups if they wanted to,
to really make this messy. But you know, in terms
of the details. I suspect give it two one of
our four or five trusted baseball insiders that have had
us all the way through will be the ones to
get their first their hands on it first. Uh, and
then we'll move forward. But uh, you know, it's a

(16:14):
great thing. They need to know. We we need to
know you got your act together on it, right, It's
not just this and now okay, now we'll work on
the health part. Whoa, whoa, whoa, come on, come on,
come on, what do you mean Now, we're gonna just
show us, but you haven't. You haven't showed us that
you had your act together. Now, you know, show us
a little bit more that you've got everything going on,
and we're gonna proceed like we should, like the other
sports are trying to proceed to come back. Well, I
would say this, though, the fact that they agreed on

(16:36):
it and right, and that's the report we're getting, is
that they agreed on the health protocols means that they
weren't operating in a vacuum on the cash side. Right.
That might have been the only part that was leaking
to us, because let's face it, that that was deciding
whether we played not how right, So the the how
is the details there? I mean, you're excited about because

(16:58):
you want to see how it you know, the sausages
getting made here. I think most people are just like,
screw this, just give me baseball. Don't get him bit
of bubble, put him actually in bubbles. Get some you know,
bubble gum around them. Whatever it takes. Let's just get
back on the field so I can bet, so I
can play fantasy baseball, and that I can have a
few moments where I can justify eating a lot of

(17:21):
hot dogs. Twitter At how about a fresco Mike gets swollen?
Done The Jason Smith Show with Mike Carmen Live from
the Geico Studios. We'll have more on the return of
baseball coming up. What could stop it? What could give
teams a big advantage to try to make it through
and win the World Series? Like the Mets will tell
you all of those things. But coming up a well.

(17:43):
In a sport filled with left turns, we had a
right turn today in the NASCAR controversy that I think
took us all by surprise, really big surprise. We'll get
into it coming up next right here, Fox. Be sure
to catch live editions of the Jason Smith Show with
Mike arm In weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven pm
Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio

(18:06):
app Fox Sports Radio, That Jason Smith Show with my
bis friend Mike Harmen live from the Geico Studios, and
Baseball is Back. We'll have more on that coming up
in a few minutes, but today, let's just say this
story we got out of NASCAR was not at all

(18:26):
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getting the zone. Auto Zone. So last night, when we
finished talking about the NASCAR race Bubba Wallace finding a
noose in his garage. This weekend at Talladega, the sport
basically stopped. They had an investigation that was coming. This

(19:10):
is something that obviously cannot be tolerated. NASCAR step together
had the hashtag I Stand with Bubba trended all day
yesterday during the race, and the picture of Bubba Wallace
with all the drivers behind him in solidarity showing everybody
there's no places in NASCAR was fantastic. And then we
talked last night said Okay, this can't be the end
of it. We gotta find out who did this now,

(19:33):
who can possibly have done this? Right as we talked
to right, we we left it in the terms of
allegations of a news being found and well as we
would come to find out, using the allegedly as we
we've used on the show at times for things of
this nature of uncertainty, well it was the appropriate term.

(19:54):
NASCAR and the FBI finished their investigation today, and I
don't think anybody was expecting for what they've found out. Basically,
it shakes down like this. It was not a noose
that was made and put in Bubba Wallace's garage. It
was a pull down for a for the garage that
Bubba Wallace was assigned a week ago. That was fashion

(20:15):
in the way of a news to grab onto it
and think about grabbing onto a handle and pulling it down. Now,
is that the best way to Yeah, is that the
best way to to handle that? No, it's not because
you can still see the news. This was put up
in October of Bubba Wallace was a sign that garage
last week? Uh, as you know, there hasn't been races,
so yeah, here we are showing up and this is

(20:36):
what's going on. A person on the team walked in,
saw the noose, told people right away this is what's
going on. NASCAR found it and then this is what
started the investigation. But Bubba Wallace was not victim of
a hate crime. This was not done by somebody who
put this in, not by somebody who done uh did
this because they knew Bubba Wallace was gonna get that
garage because again he was assigned it a week ago.

(20:57):
Could you really get out there and say, well, maybe
somebody knew that the pulled down was in the shape
of the news and they gave Bubba Wallace that. Okay,
now you're you're kind of reaching and stretching for it.
But this is what the final result is, is that
this is not a hate crime. All of this that
went on. Uh, there's nobody going to prison for it.
This was not made in a news This is not

(21:18):
made to have a statement on the Confederate flag or
any of it. And now I think you and I
and basically everybody else who has talked about this story
for the past twenty four hours ago, Oh wow, I
I I really can't believe that this is how it
turned out. And a lot of the first reactions to
this coming from online and people saying, see, we took

(21:40):
you should have looked into it. There should have been
something looked at more. I had questions about it anyway,
Why were there no pictures of it? Well, you're not
gonna put a really gonna put a picture of noose
up and say this is what was I mean, come on?
Uh So look, do I feel embarrassed? Of course I do,
you know, but it was this was a story that
didn't turn out to be what it was reported as being.
But in the end, what is your response going to

(22:00):
be when NASCAR reports they found a noose in the garage?
I mean, what what? What? What are we gonna say? Well,
let's wait and see if it's really a new NASCAR
is reporting there's a news found Okay, I mean seriously,
what what what do you think the reaction of anybody
is going to be when this story comes out. It's
a very big topic. It's a very big story when
you consider everything that's been going on in our country
race relations wise. We've had black men being hung across

(22:25):
the country that uh, that look like suicides. But there's
gonna be investigations into these. So it's a it's a
real tenuous time right now in America. So when you
hear a report that NASCAR says a news was found,
how are you gonna react to it? You're gonna talk
about it. We're gonna say, of course, this can't be
something that happens. It's not something that that that should
pass Mustard, whoever did it should face consequences for of

(22:45):
course that's what should happen now. Honestly, this is on
NASCAR to do a little bit more digging before they said, hey,
this is what we found. But I completely get where
things got out of control and this is where the
story was, because clearly it was a news. If you're
someone who was walking into that garage and it's Bubba
Wallace's team and it's his garage and the first thing
you look, you see something that looks like a noose

(23:06):
hanging from the garage. What are you gonna say, Hey, dude,
there's a news hanging from the top of this garage.
Everybody looks at it sees us, Wow, that's a noose,
all right, what are you gonna say, Well, it's just
a handle it no it, it looks like a noose.
That that's gonna be the story. And that's what we've
been dealing with for the past twenty four hours. Like
I said, is it embarrassing? Yeah? Do I feel oh man,
this story wasn't what we thought it was. Yeah. But

(23:28):
in the end, of course, this is what our response
is going to be when this is something that's reported.
This wasn't a story that anybody reached for. This wasn't
something that well, maybe this is what NASCAR. We had
statements from NASCAR, we had talks of investigations. That's just
how it's going to go. So I I get where
this happened. I get where this went. And you know, honestly, Mike,
if this was the result that NASCAR comes together the

(23:52):
way they did and Bubba Wallaces is showing unity with
all the other drivers, uh in NASCAR, and NASCAR says
we're not gonna stand for ray sism. Okay, I mean,
that's that's a that's a great ending for this story.
I mean, and now it turns out there there wasn't
even a hate crime, and we had NASCAR is able
to unite on it and do the right thing and
say we're not gonna stand for racism when racism is

(24:12):
rampant in our society now and talks about it and
protests and everything else is being you know, thrown up there,
and we have to be able to respond to it,
you know, to be able to say, hey, we're all
together on this, and oh wait, okay, it wasn't a
hate crime. I'm actually happy it wasn't a hate crime.
I'm actually happy there's not somebody out there that was
so upset about what was going on they're gonna put
Anise and Bubba Wallace's garage. And so the result was

(24:33):
NASCAR looks united. Okay. I am okay with the results
of this. Even though the story was what was reported wrong.
We talked about it, and obviously the facts were different
than than what we talked about, but in the end,
NASCAR came together. So that's something that I check off
and say that's a positive. We all know NASCAR stood
up for the right things, standing up for their drivers

(24:53):
and everybody else that's involved in the sport. And that
was good. That part of it was good. Now, as
we talked about last and I mean there was a
lot of questions that we were deep into a Monday
night race is done. Everything has been done. Uh, the
the investigation should have been pretty fast. It seemed if
if this was something you know, that heinous in a

(25:14):
in a short period of time, right FBI agents descend
NASCAR's got cameras everywhere in all of these garages. Uh
that in theory, this should have been done and done.
You know, you go back to NASCAR's initial statement, you know,
fiery is the the nice way to put it, you
know where they go Sunday night that we were made

(25:36):
aware the noose was found in the garage to all
of the forty three team were angry and outraged and
cannot stay strongly enough how seriously we take this heinous
act unquote talk about the investigation, etcetera, and eliminating. Well,
now now we have to go through protocols as nobody
ever used one of those to close garages and NASCAR, right,
but before this becomes a big thing, right, going back

(26:00):
to Sunday night, that's and obviously the drivers together and
the statement made Bubba Walla is going out and still
perpetuating to a degree on the view and other places
that there there was an act that took place when
I mean, we still don't know what the final results
are as exactly how this came to be and whether

(26:22):
this is commonplace, so that's something NASCAR will have to
address in the process. But there was no internal Yeah, no,
we've been using those kind of things to shut doors.
You know, they're heavy. We gotta get some leverage so
we pull it down. Or it's just a question that
that we asked a bit yesterday and we asked now
right of of the these kind of processes in terms

(26:43):
of how how much you did kind of talk it
out before issuing this statement and jumping to that end. Well,
and I know it's I know it's a volatile time
and you want to you want to act swiftly. But
remember a lot of folks don't ever get the oh,
by the way, this is what finished. They only get

(27:03):
the start of the story. And and for right, for
a lot of people, no matter what the results of
this are, they're gonna think that there was a news
put in Bubba Wallace's garage, no matter what the truth
is that comes out, and that's the dangerous thing in
this entire process. But yeah, I mean, you can always
you can always try to rationalize something to yourself, even

(27:25):
though it's the probability of something being that way is
so small, but you can. You can do it in
your mind. You can rationalize that and say that's what's
going on. I think you know this is pretty clear. Look,
the FBI put out a statement, NASCAR put out a statement.
You know, this is one of those cut through the
clutter things where we can say, okay, so it wasn't
a news Okay, I you know, I get it now. Uh.

(27:47):
The thing is is is that there's gonna be a
lot of pushes to why was this? Why did this
run out of control? As this was a noose put
in Bubba Wallace's garage The Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon.
And you know what I think I think about it
like this is that do you remember a few years
ago there was that controversy. I think it was I
want to say it was Vanity Fair. It was one
of the one of the Glamor magazines, and it had

(28:10):
Lebron James and I think Giselle Bunch in on the cover.
And the picture on the cover was Lebron with his
arm around Jazelle Bunch and who was in a really
you know, slinky dress, and he's dribbling a basketball. Lebron's
got a uh, you know, a fierce look on his face.
And I remember when that came out, that story hit
and I'm looking at it on Twitter and I see,

(28:32):
you know, look at this cover looks so racist. It's
like they're telling you that Lebron is King Kong and
Gazelle Bunch in his Fay Ray and here's you know,
you're making that, You're making this incredibly racist comparison. And
I looked at that, and so I said, wow, I
gotta look at this now. I knew the story before
I looked at the photo, and I looked at the
picture and I could say to myself, well, I don't

(28:53):
know if I don't think that was the intent, But
now that I'm looking at it, that's all I can see,
right Because I was told before the this look at
this and that's clearly I could see it and go,
oh yeah, maybe this should have been thought a little
bit differently, right, And there was that controversy if you
walk into that garage and the first person who goes
in and sees and it's it's fashioned like a noose.
It's not like it's just a pulley that was people misplaced. Now,

(29:15):
this was done like a noose to keep the door
being able to pull down. If you walk in there
and see it and say, boy, that's a noose. Okay,
let me go in and look, there's a news and
Bubba Wallace's garage, if you walked in and looked up,
you would say, oh, yeah, wow, someone put a noose
in the garage on the handle on the door. That's
what you would see. And and so I understand completely
how this got to that point and further because if

(29:37):
you're if you hear there's a news in the garage,
one person's got to see it, then tells a couple
of people. They go and then that's all you can see.
I'm sure if we all saw it now we go,
oh yeah, there's a news hanging from the garage that
that's what it looks like. But it really isn't because
we went through the FBI's deliberations, their investigation, they figured
everything out in conjunction. But they're able to go back
and find out that I'm sitting there from October fourth,

(29:59):
But they don't No, but they who put this up there?
I don't know. I mean, look, nobody knew when it
went up there. When did that go up there? I
don't know. I don't know. And a story like that,
you know, is going to get out of control fast.
All right. This is NASCAR has already been hot button
with with the Confederate flag being dropped and fans outside
still wanting to weave the Confederate flags. So they've been
dealing with a lot of you know, gasoline on the fire,

(30:20):
you know, the past. But then they added they added
another tanker with their statement that's the problem. But I
think that is as much as you might have had
something flaming, you didn't need to go. I mean, you
just dumped an entire truck on top by Yeah, okay,
outrage and this heinous act and everything and not hey
it we're investigating this report. Yeah, you know, just to

(30:44):
think about this though, my I mean, I hear what
you're saying that there was there was time to say, hey,
we're investing. But think about the times we're in right now.
What would have happened if NASCAR, who is under fire
for race anyway, and now they've finally done the right
thing and we're banning the Confederate flag as much as
it stood for gallantry and what some people in the
South say, like what it stood for for other three

(31:05):
for racism and slavery. You know, we had to get
rid of that. What would it have looked like if
NASCAR statement was, ah, we heard it was a news.
We don't know what it is. We're kind of looking
into it right now. Can you imagine what that forty
eight hours is gonna be for NASCAR? And as you said,
there's gonna be people who say that, oh, you know that,
they're always gonna think there's a news and Bubba Wallace's garage.

(31:25):
If NASCAR had that strategy of we're just gonna wait
and see, it doesn't matter if they get proven right
on Tuesday. What matters is their first reaction was, we
don't know that this is a noose. How can you
say it's not a news, it's a news. It's in
a black driver's garage. I mean, I I completely get
why NASCAR went with because can you imagine, like I said,
can you imagine the blowback if that was what they said.

(31:47):
They couldn't say that even even if they But on
the other side, you just stoked the fears and incited
that that visceral reaction on the other side. I mean,
I don't know that there's a win situation for a
NASCAR in this, but as you go through the events
of the last forty eight hours, I just asked, really

(32:07):
just the procedural question. Have we never seen these in
garages before? And that's something that everybody on a NASCAR
pit crew should be jumping to Twitter one way or
the other, or social media or however it's gonna come
out to say, all right, those are commonplace where they're not. Well,
Bubba Wallace went on CNN and said that in all

(32:29):
his time in NASCAR, he's never seen anything that looked
like what was hanging in his garage because that's a noose. Now,
whether that was done as you know, for whatever reason,
or hey, I know how to make a pulley on this,
I'm gonna make it like a noose. And that's what's
gonna be the big pulley that that keeps this thing.
I'm just worried about, you know, putting a handle on
this garage. I mean, obviously, like I said in the beginning,
that's something that could be thought of a little bit better.

(32:49):
But you know, I I don't think this was pretty
commonplace because I think if it was, we would have
heard something like that before now. So it could be
just a bad idea from someone who tried to make
an a not in a rope and and and didn't
do it the right way and obviously didn't a way
that caused this controversy. I mean, that's what I'm waiting
to see, you know, who are full transparency, who actually

(33:10):
who actually put it out and why did they do
it that way? But the rest of it, I get
how the story got to where we are with it.
I mean, I don't know that there was anything NASCAR
could have done differently, you know, And I always look
back and say, right, what happened? How can we do it?
What could they have done? How can we do can
you do this with the jets? Or if we had
done this in the first quarter, we could have wanted
we had done this and this if we had fired
at him. Sure, if we had made Greg Williams the

(33:34):
head coach, could we have won this guy? You know,
I I do something. But here, you know, after this
story broke, I'm going back and forth going, I don't
know what NASCAR could have done. I really don't know
how they could have done to to tamp this down.
Uh more, Because even if you don't report it and
you figure it out, well, why are you keeping this
a secret? You found a news. It's a secret and
people have to know about this. I don't know that
there was anything they could have done and it would

(33:55):
have ended the way it did anyway. For for today
with this, I mean, I'm glad, glad we found out
the truth, that's number one thing. But I just don't
know what they could have done. Wow. But even if
there's no FBI charges, they still have to explain that
the rest of the procedurals as we go. So it'll
be curious to see the transparency of NASCAR going forward.
Twitter at how about a frescup? Mike gets swollen don
The Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmen live from the

(34:17):
Geico Studios. We got more coming up in ninety seconds,
but first be sure to catch live editions of The
Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern,
seven pm Pacific, Fox Sports Radio The Jason Smith Show
with Mike Carmen Live from the Geico Studios. And we
had a big story out of the NBA coming your

(34:37):
way in about ten minutes, in a day in which
Major League Baseball is coming back, at least in theory.
The plan is out, Therey thing has been agreed upon.
Now the NBA's plan starting to see a couple of
cracks in it. Trust, we got a we got a
big story coming up on this in about ten minutes.
But as promised, Uh, the bad optic day for Tom Brady. Uh,

(34:58):
as you know in the p US a few days,
the NFL is seen and in college football as well,
has seen a fair share of players test positive for
COVID nineteen. What is the NFL p A done? They
have advised shutting down working out together. Let's not have
this while we figure out and get players healthy, because
we allegedly want to start training camp in the next month. Well,

(35:19):
Tom Brady video comes out today of him continuing to
practice with some of his teammates in Tampa during the
pandemic when the NFL Player Association has advised not working
out now this this thing is Brady has always been
kind of a coronavirus truther, and that it wasn't that

(35:39):
big a deal at the very beginning. It was, you know,
what's everybody going crazy for? Wash your hands? He was
jogging in the park downtown in Tampa when he clearly
knew he wasn't supposed to. He kind of wants everybody
to know that he doesn't agree with what's going along
with coronavirus and and all these measures being put in
place to to keep people in self quarantine. Well dedicated
to the crafts, and he's dedicated. You could be dedicated,

(36:02):
though doing many different things. I mean, you can be
dedicated by yourself. You be dedicated throwing passes to you know,
your family. You know Gesel can run some out routes
for you. She can, you know, do a couple of things.
And you know, maybe you know on that on that
on that fly pattern, you know, fade a little bit
to the left and the ball comes over your left shoulder.
You know, there's things like that that can happen. But
this is this is a really bad optic in a

(36:23):
time in which most players are nervous about playing and
getting together and being able to say I'm confident to
go out and play. Here you have positive coronavirus tess,
and here's Brady saying, yeah, no, I'm still gonna go
out and do this, and I'm still gonna have teammates
who do this. And this goes back to what we
said last night that the can the overall return of

(36:43):
sports is going to count on And I said, you know,
people are twenties and thirties. Now I gotta put forties
in there because a Brady is You're gonna have to
count on athletes in their twenties and thirties making the
smart decisions when it comes to staying healthy and not
doing something that could expose yourself to COVID nineteen. Not
that Brady's going out to a bar, but when the
NFL p A says hey, we don't want anybody to

(37:06):
work out, and Brady is doing it anyway. You're the
biggest leader in the sport and you're telling everybody, yeah,
whatever we're trying to do here, this coronavirus stuff not
that big a deal. This is an awful optic for Brady,
who quite honestly, should be leading in the other direction,
but he's not because he wants people to know I
don't believe in what's going on in the coronavirus no
matter what you tell me. This should be going the
other way for Brady. Advisory versus an edict. I mean,

(37:30):
are they gonna, you know, find them, suspend them, do anything,
Because if they're not, then you know, you're saying I'll
take my chances, right, And that that's the crux of
all of this is you know the risks and are
you willing to assume the risks? And in this case,
whoever showing up with Brady, everybody was making a big

(37:50):
deal of the gray beard stubble. That was the other thing,
showing his age instead of the boyish good looks. Uh.
The fact that you're show throwing up on the workouts
with him, Gronkowski and whomever else, and you're making a choice.
You're you're an adult. Right. If the nfl PA decides
that this is an overall edict and they're not happy

(38:13):
with it, well now they've got to come and fire
back on Brady and call him out and and put
whatever measures in place to try to curb this, but
just saying, hey, we strongly I mean, what what's the
words from Demi Moore? Uh? In a few good men,
we strenuously object the object. Well, OK, in that case,

(38:34):
then isn't that kind of where we're at here in
the same same thing. Just because of a bunch of
the guys get together in the park to run some
routes doesn't mean they're necessarily any more risk. They either
brought it in there they didn't. Yeah, But then you
the thing is, and this is what people don't get,
is that you're about you infecting other people. It's not
about you getting But the point is that they don't

(38:55):
have it. Then it's five guys working out in the park. Yeah,
but do you know they don't have it? You don't
know you don't have it. You have no idea nfl
p A said you twitter at how about a FRSCO
Mike and Swallen Dolm a big NBA story next on Fox.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven
pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart

(39:18):
Radio app. Fox Sports Radio. The Jason Smith Show with
Mike Carmen live from the Geico Studios. Welcome inside our
two of the program, Baseball is Back. Got Seth Everett
Baseball Insider, coming up in twenty minutes what to expect
from baseball's restart. We'll also get into exactly who's gonna
wind up having the big advantages as baseball is gonna

(39:40):
have a sixty game season. Players are gonna get to
training camp, that's what they're calling a training camp. Uh.
In one week, we're gonna start playing thee July got
the designated hitter, got all kinds of fun stuff to
get to. Uh. And now, at least in theory, we
are going to have baseball. Today is a good day.
Aceball canna take a victory lap, and then tomorrow get

(40:02):
into just how we're gonna keep everybody seking COVID nineteen UM.
But this story coming out of the NBA is really
what's going to potentially turn the playoffs into how legit
are they? Conversation? Right, So, what we've had in baseball,
how legitimate regular season are we gonna get? How legitimate

(40:23):
of the season is this gonna be? If someone wins
the World Series, We're only playing sixty games uh, you know,
who knows what this season is going to be like
and who's gonna really show up? And are they going
to be legitimate champions? Look, I'll say this, When the
Mets win, it's legit. If anybody else doesn't win, it's
not all right. That's how it goes. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
there's the you know, there's there's gonna be that, and

(40:44):
there's gonna be that way for the NBA. Okay, well
we're stopping. We stopped for so long. We're gonna restart.
We're not allowing all the teams to come back. We're
gonna move. So there's going to be that built in
question of how legit are the playoffs gonna be? And
I can't tell you how much I disagree with both
of those things. I mean, yeah, in baseball, could you
wind up seeing at the end of sixty games different

(41:07):
teams in the playoffs and after a hundred sixty two games,
of course you could. A team could start out fast
and then suddenly you go in the tank and and
not do it. Of course you can. But the best
teams are going to make the playoffs. You are going
to go through a regular playoff in the fall. You're
gonna have to win three rounds against are the really
good teams, and that's how you're gonna win the World Series.
The playoffs are gonna be legit for the NBA, no

(41:28):
doubt that everything is legit because we know who the
best teams are. The best teams make it to the
NBA finals. No one goes on a Cinderella run from
the eighth seed and upsets the one and then upsets that.
That doesn't happen in the NBA. The best teams always
make it, and we know who they are by game fifty.
Al Right, there's no there's no difference in the standings
now except for maybe one team that could maybe squeak

(41:50):
in it eight or you see the seatings change on
a couple of spots. So whoever wins the NBA Championship
is going to earn it. They will earn it one.
It will be legit. That being said, what's happening right
now at this moment is what could turn the playoffs
into Boy, how legit are the playoffs. Avery Bradley of

(42:12):
the Lakers has opted out of playing in the NBA's
Orlando restarted the season. He told ESPN this earlier tonight.
He started forty four games for the Lakers this year.
He told them his decision is to stay back. He
wants to stay with his family. Uh, and that's what
he's going to do. His son Liam has a history
of struggling to recover from respiratory illnesses, and it's unlikely

(42:35):
he could have been medically cleared to go into the bubble.
So Avery Bradley is choosing his family to stay home
over playing in the playoffs. Now, first thing for your family,
I get it, all right. This is something we've talked about.
There's gonna be players when it comes time to pack
a bag and go are gonna say. I don't know
about leaving my family. Is it worth it for me
to do. We've been in off season mode for so long.

(42:57):
I really feel like we're getting a handle on our
life and things are going okay, And now I'm putting
it at risk. I'm gonna go somewhere for two and
a half months, probably longer because you know, the Lakers
are gonna have a long run and I'm gonna go,
and who knows what's gonna happen. Who knows it's gonna
be like from my family. My family can't come with me.
Most likely my son can't come, so I'm gonna stay.
We told you this was going to be a possibility

(43:19):
that players are going to choose to stay rather than
to go and compete. And is this gonna be a
lot of the players. No, but Avery Bradley is a
pretty important member of the Lakers. I mean you're talking
about now you're gonna go through and have to figure
out new rotations and and and new starting players and
and who's gonna play and place them and and what's
that gonna mean for the team. This is what could

(43:40):
throw that, ah how legit of the playoffs in because
you have Avery Bradley gonna stay home. Trevor Or Reesel
already said he's staying home. And you throw on top
of a guy like Nicola Yoki Yokich who test positive
for coronavirus in Serbia. He's going to hopefully be cleared
and come to the United States be you're able to
train and be ready for the NBA's restart. But what's

(44:01):
going to happen if a couple of players get COVID
nineteen and have to sit out and it gets to
the playoffs and the Lakers have to play the last
three games of the Western Conference semifinals without a d
and Lebron. I mean, is is that really gonna be
a legitimate playoffs? Because that's what's gonna play havoc with
this is if in a normal in a normal playoffs,
guys are gonna play, guys are gonna go. But you

(44:21):
could see that in many places, not just Lebron and Nadia,
but should teams go by and now we're playing without
these two, were playing without our two bad when normally,
in regular circumstances we'd have these guys. And it's not
that's what's going to push this whole hall legit as
the playoffs? Could it be as farce players, you know,
big cogs of teams deciding to stay home. And then
what's gonna happen if players, big time players camp? But

(44:43):
what if Nicola Yoki doesn't get a free bill, a
clean bill of health and time then asked to quarantine
and come over, and who knows what happens by then
he's not ready to play, he's rusty. The Nuggets, who
are the third seed right now, wind up getting bounced
out in the first round. I mean that that's those
are legitimate concerns about a sport who wants a legitimate playoff. Yeah,
and we know he's already dropped some uh several stones

(45:05):
as it were, in terms of weight. I mean he
is uh. He and James Harden uh poster children for
the ages. Go work, uh and take your walks during
during the quarantine and drop some weight. Uh. So yeah,
I get your concern. In the end, everybody's playing by
the same set of rules. You may not like it,
and the sand maybe shifting on a day to day basis,

(45:26):
but nothing that comes out of in any field on
this earth is going to be looked at the same way. Right.
Think back to the drive by graduation you had to
do for Zoe. No matter how they pulled it off,
it wasn't didn't feel right, right. I mean he did
his best you could. Likewise, trying to get everybody into
a bubble city for the NBA to make this thing

(45:48):
come off like they're doing the best they can. Trevor
Ariza had visitation schedule with his kid, Uh said, you
know what, that's precious to me. And that's the way
it works because normally you'd be drifting into the offseason,
right it would be July, so that it comes in,
you have Davis Bertans. I'll be curious to see, with
the deadline approaching for guys to opt out, how many
do with contracts pending right, just deciding maybe this isn't

(46:13):
best for their long term economic gains here in the NBA.
So that's a little bit of a curiosity as well.
But I think when it's all said and done, it's
kind of like we you know, your overall mantra of
you take what you get, uh, don't get upset about it.
I think for the NBA it's the same thing. If
people want to put asterisks or bemoan how things work out,

(46:36):
that's the way it goes. Right. If baseball teams get
off to a slow start that we're on paper great teams,
Well it didn't gel. It didn't coalesce. Uh, and we'll
see in sorry if that didn't work out for the
big guy that you brought in via free agency this year. Likewise,
in the NBA, it couldn't make for some interesting signings, right.

(46:56):
Rumors with Bradley opting out that Jr. Some I may
become a Laker. Jerris Smith is already trending right under
Avery Bradley because people are trying to make it happen.
Let's take Jr. Smith, Heydanya Gangul. I mean he did
work out with them before they signed up Dion Waiters, right,
So I mean I think when it's all said and done,

(47:17):
we we have injuries, we have illnesses, we have different
things that pop up over the course of a season.
Will it be unsatisfying to some? Sure when for guys
that are playing had their legacy plays going on, like
a Lebron James or maybe the the guy trying to
be the best and take that, remember Kawhi Leonard all

(47:39):
of a sudden was the best in the world to
some Uh. Janice And whether things work out in Milwaukee, right,
because if they don't win, then suddenly everybody's ringing their
hands and wondering if he doesn't become a Laker at
some point. I hear you out there, Frostburg, stop shouting it. Uh.
The fact is that you know you're gonna have to
to make do uh. And And right now, Adam Silver

(48:01):
and company are are just hoping that they can keep
this thing together. You know, insert your strong superhero here,
trying to keep everything on the rails. You know, I
hear you on it and and I think you can
explain it away. You know, Hey, look, this is kind
of how it's gonna be. But I don't think that's
gonna stop fans if it becomes so overwhelming that here's

(48:22):
five or six players who decided not to go that
their big cogs in their team's machines. And then here's
players who have to self isolate. Uh, you know, and
and they're gonna miss a week and it just what
happens to be Game six and seven of the conference finals.
And it's a great player. It's it's gonna get that
tinge of that was the year where so and so one,
and you know that that's how it's you know, we

(48:42):
have a word for those people, but I can't listen.
If you can, you do can you tell me? Okay,
let's say you have you have the Lakers. The Lakers
are streaming towards the the NBA Finals. Right they lead
the Clippers two games to none in the in the
West Finals. Right here they go, They're up to Zip
and then Lebron and A D and me who knows

(49:03):
who else? P J R. Smith. Hey, you know what
they test find and hopefully nobody does. I'm just using
this as an example, I don't want to give anyone
trying to say what he said. No, no no, no, I'm
I'm just saying anybody, if if any big I could,
I could have said this for the Bucks. Stop stop stop.
I mean, but I'm not. Obviously, I want none of
this to happen. I want everybody to stay healthy. But

(49:24):
the odds are we're going to get positive coronavirus tests,
and you know, luckily so far for the players who
have tested positive, it's been some isolation and then back
to health. And we're hoping that that's that's the case.
Now we're talking from a specific from a basketball standpoint. Now,
not not this is lighton, but if you have if
it's if it's to zip and then suddenly Lebron and
a D can't play the rest of the series, and

(49:46):
the Clippers win the next four games and they win
you know, one five, you know, one oh eight five,
you know, regular scores of Knicks games. Who's gonna who
can who cannot say legitimately, well, would that have happened
if Lebron and A D didn't have to say it
out because they tested positive? And great fodder for sports
depict that's like the manager throwing a chair into the

(50:07):
ring and you knocked the guy out and you pin
him when the referees distracted. Yeah, but there's a difference
between if somebody got hurt and missed. It's it's a
different if lebron strains is growing and he misses the
rest of the series, Well, you know what, that's an
injury that happens. This is an act of God. You know,
this is this is you know, a plague locus. This
is here, here comes a here, it comes a virus,

(50:29):
you know. And and that is that something that that
is going to affect the leg what people view as
a legitimacy of the plass. I think it will. I
think you're gonna get the long list of things people
hate about that's true too, there is that, right, I
mean that that really would just be the Wow, we
also got robbed of this. So I mean, right now
we've got and and if we're doing the the Oscar's

(50:51):
Length in memoriam just to all the things that have
had to been shuttered, canceled, changed and then changed again
and then ultimately canceled in our lives. If we did that,
we'd have to pick freebir the live version to play
up all of the different things that have happened this year.
And we're in the end of June. Yeah, no, I

(51:12):
get it, But I still I I still think that
that's what's gonna be. The big reaction is gonna be
how legit was this championship and other sports looking baseball,
whoever wins, they win the champion, they're gonna win. In
the NBA, you don't know, But when when you have
this here, when you have players choosing to stay home,
and I can't blame anybody who wants to stay home
with their family, and you know what, what can you

(51:33):
say when oh, here's COVID nineteen you have to sit out?
I know what we get to say? What's that Lebron's
three and seven and finals no longer possible that he's
the goat? See how I just cut it back to Yeah, no,
you just put that right in there. Uh. So again,

(51:55):
that's where we're at right now with with uh the
big story out of the NBA. Avery Bradley is going
to sit out the Orlando restart. Um, you go back
to January and Bradley had been red hot from three
point range. Look again, this is a guy that started
every game for the Lakers. He's a big piece of
what they do, and now he's not going to play,

(52:16):
And not that it's gonna be built in excuse. I
don't think any Laker fan is gonna say if we
had Avery Bradley not I don't think. I don't think
Laker fans can say with any sort of legitimacy, since
that's the word of the last few minutes, and oh,
if we had Avery Bradley. But if you know, you
don't have every Bradley, and then a couple other players
get sick and suddenly it's well, now look what happened
to us. When if everything is equal in a series

(52:40):
where we're just playing and and you know, look, everything
else is going on. Chance of injury is the same
for everybody. You can I see many teams and many
fans saying it's just not legit. I'm just not going
to recognize it because it's if it's bad. Calls is
one thing, injuries another thing. This is nothing that anybody
has ever even at about potentially happening that would happen

(53:02):
this way. Believe me, there'll be many fans because it's different.
It's different than than the scenarios that we talked about
with being hey, well, you know we gotta deal with it.
Oh well, why why this is? This was supposed to
be our year. We're supposed to be able to play well,
and now we had to have guys sit out. That
that's how that's how it's gonna be bad. I think
it's gonna be meant different than than you think it

(53:22):
will with fans and how they feel about if Janice
has to sit out and suddenly the Bucks don't go,
and then the Celtics wind up going, or you know,
Jayson Tatum has to sit out and send the Celtics
are out when they normally, Hey, they're playing so well.
You know that's a team that could sneak in and
and and take the East and make it to the
NBA Finals. And I mean that that's just that's how
many fans. I think the majority of fans are gonna
look at it that way. And that's the big thing

(53:43):
for the NBA is they want to make sure the
rest of the season is legitimate. Just at the end
of the day, Smith and if we want to go
and uh simulate this on a video game, we can.
Otherwise you play it out and fans will react, sports doog,
radio and television will react as it does for me.
I don't care what twelve guys are opposing each other.

(54:06):
And yes, would I be saddened if we lost a
couple of the superstars that had to be quarantined. Absolutely,
But in the end, we're getting live basketball action and
we're getting back at it. I'm just gonna celebrate every
one of those minutes, even if j R. Smith's the
guy taken the last second shots Twitter at, how about
a fresca? Mike gets swollen done? The Jason Smith Show

(54:27):
with Mike Carmen Live from the Geico Studios. Coming up next,
Baseball's restart, What to expect, Who has the advantage? All
that and more? Right here, a huge, huge night and
wouldn't you know it? After Avery Bradley starts trending, of course,
Alex Caruso starts trending. You know what? You know? What happened? Superstar?
It's coming up next right here, Fox Balls to be

(54:49):
sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith Show
with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven pm Pacific,
Fox Sports Radio. That Jason Smith Show with My best
friend Mike harmon and Yes, baseball is back. The big
announcement today, both sides have agreed on the agreement. I

(55:11):
feel like mcannon from mass singer, let's reveal the revealing object. Uh,
we're getting a sixty game season. We're getting universal designated
hitter for this year. Only everything happens in the next
couple of years is up in the air, obviously, but
this is what we're getting. The spring training or summer

(55:31):
training is going to begin on July one. The first
game will be on either July or July. Baseball can
take a victory lap tonight and then tomorrow it's gonna
be okay. So what about your COVID nineteen plans, because
we need to know that you're on top of that. Too.
Has been all about labor for the past few weeks
and nothing about what's your plan? How are you gonna

(55:52):
fight COVID nineteen. Why have we not heard anything about this?
What's your plan? It's like Gil Brandt's interviewing you. Stop what.
I don't have a system, Gil blank you Jason joining
us now on the hotline. For more on this longtime
baseball insider check them out on his Sports with Friends podcast,

(56:12):
The Hall of Justice Podcast. It is Seth Effort, Seth.
What's happening? My friend? How are you guys? Are you
guys as giddy as some of the people I'm seeing
on social media? My goodness? Oh what? What's what? Are
you gonna be a hater tonight? But are you telling
me they reached an agreement? What they reached an agreement
on that they're all going to try to stay healthy.
That's the agreement. Hey, listen, they will, let's figure that

(56:36):
out tomorrow. One of the darkest days for the sport.
And people were like, because we got we got it.
At least we're gonna try now. But no, but a
new day yesterday. But it's an old day now. Ian
Anderson said it so well, Listen, I see where I
see where you're going, Debbie Downer, because you know, seeing
you on Twitter, I get that it's one of those
days for you where it's that's her the enthusiasm. Really,

(56:58):
that's all I'm saying. It's calm down. This was a
dark time. This is something that the owners tried to
pull on the players. The owners are a bunch of liars,
and the fact that they're doing this season in home
ballparks and not in a quarantine situation with no restrictions.
By the way, these players can come and go as
they please. Um, good luck, Let let rock and roll. Wow.

(57:24):
I thought I was gonna say just so, I was
gonna say, how excited you're gonna because I'm gonna tell
you how into Batman versus Superman. My daughter has been
the past couple of weeks. Oh, that's great. It's a
great film. Dark, it's a dark film, but I think
it's great. Did your daughter know that they're both their
first name their mom's first names are Martha. Yeah, well

(57:44):
she found that out in the middle. Yeah, that's a
big plot point. Actually, you know, I mean spoiler. I
made you know. The one thing I made sure to
tell her is thattte Listen, you're gonna hear daddy talk
about a lot of actors and actresses in the next
few years and who he likes and who he doesn't.
And I said, here's one thing. I'm coming around a
little bit on Henry Evil. He's still very boring, I said,
but you watch watch every Amy Adams movie you possibly

(58:05):
can see. She acts exactly the same in every scene,
whether she is getting thrown from the building or having
for the Hall of Justice. I love this. Every week
you've been disting. It's great. She acts exactly the same.
She gets dropped, she's falling to her death, gets caught,
put on the ground. I'm good, I'm good. What's what's next?
What's next? Okay? That that's great? Okay, I mean, but yes,

(58:29):
I gave you a little bit of happy. It's now.
You gotta be happy for baseball a bit. You gotta
give me a little bit of baseball happiness. Well, here's
here's the thing. Charlie blackfan tested positives today. No one's
talking about that. And I'm not talking just about positive tests,
because yes, if you're positive and asymptomatic, you get the antibodies.
That's a good thing. There's a lot of positives about this,
And yes, sports is a great thing for people who

(58:50):
are still stuck at home quarantined, especially older people who
are dealing with anxiety other forms of mental illness. There's
a lot of positives here. Don't get me wrong. What
I'm saying is the plan is very hotchpotch, and it's
very awkward in that the owners tried to negotiate with
the players and said that they were hemorrhaging money. But

(59:14):
for six years they had record revenues and I just
I don't understand how anybody could do that. Plus one
thousand minor leaguers were released. So yeah, we have a season.
The Blue Jays still don't know where they're playing yet.
That's that's one of the things, because you can't go
into Canada without isolating for fourteen days. So the Blue
Jays may play in Dunedin, but I don't know. This

(59:36):
is my favorite story of the week since I've last
spoken to you guys. The Phillies closed their facility when
eight play eight people, five players and three executives or
three staff members UH tested positive. And so the Phillies
closed their thing, and the Blue Jays, less than a
half an hour after they saw it on Twitter, closed

(59:56):
their facility. Not because the positive tests. It's because knew
they were at the same bar. The like, this is
what I'm saying, Like, there is gonna be socialization, fraternization,
this is what's gonna happen. The Phillies and the Blue
Jays dinedin and clear Water are right next to each other.
They're like twenty minutes away, and a bunch of guys

(01:00:18):
who were working out from the Blue Jays, and they
came out to meet up with the Phillies, and what happened.
Both facilities closed in a second. And all I'm saying
is what happened. People in the Northeast are spoiled because
you know, the Mets, your beloved Mets, will play the
Phillies a bunch, the Yankees a bunch, the Nationals a bust,
and they're gonna be on busses for the most part.

(01:00:38):
What are the Colorado Rockies doing? What are the Seattle
Mariners doing? And if if people tell me that it's
chartered planes, I know who charters them. Those are Airlines,
Delta Services half of Major League Baseball, And so are
they keeping those planes clean? What's the plan? And again,
in the NBA, they don't have that problem. In the NHL,

(01:01:00):
they don't have that problem. And I'm not rooting for
one sport over another, but don't you agree that the
NBA and the NHL plans just sounds smarter. Well, yeah,
because we haven't heard anything from the from Major League
Baseball yet. Said and this was my point that I
was going to tee you up on until you just
took it from me. What's that. Yeah, well, tonight should
be a big night. Let's sell, let's celebrate base But

(01:01:22):
why did you say that name? And then Amy Adams
comes in, Oh, it's because it's just like I said anyway,
in an instant. It doesn't a gnat flying by my
face can do that. Uh. But but my point is
that tonight should be a big night. But tomorrow we

(01:01:43):
really do kind of need a plan because there's been
nothing up until this point. And that's the easy stuff was,
let's figure out what we're gonna do as far as
keeping everybody safe, even if it was just set some
stuff that would distract you from the labor crap that
was going on. All right, you know, we didn't have
a great day labor wise, at least protection wise. This
is what we're looking at. This is have been right,

(01:02:06):
but the labor should never have been public. The fact
that the owners were crying poverty was a joke to me,
and that was wrong. And some of the players could
have kept their mouth shut too. Uh. This whole argument
was not because the March Agreement wasn't a good one.
The March six agreement says for every game you play,
you get your salary and the owners said that's so good.

(01:02:28):
So they made the agreement, and the union didn't write
the agreement. The league did, and the league came out
and tried to change it. So all of this is
on the owners. None of this to me, and is
on the players. The players. What I hope they're doing
is they're taking this opportunity to entertain us, to put
on a show. Make this about the play on the field.

(01:02:49):
Please make the play interesting, and please make contact when
you have two strikes. But the thing that I'm also
looking at, But the things that I'm also looking at
is I just hope that they look at this opportunity
and say, we have a chance to do something that
is very difficult in a pandemic, which is we can
entertain a lot of people. So don't blow it by

(01:03:11):
going out carousing with each other when you're when you're
you know, in these road cities and especially the western
the western part of the country, because that's all airplanes.
You know, Chicago is gonna be able to drive to
play the White Sox, the Brewers. That's bus trips, but
there's very few of those. And I just think that
for those teams that are gonna be traveling all over

(01:03:33):
the place. All I want is all the managers, the
pitching coaches, the third base coaches, all the front office executives,
everybody who's essential to be there that's over fifties, sixty
and seventy. I just hope they're safe. Seth Everett our
guest here Fox Sports Radio, The Jason Smith Show with
Mike Harmon company from the Geico Mobile, Geico Studios. Seth

(01:03:55):
longtime baseball insider, the proud host owner of the sports
with Ends in a Hall of Justice podcasts. You can
find them on Twitter at Seth Underscore Everett. For that, Seth,
I've always been surprised during this process that we didn't
have leaks of actual documents other than the fight over
what was agreed to at the end of March. Where
where was the actual You know, hey, I've got the

(01:04:17):
Stone tablets to show you, just so you can stop
blaming us. I was on Twitch and I was holding
up a piece of paper showing the Cubs. Guy said,
called it a ledger. It's a ledger. I said, no, no,
it's probably on Microsoft Excel. I just think their numbers
are on an Excel file. They could send that to
the whole league in two seconds, um. But they were

(01:04:37):
screaming that their numbers are abhorrent and that they're hemorrhaging money.
And yes, if you look at it in an isolated line,
this has not been a good year for anybody. But
I don't think any bar owner that's been struggling to
keep their bar open it cares about the line. For
a Major League Baseball team that had record revenues, they

(01:04:59):
could take and this is a fact they could take
for for pro rated sixty games. Take the money from
MLB Advanced Media for the last six seasons alone, and
that could pay all the players. So paying the players
was never a problem. What they should have been focusing
on is how can we do this safely? And is

(01:05:20):
this the right time to be doing this or would
it have been better to go to Florida and Arizona
in the fall September, October, November and play in somewhat
of an isolated bubble. We don't know what's happening with football.
We all expect it, but we're hopeful, and you know,
everything's fluid in both college and and pro football. But
the end gating of the NHL, their system, they're separating

(01:05:44):
in half by every ten days because it goes from
twenty two to sixteen to eight to four to two,
and so the risk gets minimized. That's not what baseball is.
Baseball just keeps going and they're going to try to
do as much as they can. And all I'm saying
is if the players can show me that they are
going to take this very very seriously, I'd have a

(01:06:05):
lot more enthusiasm. Seth Ever dar guest here, Fox Sports Radio,
Jason Smith, Mike Harmon. Now, the thing is with this,
Seth is, baseball is made two of all the team sports.
It's the most social distance friendly, the most COVID nineteen friendly.
So I don't think you're going to have as much
The catchers should wear mank catch it well, the catchers

(01:06:26):
do saying no, listen, I think I think all the
batters should have to wear masks when they bat catcher
should wear masks, and the whole plate umpire has to
wear a mask, everything else. If you want to say,
should get those chess protectors back for this year. Yeah,
he's gonna umpire from fifty like it's a like it's
a youth game. He's gonna upire from behind the mound

(01:06:49):
down and says we're gonna try a robot because they
can't get COVID, And here it is the robot umpires.
Bring them on. Look at this way, questions up trending
on Twitter. Hang on, I'm seeing quest that, Uh so
I get So. I think once they can start, we're
going to have baseball because the the the likelihood of
transmitting COVID during a baseball game, as long as you're

(01:07:10):
social distancing during the the in between innings, is gonna
be much less than a physical game like the NBA
or the NHL and National Football legue. So I think
once they get there, I think everything is gonna wind
up going okay. I hope that's going to make the
players get more into it because it's gonna be a
little bit of time for NBA players are always gonna wonder,

(01:07:30):
I gotta get tested right after the game because I
was just you know, down low, you know, banging against
these guys for forty eight minutes. You know, MLB players
may not be as skittish. So I think as long
as this does start, then Major League Baseball has the
potential for it for this to take off. As long
as it's taken care of, going up to it. Basketball.
I think it's gonna be battle all the way through it.

(01:07:51):
Go ahead, as you said, I emailed my friend at
the Players Associate and I have more friends at the
Union right now than I do with the league. That
has changed in the last six months. That I said
because when Trevor Ariza came out, and again he has
all the right in the world to not want to play,
but his situation if there wasn't COVID nine team would

(01:08:11):
be a very different story. And so what I would
say is just say you have concerns. Don't tell anybody
your personal life story. And so I said to the
Union next day, for all the players that don't want
to play, could they just come up with a standard
Derek Jeter style line of it's just too risky, just
say that. Don't tell me your reasons why don't. I

(01:08:34):
don't want to know. I don't want to have any
inkling about your personal life on why you don't want
to play. Just tell me it's too risky, because saying
that you're an impending free agent might not fly for
these baseball players. Basketball may get away with it, Baseball
will not. You can follm on Twitter at seth Underscore Everett.
That's at seth Underscore Everett. Make sure you hashtag all

(01:08:57):
your questions to him with Martha uh Hall of Justice Podcast,
Sports with Friends Podcast. I'm gonna stop trying to kill
you because you said that name. Um as always, buddy,
we appreciate it, my friend. We'll talk to you next week.
You got it. Let's talk in the Dodgers press box.
Let's go there. Well, let's talk on when do we
get on Hall of Justice podcast. I'll tell you what

(01:09:19):
You're welcome to come on this month, I promise. All right,
very good. Right now, you tell me what we're gonna
talk about, and then so I can I can have
good hot Tapes'll be a certain scene in a very
overrated movie that will be coming up. All right, very good?
Oh men in black when Bernard Gilki misses the flyball
because it's a Mets game. But Kevin Smith did say
when I told him about my relationship with the Mets,

(01:09:40):
Kevin Smith did say, I was the only guy in
Avengers endgame rooting for Thanos. I was there with you.
Let's guys see you, buddy, have fun. I was rooting
for Thanos at the end. Um, that's like Betty White
from Lake Placid. I'm rooting for the alligator. Right, Wow,

(01:10:01):
you got a lake plastographic? Did that was nice, wasn't it.
I mean that you don't get many Lake Placid references
and not at all Betty White. Wait, let me get
this right, Betty White? Right? Uh? Bridget Fonda? Uh hang on?
Who is the dude? Oliver Platt? And I'm missing somebody.

(01:10:21):
I'm missing somebody from Lake Placid, somebody else big? There
was ah, somebody else flat Betty White and Bill Paxton
or oh, Bill Courts, Bill Pullman, I'm missing Bill Pullman. Yes,
of course I'm missing Bill Pullman. That's my wife's favorite actor,
Bill Pullman, except the really right. Oh no, she can't

(01:10:41):
stand him. No, we we know people that hate Michael
Caine and won't watch anything with Michael Caine. Well, now
it's good because now that Joe's watching the Batman movies,
when I do my Michael Caine impression, at least she
gets it now, and and and and and and and
and and her mind is blown. When I told her

(01:11:02):
yesterday that Michael Keaton is going to be Batman again
in the Flash movie, She's like, what, Michael Keaton how
they can have that off. Man. I know it's almost finalized,
but if they can get that done, how great would
that be? Here's the craziness is this people walking around
going the guy who was the vulture is gonna be
Batman looks like that's gonna Workman. There was. We got

(01:11:23):
more coming up in ninety seconds, but first, be sure
to catch live editions of The Jason Smith Show with
Mike Harman weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven pm Pacific
on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio app.
Fox Sports Radio The Jason Smith Show with Mike Harman
Live from the Geico Studios, and thanks to Seth Evan
for stopping by MLB Insider. I know, but no, but

(01:11:49):
I agree with his points on because I've said, look,
Baseball needs to tell us what their COVID nineteen plan
is because right now we don't know what it is.
Take Tonight is the victory lap, but tomorrow we have
to aren't seeing some stuff because we saw it from
the NBA, we saw it from the NHL, we've seen
it from the NFL. Let's let's see what your plan
is because we don't know anything about that. What kind
of plan does baseball have. We've only heard the labor

(01:12:11):
aspects of it. But when it comes to playing the season,
and now we know that we're gonna have some kind
of they're calling a training camp beginning of July. We're
gonna get the first games around July. Who's going to
have an advantage going into this sixty game season. Who's
gonna be the teams that have the advantage And I'll

(01:12:32):
tell you exactly who they are, because it's gonna be
just like the NBA. There are gonna be teams that
show up and just say, we don't really want to play.
I I want to stay healthy, I don't want to
get COVID nineteen. I'm gonna show up. I'm gonna play
for a couple of months and then we're done, and
then we're going home. And I'm not going to buy
in emotionally and physically. And that's how it's gonna go.

(01:12:53):
And there's gonna be many teams to do that. But
the teams that are gonna win are gonna be the
teams that show up and buy right away and play
without fear and and play like this is sixty games
of the season and everybody's got a chance to win
the World Series. That's who's going to win. And it
may not be the best team, because that's that's the
thing in baseball. The best teams don't always win. The

(01:13:14):
best teams get in, the hottest teams wind up winning.
That's how it goes in in in baseball. And you
can have a team show up that may not be
that talented, but you know what, damn it, we are
gonna put our pedal to the floor here and see
what we can do for sixty games. And maybe a
team like the Padres gets a couple of starting pitchers
that who knew they were gonna be able to pitch
this well this early, and suddenly you know they they

(01:13:36):
instead of a good start for the Padres where they
start out thirty eight and twenty two and then they
fade into being you know, seventy nine and eighty two, uh,
they wind up going thirty eight twenty two, and there
in the playoffs and something other Podres are making noise
because they bought in and they're there to win. That's
who's going to win. Those teams that are there for
that purpose, that can put everything else out and say

(01:13:56):
we're here to win no matter what. It's gonna be
we're ready, and then playoffs come and obviously you know
you were down to the best teams from there, but
you want to know the team's gonna make the playoffs,
are gonna move on, And it may not be the
best because even the best teams may decide, yeah, we're
not into it, even though it's a window open for
them to win a championship. I don't know, because everybody
feels differently. Everybody feels differently about going to UH play

(01:14:18):
this season, about how they're gonna try to avoid COVID
nineteen during it, and you never know who what's gonna be.
But this is where if I'm a bottom feeder team,
I can say, you know what, this is our chance.
This is this is our chance right here, right now.
We're never gonna win a hundred sixty two games and
and get to the plant. We're not the potters. Canna
say we're not gonna beat the Dodgers in a hundred
sixty two games, but could we maybe do it in

(01:14:39):
sixty games? Let's go. This is our chance. This is
where all these bad teams and I'm not putting the
medicine because the met's actually at the seventh best odds
to get to the World Series. But all these bottom
feeder teams can say, you know what, why not? Why not?
Why not these sixty games? And if you have that
mental edge, you're gonna win over a more talented team.
That is just they're going through the motions. Young guys

(01:14:59):
hunger on on a dead sprint, right. I mean that
that's why you know what we're talking before you you
bring up a team like the White Sox, not to
go all Homer, but a lot of young talent that
over the course of a full season, right, because we
know the minor leagues into the majors and and how
guys wear down going down the stretch, Well, you don't

(01:15:20):
have that here. Conversely, a team like the Angels right
where perhaps Albert pool Holes is far more effective for
you in a sixty game season than you know, the
hundred sixty two because you don't have that wear and
tear over his body. And the final numbers are always
solid for pool Holes, even as he's getting older. But

(01:15:42):
there are long stretches of where the inactivity uh and
the numbers dip well, and maybe Mike Trout actually has
some meaningful at bats. How great would that be for baseball.
Uh as you roll through there as well, So they're
a team I think that's interesting. And then you got
the Tampa Bay Rays? Why not them this year? Right there?
They're always an eighty eight ninety two win team very quietly.

(01:16:06):
They've got enough pitching to make it make it interesting
in prospects, just a matter of whether they're ready. Yeah,
and why not? I mean, like I said, sixty games
is nothing. Sixty games is absolutely nothing you are talking about.
All we gotta do is play somewhat well. And if
we if we start out good, hey, al right, we
can ride that momentum for a while. You get to

(01:16:28):
the twenty game mark and you're thinking playoffs already, you
already thinking, boy, how many more seed? How many more games?
Like if we start out fifteen and five, it's okay,
you're thinking, oh, we're we're eight games up on the final,
on the playoff spot right now? Where were this many
games up? How many more games do we g what's
our magic number? Gonna be twenty games and teams are
gonna say, okay, we're here, We're not. And that's also
going to be the point where some teams are gonna

(01:16:50):
go you know what, I came. We gave it our
our our best shot. It's not working out for us.
We started out eight and twelve. I'm done. I'm ready
to pack it in and go home. So you have
the play is who are gonna show up? And and
and and and really go through the motions from the beginning.
Then you're gonna have many teams. Once you get twenty
games in, are gonna be that way to series? Perhaps
you get a run there too. We got more baseball,

(01:17:13):
more big news from the NBA and NASCAR coming up next.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven
pm Pacific Fox Sports Radio. Welcome inside our three of
the program, The Jason Smith Show with my best friend
Mike Carmen, and I'll tell you tonight is certainly one

(01:17:35):
of those nights where we thought we had one or
two really big stories and then you get offshoots of
them and suddenly a new one shows up. It's it's
like in the movies when, uh, you know, when the
good guys are are are going after the bad guys,
they think there's only like one or two alien ships
and then sudding they look up in the alien ships

(01:17:55):
split in half and then there's like seven or right,
and you go, oh, my goodness, where did they come from?
He just watching h I was just watching Avengers too,
how about that? Uh So that's so that's kind of
where we are tonight, because you know, coming in we
we have the big NASCAR story, which we're gonna get
to coming up in about twenty minutes. As now, it
turns out a noose was not placed in Bubba Wallace's garage.

(01:18:17):
Now what was in there certainly looked like a noose,
but it wasn't put in there directly for him, and
there is no hate crime. As result of this, we
have baseball coming back and the everything has been agreed
upon and what to look forward to now that we
have a report date for summer training which is gonna
be in a week. And then Basketball stands up and says, hey,

(01:18:38):
you know what, I don't forget about us. As about
an hour ago, we found out that the Lakers guard
Avery Bradley has decided to not play in the Orlando
Bubble when the NBA season resumes. He has cited commitments
to his family, including his son, who has a disorder

(01:19:01):
or a respiratory illness that he's recovering from that would
make it impossible for him to be able to be
in the protective bubble with Bradley and everybody else while
they're playing. So Bradley has chosen to stay at home
with his family, which I completely get. We told you
this is gonna happen, that there were gonna be players who,
when it came down to it, weren't gonna be comfortable

(01:19:22):
with leaving for many reasons, many of them uh physical
and and about COVID nineteen. It could have been for yourself,
it could have been for family members. And there we're
gonna be a handful of players who were saying, you
know what, I'm not going. We've had Trevor Ariza say
I'm not going. We now have Avery Bradley saying he's
not coming. Tomorrow is the deadline, and I think we're
gonna get a few more players between now and the

(01:19:43):
deadline say yeah, I'm not coming for this extenuating circumstance,
and they're gonna get to go and not have to
worry about any kind of grievance or or being in
breach of contract. The NBA has said, if you have
reasons for not going. You don't want to go, we understand,
and you can stay home. So I We're gonna see
a few more people like this going between now and tomorrow.

(01:20:03):
But like this was something we said, this is an
inevitability because there were returning sounds great when and ideas
are always great and abstract. I mean, how many great
abstract ideas you know have you had over the course
of your life. You know we're gonna do when the
bar closes it too. We're gonna go get food and
we're gonna drive to Vegas. We're gonna be there at
seven am. We're gonna gamble all day, We're gonna drive

(01:20:24):
back to our night. And then when at two o'clock
in the morning, you go, did I'm not going to Vegas? Man,
Let's just go to McDonald's, get some food, and I'm
gonna go to sleep. And I have about three three
weeks now. Man. Let uh, yeah, but you're not gonna
leave it two in the morning after a night of
drinking and drive six hours at least. I won't do
it after drinking, but after well, after working with you

(01:20:45):
sometimes like you know that I've drunk out in the
power on the Fox Sports Radio megaphone that we have here.
But look, man, I've had a lot of ideas that
with any kind of capital behind me, we could have
been rich men, there's no question. But here, here we
sit as we roll through a night of trying to
get this all back together and right. And it's all
theoretical still until someone's got to pack a bag right,

(01:21:09):
and I get where are our buddy? Seth Effort is
still a skeptic when it comes down to it, and
and for good reason, I think is that it's still
the sands are shifting. But just always remember there's a
lot of commas and a very large dollar sign in
front of it all. Uh, not just for the players
and owners, but for society at large that you put

(01:21:30):
on this and the importance of getting games back together.
So risk assessment comes through it. Guys know they only
have a short time and and so far we only
have three guys that have pulled out right. Avery Bradley
the latest will get to a tweet regarding him in
a minute. Uh, Trevor Reza and Davis uh Bertans Yeah,

(01:21:55):
Uh Davis, Wow, that's that's just cold. But the the
idea that sorry, brainard, I heard you snapping. I knew
you were thinking. That's why I didn't say that you
were snapping. You were thinking line, yeah, I had it,
line line exactly because Magic Johnson just now gave us
this gem um in case you missed it, the Lakers

(01:22:17):
losing Avery Bradley is a tough loss and will make
it more difficult for them to win the NBA Championship. Well,
now you want the Magic Johnson twitter game for later
on this hour. Now you just blew it. You just
completely blew the man just had it. Doesn't matter you
blew it. We could have we could have done like
seven games off of one tweet for Magic Johnson. And
now you blew it. You blew it, blew it. You

(01:22:40):
know what, he's just getting warmed up. I got a
feeling that it's gonna flaw through. I remember your line.
It's you blew it. I'll wear it, no question about it.
But blew it like the deadline is coming. And don't
don't think that's going to be a hard and fast
deadline either. I mean there's there's certainly going to be

(01:23:03):
enough consideration. I think if a couple more players were
to fall off, because we're seeing a number of heroes
of yesteryear in the rumor conjecture speculation mill. I mean JR.
Smith has been trending for hours now based on this news.
And here's the thing, and this is where you're at.
I mean to give you the last hour on Twitter. Okay,

(01:23:26):
just give you the last hour on Twitter, because like
I said, and maybe you're right, you're gonna get a
little bit more of an ish factor. But you know,
teams do have to know so they can try to
replace shore players. Uh. You know, it was about an
hour ago where the decision came down where Avery Bradley
says he's not going to go. Remember Avery Bradley was
at the the front of this with uh Kyrie Irving
a few days ago about putting out the statement about

(01:23:48):
why you know, playing in the bubble in Orlando might
not be a great idea. And now you see Avery
Bradley coming at it from familial concerns. So about an
hour ago it hits Avery Bradley opting out about for
ten minutes, that was the breaking story, right, It was
Avery Bradley opting out of of playing in the NBA.
About eight ten pm, it was the Lakers are screwed

(01:24:10):
without Avery Bradley as much as Avery Bradley is a
nice player. Look, he started forty four games. You don't
want to have to replace replace The guy has been
shooting a lot of threes. But it's all the Lakers
are screwed. Here's at that position. Here's a shooting percentage
from three point range. Uh, here's his game starts. Here's
his minutes played, Here's what his his averages, all all

(01:24:30):
of the sudd the Lakers are screwed without Avery Bradley.
And then ten minutes after that come the oh, here's
how the Lakers can overcome losing Avery Bradley tweets of Hey,
we're pretty deep. You could have Contavia's call. Well, Pope
slide in, do all of these things now, and so
ten minutes after that, it's all we're fine without Avery Bradley.
Ten minutes after that, j R. Smith starts trending, and
this is when Laker fans just start locking off of Twitter. Okay, okay,

(01:24:52):
I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. Because according to ESPN,
the leading candidate for the la Kers to sign to
replace Avery Bradley is, in fact j R. Smith. He
is emerging as a leading candidate because the Lakers can
sign a replacement player for Avery Bradley, so we get

(01:25:13):
to see Lebron and j R. Smith most likely again,
maybe in the finals. J R. Smith forgetting what the
score is again? Huge boner. This is gonna this is
gonna be so awesome. I really wonder because you know,
Lebron generally likes j R. Smith generally likes him. But
he's got to be going Jrs. Oh, come on, man,

(01:25:35):
come on, man, really, come on, man, I I really
come on, man. Where's nobody else? There's nobody else. We
can't get anyone. The Knicks didn't wave anybody good that
you know, say they screwed themselves by doing that. Nobody else.
We can't get you, all right, j R. Smith? I
guess I guess j R. Smith is the guy. It's
gonna be so good. Hey, Kyrie, you want to come

(01:25:57):
play with me. Let's get you off the net. Uh,
you know, come play here for a little bit here
in l A and we'll we'll be will be great.
Come on, Kyrie. And then if you change your mind
after a couple of games, that's fine, because I got it.
You're gonna change your mind anyway, because that's what you do.
I'm so happy about this. It really it made my day,
uh for so many reasons. But we're gonna see a
lot of these other guys right that start floating up

(01:26:20):
that have played in the league the last couple of years.
Uh is twin trending on the other side for Major
League Baseball right because he doesn't have a contract yet.
So like, oh, guys that are sitting waiting around ye
have been getting my reps in, but getting my shots
Because really, that's the thirty for thirty or hour long
documentary that we're gonna need when this is over. Show

(01:26:43):
us all the little gym's that guys were getting to
to get their shots up, because I ain't buying that
a lot of these guys just psitting around playing video
games or working on their music careers or whatever else.
Guys have been shooting. Show me where they've been going
undercover of night to go get the couple of hundred
shots up every day. That's the most fascinating part of

(01:27:04):
the last three months of quarantine when it comes to
NBA players and what they've been doing with their time. Uh.
So again, there's your big story right there that Avery
Bradley is sitting out now you're gonna see players who
are gonna probably do the same thing. We're gonna get
that over the course of the next couple of days,
I would say twenty four hours plus. Again, you're probably

(01:27:25):
gonna see some teams doing that tomorrow. So all that's
going on, we have the return of Major League Baseball.
And there are still questions as to how baseball is
gonna pull off playing coronavirus wise, many things, but we
have the agreement in place, and we know when summer

(01:27:46):
training is gonna start, we know when the season's gonna start.
To the end of July, we're gonna play with the
universal Designated hitter, and we are going to at least
try to have baseball. And for everyone who is still
gonna be nervous or worry about baseball finishing the season,
subscribe the philosophy we told you last week on the

(01:28:07):
show when it comes to sports for this year, when
the coronavirus started, we didn't think we were gonna get
sports at all. Right, when when everything shut down, we
thought the NBA has done, the NHL is done. We're
not gonna see anything else. Can football even play. We're
not going to get any sports and what have we
seen in the past couple of months. Well, UFC has
come back. We're seeing UFC, We are seeing NASCAR, we

(01:28:29):
are seeing golf, and even the golf had a positive
coronavirus test, but they're still going forward. We are seeing
sports and now we're seeing plans for baseball and basketball.
Don't think about the season ending. Are we gonna get
to see a championship in this year, especially in which
years get tougher and tougher as they go on. Subscribe

(01:28:50):
the philosophy that I'm sure you heard in kindergarten that
I know my kids heard in kindergarten, Harmon's kids heard
in kindergarten. We get what we get, and we don't
get upset because is whatever sports we get, let's just
be happy we have them for as long as we
have them. Maybe it's an entire season awesome. Maybe it's
a month okay, maybe it's a couple of weeks, but

(01:29:11):
it's still a couple of weeks more of sports and
we thought we were gonna have. Think of it as
found money, think of it as the extended adult swim.
Think of sports that way, because even when there's no
games going on and teams are in spring training and
they're playing games there. We're still gonna be following it
and getting excited for the start of the season. That's
gonna be the overwhelming emotion. And if something happens in
the sports stops, okay, as sports fans, we've done okay

(01:29:35):
for the past few months without sports. Do we miss them? Yeah?
But is it where If this sport doesn't come back,
I really don't know what I'm gonna do with my life.
Of course not. We've done pretty well. We've done well
with it. We will move on to the next sport
that comes back after that, and if that doesn't come back,
we'll move on to football. And then after football we're
back to baseball. We're back to the NBA in in
November and December. So it's not like sports aren't gonna

(01:29:58):
come back. It just we may get a stop and
start here in the summer and early fall. And if
we do, okay, celebrate that it came back, look forward
to what's next. We get what we get and we
don't get upset. And if you have that philosophy, that
positive philosophy, if sports do go away again, you can
take it in and say, all right, I get it,
they tried, it was, it was great. We we rode

(01:30:18):
the fast lane for a little while, and then we're
onto the next sport, and then hopefully we get something
after that, and eventually sports are gonna come back. They're
gonna stick, and it's gonna be back to the way
it was at least seeing sports on television and playing
for championships and having normal conversations about it. Well, and
that's it right now, there's just so many moving parts, right.
We get more information, more guidance, different states and municipalities

(01:30:40):
taking different measures and trying to find some semblance of
consistency and pushing forward. Right We're we're talking about it
in when it comes to college football, the NFL, all
of these different sports are going through the process saying, well,
it's gonna be on a state by state basis. Likewise,
as we get Bay Upaul ready to come back and

(01:31:01):
and be in the NBA, nothing's going to be perfect, right,
no matter how much you're planning for this. If we've
learned anything from these last four months is that stuff
changes in a hurry. Right now you can trace saying well,
maybe as early as December, you remember how sick a
few folks were running around the Fox Sports radio studios. Uh.

(01:31:22):
And I can probably point to guys that might be
working tonight. I'm not sure, but the idea of being that, yeah,
we didn't know. You thought, wow, it's the flu. You
really should be home because it's the flu. And then
perhaps it was it was this. We we just don't know.
But you're learning and adapting and adopting best practices and
hoping that you can instill in the players, coaches and

(01:31:44):
everybody else. All right, if we want to get this done,
let's all, you know, buckle down and just say, here's
the two to three months sprint. Uh, here's the best
computers that we can possibly have for you to connect
with every member of your family around the world. Uh.
And and let's get after it. And for us as
fans and for people that talk about it here on

(01:32:05):
the radio. I'll celebrate every at bat and every minor
leagueer that gets a shot because of unforeseen circumstances. Right,
it's a chance to be a hero and to just
remember how much we love these things. And maybe it's
the shot in the arm some folks need to say, hey,
we want to keep this flowing. Be smart and maybe

(01:32:26):
they act a little smarter because they're they're getting the
gift of what has always been this pastime and release
for them. So perhaps some big things come out of
out of the way there. But you know, for me
and for you, I know you're ready to watch the
Jets if they go oh and eight or O N sixteen,
whatever it is, you're gonna celebrate every one of those

(01:32:47):
losses along the way. Twitter at, how about a fresh guy.
I see what you did right there, and I'm not
gonna respond. I not gonna devendue into a post. I'm
not gonna take the bank. No, I'm not gonna do it.
I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it.
Sam Sam Sam so tsh twitter out. How about a
fresco Mike at Swollen Dome The Jason Smith Show with
my best friend Mike Harmon. Although we're a part these days,

(01:33:10):
we're sharing more and Geiko sharing more too, with the
Geico giveback credit on car and motorcycle policies for both
current and new customers that last year full policy term.
Visit geico dot com slash giveback for info and eligibility.
Coming up next, the ending to the NASCAR controversy that
absolutely none of us saw coming. We break that down

(01:33:33):
This is Fox. Be sure to catch live editions of
The Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten
pm Eastern, seven pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and
the I Heart Radio app Fox Sports Radio. That Jason
Smith Show with my best friend Mike Harmon, and the
Bubba Wallace controversy ended in a way that none of

(01:33:57):
us saw coming. Major League based wallas back. Yes, the
NBA's got big headlines, but nothing is shocking as how
the Bubba Wallace noose controversy ended today with the FBI's
investigation ruling that the news that was placed in his
garage was not a hate crime. And the details are shocking,

(01:34:20):
They're embarrassing, and it wasn't the way we thought this
story was going to end. Over the weekend in Talladega,
Bubba Wallace, one of his UH team members went to
the garage and saw that there was a noose hanging
from the garage door. It was reported to NASCAR. UH
we right away heard the story and NASCAR said they

(01:34:42):
were going to investigate. Everybody pulled behind Bubba Wallace. There
was some incredible moments NASCAR had over the next twenty
four to forty eight hours. And as we talked about
last night on the show, well what's next, what about
the investigation? Because now we got to know, all right
it was it was a really big couple of days
for NASCAR, who found a way to all come together

(01:35:04):
and stand and say we will not stand for racism.
Right now, we got to find out who did it.
Now we find out what happened, who put this there,
who had access, because this isn't like NASCAR normally with
hundreds of thousands of fans around, there's a limited number
of people. The FBI and NASCAR investigated and what they
found today in their report was that this rope, which

(01:35:24):
was fastened like a noose, was put in the garage
sometime in October of Obviously, making a pull tie for
the garage door in the shape of the noose not
the best idea. And that's the next part. Now, why
was it in the shape of a noose when it
was there? That's what we got to find out. But
this one had been easier to get a grip on

(01:35:46):
than just a rope hanging down right exactly. It could
it could have been It could be that, but I mean,
obviously there's better ideas and ways to fasten the noose.
And look, I'm someone I don't know how to how
to fasten the noose. I have no idea, But now
we need to know what was gonna happen. So here
was the investigation. And even though it looked like a news,
it wasn't news. I mean, you can't say it wasn't

(01:36:06):
because it was a news. It was a noose that
was fastened to pull down the top of the garage.
This was done in October of Bubba Wallace was assigned
that garage somewhere in the days leading up to the
race this past weekend. So it wasn't like they did
it and here comes Bubba Wallace. And you know you
gotta really reach for a conspiracy theory that okay, someone

(01:36:26):
did in October knowing full well that when the next
time Bubba Wallace came to the track, you could assign
him that garage and suddenly this controversy would ensue. Um,
so I think you have to, like I said, that's
a stretch to get there. But clearly this was not
a hate crime. This was not There was not a
hate crime perpetrated against Bubba Wallace. So where do we

(01:36:47):
go from here? Well, the first thing I'm gonna say
is is this embarrassing? Yeah? Is it embarrassing for us? Yes,
because we talked about this and this was a story
that we got the report on that was a noose
and Bubba Wallace's garage, and we reacted accordingly with how
you're going to react when you're told, hey, there's a
news found in in a black driver's garage. All right,

(01:37:07):
There's there's no other way to react other than, oh
my god, this someone actually did this. Can you believe this?
This is I mean, this can this can't stand. This
has to be something that has found out. This is
what the normal response is when you get the reports
of that story. Now, could NASCAR have vetted this a
little bit better? I think they could have, But in

(01:37:28):
the end, I don't know that they would have been
able to avoid the events as they unfold, which we'll
get to that in a second. But the thing is
is that when we get this story, this wasn't a
story that hey, some sources say this and we got
it off a blog. This was NASCAR is reporting a
a news was found in Bubba Wallace's garage, And now

(01:37:51):
we're reacting to it. When you get that story, okay,
you you take we take that as as gospel. This
is a story, right, This is a story, and this
is how we reacting to it. And that is something
that I will continue to do. We get a report
from a from a reliable source that this is this
is an event, this will we do every day on
the radio. We talked about that. Like I said, it's
an embarrassing for us, Sure it is. It's embarrassing that

(01:38:14):
we spend time talking about this, that that potentially someone
did this and maybe it could have been connected to
the Confederate State flagged controversies. NASCAR was fighting against that
as well. So yeah, it's embarrassing. But in the end
it ended as well as it could. Because I'm number one,
I'm glad there was no controversy. I'm glad nobody did this.

(01:38:35):
Are you kidding? I'm glad there was nobody out there
that that decided I'm gonna show, I'm gonna show what
side of the fence on on as far as when
it comes to race relations, I'm gonna put a noose
in a black driver's garage. I'm glad nobody was there
doing that. Are you kidding? That's that's great news. But
the way it ended in which NASCAR stood behind Bubba
Wallace in a time when in this country race relations

(01:38:57):
have never been more fragile, and here as NASCAR, who
was fighting against the getting rid of the Confederate flag,
which is still very divisive for many people in the
South because what the flag stood for in in their independence,
but also it stands for racism and slavery and different things.
They had to get rid of it finally, so they did.
They're dealing with that and now here they are standing

(01:39:19):
up saying, we are one with Bubba Wallace. This is
who we are. We will not tolerate racism. This is
not quite an ends justify the means type story, but
this is where, even though this didn't turn out to
be the story we saw, the end result was here
is NASCAR all getting together and they have decided to
make this public statement denouncing racism, and we are all

(01:39:40):
in it together with everybody. And I think that's as
that's as good an ending as you could hope for,
because clearly we got what we should be getting all along.
This was brought to NASCAR's doorstep. They reacted in the
way that you would hope everybody would react. And here
we are all together. And that's still that photo of
Bubba Wallace and all the drivers behind them on the
on the on the course before the that is an

(01:40:00):
iconic photo. And this is where NASCAR the moment where
they said, this is who we are. We are inclusive,
we are about everybody. We're not about divisiveness, we're not
about the Confederate flag and separating all of us. We
are all one. And that's about as good as you
can expect something to end that way. Yeah, I mean,
we still need to find out the origin of this.
I mean there's still some vetting in details that that

(01:40:21):
need to follow through, even if the FBI is not
going to go and find someone to charge, right, I mean,
Bubba Wallace is still making the rounds. He was on
CNN tonight saying, hey, I've never seen that it's a
straight up noose. Well, that's still parties still out doing
interviews and that in that vein. So it's furthering the

(01:40:42):
the initial thrust of the NASCAR statement from Sunday night. Right,
we cannot uh state strong unquote, cannot state strongly enough
how seriously we take this Heinous Act launched, the immediate
investigation will do everything we can to identify the person
responsible persons and eliminate them from the sport. And then
their statement on racism and wiping it out in in

(01:41:06):
NASCAR and making the sport opening and open and welcoming
for all. And we had all those big moments, Jason,
but it's still that it's not done right. There still
needs to be transparency, all right, who reported it, where
did it go? What's the chain a sequence of events
as it rolls in and when the FBI comes in,

(01:41:29):
as soon as hate crime comes and Heinous act is
comes out of their official statement. So I hope this
isn't it right. I I want to know the rest
of the story. This isn't done right. It's it's good,
and we watched everybody rally behind Bubba Wallace, but if
he's gonna still continue to do interviews citing that this

(01:41:49):
was still an issue, Okay, that's it's not done right.
He didn't say wow, it's you know, didn't didn't turn
out that well, you know that way, And it's good
that it wasn't part of some plan or or an
act on somebody's part. I'm glad to hear that. Uh No,
he's still pressing the issue, uh in in his post

(01:42:10):
race appearances. So this is something NASCAR still needs to
go back and do their due diligence. Find out the
photos from that that garage from October of nineteen, the
last race at Talladego over the fourteenth of October. They
need to go back and find this out, figure this out,

(01:42:31):
and and if they, in my to my thinking, this
is where you've got to have a press conference with
all the principles involved and go through this because unfortunately,
what we're gonna have is a lot of folks. And
I believe this because it happens all the time. Right
Where are the corrections and retractions in the newspaper. They're
buried in the stock quotes that nobody's reading because everything's

(01:42:54):
done online, right, nobody nobody sees the update. And I
don't know that necessarily that message will will go out here.
Everybody will remember the firestorm of Sunday night into Monday,
but not necessarily that. Hey, there's no charges coming from
the FBI. But to me, this is this is still

(01:43:14):
an unfinished story. Well, here's the thing. Jason Smith Mike
Harmon Live from the Geico Studios Fox Sports Radio. I
don't know that NASCAR could have really done anything to
end up in a different spot than we are right now,
where here's the statement it wasn't a hate crime, and
now they're dealing with the fallout from that. Because let's

(01:43:35):
say that NASCAR decided to take the tack of well,
let's let's see what this is all about before we
rush to judgment. Right, Let's let's say because that's the
that's what that's what you could say NASCAR could have done. Right,
NASCAR could have uh, they figured out a way to
to to keep this up, play things out in the
real world, all right. Think of where we are right now.
Race relations are at the toughest point they've ever been

(01:43:59):
at with every thing going on in the country the
past few months, with the George Floyd protests and and
we've seen black men uh dead throughout the country the
past few days, uh with potentially suicide because they've hung themselves,
and then there's gonna be investigations did they really hang themselves?
Did they not? And this is where we are mentally
as a country. Race relations are really difficult. So now

(01:44:22):
here comes a story in which the Bubba Wallace's team
finds a noose in the garage, and they reported if
NASCAR says, well, a noose was found in in Bubba
Wallace's garage, we're investigating if it really is a noose.
Can you imagine what the reaction to that would be,
all the bad you talk about not being able to

(01:44:42):
get out from under the other side of it. If
they said that, which they could easily then look at
things today and say, well, see we were right. It
wasn't a noose. It doesn't matter because your initial reaction was,
here's a noose and the driver's in a in a
driver's garage, and your first reaction was, let's see if
it's real. Are you really about truth and justice? Are
you really about being equal? Are you not about racist?

(01:45:03):
That's gonna be the takes that were out there, and
if it was for us, here come these here come
these stories about a a news being found in Bubba
Wallace's garage. If we're on the radio and look and
like I said, these are legitimate stories because it was
something that was from a non legitimate source, or if
it was if it was a blog or something else,
we wouldn't touch the story until it became legit right

(01:45:25):
until a big news organization, for whether it was US
at Fox or ESPN, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, whatever it was.
Once a legitimate news source confirms something, then you treat
it like it is a legitimate story. This story comes
out from NASCAR a right that this is this is
a news. Can you imagine if if we had gone
on the air and said, well, let's see if it's

(01:45:47):
really a news. Oh my god? Can you imagine what
the backlash would be even though you you're thinking in
your mind, hey, I'm just doing my due diligence here.
We we got this report that this is what it was,
and we react accordingly. And and if NASCAR was in
no way shape where they could try to cover it up,
even if they even if they tried to keep it quiet,

(01:46:07):
it would be hey, here's reports that a news was
found in Bubba Wallace's garage and NASCAR's keeping it quiet
there and even said anything about it. Yet, well, what
are you trying to do? Are you really trying to
get to the bottom of this? So I don't see
how NASCAR could have reacted any differently, because because if
they did, the initial reaction would have been so bad
that it would have seemed like they weren't genuine, and

(01:46:29):
they would have seemed on on the on the on
the other side of the race issue. And that's not
going to do them. And even if they get even
if you get the news from today where it wasn't
a hate crime. So I I just don't see where
NASCAR could have done anything differently to avoid being where
we are right now. Now. Can they do different things
to figure things out from here on out? Yeah, you know,
could they have done a bigger inquiry right away and

(01:46:52):
figure it out, Sure you could say that, but this
is but this is something Mike. This is like you
walk in, but what did they do? All they did
was stow flames and then now all they release a
statement going up are bad? Well, the story, the story
was getting out, the story was getting out, there was
no putty. But all they did was as a this
is a heinous act. So now you've got to go

(01:47:12):
through and you've got to give us the transparency of
what you did because you you called it uh I
hainous act and you you rallied everybody and and again
it's good that everybody came together, but you were outraged
that this, and then they released this statement. Hey, we're
glad that it did turn out to be this. We
appreciate the FBI is quick and thorough investigation. Are thankful

(01:47:34):
to learn that it wasn't an intentional racist act against Bubba.
That's good, it's it's a good statement. But you still
need to come back to Okay, give us the rest
of the story of how this proceeded, uh and the
principles involved. At this point, let's let's talk to folks,
all right, what happened back last October? Like, if you

(01:47:54):
really want to put this behind you, that's what you're
gonna need to do it. Well, they brought to the FBI.
I mean, I think that's just because they're not going
to find doesn't doesn't mean that there's nothing to it, right, No,
But what I'm saying, I don't know if if they're
silent about it, and that that doesn't do them any good.
I mean, just think about how that would play out

(01:48:15):
about it. But they condemned it like it was done.
A statement they released on Sunday night basically said this
is a racist, terrible act. This is awful, and without
having done any even investigation to determine whether it was
just simply oh, it's a pull, pull for the for
thee Yeah, but it's it's a news. It could be

(01:48:37):
a pull for the garage. But it's a noose. It's
not like they got any part of that wrong. You know,
it's a noose. Now you can argue what it was
there for. You can argue added, what why was this
put up there? Why who put it up there for
this reason? Whatever? Why would you make a make a
garage pull in the shape of the news. But it
wasn't news. So they were going on the facts that
they had. Here's a news in the garage. Okay, can

(01:48:58):
we figure out how it got no and that by
that time the story is out and so what else
can what else does NASCAR do? Hey, we want to
we were on the right side of racism. We want
to make sure everybody knows that. And here we are
putting everything together. And I think it was more important
for NASCAR at that point to show that, Hey, don't

(01:49:19):
worry about us, We're on the right side of everything.
And we have the FBI coming in to figure it out,
and we're gonna go through and have a throw investigation.
But you need to know what side we're on. We
have no problem telling you here, all of us, we
all stand with Bubba Wallace and this is this is
the way we're going towards in this country. And I
think they tried to do it with the with the
Confederate flag too. They wanted this is the way we're going,

(01:49:39):
this is this is how we stand as far as
race relations go in our country. So from that that
was more important than the investigation was how what is
NASCAR's response. The first thing wasn't who did it? It
was how does NASCAR feel about it? How does NASCAR
feel about about a new spin in somebody's garage? What
are they going to do about it? That was number one,
And this was no. But two. If it was flipped,

(01:50:01):
then I I'd agree with you and say, well yeah,
because that was but number one really was what are
you gonna do? How do you how do you fight
damage control on this? And what are you going to say?
And how are you going to make this right? And
that's what they focused on. So I get that that
lagged a little bit um, but I think that was
probably more important for them at the time, and that's
why they didn't the way they did. Well, it's just good.

(01:50:22):
I mean, it just has to be noted as he's
as Bubba Wallace is doing more press. Doesn't sound like
he's buying the explanation. So he's still got something they
need to quell here. Yeah, he was on, He was
on doing the news shows tonight saying and in all
his years in Nascar, he has never seen anything like
that in the garage. So listen, They're still gonna be
more to this story. There's still gonna be more to

(01:50:44):
this twitter at how about a frescup? Mike gets swollen
on The Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmen live from
the Geico Studios. We got more coming up in ninety
but first be sure to catch live editions of The
Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern,
seven pm Pacific, Fox Sports Radio The Jason Smith Show
with Mike Carmen Live from the Geico Studios. And we

(01:51:06):
got more baseball, more basketball, big story out of the
Los Angeles with the Lakers. We got more on the
Bubble Wallace controversy. But today Tom Brady put out an
optic that I really wish he would think differently on it.
Uh Brady, there's video of him working out in Tampa

(01:51:27):
with his new Buccaneers teammates, And this goes indirect opposite
direction of of the NFL p A, which has requested
that due to the outbreak in COVID nineteen with different
teams working out, that players shouldn't work out with their
teammates for a little while so everybody can stay healthy.

(01:51:48):
And then here's Brady basically thumbing his nose at it
and saying not doing it now. Brady has been a
coronavirus truther from the beginning. Right when coronavirus came up,
was what's the big deal? Wash your hands? And then
he was caught running, uh, working out in a Tampa
Bay park when the park was closed, which he didn't
have to do that. It could have jogged around his neighborhood,

(01:52:08):
but no, he didn't have to do that, but he
decided to do that because he wants everybody to know
that he really doesn't think the coronavirus is that big
a deal. And now today there's video of him working
out after the NFL p A HA said listen, stop
doing this. And this is where I wish Brady was
a different kind of leader, because he should be leading
in the direction of safety, because there's many players right

(01:52:29):
now who are nervous about going out and playing, whether
it's the NFL, NBA, major League Baseball. They want to
feel good and feel it they're going to be protected.
And here's the NFL with all these COVID nineteen cases
going on. Brady should be the one saying, let's make
sure we're all safe. Instead, he's saying, no, blank this,
I'm gonna work out. You can go work out too.
And this is why we wind up having coronavirus spikes

(01:52:52):
and outbreaks because a guy like Brady, who could lead
in the right direction, leads in the way off. Yeah,
I forget it, Let's go out and continue to work out.
This is what we said last night, Mike, that the
return of sports inevitably is gonna come down to players
in their twenties and thirties and now forties, because I
throw Brady in there making smart decisions when it comes
to staying healthy and doing the right thing and avoiding

(01:53:15):
exposing yourself to COVID nineteen and then in turn exposing
your teammates to COVID nineteen, because then sports can't come back.
Look at what happened to the Orlando team, the in
WSL last night. They can't go play because everybody went
to a bar. We saw the same thing in Major
League Baseball. You gotta be smart, be smart so everybody
can play. And Brady, who is the biggest star in
the National Football League, could be leading that way. But

(01:53:38):
instead it's no, no, no, let's just keep you up.
We're gonna keep working out, keep doing all this stuff.
This coronavirus stuff we're not gonna pay attention to. He
should be going in the other direction. Well, again, it's
a recommendation, right, And the the idea of being be
smart about what you're doing. It didn't go run into
a giant, crowded pool or standing line to go down

(01:54:01):
at water slide, or go into a crowded bar or
a mosh pit. They throw a football around, and I'd
like to think that whatever they've determined is they're safe, right.
I mean, everybody's determing their own level of risk assessment. Right.
So the the NFL, if they want to bar guys
from playing, and if we find se Bruder film of

(01:54:22):
you working out with other people, were gonna take, you know,
giant chunks of your money away or suspend you then
go down that road in in the interim, you're gonna
have guys getting together. I'm sure he's not alone. It's
just he's Tom Brady, so he's gonna get more publicity
when it comes down to that. I'd like to think
that they're being smart, right. They've got the little thermometer

(01:54:44):
guns that they're they're putting to the forehead and reading
their temperatures and making sure they're good. I know he's
got his TV twelve vitamins and that whole thing going
on as well, and his supplements, but I can't say
that he's obviously doing something grossly inappropriate here and then
putting himself at more risk than you know when I

(01:55:06):
go outside. I mean, I'm not gonna condemn him if
he I if it was regular situations and coronavirus wasn't
spiking in Florida and you didn't have the nfl p
A say don't do this, and Brady basically thumbing his
nose at it, I think that's different if it was normal.
I'm working out, Okay, maybe not the best thing. Like

(01:55:29):
Dak Prescott, the videos of him with his arms around players,
Oh you got a social distance. This is We've had
an outbreak. Be smart, and Brady still decides to go
the other way, just he could, he could do it better.
Twitter and out about a fresco Mike and Swollen dolm
ay more from Baseball and Nascar next on Fox. Be
sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith Show
with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven pm

(01:55:51):
Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio app.
It was approximately nine seconds ago Alex tischert realizes he
was playing the wrong open for the Slide Over Baby
Hour and it's good left turn. He covered it up beautifully.
Oh crap, Oh I missed it. Okay, welcome inside Slide

(01:56:13):
Over Baby Hour. We have so much to get to.
We'll get too. Big story out of baseball coming up
in a second of exactly the best way to attack
this sixty game season, now that everything has been agreed
upon and completed, and why this is a year for
basically anybody to win. But I do want to say

(01:56:34):
this because we're so I'm so crazy about baseball today
coming back and I'm really excited, and then I'm you know,
you're seeing all the names in in in Major League
Baseball trend on Twitter, and then for the past couple hours,
puek is trending. I'm like, wait a minute, week is trending.
Hang on to a second. Whoa, why what did y'all
see LP week do? No? No, no, not yassi LP

(01:56:55):
week and it's about a soccer player named weak so
been making the rounds. I mean, he was on a
five seventy l A Sports just this past week talking
about his foundation and what he's doing and he's staying
in shape and everybody's wishing, wanting, hoping to see him
back out on the field again. No, they're they're talking
about Peek, who plays with Messy and apparently I I

(01:57:17):
didn't see the results, but apparently they may have had.
He had a pretty good game today. And that's why
pweek is trending. So it's not pweek, your friend. He's
not licking bats are having parties in Oklahoma City. No,
it's it's uh, it's it's pweek the soccer player. But
tweaks still your friend, though, I mean, it's still my friend.
Because it's funny because when you get into the trending,
it says pueeg MLB, but then when you click the link,

(01:57:41):
it's not about him at all. UH, So that we
have that going on. But with Major League Baseball coming back,
there are many different offshoots to this conversation that we've
had over the course of the night. Now that everything
is official, uh, the players have agreed to the owner's posal.
It's going to be a sixty game season that we're

(01:58:03):
going to begin spring training or rather summer training on
July one. First games are gonna be the twenty three
or four of July. We're gonna play the sixty games.
There's gonna be a universal designated hitter, and then we're
going into the playoffs. Everything has been agreed upon. The
players said, Okay, as we've said, the tonight is the

(01:58:27):
night for Baseball to have their victory lap. They got
it done. We're gonna get a sixty games season. Okay,
tomorrow we kind of need a bit on safety and
COVID nineteen and how they're gonna get this done, because
we have had none of that so far on on
from Major League Baseball. We've gotten protective instances and strategies
from the NBA and the NHL and even the NFL

(01:58:49):
when they come back, but Baseball they haven't even distracted
us away from the labor problem with well, hey, let's
forget about the labor problem for a second. We we we
at least know what we're gonna do to protect the players.
There's been none of that, so you gotta show me
you're act together a little bit. Well, to be fair,
they don't have to. They don't know us a damn thing.
We're not going to the bubble. We're not going to
the games. So they want if they wanted to keep
us in the dark, they can don't know. They the

(01:59:11):
players that they owe the players that to be safe.
But according to the reports tonight, they've signed off on it,
so I'm assuming at least the player reps have seen it.
Whether the rest of the thousands of players across Major
League Baseball half, well, that's a whole other question. Well that,
but that gets into the part about when you buy
a car. You want to feel good about buying the car, right.

(01:59:32):
You don't want to want to walk on the lot
and go, hey, I really like that car, and the
salesman goes, yeah, that's that's a good car, but I
really like it. Yeah, let's do the paperwork. Yeah, I've
usually done my due diligence before I go anywhere near
a car lots. But but you want the guy selling
you the car to romance you a little bit and
to kind of tell you about the car and give
you the features and make you feel good about buying

(01:59:53):
the car. The more he does that, the more I'm
walking away to stop. You're just being a hate or
right now? Uh, you know what, my dad. You want
to feel good, and players want to feel good about
going back and playing baseball. They want to feel good,
so they want they need to know, Hey, are your
plans good plans or are you just trying to wing
it right now? Because we spend so much time on

(02:00:15):
the labor issues of it, It's okay, Well everybody's gonna
play in their own park. What do we do? I
don't know. Ah, great, that's a good plan, so players do.
But like I said, take tonight for that, but tomorrow,
because these players are going to report in a week, Mike.
This is a week from from an hour from now,
they're going to report, and we're gonna have baseball players
trying to get ready for a season. So this is happening.

(02:00:36):
It's happening now, So we kind of need that in
the next really happening. They're just so excited I throwing
any water on my celebration here, man, I am, I'm
on fire for this information that we finally got to
whatever the forced agreement. They may hate each other and
we might have guys shaking hands through gritted teeth. Uh,

(02:00:58):
it doesn't matter. Solve the snile, right, the half smile,
half sneer, like my uncle Tom used to call it.
It doesn't it doesn't matter. Uh, We're we're getting baseball
for sixty games. And now you figure out the details.
And yes, I'd love to see what part of that
original sixty seven page proposal, what it's been whittled down to. Uh,

(02:01:19):
as we go through and what's been approved? Uh and
rolling through, I mean because obviously for friends of ours
that are broadcasters, they want to know do they get
to travel because there's been some talk that the radio
teams will get to travel these parks. We know that
there's gonna be longer uh series, so maybe five games,
which is where maybe you find your advantage. All right,

(02:01:40):
we've gotta beaten down. Let's keep going. So you know though,
because look, this is a season where stuff is gonna
turn on a dime here, uh in terms of being
able to get yourself into a playoff push so excited
and I'm sure in due time will get all the
data points we need uh to tell us how the
bubble is gonna work and in each of these all parks,

(02:02:00):
and how they're gonna get it done with travel and
everything else. I'm curious, no question about it. But as
far as as the game goes, I'll tell you who's
gonna have the advantage of the sixty games season coming
into it and and and trying to pick up and
have a season that no baseball player has ever really had. Alright,
we're gonna start spring training in the at the end

(02:02:21):
of June, We're gonna play a sixty game season. The
teams that show up focused and ready to play are
gonna overcome the more talented teams that are there to
go through the motions, because there's going to be the
teams that just show up that There's many players who
were saying, it's it's two months. I really don't feel

(02:02:42):
great about being away from my family when I am,
I don't feel great about being the ballpark. I don't
feel great about this. I'm gonna play two months because
I have to and then we're going home. And there's
gonna be a difference in those teams versus the teams
that come in and say, this is an opportunity, let's
go win a championship. The same thing is gonna be
said for teams in the NBA, because there's gonna be
much more of that, because teams are gonna show up
and go, well, we gotta show up, and we're gonna

(02:03:04):
lose the playoffs anyway, because we're not gonna beat the
Clippers and then the Lakers and then beat the Bucks.
So we're just gonna play a little bit and go home.
But you're gonna see that in baseball too, there's gonna
because they're already are players that don't want to be
there because they don't like the decision that was made
and the agreement that was agreed to. So you're gonna
see that. It's gonna be natural, it's gonna be medical concerns,

(02:03:25):
it's gonna be labor concerns. But you're gonna see teams
say you know what, and players say, you know, let's
just go play and then we're gonna go home. You're
gonna see teams that show up to spring training like that.
Then you're gonna see teams after the first twenty or
so games when you get near the midway point of
the season where they're gonna play a month and go, yeah,
not working out for us. We're twelve and twenty two,

(02:03:45):
We're done. I'm folding it up and I'm mailing it
in and I'm just gonna play these last thirty games
and I'm going home. But those teams that stay mentally strong,
that show up wanting to win and knowing they can win,
those are the ones that are gonna win. And this
year for the teams like the Padres or the Mariners
who are terrible, or the Tigers, who could never compete

(02:04:07):
with any of these good teams in the course of
under sixty two games season, Okay, there's no way the
Padres are gonna show up and and beat out the
Dodgers to win the NLS. Right, that's just not gonna
happen in over hundred sixty two games. But sixty games
that's doable. You get a couple of pitchers who show
up and hey, look at this, we got a couple
of rookie pitchers who were pretty good. We don't have
to worry about them hitting the wall in the middle

(02:04:30):
of the season. We're talking about sixty games. They're gonna
start ten or eleven games, and then the playoffs, their
arms are gonna be fresh. We can start out and
maybe we go thirty eight and twenty two or thirty
five and twenty five, and that's good enough to get
into the playoffs, whereas later on in the season we
would fade a bit and maybe we wind up being
five hundred and our young arms that show up hit
the wall, or our young rookies who come up playing

(02:04:51):
too many games hit that rookie wall. And the guy
who was hitting three thirty for the first fifty games
is now down to to seventy when you get down
to the end of the season. But this is that
year if anybody can do it, if you're gonna see
a crazy team come out of nowhere and win, this
is the year because those teams can do it over
the course of sixty games where they couldn't compete normally.

(02:05:11):
So that's the message. If I'm one of those teams,
I'm an also rand. Listen, you know what, look, you
know where we guys all are. But sixty games, we
can do this. Sixty games and we get in the playoffs.
We stay hot, because that's how it goes in baseball.
The hottest team wins. It's not always the best team.
The best team wins in the NFL, the best team
wins in the NBA. The hottest team wins in Major

(02:05:32):
League Baseball. We get in that playoffs, we get hot.
Suddenly it's a World Series title. We could be saying,
look at this Detroit Tigers, they're the worst team in baseball.
They are winning the World Series, you know? Or or
the Seattle Maritives, who did they start out last year
like thirteen and one? They started out and they did
the first three weeks of the season. They were on fire,
they were great. Why not do that this year? And
then look at look at the seat, Look at the

(02:05:53):
Santal Mariners. They're in the playoffs now here they go.
What a great story they are and and who would
have thought this could have happened. That's how I if
I'm one of those teams, That's exactly how I sell it.
Oh absolutely. I mean you look at the young guys
and we talk about that transition right always from college buckets,
uh to the pros and guys hitting that rookie wall Well,
we don't have it here for pictures. Look, man, you're

(02:06:15):
gonna have seven or eight starts when it's all said done,
every one of them are gonna be magnified. So it's
almost like a playoffs start every time you take them out,
which is pretty cool. Uh for some pictures. Maybe that's
not the best of things, but we'll see how that
plays out over time. But you look at the Angels, right,
Mike Trout is going to have meaningful at that at

(02:06:36):
bats beyond opening day Smith, Hey, and look at the
Angels are another team you know, could they could they
do it over sixty games? Sure? But them the Rays right,
too young to know better, uh what they should be? Right? There?
Always that team that you look up and go, wait
a minute, they won eighty how many games they won?
Ninety games? How they do that? Uh? And good young staff,

(02:06:59):
a lot of young town. We'll see what they're able
to pull up. But in a sixty game sprint. Again,
the assumptions are Dodgers, Yankees, and your heavyweights Houston probably
positioned pretty well again with the veteran arms, uh to
help anchor things. But I'm I'm just curious to see
all the different ways this plays out. Certainly as a
as a White Sox guy from the South side of Chicago,

(02:07:21):
I mean that that's a team that is mighty intriguing.
To meet Tim Anderson today announcing he's going with Clutch
Sports as his agents now. Uh so, next level moved
for him and higher profile as well, but certainly for
the White Sox, a lot of young talent coming together.
You got jose A Brew you back. I mean, there's
there's certainly potential there for some chaos. I think they're

(02:07:44):
twenty four to one on your handy dandy betting sheet
right now. Uh So, perhaps a little bit of action,
a little bit of wager in Nevada, Uh to come
for one young Mike Arment as well? Uh guy, because
you gotta make it interesting or more interesting, more interesting.
Some would say interesting er, but I don't because I
know English, because you went to school. Yeah, yeah, no. Look,

(02:08:06):
the good teams are still gonna be good. But but
a team like the Dodgers, let's just say that, as
you know, has won the NL West, you know, going
all the way back to V four. Uh you know,
could they have one of those stumbling starts? Sure they could,
because you've got to get out of the bait gate strong,
you know. And this is why, this is why I
think a lot of teams are gonna regret not having

(02:08:27):
the expanded playoffs because you it's tougher to have to
overcome that start. Maybe you you have one of those
things where boy, we're five hundred, and if the Dodgers are,
you know, find themselves at thirty one and twenty nine
looking on the outside in and the playoff picture, but
by the midway point to the end of the season,
suddenly they're fifteen or twenty games over five hundred. That's okay.

(02:08:48):
So I mean, you could see teams having five hundred
type starts, and because they're not starting as hot as
other teams, the impetus to start out big is huge.
And that's why you're gonna be able to tell right
away which teams are there to play and which teams
are there to just go through the motions and go home,
and we'll know that pretty easy. The potential for so
much chaos here, isn't it delicious? I mean, it's it's

(02:09:11):
gonna be great theater and it's dead sprint on Twitter,
And how about a Fresca might get swollen. I mean
I'm not sprinting. I mean I don't sprint. I just
don't activate the glutes. Man, I'll go for a walk,
but I'm not gonna sprint. By the way, are we
gonna be how do we get together to boo the astros? Well?
I I think you have to do it over a

(02:09:31):
zoom call? Can we get someone to stand there and
just have thousands of people call into a zoom call?
So echoes, it's gonna be this. It's gonna look like
that scene from Love actually at the end where all
the small photos make up the big picture, and it's
gonna be everybody booing the astros. Yeah, and I'll booing
photo mosaic like it's not gonna work. That's beautiful eight

(02:09:53):
seven seven ninety nine on Foxes the phone number eight
seven seven six nine. This is the why not us
here in Major League Baseball? Trust me? Coming up, we
have big news out of the NBA. Avery Bradley has
decided to not go to the Lakers restart in Orlando.
What does that really mean? And are they really going
to sign J R. Smith? And also more on the

(02:10:15):
Bubba Wallace controversy that ended away that none of us expected.
I'll tell you exactly why it unfolded the way it did,
and you'll understand where it got to the news controversy.
It's coming up next Fox. Be sure to catch live
editions of The Jason Smith Show with Mike harmon weekdays
at ten pm Eastern, seven pm Pacific. You know, I

(02:10:38):
always have to be honest. Fox Sports Radio The Jason
Smith Show with Mike Harman, go ahead, and I don't
know that there is anything more wild in the world
right now. Then the three way Twitter battle going on
between Aubrey Huff, Treford Bauer, and Kirk Chilling. I mean,
I just spent the I felt like I was on
Reddit the last ble minutes going through Twitter seeing these

(02:11:02):
guys fight about their careers. Oh my god. All right,
let me just let me just sum it up for
you before. We've been going at it for about Yeah,
this is insane, all right. So obviously Aubrey Huff, who
put out this I didn't even want to get into
the video he put out about wearing a mask last week.
But Trevor Bauer, who has been one of the more
outspoken pitchers in Major League Baseball, Uh, he gets into

(02:11:23):
it with Aubrey Huff about their careers, and Aubrey Huff
is talking about winning two World Series rings and Bauer doesn't.
Then Kurt Schilling decides to jump in and and talk
about war as a stat and you have to get
your team to the World Series. And then Trevor Bauer
puts out a stat going, my career so far is
better than yours. At this point Kurt and Kurt Schilling
gets really mad, saying that oh, I've I've done one

(02:11:44):
of these games, been to All Star Games World Series,
and it just goes back and forth about them promising
to follow, to give twitters to Twitter followers to each other,
and this is just insane. I need a thirty for
thirty on this. I mean, I mean, this is I
keep going back to find where it began. I can't
find the beginning. It's just it's just so entertaining, going, Wow,

(02:12:05):
these guys can't stand each other. Then oh, but then
this is a response to this, and this is a
response to this. I'm never gonna get to the beginning
of this. It's like inception. Uh if you think you
figured it out, and then there's another layer for you. Uh,
And you've got three big personalities. We all know Kurt
Schilling in his history, Aubrey huff has really comes strong

(02:12:29):
to the game here these last couple of certainly this
last week, with a lot of stuff to anger people.
Uh and when in addition to getting into the political
side of things, starts invoking religion on stuff gets people
fired up on a whole other level. Meanwhile, Trevor Bauer
just wants to play baseball. I mean, no, I don't

(02:12:50):
know ba Bauer really enjoys this. He was, he was
enjoying baseball until Aubrey huff got in the middle of it.
But now now it's gone and now he's gonna pass
time until he asked a report. You know what it
looks like. This looks like this looks like that scene
from what was it? Civil War? Where iron Man is
fighting Captain America and Bucky and he's in the middle

(02:13:10):
and like Buck, Captain American taking turns in again and
iron Man is trying to turn it hit each of them.
That's like, what's is going on with Trevor Bauer and
Kurt Schilling and uh and Aubrey Huffet's insane, I mean
Bowers mentioning, Hey, Kurt, how about all the money you
lost in the video came into me. It's like nothing
is off limits with this battle. Nothing. Yeah. No, there
were a lot of lawsuits out of that. Yeah know

(02:13:31):
that that was ugly Uh for for folks that don't
know that one, go Wikipedia that do a deep dive
on that one. Uh that that'll keep you busy for
the rest of my But yeah, I mean if we
can get that into a three man zoom call and
match and you and I can just moderate that, that'd

(02:13:51):
be great. Twitter At how about a fresca Mike gets
swollen on The Jason Smith Show with Mike Carmen Live
from the Geico Studios now obviously, and we'll get to
the Avery Bradley Lakers big story coming up in a
couple of minutes. Uh. The Bubba Wallace controversy ended in
a way in which no one expected it to end today,
and this is with the FBI concluding there was no

(02:14:12):
hate crime against Bubba Wallace, who NASCAR driver that found
a noose in his garage when he was assigned it. Uh.
This past weekend, after a very big weekend in which
NASCAR was very public about being able to try to,
you know, eradicate racism. It was. It was a big
last couple of days for NASCAR. The FBI, through their investigation,
found that this was a garage pull door rope that

(02:14:37):
was fastened like a noose that had been put up
in October of and obviously no one knew that Bubba
Wallace is gonna get assigned that garage UH this past weekend.
And we've talked about this from different angles about how
no matter what NASCAR did, this was going to be
the reaction because the first reports are of a noose
in someone's garage and how are you going to react
to that? So I think everything went the way it

(02:14:58):
should and now the discrepancy is over. Is it a noose?
Is it a pull rope? And Wallace has gone on
on UH a couple of television shows and I'd saying,
I've never seen something like that in all my time
in NASCAR, And I look at it and I see
a news I mean, they showed video of it on TV.
It's it's a noose. Now. Was it built to be

(02:15:19):
a noose by whoever did it a few months ago
for an unknown reason? Or was it just a way
to build a garage pull rope and a way that
could have been done better so it didn't look like
a slip knot versus NEOs versus. How are we defining
it right? It's it's it's definitely you know that. That's
the crux of the story now. And to go further

(02:15:40):
about why, and I get why NASCAR responded the way
they because it was it embarrassing. Yes, I've told just embarrassing.
Was embarrassing to us, We talked about it, other people
talking about it. But I get why this went the
way it did and why the events unfolded. To explain
it to you, I'm gonna take you back a couple
of years ago, if you remember, I think it was
it was Vanity Fair or g Q or one of

(02:16:02):
the magazine one of the big fashion magazines had a
front page cover that featured Lebron James, and I think
it was Jazelle bunch in And the picture on the
front of the Vanity Fair cover or g Q, I
forget what it was. The picture on the front cover
was Lebron Vogue Vogue. It was okay, very good, what
you looking at? Vogue? Vogue? And it was Lebron James

(02:16:24):
in his uniform. One hand he is dribbling a basketball
and he's got a really mean look on his face,
and he's got one arm around Jazelle Bunchen, who was
in this slinky dress, and she's got her hands up
and she's smiling. And now, when I woke up, because
I remember waking up and being ready to go on
the air and and you know, to figure out what
I was going to talk about for that night, I
get on Twitter and I see this controversy and I'm like, okay,

(02:16:48):
racist controversy involving cover of Vogue magazine in which it
looks like, you know, many people are saying it looks
like King Kong, and and what what a racist comparison
to make Ron James being King Kong in this photo,
because that's what that's what it looks like to people. Now,
I saw this before I saw the story, So of

(02:17:08):
course when I saw the cover, that's all I could see.
I couldn't see anything. I couldn't see anything else. I
couldn't see that the photographer probably had a different thought
in mind when when when they took the picture, that oh, hey,
give me something fun. You look like here, you know,
he's powerful and he's saving you were you know, who
knows what it was there. I'm sure it wasn't done
with a with a racial a tone to it, but
in the moment, you know, maybe things got away from them.

(02:17:31):
But once I knew that was the story, okay, I
couldn't see anything but that being you know, here's you're
comparing Lebron James to King Kong. And when this story
comes out of a noose in the garage, I'm being
told it's a noose, and I look at it, and
sure enough, all I can see is a news because
it's a news. And now think about you're the person

(02:17:51):
from Bubba Wallace's team who goes into the garage and
sees this hanging from the door, and what he sees
as a nuisance, says, oh my god, this is the noose.
And he goes and he tells his teammates, he tells
everybody else. Everybody shows up. You're expecting to see a noose,
and what do you see? It's a noose. So then
the story breaks, a noose is found in Bubba Wallace's garage,
and there's nobody to say, well, is this part of

(02:18:12):
the door handles just a bad idea for the door handle?
Because what do you see, you see a noose, and
the story gets out and things go from there. So
once that was reported that way, there was really nothing
else anybody could have done, because the story then takes
on its own life and with what we're dealing with
going on in this country the past few months, of course,
that that becomes a front burner story. And now NASCAR's responsibility,

(02:18:36):
their number one responsibility, is Okay, how do we fix this,
how do we make this right? How do we respond?
That's more important than the investigation, because we know the
FBI is coming in the next couple of days. We're
gonna take care of this, look into it. But how
do we respond is more important. So that's what NASCAR
focused on, and we didn't get the noose part of
the story didn't come along until later on today. So

(02:18:57):
once you see it from that suspect, it was once
people see a news that's a noose, and look, I
see it, it's a news. I'd see the way it's tied.
That's just the way it is. That's how this was
going to go. And I don't see how NASCAR could
have done anything differently to avoid being where they are
right now with it. Yeah, and and now it's the
question of where it goes from here. As we talked

(02:19:17):
about it yesterday, it was well alleged noose and here's
we talked more about the race day unification of the
drivers and of the NASCAR field, but certainly wondering what
the investigation once the FBI came in, was going to yield. Uh.
Bubba Wallace on with Don Lemon tonight on CNN, it's

(02:19:42):
a straight up news, not a garage pool, um. And
the Sporting News right above it says, which is what
social media detectives are claiming. Okay, uh, nice editorial to
add into their U I quote, I've been racing all
my life. We raced out a hundreds of garages that
have never had garage pool like that. So people that
want to call it a garage pole and put out

(02:20:03):
all the videos, uh and photos of not being their evidence,
go ahead. The FBI stated it was a news over
and over. NASCAR leadership has stated it was a news.
I can confirm I actually got evidence of what was
hanging in my garage, over my car, around my pit
guys to confirm that it was the news. Never seen
anything like it, So continuing to push that so he's

(02:20:26):
calling on NASCAR to push beyond what the FBI concluded here,
right that the explanation clearly for Bubba Wallace and his
team is not sufficient at this point. So now it's
the all right, maybe you had a gaff on the
opening because again the way the way it was worded

(02:20:46):
is you immediately came up with the condemnation and saying
this is what it is. And for me, I fear
that's that's where a lot of the conversation's gonna end
for folks, is that while this is what obviously happened,
and Bubba Wallace, in going on air as he has
UH is leading, at least from those words that I

(02:21:09):
just read them from his appearance tonight, that he's still
convinced there's more to this. So NASCAR, UH is going
to have to continue its own investigation. Uh, this is
not a finished product at this point. Twitter at how
about a fresca might get swollen don the Jason Smith
Show with Mike Carmen live from the Geico Studios, just

(02:21:29):
to give you a point of just how this story
got to where it was. And really I don't see
there being any other way that they avoided being at
this point. Now where we go from this point, that's
a different story coming up in ninety. Speaking of a
different story, we get to the NBA where I can
now see the point of our the NBA playoffs going

(02:21:51):
to be legitimate. After the story we're gonna bring you,
But first, be sure to catch live editions of The
Jason Smith Show with Mike harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern,
seven pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I
Heart Radio app. So tonight we saw a big story
in the NBA as Avery Bradley, who was leading the

(02:22:13):
movement along with Kyrie Irving to question the players playing
in the bubble in Orlando a few days ago. Bradley,
who started forty four games for the Lakers this year
was pretty good shooting from three point range, has decided
he is not going to rejoin the team when they
continue this season in Orlando. Bradley citing family concerns and

(02:22:33):
one of his children, Liam has a respiratory illness which
needs to be looked over, and he would not be
allowed to be with Bradley in the bubble in Orlando
while they're playing, so he has decided to stay with
his family instead of going to play with the Lakers,
and I get it. You know, we've said this from
the beginning that when you get close to that pack

(02:22:55):
of bag and go time, there's gonna be players that say,
you know what, I don't know about this. I might
want to stay home either because I feel like my
family is at risk or I'm at risk. And the
deadline is tomorrow for teams to let players know or
for players to let teams So I'm not going to Orlando,
and I fully expect there to be more players like
Avery Bradley to say, Hey, why we're not gonna come

(02:23:17):
play and because I'm gonna stay home. And look, the
NBA has been very understanding about this. They're not gonna
say players are in breach of contract. They're going to
allow them to to go and and and that's a
really good thing. But this is what's going to open
the door to will the NBA playoffs be legit? Because

(02:23:39):
what we're seeing now is, let's just say a few
more players say they're not playing well. Already the Lakers
have to replace Avery Bradley a starter. What's gonna happen
if you get to the playoffs and a couple of
players test positive for coronavirus have to sit out. Now,
hopefully it doesn't happen, and hopefully every player is healthy.
And I'm not going from the perspective of, oh boy,
this guy getting sick, but you know, you think that

(02:24:01):
with the math that's going to happen. And luckily players
have been recovering pretty quickly. But you get to the
playoffs and let's say the Lakers are playing the Clippers,
and the Lakers are up to Zip in the best
of seven at Western Conference Finals, okay, and then Lebron
and a d have to sit out for the rest
of the series, and suddenly the Clippers turn that into
a back end sweep. They go on when the NBA Championship,

(02:24:24):
you're gonna have a lot of fans go the playoffs
weren't legit because it's not an injury that causes Lebron
tomiss time. This is not ineffectiveness or or a team
not playing well. This is something completely random black swan
that has shown up. And and it's a black swan
event that is resulting in here's players not being able

(02:24:45):
to play, Avery Bradley and Trevor Reason as well staying
home with family. You have have potential players getting sick. Look,
Nicola Yokich has tested positive for coronavirus, and who knows
what his journey back into the States is going to
be like, well he get a clean bill of elf?
Will he be ready to play? Will he be his
normal self? Will he not be? I mean all of
these questions are gonna be out there, and if that happens,

(02:25:07):
I think then you're gonna have a large portion of
fans saying, hey, you know what NBA playoffs yet it
was just ridiculous and such a team one, but they
were they really the champions because Lebron couldn't play, or
Janice couldn't play, or the Bucks lost to you know,
three fifths of they're starting five for a couple of
games and couldn't do it. So I think that would

(02:25:27):
really push into the Yeah, I don't know how legit.
The NBA playoffs were part of the conversation that I
think many you're gonna wind up going with, well and
they can all beat it, because you can't have it
both ways right either. No, I mean seriously, you either
want him to play or you want everybody to go
sit in the corner and sucking on their thumbs and
and then hope and wish that this stuff goes away,

(02:25:49):
like at some point, like you just have to say,
all right, there's risk involved. It's risk involved all the time.
And unfortunately this one still has some questions as to
how we we curb it and push it to where
it's minimized and the number of positive tests are there,
we go through the death rate, We've done this at nauseum,

(02:26:10):
I mean, and it's all about risk assessment and and
if folks want to astris get Away or write books
about the terrible playoffs of have at it. I'm getting
my popcorn. I'm gonna enjoy it. If someone's not there,
you know what, I'll cheer for the next guy wearing
the uniform. Because in the end, aren't we all just
cheering laundry? We liked the story love you love the

(02:26:32):
laundry cheering line love, But it's true, right, I mean,
in the end, if we're gonna go down the route
of none of this is legit? All right, well, you know,
how how far do we need? How many guys do
we need? What's what's the threshold before we decide on
the illegitimacy of this playoff? Period? Right? Because some are
already still belly aching over the sixty game MLB season.

(02:26:54):
Shut up last week you didn't have any you had zero,
and you were complaining that you weren't to get a
baseball's ease. Well now you got one. It's imperfect, it's
got weird rules, especially if you get to an extra inning. Uh,
and that guy's starting on second base. Yeah, I don't
like it. Either, shut up and enjoy your baseball sing
here well. And and look, there's gonna be folks that

(02:27:16):
are wondering about Avery Bradley, like why don't you want
to play basketball? Like he made a personal decision. I
hope he and his teammates, and you know they've got
to be okay with it. His coaches have to be
okay with it. And you know, next man up could
be j R. Smith for you, Jason Smith. I mean,
it could be that right in our backyard here in
Los Angeles, that we get that story by Avery Bradley,

(02:27:39):
part of the bubble. Those are there's some value. Those
are already the reports of ESPN that j R. Smith
is the leading candidate to replace Avery Bradley. It was
he had worked out with them before this all at
eight o'clock tonight, the Avery Bradley story hit West Coast time.
Eight ten were all the boy the Lakers are without

(02:28:00):
Avery Bradley tweets, then at a twenty where well the
Lakers can overcome not having Avery Bradley tweets. Then at
eight thirty j R. Smith started trending, and after that
Laker fans just got right off a Twitter. Okay, we'll
really I got j R. Smith. Come on, man, sera,
come on, I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it.
Let's see currently trending for me. Clippers. Jack del Rio. Oh,

(02:28:24):
Jack del Rio is another one. We don't have enough
time for Jack del Rio tonight. It's not enough time.
Joe Hayden Rondo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, apparently. I think Jack
del Rio fell victim to a fake political tweet. I
think that's what's happened. I'm not sure because listen, it's

(02:28:44):
only so much I could do to get through Trevor
Bauer and Kurt Schilling and are very off arguing about war,
and I mean it's just and VARp and everything else.
It's just insane. I can't keep it straight. I really,
it's like the man, I mean really levels, I mean,
it's it's I mean, oh my goodness, I feel like,
you know, the the night gets on. I mean, as

(02:29:06):
the later it gets, the crazier it gets. That's how
it goes. Well, that's generally how it works anyway, especially
once you get into the slide Over Baby hour. If
that's true Twitter At how about a Fresco Mike gets
Swollen Dome The Jason Smith Show with Mike Carmen Live
from the Geico Studios coming up next. Hey, the absolute
way for you to look ahead to the Baseball and

(02:29:29):
NBA seasons that are coming and and if you have
time to look at the Twitter war going on, Okay,
go ahead, We're really it's like Iron Man fighting Bucky
if you just put up Oh, I can't believe we
only have fifteen minutes left. All right, that's coming up

(02:29:49):
next right here, Fox

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