July 1, 2020 • 47 mins
Jason Smith and Steve DeSaegher, in for Mike Harmon, react to Adam Silver's latest comments and explain why the bubble in Orlando may be in jeopardy. FS1 NBA Insider Ric Bucher joins the guys to look at how the Clippers could be affected if Lou Williams is out for the postseason, plus the latest on the Knicks' head coaching search. Jason looks out how the cancellation of the Minor League season will shape the future of the sport. Jason predicts a potential cancellation of the NFL preseason, and Jason rings in a happy Bobby Bonilla Day as the clock strikes midnight in New York!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to the best of The Jason Smith
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(00:22):
Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon on Fox Sports Radio.
Greetings and welcome inside The Jason Smith Show with Mike
Harmen live from the Geico Studios. Mike Harmon off tonight
special delivery. Steve de Seger in for him as boy.
(00:43):
I'll tell you what every day is sort of following
the same I would say, the same pattern where late
in the day there's just a flurry of news because
the NBA and MLB and the NFL have had meetings
about something COVID restart related, and we get a whole
bunch of stuff just dumped at us like five o'clock
(01:03):
in the afternoon. Weird. Usually all the big news happens
in the morning, early part of the day, and then
once in a while we get a story breaking at night.
That's a really big deal. And usually when that happens,
it's something coming from a game. Uh, that that's going on.
But obviously no games happening now. But the last you know,
month or two has been okay. But after a whole
day's worth of thinking things and having conference calls and
(01:24):
zoom calls, hey, we get big stories. And we told
you yesterday this is a huge, huge, huge week for
restarting sports, for the NBA and Major League Baseball because
this is when the players are getting a little skittish
and a little nervous about going and restarting this season.
You know, we had players bow out yesterday in the
(01:47):
NBA and in Major League Baseball today again the same thing.
Lou Williams still unsure if he's going to restart the
season with the Clippers, and if the Clippers don't have
Lou Williams. I don't think the Clippers beat the Lakers
in the Western Conference Finals. I'm sorry, I'm just putting
both those teams in the Western Conference Finals. I hope
that's okay. Uh, this is the first real big domino
of boy if they're missing him, If a team is
(02:08):
missing player X, who decided to not come back. That's
gonna put a dent in their title plan. So this
is what we're getting, uh now, is that the players
need to be shepherded through this situation and being told
that hey, we got you. You know, the the NBA
and MLB saying listen, we're all set, we got you,
We're gonna take care of you. Well. Today, Adam Silver
(02:28):
went on a podcast on Time uh Time one hundred talks.
He did an appearance on Time one hundred talks, and
he was asked about the NBA's chances of not going
to Orlando, and Adam Silver said, Hey, while the plan
is to go on and play, hey, you can't just
say full steam ahead. Never full steam ahead no matter what.
I think. One thing we're learning about this virus as
(02:50):
much as unpredictable, and I think we and our players,
together with their union, the Players Association, look at the
data on a daily basis, and if there were something
to change that was outside of the scope of what
we're playing for, certainly we would revisit our plans. I'd
also say, I mean, we're testing daily. We haven't put
a precise number on it, but if we were to
(03:11):
see a large number of cases, and we were to
see spread in our community, that would, of course would
be a cause for us to stop as well. There's
two big things coming off this, And the first thing, Steve,
is that I'm glad. I'm actually glad that I heard
Adam Silver say, hey, if the coronavirus gets out of control,
this could stop us playing. Actually, because with what's going
(03:32):
on now in the country, there's so much you know,
full steam ahead that no matter what, and it can
get out of control, and you're talking about people's health.
I'm actually glad to hear that Adam Silver say, hey,
went no, no no, can't say full steam ahead because the
player's health is important. We have to take care of this.
That that could stop us. Because when I see stories
today like Major League Baseball insinuating that if a player
gets COVID they're gonna hide that test and just the
(03:55):
player goes on the injured list and they don't say anything, Well,
the implication they have to hide the test sports sometimes. Dude,
I don't want to release the medical information, sure, but
you know, I think you kind of have to let
people know that. I think you have to. You can
get think that's important, sure, but any any time. Any
time I hear of sports say we may hide positive
(04:17):
coronavirus has from anybody, that's never a good look because
you're wondering, Okay, are you gonna just hide cases and
just try to play no matter what? Are are you?
Are you gonna see teams lie to players and say, yeah, no,
you're fine. It's gonna sit for a couple of days. Meanwhile,
you're in quarantine or and you don't know what, or
they don't tell you're officially in it. So I'm kind
of glad to hear Adam Silver say, listen, we're not
(04:37):
just gonna go crazy and go and play no matter
what and just collect money at the gate, and doesn't
matter who's healthy. He knows coronavirus could get to the
point where that stops basketball, and and there's no hard
and fast time where I could say, okay, this will
stop it. It's gonna be a smell test thing. It's
gonna be we can play until we realize we can't
play anymore. So I'm actually kind of buoyed by Adam
Silver in the leadership He's showing here as far as
(04:59):
this goes. It was kind of took a little bit
of pressure off me today, going, Okay, the NBA, at
least I know, was gonna do things. Although people were
remember saying a few weeks ago, Okay, are they going
to pause the playoffs if some star has to actually
pause for a couple of weeks because you're tested positive
and flat out this past week, Silver said, nope, You're
gonna treat that like you had an injured player during
(05:20):
the regular season. Nope, You'll just have to go without him,
you know, And that and that gets into a different,
a different thing where Okay, you're not gonna you're not
gonna stop the game. But let's just say this happens. Right,
Let's just say this happens. Let's say on uh, you know,
two nights before the end of the regular season or
you know, in the middle of the playoffs. Let's just
say it doesn't matter that the Raptors are gonna play
(05:41):
the Celtics, right, rap set to play the Celtics. Raptors
and Celtics each play on Monday night, They're gonna play
on Wednesday night. Well, on Tuesday morning, we find out
three Raptors players test positive for COVID nineteen. But they're
going into isolation and they're gonna be monitoring everything is
everything is fine. Are the Celtics who have no as
of COVID nineteen tests, Are they gonna say, yeah, we're
(06:01):
ready to play this game the next night. You're ready
to go, No, we'll play because you're not gonna know.
You're not gonna know if the other players you're playing
against have COVID nineteen, if you're gonna get it from them.
So if you suddenly have a team that says, yeah,
we've got three positive tests, the NBA can say, Okay,
well they're being monitored and they're fine, and we'll get
them back in and they have to you know, they
have to isolate and self quarantine, but we don't you
don't know what the effect on the rest of the
(06:23):
team is. Yeah, you could take their temperatures, but sometimes
the symptoms take a couple of days. Is a team
that has no positive tests gonna say, yes, we're gonna
go play this game the next day. That's a big
thing that I think they're You're we're not thinking about enough,
because look, we we had we had teams refused to
play at the end. You know, Rudy Gobert test positive
for COVID nineteen. Right, all the games are canceled. We're
(06:44):
gonna play one more game with the Kings and the Pelicans,
and the Pelicans say, referee from our game. Ref Rudy
Gobert's game the other night. We're not playing. So okay,
there's no game. And this is the part of it
to the power of the player, especially in this league. Right,
so if you get a few players together, it's like
the Donald Sterling situation. Remember, and those Clipper players would
have stopped playing. Wasn't it a playoff game? And they
(07:06):
would have walked off. They would have walked off, would
have come together, forget it? So I I could obviously
have seemed to see a team coming together in this
type of situation, with this COVID nineteen hovering over all sports.
And now whether or not Adam Silver is doing this
because he's you know, he's doing the right thing, or
he knows how powerful the players are. And that booys
(07:27):
me too, is that the players aren't going I I
don't think the NBA players are going to be herded
into doing anything they don't want to do. You know,
it's it's not on the professional athletes at the Star
Baseball players and NBA players gonna say, listen, if we
got this going on, we're just not gonna play, and
we're gonna figure this out, and it's not gonna be
We're telling you you have to go play, and and
they're gonna be powerless in this. Look, the NBA players
(07:49):
are very, very powerful, and you know, so they're gonna
be the ones that are gonna make the decisions on this.
But the other thing about this is that I'm coming
around on an idea that I first thought was a
bad idea, and now I think it's the only idea
that can save the NBA. Yeah, it's amazing, right, it's
I didn't think this is a really great idea. I
(08:09):
thought this idea sounded great in theory, but now I
think it's the only idea that could save the NBA.
I was not a big fan of the bubble plan.
I didn't think the Orlando bubble ideas. I didn't think
it was a good idea because it sounded good in
theory versus in practice. Hey, we're gonna we're gonna get
the players all together, We're gonna quarantine them, we're gonna
(08:29):
test them every day. They're gonna be in a bubble.
They're not going to be amongst anybody else. And this
is what's gonna work. But if you qualify after the
first round, remember a limited number of family members can
go to the Disney complex. You gotta win. Yeah, but
if I lose, I can go home and see everybody.
Well yeah, that's true. Okay, Well but if I win,
I can see three people. If I go home, I
can see everybody. I'm gonna go home. So I didn't
(08:53):
think it was a good I thought it was good
in theory because once you saw the NBA's plans coming out,
it seemed like, how are you going to get get
a lit on this? When you can play cards? But
if you play cards, you have to throw the cards
away right after. You can't play but to two verses
to ping pong even though you're you know, slamming up
and down against other people's bodies the entire night. No, no,
but don't stand next to each other and play ping pong.
(09:15):
Cardiovascular And they've said heavy breathing. Of course, even an exercise,
they've proved that that's more likely to transmit because we're
talking respiratory droplets. So the heavier you're breathing, like say,
in competition, and more likely it is to spread. Yeah,
I thought this is it sounds great. It's like time travel,
Like you hear all these things. No, time travel is possible,
(09:35):
time travels completely possible. How do you do it? Well,
there's the flux capacitor, and then there's timelines, and then
there's this, and there's quantum physics and I'm forgetting jigawats. Yeah,
and you're like, wait a minute, you're you're explaining the
most complex thing in the world that probably isn't even real.
That's kind of how I thought, you know, playing in
the bubble is gonna be he sounds like a great idea.
I'd like to time travel, time travels trave but realok,
a cow impossible? Really is the time travel? I mean really,
(09:58):
unless you have a DeLorean, it's gonna be really difficult
to do, so I thought. But and those are harder
to find, of course, they're very Yeah, I mean it's
hard to find it, Dolora. I don't know you're gonna
find it, Dolorian. Now that's very difficult. You said to
wait thirty years have become a collector's item. Actually, the
odd thing is you'd have to go back to the
future to find find the Dorian and they didn't use
it to go back to the future. Hey, listen, you
(10:19):
think there's people out there that are selling things in
the future, that are taking money from people, going yeah,
I gotta put it's in the future. Wait a minute,
didn't Biff had the Book of Sports with all the
results in Back to the Future too, and that's how
he made the big money because he knew the results
of all the future World Series games. I need I
need a Mickey Mantle rookie card. I got one, but
(10:39):
it's in the future. But here, if you give me
twelve dollars, that's your card, and then when you get
to the future it's yours. I'll give it to you.
I mean, is there some kind of scam going on
where that's happened, you know, which brings the fact to
all these leagues if they don't even know And one
of the leagues actually said this, I don't even know
three weeks into the future. How can you ask me
to predict three months to the future. And frankly that's correct.
(11:02):
But now seeing as how things have evolved in the
past couple of weeks, where we can't really trust players,
people to social distance the right way where mass and
stop the spread of COVID nineteen. Right, we were on
the the the the way back down, coming down with
(11:23):
everybody else, and I'm thinking, we're gonna have fans at games.
Everybody's going. Everybody's making too much of this because look
look at we're flattening the curve, and coronavirus were taking
care of it. But no, not enough of us can
go out and do it safely. And you're seeing athletes
who decide we're gonna go to a bar one night
and look what happens. Oh, we have COVID nineteen. Now,
I think the bubble is the only thing that can
(11:43):
save the players because they need to be in an
in a situation where everything is controlled around them, where
they can be said, Okay, listen, this is what it is.
We're gonna test you, We're gonna keep you safe. We're
gonna play basketball. You're gonna get paid, You're gonna get
to have a great and un precedented amount of exposure
to to everybody your sport. You can, we can push
(12:05):
social justice like we never have before. We can do
all these things. But the fact is is that as
we've seen, trusting you know, athletes in their twenties and
thirties to say, Okay, you've got to do everything the
right way and stay safe. I think that's impossible. I
I don't think you can say, yes, we'll do that
and look at the NBA gonna have to worry about
what what What some people might say is, oh, it's
(12:27):
a bad optic where you have all these players, you
have a lot of black players in a bubble and
under and that's not going to be a good optic,
which is kind of what Chris Paul was bringing about
a couple of weeks ago. But I think that's the
only way you're gonna be able to play. Say okay,
let's control everything. Let's leave the NBA. We're going to
control it all and keep everybody safe. Positive tests here,
you're not playing, we're doing X, Y and Z. We
(12:48):
are in control of this. Well, even in that situation,
you don't have total control. It's just the best you
can do. Which is why one baseball writer said that's
the wild, Wild West, because baseball is still going to
all the other stadiums in in inter league and all
the other stadiums in your division, and they're making flights
and they're having series just like nothing's happening. Yeah, you know.
(13:09):
And the thing with baseball is that they're going in
a way where I don't know that you can control.
And look, if you can't control, you can only do
the best you can. You're right, and and basketball, clearly,
this is the best way you can do it if
we can control in a bubble and stop positive tests,
because we can stop players from making a bad decision
where they say, listen, I'm gonna go out for a drinker,
I'm gonna go out to a restaurant, or I'm gonna
(13:30):
go do this, or somebody who has come to visit
them that wasn't social distancing. And you know, you can
control that and that's gonna keep everybody healthy. And that's
a big positive for being able to play baseball. The
best part is that okay, yes you're traveling, and that's
probably not the best idea, but there is the least
amount of interaction. And as we've known for coronavirus is
(13:52):
the longer you are exposed to someone or the more
likely are you are to get it. Baseball is the
sport most made coronavirus US friendly of all the team
sports sports you know, the individual sports, clearly you can
do it because we're saying come back. But baseball, of
the team sports, is the most coronavirus friendly. So that's
where okay, at least that's in baseball's wheelhouse, and that's
(14:13):
on their side. That okay, the less of it's out there.
But I'll tell you, you you know, if if the NBA
bubble really works and and and I I wonder if
you're not gonna see other sports go okay, depending on
how things go in our country, if we see big
spike and rise, it's gonna be well, guess what, we
all have to find some kind of bubble. And that's
the way forward because the first time somebody for one
league finds successful way to do it, all the league
(14:35):
is gonna copy. And do you know why? Overall, the
bigger story is why are we in this situation in
sports in this country because our country didn't take the
virus seriously, because there are other countries like Germany that
did and they were able to finish their season. It
just finished on FMS one last weekend. They're done with
the actual regular season schedule. South Korea baseball have been
(14:58):
on TV, granted with no ends but they've really needed
the TV exposure financially to keep that league afloat, and
they've gotten it. And Taiwan, despite being close to China,
took it very seriously and they've had experience with pandemics
and it came in Andy and guess what, they were
the first baseball league in the country to start. So
these things and Japan Baseball recently started. These are the
(15:21):
things of why we're in a bind in this country.
I'll tell you the bubble. I went from the bubble
being this has never come on. How is this going
to work? To think in ten days it's you know,
the bubble. Maybe the only thing that saves us. Rocky said,
people can change. We've seen it on this show during
this fight. I've seen a lot of changing. And I
(15:42):
like how we got to talk to the crowd at
the end, you know, like, what does that? What does
it usually got? You got to talk to the crowd
with with of course, with a with a translator right now,
it's kind of translation. It was Rocky after all. 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
(16:04):
app joining us. Now on the hotline, it is Bleacher Report,
Fox Sports One. NBA insider Rick Buker and Rick Look
will get to this stuff with Adam Silver and as
we get on as the league is getting ready to
come back, and j R. Smith too. But you know
the Lou Williams thing for all the players not coming back,
I mean, am I overestimating that? Boy, if Lou Williams
(16:24):
doesn't play that, that puts a huge dent in the
Clippers chances to win it all. Yeah, I don't know
a dent, certainly, I don't know if it's a huge dent.
I would say, I think you're underestimating a little bit.
The Avery Bradley. I think the distinction between Avery Bradley
and Lou Williams is in it's it's there's a distinctive difference,
But I don't think it's a monstrous difference. Uh, And
(16:47):
I'm probably probably not expressing that well. I think I
think the Lakers are going to miss Avery Bradley in
a significant way. A lot of it depends on the
condition to Roz and Rondo uh coming back. But does
a reason that Davy Bradley moved into the starting lineup
and was getting a lot of runs. So, um, the
question with Lou and I guess this is the thing.
(17:07):
You know, remember when when DeAndre Jordan's was headed to
the Dallas Mavericks and Blake and Chris Paul and Doc
Rivers all staked out his his house. I would not
be surprised if Doc Rivers is doing the same thing
with Lou Williams right now. I know their relationship and um,
(17:28):
and I would expect that Doc is going to be
doing everything that he can to convince Lou to come
come along. I will I will be I mean, look,
it's very possible I would be there. I would be
surprised when all of a sudden and done, if Lou
ends up not going to going to Orlando. He hates
the practice, he hates like anything that's beyond playing. Um,
(17:50):
so I get why he would be the guy that
would express the most reluctance for a variety of reasons, obviously,
But I just I feel like with what the Clippers have,
the possibility that they have the relationship that Doc has
with Lou, that they're gonna find a way to get
this done. Rick. When it comes to now, let's go
across the across the hall to j R. Smith, who
(18:12):
get you know, is is gonna wind up taking Avery
Bradley spot per se for the Lakers big story the
past twenty four hours. I don't I don't know that.
I mean it sounds great and j R. Smith coming
back is awesome, and that's gonna be great because it's
gonna be fun. But I just don't know how much
he's gonna play. I mean, I feel like he's the
let's break glass in case of emergency because the Laker,
(18:32):
you know, k c. P Is gonna play in Waiters
is gonna play, and and Alex Caruso is gonna play
in Rondo. All these guys are gonna play. I think
this is just Hey, if something happens and we have
to put you in, we'll put j R. Smith in. Yeah,
I think you're right. It's it's a matter of are
you gonna leave that rostery spot open? Well, no, not
if you can fill it. And so who are you
going to fill it with? Jamal Crawford, Nick Young, j R. Smith.
(18:55):
I mean, those are those are the candidates, and those
are the main candidate. J Smith at least has a
familiarity with Lebron Um. Lebron maybe unfortunately has a familiarity
with her in some key situations. But as far as
a guy who could defend a little bit and knocked
down a big shot and understand how to play off
(19:18):
of Lebron, they are just makes the most sense. Of course,
I'm talking about the JR. That we saw about two
years ago. There's a reason that they signed uh Dion
Waiters ahead of j R. Smith at this point in
their respective careers, and so yeah, I would fully expect
that j R. Is only going to see time. Let's
(19:41):
put it this way. If j R c is time,
things are probably not going well for the Lakers. Although
you know at some point, you know what's gonna come
down to. He's gonna be on the floor in the
last minute of Game seven and take an ill advised shot.
I mean, you just know somehow that's gonna happen. Well,
wait a minute, I mean you're like, you know tomorrow
(20:02):
is Wednesday, Like, yes, of course he is. I mean, yeah,
he's gonna he's gonna hit about three, like, oh my god, shots,
and then he's gonna miss about seven in a row,
and then he's gonna hit two more. Oh my god,
shots and you just don't know when they're gonna come do.
This is the thing. I don't know that it's a
(20:24):
matter of like in a in a crunch time situation,
or it's in the first quarter. It's kind of like
that Roulette wheel. You know it's all gonna happen, you
just don't know when. And I don't think JR. Really knows.
I think that's why he's so good or so fearless
under pressures, because he doesn't really know what's going on.
(20:45):
It's just I got the ball, there's a basket, I'm
going to shoot it, and that's par for the course. Rick.
This is Steve amidst all the questions, and there are
many about this year, I do have one question about
next season to you in that it's a pipe dream,
isn't it that next season, for the end is starting
first week of December. First off, this season's NBA Finals,
even if we get to the NBA Finals wouldn't end
(21:06):
until mid October, and they don't know about fans even
being back for games in December. Still right, Yeah, No,
I think we're a long way from I think we're
a long way from having fans in the building. But
I don't see anything as far as the timeline is
concerned that they wouldn't be able to come back in December.
What is what's your what's your reasoning for? That's because
(21:27):
they were talking early December, and everybody, even before the virus,
was saying, you know, they should kind of start on
Christmas because they get all this attention on Christmas. Main
that would be a good starting point for a season. Yes,
except that you have all that attention and you're going
to see it at the beginning of this on July three.
It's really see people, it's it's not very good basketball
(21:49):
the first I mean, we we've had a couple of
good games, like Lakers Clippers was was fun and I
was impressed, But by and large, we get a lot
of of scrappy basketball early on, which is why Christmas
is your showcase. So you'd want to have your teams
to have five, six, seven, eight games under their belt
(22:13):
before you get to the showcase. Otherwise it's like, hey, guys,
we're back. It's basketball on Christmas. Oh my god. This
is awful because you get a lot of people on
Christmas who are watching that may not wit watch the
rest of the year. Or or not watching on a
regular basis. So that's going to be their their impression.
And if you're buying, you know, if you're if you're
(22:35):
buying a jersey, if you're buying Kyrie Irving's jersey for
your kid and he opens it up on Christmas and
then Kyrie Irving goes to for nineteen, it kind of
takes a little of the steam out of the gift,
doesn't it. Well, that's why Nicks jerseys are No one's
buying them anymore. We can't. We can't. I can't risk
my kid opening this jersey and being disappointed after he
(22:55):
actually watches a game. I mean, I don't think they
make nexs jerseys anymore, or they're saying I don't want
to my kid walking out in public with the next jersey. Well,
with with Tom Thibodeau being the next coach to the
New York Knicks, I think guys are going to have
to earn. Like they're not going to get jersey until
they meet a certain level. They're gonna be playing shirts
and skins up until then. Um, well, is that's definitely happening, Rick,
(23:18):
because the Nick the Knicks have I think seventeen or
eighteen more people they want to talk to. Yeah, but
you know what, in all seriousness, I think that's a
smart move by Leon Rose because he's never he's never
done this before. So why not Kansas the League? I mean,
he knows Tom. He knows Tom the part of c
A A represented by Worldwide West or affiliates thereof, so
(23:43):
they know who Tips is. But why not bring in
Mike Brown and pick his brain and you know, find
out what he did in Cleveland and what the Warriors
are doing in Golden State and uh, just just you know,
get his collect as much knowledge as possible. I mean
that's really Uh they're not the first to bring in
(24:04):
a lot of different people and pick brains and get
a base of knowledge. And especially for a guy like
Leon Rose who's never been in that position, I think
it's actually a smart move because you're you're never going
to get the opportunity to, uh to to peek into
the playbook of this many different coaches or coaching candidates,
(24:24):
and I dare say, you get them where they're you know,
they're they're vying for potentially a job or it's not
this this time around, maybe the next time around. So
they're gonna give you their best goods. So I I
don't have a problem with with doing it, especially uh
you know, there's my understanding is what we'll get all
we'll get the announcement sometime uh second third week in July.
(24:49):
We'll we'll we'll find out. And um, I honestly that's fine.
But I don't see any rush in in doing this.
But ultimate, I guess they want to get going. They're
thinking is get the coach in place, get his um,
you know what he's expecting from the players to the players,
(25:09):
get his playbook into their hands so that they can
get going. So I guess it, as I think out loud,
it makes enough sense to do it, uh next month.
But um, as far as interviewing a bunch of people,
I think that's I think that's just collecting knowledge, and
I don't think that's a bad thing. Rick Buker with
us The Jason Smith Show with Mike Carmen Steve de
Seger in for Mike. Now we get to the resumption
(25:32):
of the NBA season, and certainly Adam Silver today making
a lot of headlines saying we're not full speed ahead.
No matter what COVID nineteen could could stop us at
any point. Uh, where is the NBA right now? Rick?
Because this is why I look at this week is boy,
this is where the players are going to be the
most nervous about returning. Uh. Are you seeing a situation
(25:54):
in which, boy, things could change for the NBA as
far as their plans to resume. Not at not at
this point. You know the the I'll tell you the
the gms that I talked to right before the players
came in on four, we're expecting a lot more positive
tests than we got. We got what sixteen out of
(26:15):
three two? I think they were expecting like somewhere as
they Nobody gave me a number, but I would dare
say eighty ninety. Maybe they are a much higher number.
Because they were asking Adam at that time, the gms
were what's what's the cutoff number? Like? What what? How
many have to test positive? Where we might shut this
(26:37):
thing down? And they were thinking that they were going
to get to it. The feeling is that what they
with only his sixteen testing positive out of the three
D sum that you are now creating a a bubble
and an environment that should be safer and more COVID
(26:58):
free and COVID COVID protected then where those three players
were prior to this. So I think that that is
simply I think it's it's more uh pr because there
is the nervousness about Florida. We have the rise in
(27:21):
cases nationwide, and so for the league to to blindly say, hey,
no problem, we're going forward. You know, we're the whole
idea of blindly going forward in this under these conditions
would not be a good look. But I haven't heard
(27:42):
anything from the league that would tell me that they
have an increased nervousness or anxiety that what they are
building is not going to hold up and protect their
players at least to get there and to experience it.
If we get everybody in there and suddenly guys are
(28:03):
testing positive left and right, or we get you know,
an older coach Mike D'Antoni or now Gentry uh and
they get gravely ill, then I think that would give
them pause. But we're not there yet, and so right now,
I think it's just a matter of um adam um
you know, testing, testing the wind, understanding what the you know,
(28:26):
what what the the atmosphere is like in the in
the country overall, and playing to that and saying, hey,
you know what, We're aware of what's going on, and uh,
and we're not going to just you know, play again
at all costs, even though even though the mindset among
(28:46):
the owners is we pretty much have to play at
all costs because otherwise it's gonna cost this way too much. Yeah,
and they've gone through this wreck. My last question it
relates to what Adam Silver talked today about players may
have to adapt their language, you know, gets picked up
by the microphones now on the telecast. It actually brings
me to the question on us kind of a separate point.
Have you watched live sports in the last month and
(29:10):
what telecasts have done with no actual crowd noise, because initially,
like German soccer on FS one, you could hear everything
from the players. It wasn't like a scrimmage, and then
they started pumping in crowd noise. Yeah. I watched the
Bundesliga games and I gotta this is the thing that
drives me crazy about the NBA. I mean, we're just
(29:33):
we're almost to cricket. I mean, let's just start wearing
the white flax and the and and half tea at halftime.
And it is we're taking all of the flavor and
passion and personality out of the game. We've taken the
physicality out of it. We've taken the you can't look
(29:53):
sideways at a guy without drawing a t you can't uh,
you can't emote uh, and now you can't curse. I
mean I was looking forward. Anybody has ever heard I'm
dating myself a little bit. Anybody ever heard Kevin Garnett curse?
I mean it was a work of art. It was
it was profane, and I don't know necessarily that I
(30:15):
want my kids under twelve hearing it, but um, it
was good stuff. So I mean, where are you drawing
the line? Like, you know, look just you know, dropping
f bombs all over the place is one thing, but
there's a certain trash talk that is profane that this
That's what I was looking forward to is hearing the
(30:39):
back and forth and the idea that Adam is telling
them that they've got to tamp that down. I'm like,
no way, man, I need that stuff. And should they
add crowd noise or NBA two K sounds or something,
you know what it's it's no I mean, Orlando already
does it in the regular game, and there are other
(31:02):
teams that do. I mean guarantee you teams amplify their
their their noise level, um and so. But no, I'm
not I'm not for that. If we look at trying
to trying to pretend this is going to be the same,
or trying to create it like it's going to be,
it's not going to be the same. So just embrace that.
Embrace it. It's going to be different, and let's let's
(31:25):
go into this and experience something completely new and different
rather than trying to. I mean, look, I don't know,
I would just I would think it was kind of bogus.
Wouldn't wouldn't do it for me. It's like it's like
the last tracks. Last tracks don't make you don't make
things funnier, do they? Mash took it out eventually. I
think you can. You can follow on Twitter with or
(31:48):
without a laugh track. It is at Rick Buker. Bleacher
Report reports one NBA insider. That's a good one. Like
you like that you like to one good stuff was
always butunny. We'll talk to you next week. Have ago on.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm. Eastern seven
(32:10):
pm Pacific. You know, it's a little bit of viperbole
every day when we say this has changed forever. Certain
things in our lives have changed forever because of our
living with COVID nineteen. Certain things are changed for a
little while. But certainly today I think we saw a
sport change forever as the minor league baseball season was
officially canceled. Earlier today, we thought this was coming. We
(32:34):
didn't know what kind of season minor league baseball was
gonna have, and clearly it was too risky in many
circumstances to have minor league baseball continues. So they will
not play. They will begin again with a fresh start
in UH. This is why this is gonna change, UH,
minor league baseball and baseball forever, because minor league baseball
(32:57):
is not a big money maker, right like that. You know,
a lot of the the minor league teams are subsidized
by the major league teams either they're in some are
independently owned. That's right. A lot of them are not
owned by the major league teams, so they have to
pay for the equipment and the salaries, and they don't
have the TV contracts that the majors do. Of course, Yeah,
it's gonna some are gonna be Some are gonna have
to worry about Major League being able to subsidize them.
(33:19):
Some are gonna say, well, we have to sell, and
you're gonna see some own many owners are gonna have
to sell the team because they have lost even more
money now. And what I think this is gonna wind
up being is that we're gonna come back to baseball
next year and you're still gonna see double A and
Triple A. Baseball will be the same, like you're still
gonna see because you need that pipeline to get from
double A to Triple A to the major leagues. And
(33:40):
I think that will stay. But all but all those
lower minor league teams, I don't think you're gonna see.
I'm you may see teams only have single A, double A,
triple A, no short season, single A, no split season
in double A, no no two teams, no rookie leagues. No.
I think you might see all that go out the window,
and it might wind up being just rate A, double
(34:01):
A and triple A. And some teams you might they
might struggle have a single A team. They might say listen, well,
let's we're going to figure something out and just bring
some of our players and maybe, you know, share a
team with somebody. I mean, you're gonna see minor league
baseball in a different way than we've ever seen it
before next year. And this was a problem before the virus.
Remember the contract between the major and minor leagues ends
(34:21):
this year anyway, and Major League Baseball has already proposed
reducing the minimum total of affiliates from a hundred sixty
down to a hundred twenty teams. That's when politicians, especially
with minor league towns, were saying, hey, this is part
of Americana, this part of baseball. We we shouldn't be
getting rid of these teams. Now they're gonna have to because,
as the Association president and the minors said, we here
(34:44):
in the minor leagues are fans in the stands business.
We don't have the national TV revenues, and more than
half of our hundred sixty clubs are in danger of
failing without new money now, without a loan or government assistance. Look,
and I've but to so many minor league games. Most
of my life have been to more minor league games,
and the stands are never filled the stands never even
(35:05):
filled a ten thousand capacity or eight thousand, four thousand
average if you add all the levels. Yeah, we're gonna
see Major League Baseball is going to see their minor
league and minor league baseball across the country change forever.
After this, be sure to catch live editions of The
Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern,
(35:27):
seven pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I
Heart Radio app. Fifteen more years, the Mets will be
dealing this playing Bobby Benia nearly one point two million
dollars on Bobby a day. Uh, Bobby Banni a day
July one, and you know when the clock turns to July, Steve,
(35:47):
there's always a couple of big days. Obviously Bobby Beni
a day on July from but but July nine is
Jeff Fisher Day. Seven nine is Jeff Fish So we
go from Bobby Benia Day to Jeff Fisher Day, which
is seven nine, please because every year always going seven
and nine. So July nine is Jeff Fisher Day. The
(36:09):
day on the first, we have the fourth of July
and then we have Jeff Fisher Day. It's it's a three.
As far as the Mets thing though, in retrospect, and
it's their job to think of this in advance. Shouldn't
you just not be paying off a player like that
over such a long term simply because the story will
come up again every year? Isn't that reason number one?
(36:31):
Maybe to pay the last sum check, be done with it.
I think if if you could go back to the
two thousand one Mets, I think there's many things they
would want to change. First thing is, don't listen to
Bernie made off. Secondly, Hey, it's gonna be kind of embarrassing.
And you know, this is a team that was worth
in the hundreds of high hundreds of millions of dollars
back in two thousand and one. It was it's like
five million bucks. Let's just figure out a way to
(36:53):
spread it out. Is that to give him that money
had just been on the World Series? Oh? I know,
I know, sorry to bring That's the Mets. That's how
it's That's how the Mets work. That's why I'm happy
that now seven bidders have been approved to buy the Met.
Steve Disager if he's somebody is gonna buy the Mets
and we're gonna be out from under the Wilpons and
that will be That will be the day I celebrate
(37:13):
whatever day that closes. Hopefully that closes in July, and
we have Bobby been the a Day on the first,
and then we have the fourth of July, then we
have Jeff Fisher Day, then we have Mets Freedom Day.
I guess you could call him a year and the
first just got the new owners are gonna say, hey, listen, Bobby,
we're gonna tear that agreement up. Or you know, Bobby,
we're just gonna send you all that money now. Okay.
(37:36):
Actually Mr Mett is not going to be at any
of these games, right there's no mascots and no fans. Well,
I don't know. Mr Met could be there. He's got
the big head on, so he's got kind of got
the mask already. He's social distancing. Uh okay, he could
make a case. I wish he had a strong your union.
I'm not expecting to see any Oh, do the mascots
have a union? Is there a Are you kidding? The
(37:59):
cheer leaders were getting hourly pay and then they went
to court. In sports in general in this country I'm
talking about. This is not like career where you've got
the cheerleaders with the mass on the dugout cheering literally
when they're backs to the field, cheering to no fans
in the stands. It's not now, but I wouldn't surprise
if there was a mascots union. You never know, there
(38:21):
might be. We had some powerful mascots there. Yeah. Sure
you have the Philly fanatic, you have Mr met other people,
led by the San Diego Chicken of course, bring too.
You know, he should have organized the union because he
was famous for one phrase. He was asked about what
it was like being in that hot costume on the
(38:41):
sunny afternoons during the summer ball games, sweating up a storm.
His reply was, if you can't stand the heat, get
out of the chicken. Frankly words to live and also
a labor issue. Yeah that's true, that's true. Hey, listen,
we have to make the that would be the first thing.
Can we make these costumes a little bit more more cooler? Okay?
(39:03):
Can we just can we do that? I mean they're
really really hot. Remember, passing out was the equivalent of
the old MLB wool uniforms, you know, nothing breathing back
then that they didn't pay him off. I actually wore
a chicken suit once at you you are a good story.
I wore a chicken suit at Fox Sports Radio because
Ben Maller and I first my first time around a Fox.
(39:24):
We used to do a weekend show on Saturdays and
Sundays together for in like two thousand one, two thousand
to two thousand and three at the time, and Benny
Yagbayanni were stars on the Mets. Yes right though, Andy Chavez,
sure yeah, all of all those players. Uh. And and
we did a we did a show together on the weekends.
There was a lot of fun. Oh my god, the
food we bought before a show was fantastic. And uh,
(39:47):
Ben and I did a show together. We made a
bet on the n c A tournament and that we made.
The loser would have to wear a chicken suit. So
and I lost on the sidewalk, No no, no, in
the studio for the the loser had to wear a
chicken suit. So no no. But it was still the
Internet was big, and you know Ben had a website
(40:08):
and he was, you know, gonna put it up on
his book and SAI, all right, Greig, we'll do It'll
be fun thing. And I wound up losing. Of course,
I think, I think because I had Gonzaga and I
was stupid because I was way too early on on
the Gonzaga. Uh yeah, So so I had to go
and I went up from Chat too far. Luckily there
(40:28):
was a costume store not too far from the station,
and so I need to run a chicken costume I
longly needed. Fo I go like four hours ago, like
you return it for a day and return back how
much it was like thirty five bucks. I'm like, okay,
that's not bad. So I got a chicken costume and
I got to wear it for the entire show, and
Ben put pictures up on the website of me, and
I was. I wore a chicken costume and I had
(40:49):
to wear the head in between uh segments. But obviously
I couldn't wear it. We were talking because you know
that just like this all the time, and people sound
like that on the air now, right, So I and yeah,
but that this same thing is it's not good radio.
So but you can't have three hours of that. No,
you can't have that. So I would wear and it
sounds like the bad videotape in the old days, yea
(41:10):
having it I thought, I take this game, but joe
Box voice is really not coming through. Check the tracker. Actually,
about the time we were taping Mets games in two
thousands when that occurred, just turn the volume off, just
turn the volume off and wearing it in between segments.
(41:31):
It got so hot within seconds, I'm going, oh my god,
the sweat is and I and I and I I'm
somebody who sweats, you know something. Sometimes I just need
to like look one way to the other and I
start sweating. Uh. And so I'm like, boy, this is
just really awful, like rivulets of sweat coming down my face.
And every time I would take the chicken suit head off,
I was like, oh, oh, I feel like I'm in
(41:52):
an air conditioned room. This is the best. How does
where you do it all? Most of them have, you know,
the cartoon head done? Yeah, but at least they're outside
walking around. I mean, I'm inside in the studio. There's
no breeze, there's no air, but there's also I don't
know how often they get to go take their costume
heads off and cool off for a little bit. I mean,
(42:12):
I have no idea. I mean I assume they get
they get they get regulation breaks to do that during game.
But is it every three innings? Is it every inning
and every half? At least football you've had halftime. I
believe I have seen a costumed person at halftime taking
the at the top of the chicken head off or
whatever the costume was, and just sitting exhausted for the
twelve minute break before he had to go back out.
(42:35):
Oh my god, look that guy's not wearing his head. Oh,
you've completely ruined the image of it. But the b
y U mascot, he was doing one of those flips
in the end zone where you jump on the trampoline
first and then the head flipped off. You might be
right about that, You might be right. It was separate
(42:55):
from the b y U game where they had the
parachutists coming in and landing right before coming one of
them kind of missed the midfield circle that they had
left for him. We went straight into the wall beyond
the item. This is where you're supposed to land. Oh yeah,
I know, we tried that. It was just still not
as bad as the parachutist before kickoff of I believe
it was a duke football game who landed at the
(43:17):
fifty yard line of the North Carolina Stadium eight miles away.
They did, where is everybody? I know this is where
we're supposed to go. I do not see the crowd
from up there. I got everything right. I don't understand
this is the state. I mean, how many stadiums could
there be? I mean, I mean the stadium, but there's
nobody parked. Oh there's you know. Wait, don't I get
(43:38):
the time wrong? Maybe the games in an hour? Maybe
I jumped an hour to or Oh, speaking of getting
the time wrong, I must bring up this hour of
the Las Vegas Korean baseball betting scandal from this past weekend.
I guarantee you some point in the next half hour
I will be bringing that up. Oh boy, all right.
(43:59):
Jason Smith ste De Sager live from the Geico Studios.
Now earlier, we we talked a few minutes ago. We
were talking about two big changes for the National Football
You look, and we'll continue to celebrate Bobby Beni a
day because it's here, uh, that the NFL is considering
for this fall. One is cutting the number of preseason games.
I can't see them playing any preseason games. They want
(44:19):
to buy time, they want to be able. Then they're
not gonna want to risk the season by having players
catch COVID nineteen when they're playing games that don't match.
So no Cam Newton versus Carolinason game not gonna get
that not gonna happen. Realized, they're gonna say, we're gonna
do it, and we're gonna say the NFL is not
gonna make changes where it's gonna be dribs and drabs
like you're seeing with baseball in the NBA. It's gonna
(44:42):
be here's what we're doing, and here's our changes for
the season. And eventually it's gonna be we're playing the
middle of October. There's gonna be no preseason. We're coming
to camp on September one, whatever the days are gonna
be that then that's how we're doing it. And that's it.
It's not gonna be well, we're gonna look and see
how this goes, and see how this goes. They're gonna
make one decision and it's going to come in the
next couple of weeks, and you know, and and mainly
(45:02):
because the the NFL is not going to be able
to see exactly what works because by the time everybody's
got to come to camp which is gonna be you know,
less than a month from now. We're gonna only be
into the first couple of days of the baseball season,
and we're not even gonna have the NBA yet. So
it's not like they're gonna have games and say, Okay,
they're following this philosophy and this seems to be working.
(45:24):
They're not gonna know anything by the time they come
to camp. So that's why if they if they come
in September. Obviously, it gives coronavirus more time to burn out,
for us to get under control, to wear masks out
in public, to be able to make sure we're not
spreading this and slowing the spread. Uh, it gives them
more time to say, Okay, this is what worked for baseball,
this is what worked for the NBA, Maybe this part
can work for us. And I think that that that
(45:45):
will happen sometime in the next couple of weeks. I'll
be really surprised if they wind up coming to camp,
you know, at the end of this month, and everybody
is borrowing from everybody else worldwide in leagues of what work,
because this is also unprecedented. We talked last hour about
our first hour television of sports and how that has
looked different with the pumped in crowd noise. And then
what's really been bad is one of the European soccer
(46:07):
leagues is maybe it's Italy has just been maybe it's Spain.
There they've just been putting the video game type of
fans in the stands so you don't have empty seats
in the background. It is comical, but not in a
good way. Uh So, really what you're saying, if there's
no NFL preseason, then yet again, the Ram Stadium is
still not opening yet because didn't Harmon have tickets to
(46:30):
take his daughter to the Taylor Swift opening of the
stadium before the preseason was due to start. Mid August
is when that new place is due to start as
it stands. If if there's not a preseason, then that
means the first Sunday night game is supposed to be
Rams hosting the Cowboys, right then that would be the
grand opening, and then the Chargers host in the same
(46:50):
place one week after that, assuming again we had that going.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven
pm Pacific
Thanks for listening to the best of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmen podcast. Be sure to catch us
live every weeknight from ten pm to two a m.
Eastern seven to eleven pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio.
Find your local station for The Jason Smith Show with
Mike Harmon at Fox Sports Radio dot com, or stream
us live every night on the I Heart Radio app
by searching fs R. This is the best of The
(00:22):
Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon on Fox Sports Radio.
Greetings and welcome inside The Jason Smith Show with Mike
Harmen live from the Geico Studios. Mike Harmon off tonight
special delivery. Steve de Seger in for him as boy.
(00:43):
I'll tell you what every day is sort of following
the same I would say, the same pattern where late
in the day there's just a flurry of news because
the NBA and MLB and the NFL have had meetings
about something COVID restart related, and we get a whole
bunch of stuff just dumped at us like five o'clock
(01:03):
in the afternoon. Weird. Usually all the big news happens
in the morning, early part of the day, and then
once in a while we get a story breaking at night.
That's a really big deal. And usually when that happens,
it's something coming from a game. Uh, that that's going on.
But obviously no games happening now. But the last you know,
month or two has been okay. But after a whole
day's worth of thinking things and having conference calls and
(01:24):
zoom calls, hey, we get big stories. And we told
you yesterday this is a huge, huge, huge week for
restarting sports, for the NBA and Major League Baseball because
this is when the players are getting a little skittish
and a little nervous about going and restarting this season.
You know, we had players bow out yesterday in the
(01:47):
NBA and in Major League Baseball today again the same thing.
Lou Williams still unsure if he's going to restart the
season with the Clippers, and if the Clippers don't have
Lou Williams. I don't think the Clippers beat the Lakers
in the Western Conference Finals. I'm sorry, I'm just putting
both those teams in the Western Conference Finals. I hope
that's okay. Uh, this is the first real big domino
of boy if they're missing him, If a team is
(02:08):
missing player X, who decided to not come back. That's
gonna put a dent in their title plan. So this
is what we're getting, uh now, is that the players
need to be shepherded through this situation and being told
that hey, we got you. You know, the the NBA
and MLB saying listen, we're all set, we got you,
We're gonna take care of you. Well. Today, Adam Silver
(02:28):
went on a podcast on Time uh Time one hundred talks.
He did an appearance on Time one hundred talks, and
he was asked about the NBA's chances of not going
to Orlando, and Adam Silver said, Hey, while the plan
is to go on and play, hey, you can't just
say full steam ahead. Never full steam ahead no matter what.
I think. One thing we're learning about this virus as
(02:50):
much as unpredictable, and I think we and our players,
together with their union, the Players Association, look at the
data on a daily basis, and if there were something
to change that was outside of the scope of what
we're playing for, certainly we would revisit our plans. I'd
also say, I mean, we're testing daily. We haven't put
a precise number on it, but if we were to
(03:11):
see a large number of cases, and we were to
see spread in our community, that would, of course would
be a cause for us to stop as well. There's
two big things coming off this, And the first thing, Steve,
is that I'm glad. I'm actually glad that I heard
Adam Silver say, hey, if the coronavirus gets out of control,
this could stop us playing. Actually, because with what's going
(03:32):
on now in the country, there's so much you know,
full steam ahead that no matter what, and it can
get out of control, and you're talking about people's health.
I'm actually glad to hear that Adam Silver say, hey,
went no, no no, can't say full steam ahead because the
player's health is important. We have to take care of this.
That that could stop us. Because when I see stories
today like Major League Baseball insinuating that if a player
gets COVID they're gonna hide that test and just the
(03:55):
player goes on the injured list and they don't say anything, Well,
the implication they have to hide the test sports sometimes. Dude,
I don't want to release the medical information, sure, but
you know, I think you kind of have to let
people know that. I think you have to. You can
get think that's important, sure, but any any time. Any
time I hear of sports say we may hide positive
(04:17):
coronavirus has from anybody, that's never a good look because
you're wondering, Okay, are you gonna just hide cases and
just try to play no matter what? Are are you?
Are you gonna see teams lie to players and say, yeah, no,
you're fine. It's gonna sit for a couple of days. Meanwhile,
you're in quarantine or and you don't know what, or
they don't tell you're officially in it. So I'm kind
of glad to hear Adam Silver say, listen, we're not
(04:37):
just gonna go crazy and go and play no matter
what and just collect money at the gate, and doesn't
matter who's healthy. He knows coronavirus could get to the
point where that stops basketball, and and there's no hard
and fast time where I could say, okay, this will
stop it. It's gonna be a smell test thing. It's
gonna be we can play until we realize we can't
play anymore. So I'm actually kind of buoyed by Adam
Silver in the leadership He's showing here as far as
(04:59):
this goes. It was kind of took a little bit
of pressure off me today, going, Okay, the NBA, at
least I know, was gonna do things. Although people were
remember saying a few weeks ago, Okay, are they going
to pause the playoffs if some star has to actually
pause for a couple of weeks because you're tested positive
and flat out this past week, Silver said, nope, You're
gonna treat that like you had an injured player during
(05:20):
the regular season. Nope, You'll just have to go without him,
you know, And that and that gets into a different,
a different thing where Okay, you're not gonna you're not
gonna stop the game. But let's just say this happens. Right,
Let's just say this happens. Let's say on uh, you know,
two nights before the end of the regular season or
you know, in the middle of the playoffs. Let's just
say it doesn't matter that the Raptors are gonna play
(05:41):
the Celtics, right, rap set to play the Celtics. Raptors
and Celtics each play on Monday night, They're gonna play
on Wednesday night. Well, on Tuesday morning, we find out
three Raptors players test positive for COVID nineteen. But they're
going into isolation and they're gonna be monitoring everything is
everything is fine. Are the Celtics who have no as
of COVID nineteen tests, Are they gonna say, yeah, we're
(06:01):
ready to play this game the next night. You're ready
to go, No, we'll play because you're not gonna know.
You're not gonna know if the other players you're playing
against have COVID nineteen, if you're gonna get it from them.
So if you suddenly have a team that says, yeah,
we've got three positive tests, the NBA can say, Okay,
well they're being monitored and they're fine, and we'll get
them back in and they have to you know, they
have to isolate and self quarantine, but we don't you
don't know what the effect on the rest of the
(06:23):
team is. Yeah, you could take their temperatures, but sometimes
the symptoms take a couple of days. Is a team
that has no positive tests gonna say, yes, we're gonna
go play this game the next day. That's a big
thing that I think they're You're we're not thinking about enough,
because look, we we had we had teams refused to
play at the end. You know, Rudy Gobert test positive
for COVID nineteen. Right, all the games are canceled. We're
(06:44):
gonna play one more game with the Kings and the Pelicans,
and the Pelicans say, referee from our game. Ref Rudy
Gobert's game the other night. We're not playing. So okay,
there's no game. And this is the part of it
to the power of the player, especially in this league. Right,
so if you get a few players together, it's like
the Donald Sterling situation. Remember, and those Clipper players would
have stopped playing. Wasn't it a playoff game? And they
(07:06):
would have walked off. They would have walked off, would
have come together, forget it? So I I could obviously
have seemed to see a team coming together in this
type of situation, with this COVID nineteen hovering over all sports.
And now whether or not Adam Silver is doing this
because he's you know, he's doing the right thing, or
he knows how powerful the players are. And that booys
(07:27):
me too, is that the players aren't going I I
don't think the NBA players are going to be herded
into doing anything they don't want to do. You know,
it's it's not on the professional athletes at the Star
Baseball players and NBA players gonna say, listen, if we
got this going on, we're just not gonna play, and
we're gonna figure this out, and it's not gonna be
We're telling you you have to go play, and and
they're gonna be powerless in this. Look, the NBA players
(07:49):
are very, very powerful, and you know, so they're gonna
be the ones that are gonna make the decisions on this.
But the other thing about this is that I'm coming
around on an idea that I first thought was a
bad idea, and now I think it's the only idea
that can save the NBA. Yeah, it's amazing, right, it's
I didn't think this is a really great idea. I
(08:09):
thought this idea sounded great in theory, but now I
think it's the only idea that could save the NBA.
I was not a big fan of the bubble plan.
I didn't think the Orlando bubble ideas. I didn't think
it was a good idea because it sounded good in
theory versus in practice. Hey, we're gonna we're gonna get
the players all together, We're gonna quarantine them, we're gonna
(08:29):
test them every day. They're gonna be in a bubble.
They're not going to be amongst anybody else. And this
is what's gonna work. But if you qualify after the
first round, remember a limited number of family members can
go to the Disney complex. You gotta win. Yeah, but
if I lose, I can go home and see everybody.
Well yeah, that's true. Okay, Well but if I win,
I can see three people. If I go home, I
can see everybody. I'm gonna go home. So I didn't
(08:53):
think it was a good I thought it was good
in theory because once you saw the NBA's plans coming out,
it seemed like, how are you going to get get
a lit on this? When you can play cards? But
if you play cards, you have to throw the cards
away right after. You can't play but to two verses
to ping pong even though you're you know, slamming up
and down against other people's bodies the entire night. No, no,
but don't stand next to each other and play ping pong.
(09:15):
Cardiovascular And they've said heavy breathing. Of course, even an exercise,
they've proved that that's more likely to transmit because we're
talking respiratory droplets. So the heavier you're breathing, like say,
in competition, and more likely it is to spread. Yeah,
I thought this is it sounds great. It's like time travel,
Like you hear all these things. No, time travel is possible,
(09:35):
time travels completely possible. How do you do it? Well,
there's the flux capacitor, and then there's timelines, and then
there's this, and there's quantum physics and I'm forgetting jigawats. Yeah,
and you're like, wait a minute, you're you're explaining the
most complex thing in the world that probably isn't even real.
That's kind of how I thought, you know, playing in
the bubble is gonna be he sounds like a great idea.
I'd like to time travel, time travels trave but realok,
a cow impossible? Really is the time travel? I mean really,
(09:58):
unless you have a DeLorean, it's gonna be really difficult
to do, so I thought. But and those are harder
to find, of course, they're very Yeah, I mean it's
hard to find it, Dolora. I don't know you're gonna
find it, Dolorian. Now that's very difficult. You said to
wait thirty years have become a collector's item. Actually, the
odd thing is you'd have to go back to the
future to find find the Dorian and they didn't use
it to go back to the future. Hey, listen, you
(10:19):
think there's people out there that are selling things in
the future, that are taking money from people, going yeah,
I gotta put it's in the future. Wait a minute,
didn't Biff had the Book of Sports with all the
results in Back to the Future too, and that's how
he made the big money because he knew the results
of all the future World Series games. I need I
need a Mickey Mantle rookie card. I got one, but
(10:39):
it's in the future. But here, if you give me
twelve dollars, that's your card, and then when you get
to the future it's yours. I'll give it to you.
I mean, is there some kind of scam going on
where that's happened, you know, which brings the fact to
all these leagues if they don't even know And one
of the leagues actually said this, I don't even know
three weeks into the future. How can you ask me
to predict three months to the future. And frankly that's correct.
(11:02):
But now seeing as how things have evolved in the
past couple of weeks, where we can't really trust players,
people to social distance the right way where mass and
stop the spread of COVID nineteen. Right, we were on
the the the the way back down, coming down with
(11:23):
everybody else, and I'm thinking, we're gonna have fans at games.
Everybody's going. Everybody's making too much of this because look
look at we're flattening the curve, and coronavirus were taking
care of it. But no, not enough of us can
go out and do it safely. And you're seeing athletes
who decide we're gonna go to a bar one night
and look what happens. Oh, we have COVID nineteen. Now,
I think the bubble is the only thing that can
(11:43):
save the players because they need to be in an
in a situation where everything is controlled around them, where
they can be said, Okay, listen, this is what it is.
We're gonna test you, We're gonna keep you safe. We're
gonna play basketball. You're gonna get paid, You're gonna get
to have a great and un precedented amount of exposure
to to everybody your sport. You can, we can push
(12:05):
social justice like we never have before. We can do
all these things. But the fact is is that as
we've seen, trusting you know, athletes in their twenties and
thirties to say, Okay, you've got to do everything the
right way and stay safe. I think that's impossible. I
I don't think you can say, yes, we'll do that
and look at the NBA gonna have to worry about
what what What some people might say is, oh, it's
(12:27):
a bad optic where you have all these players, you
have a lot of black players in a bubble and
under and that's not going to be a good optic,
which is kind of what Chris Paul was bringing about
a couple of weeks ago. But I think that's the
only way you're gonna be able to play. Say okay,
let's control everything. Let's leave the NBA. We're going to
control it all and keep everybody safe. Positive tests here,
you're not playing, we're doing X, Y and Z. We
(12:48):
are in control of this. Well, even in that situation,
you don't have total control. It's just the best you
can do. Which is why one baseball writer said that's
the wild, Wild West, because baseball is still going to
all the other stadiums in in inter league and all
the other stadiums in your division, and they're making flights
and they're having series just like nothing's happening. Yeah, you know.
(13:09):
And the thing with baseball is that they're going in
a way where I don't know that you can control.
And look, if you can't control, you can only do
the best you can. You're right, and and basketball, clearly,
this is the best way you can do it if
we can control in a bubble and stop positive tests,
because we can stop players from making a bad decision
where they say, listen, I'm gonna go out for a drinker,
I'm gonna go out to a restaurant, or I'm gonna
(13:30):
go do this, or somebody who has come to visit
them that wasn't social distancing. And you know, you can
control that and that's gonna keep everybody healthy. And that's
a big positive for being able to play baseball. The
best part is that okay, yes you're traveling, and that's
probably not the best idea, but there is the least
amount of interaction. And as we've known for coronavirus is
(13:52):
the longer you are exposed to someone or the more
likely are you are to get it. Baseball is the
sport most made coronavirus US friendly of all the team
sports sports you know, the individual sports, clearly you can
do it because we're saying come back. But baseball, of
the team sports, is the most coronavirus friendly. So that's
where okay, at least that's in baseball's wheelhouse, and that's
(14:13):
on their side. That okay, the less of it's out there.
But I'll tell you, you you know, if if the NBA
bubble really works and and and I I wonder if
you're not gonna see other sports go okay, depending on
how things go in our country, if we see big
spike and rise, it's gonna be well, guess what, we
all have to find some kind of bubble. And that's
the way forward because the first time somebody for one
league finds successful way to do it, all the league
(14:35):
is gonna copy. And do you know why? Overall, the
bigger story is why are we in this situation in
sports in this country because our country didn't take the
virus seriously, because there are other countries like Germany that
did and they were able to finish their season. It
just finished on FMS one last weekend. They're done with
the actual regular season schedule. South Korea baseball have been
(14:58):
on TV, granted with no ends but they've really needed
the TV exposure financially to keep that league afloat, and
they've gotten it. And Taiwan, despite being close to China,
took it very seriously and they've had experience with pandemics
and it came in Andy and guess what, they were
the first baseball league in the country to start. So
these things and Japan Baseball recently started. These are the
(15:21):
things of why we're in a bind in this country.
I'll tell you the bubble. I went from the bubble
being this has never come on. How is this going
to work? To think in ten days it's you know,
the bubble. Maybe the only thing that saves us. Rocky said,
people can change. We've seen it on this show during
this fight. I've seen a lot of changing. And I
(15:42):
like how we got to talk to the crowd at
the end, you know, like, what does that? What does
it usually got? You got to talk to the crowd
with with of course, with a with a translator right now,
it's kind of translation. It was Rocky after all. 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
(16:04):
app joining us. Now on the hotline, it is Bleacher Report,
Fox Sports One. NBA insider Rick Buker and Rick Look
will get to this stuff with Adam Silver and as
we get on as the league is getting ready to
come back, and j R. Smith too. But you know
the Lou Williams thing for all the players not coming back,
I mean, am I overestimating that? Boy, if Lou Williams
(16:24):
doesn't play that, that puts a huge dent in the
Clippers chances to win it all. Yeah, I don't know
a dent, certainly, I don't know if it's a huge dent.
I would say, I think you're underestimating a little bit.
The Avery Bradley. I think the distinction between Avery Bradley
and Lou Williams is in it's it's there's a distinctive difference,
But I don't think it's a monstrous difference. Uh, And
(16:47):
I'm probably probably not expressing that well. I think I
think the Lakers are going to miss Avery Bradley in
a significant way. A lot of it depends on the
condition to Roz and Rondo uh coming back. But does
a reason that Davy Bradley moved into the starting lineup
and was getting a lot of runs. So, um, the
question with Lou and I guess this is the thing.
(17:07):
You know, remember when when DeAndre Jordan's was headed to
the Dallas Mavericks and Blake and Chris Paul and Doc
Rivers all staked out his his house. I would not
be surprised if Doc Rivers is doing the same thing
with Lou Williams right now. I know their relationship and um,
(17:28):
and I would expect that Doc is going to be
doing everything that he can to convince Lou to come
come along. I will I will be I mean, look,
it's very possible I would be there. I would be
surprised when all of a sudden and done, if Lou
ends up not going to going to Orlando. He hates
the practice, he hates like anything that's beyond playing. Um,
(17:50):
so I get why he would be the guy that
would express the most reluctance for a variety of reasons, obviously,
But I just I feel like with what the Clippers have,
the possibility that they have the relationship that Doc has
with Lou, that they're gonna find a way to get
this done. Rick. When it comes to now, let's go
across the across the hall to j R. Smith, who
(18:12):
get you know, is is gonna wind up taking Avery
Bradley spot per se for the Lakers big story the
past twenty four hours. I don't I don't know that.
I mean it sounds great and j R. Smith coming
back is awesome, and that's gonna be great because it's
gonna be fun. But I just don't know how much
he's gonna play. I mean, I feel like he's the
let's break glass in case of emergency because the Laker,
(18:32):
you know, k c. P Is gonna play in Waiters
is gonna play, and and Alex Caruso is gonna play
in Rondo. All these guys are gonna play. I think
this is just Hey, if something happens and we have
to put you in, we'll put j R. Smith in. Yeah,
I think you're right. It's it's a matter of are
you gonna leave that rostery spot open? Well, no, not
if you can fill it. And so who are you
going to fill it with? Jamal Crawford, Nick Young, j R. Smith.
(18:55):
I mean, those are those are the candidates, and those
are the main candidate. J Smith at least has a
familiarity with Lebron Um. Lebron maybe unfortunately has a familiarity
with her in some key situations. But as far as
a guy who could defend a little bit and knocked
down a big shot and understand how to play off
(19:18):
of Lebron, they are just makes the most sense. Of course,
I'm talking about the JR. That we saw about two
years ago. There's a reason that they signed uh Dion
Waiters ahead of j R. Smith at this point in
their respective careers, and so yeah, I would fully expect
that j R. Is only going to see time. Let's
(19:41):
put it this way. If j R c is time,
things are probably not going well for the Lakers. Although
you know at some point, you know what's gonna come
down to. He's gonna be on the floor in the
last minute of Game seven and take an ill advised shot.
I mean, you just know somehow that's gonna happen. Well,
wait a minute, I mean you're like, you know tomorrow
(20:02):
is Wednesday, Like, yes, of course he is. I mean, yeah,
he's gonna he's gonna hit about three, like, oh my god, shots,
and then he's gonna miss about seven in a row,
and then he's gonna hit two more. Oh my god,
shots and you just don't know when they're gonna come do.
This is the thing. I don't know that it's a
(20:24):
matter of like in a in a crunch time situation,
or it's in the first quarter. It's kind of like
that Roulette wheel. You know it's all gonna happen, you
just don't know when. And I don't think JR. Really knows.
I think that's why he's so good or so fearless
under pressures, because he doesn't really know what's going on.
(20:45):
It's just I got the ball, there's a basket, I'm
going to shoot it, and that's par for the course. Rick.
This is Steve amidst all the questions, and there are
many about this year, I do have one question about
next season to you in that it's a pipe dream,
isn't it that next season, for the end is starting
first week of December. First off, this season's NBA Finals,
even if we get to the NBA Finals wouldn't end
(21:06):
until mid October, and they don't know about fans even
being back for games in December. Still right, Yeah, No,
I think we're a long way from I think we're
a long way from having fans in the building. But
I don't see anything as far as the timeline is
concerned that they wouldn't be able to come back in December.
What is what's your what's your reasoning for? That's because
(21:27):
they were talking early December, and everybody, even before the virus,
was saying, you know, they should kind of start on
Christmas because they get all this attention on Christmas. Main
that would be a good starting point for a season. Yes,
except that you have all that attention and you're going
to see it at the beginning of this on July three.
It's really see people, it's it's not very good basketball
(21:49):
the first I mean, we we've had a couple of
good games, like Lakers Clippers was was fun and I
was impressed, But by and large, we get a lot
of of scrappy basketball early on, which is why Christmas
is your showcase. So you'd want to have your teams
to have five, six, seven, eight games under their belt
(22:13):
before you get to the showcase. Otherwise it's like, hey, guys,
we're back. It's basketball on Christmas. Oh my god. This
is awful because you get a lot of people on
Christmas who are watching that may not wit watch the
rest of the year. Or or not watching on a
regular basis. So that's going to be their their impression.
And if you're buying, you know, if you're if you're
(22:35):
buying a jersey, if you're buying Kyrie Irving's jersey for
your kid and he opens it up on Christmas and
then Kyrie Irving goes to for nineteen, it kind of
takes a little of the steam out of the gift,
doesn't it. Well, that's why Nicks jerseys are No one's
buying them anymore. We can't. We can't. I can't risk
my kid opening this jersey and being disappointed after he
(22:55):
actually watches a game. I mean, I don't think they
make nexs jerseys anymore, or they're saying I don't want
to my kid walking out in public with the next jersey. Well,
with with Tom Thibodeau being the next coach to the
New York Knicks, I think guys are going to have
to earn. Like they're not going to get jersey until
they meet a certain level. They're gonna be playing shirts
and skins up until then. Um, well, is that's definitely happening, Rick,
(23:18):
because the Nick the Knicks have I think seventeen or
eighteen more people they want to talk to. Yeah, but
you know what, in all seriousness, I think that's a
smart move by Leon Rose because he's never he's never
done this before. So why not Kansas the League? I mean,
he knows Tom. He knows Tom the part of c
A A represented by Worldwide West or affiliates thereof, so
(23:43):
they know who Tips is. But why not bring in
Mike Brown and pick his brain and you know, find
out what he did in Cleveland and what the Warriors
are doing in Golden State and uh, just just you know,
get his collect as much knowledge as possible. I mean
that's really Uh they're not the first to bring in
(24:04):
a lot of different people and pick brains and get
a base of knowledge. And especially for a guy like
Leon Rose who's never been in that position, I think
it's actually a smart move because you're you're never going
to get the opportunity to, uh to to peek into
the playbook of this many different coaches or coaching candidates,
(24:24):
and I dare say, you get them where they're you know,
they're they're vying for potentially a job or it's not
this this time around, maybe the next time around. So
they're gonna give you their best goods. So I I
don't have a problem with with doing it, especially uh
you know, there's my understanding is what we'll get all
we'll get the announcement sometime uh second third week in July.
(24:49):
We'll we'll we'll find out. And um, I honestly that's fine.
But I don't see any rush in in doing this.
But ultimate, I guess they want to get going. They're
thinking is get the coach in place, get his um,
you know what he's expecting from the players to the players,
(25:09):
get his playbook into their hands so that they can
get going. So I guess it, as I think out loud,
it makes enough sense to do it, uh next month.
But um, as far as interviewing a bunch of people,
I think that's I think that's just collecting knowledge, and
I don't think that's a bad thing. Rick Buker with
us The Jason Smith Show with Mike Carmen Steve de
Seger in for Mike. Now we get to the resumption
(25:32):
of the NBA season, and certainly Adam Silver today making
a lot of headlines saying we're not full speed ahead.
No matter what COVID nineteen could could stop us at
any point. Uh, where is the NBA right now? Rick?
Because this is why I look at this week is boy,
this is where the players are going to be the
most nervous about returning. Uh. Are you seeing a situation
(25:54):
in which, boy, things could change for the NBA as
far as their plans to resume. Not at not at
this point. You know the the I'll tell you the
the gms that I talked to right before the players
came in on four, we're expecting a lot more positive
tests than we got. We got what sixteen out of
(26:15):
three two? I think they were expecting like somewhere as
they Nobody gave me a number, but I would dare
say eighty ninety. Maybe they are a much higher number.
Because they were asking Adam at that time, the gms
were what's what's the cutoff number? Like? What what? How
many have to test positive? Where we might shut this
(26:37):
thing down? And they were thinking that they were going
to get to it. The feeling is that what they
with only his sixteen testing positive out of the three
D sum that you are now creating a a bubble
and an environment that should be safer and more COVID
(26:58):
free and COVID COVID protected then where those three players
were prior to this. So I think that that is
simply I think it's it's more uh pr because there
is the nervousness about Florida. We have the rise in
(27:21):
cases nationwide, and so for the league to to blindly say, hey,
no problem, we're going forward. You know, we're the whole
idea of blindly going forward in this under these conditions
would not be a good look. But I haven't heard
(27:42):
anything from the league that would tell me that they
have an increased nervousness or anxiety that what they are
building is not going to hold up and protect their
players at least to get there and to experience it.
If we get everybody in there and suddenly guys are
(28:03):
testing positive left and right, or we get you know,
an older coach Mike D'Antoni or now Gentry uh and
they get gravely ill, then I think that would give
them pause. But we're not there yet, and so right now,
I think it's just a matter of um adam um
you know, testing, testing the wind, understanding what the you know,
(28:26):
what what the the atmosphere is like in the in
the country overall, and playing to that and saying, hey,
you know what, We're aware of what's going on, and uh,
and we're not going to just you know, play again
at all costs, even though even though the mindset among
(28:46):
the owners is we pretty much have to play at
all costs because otherwise it's gonna cost this way too much. Yeah,
and they've gone through this wreck. My last question it
relates to what Adam Silver talked today about players may
have to adapt their language, you know, gets picked up
by the microphones now on the telecast. It actually brings
me to the question on us kind of a separate point.
Have you watched live sports in the last month and
(29:10):
what telecasts have done with no actual crowd noise, because initially,
like German soccer on FS one, you could hear everything
from the players. It wasn't like a scrimmage, and then
they started pumping in crowd noise. Yeah. I watched the
Bundesliga games and I gotta this is the thing that
drives me crazy about the NBA. I mean, we're just
(29:33):
we're almost to cricket. I mean, let's just start wearing
the white flax and the and and half tea at halftime.
And it is we're taking all of the flavor and
passion and personality out of the game. We've taken the
physicality out of it. We've taken the you can't look
(29:53):
sideways at a guy without drawing a t you can't uh,
you can't emote uh, and now you can't curse. I
mean I was looking forward. Anybody has ever heard I'm
dating myself a little bit. Anybody ever heard Kevin Garnett curse?
I mean it was a work of art. It was
it was profane, and I don't know necessarily that I
(30:15):
want my kids under twelve hearing it, but um, it
was good stuff. So I mean, where are you drawing
the line? Like, you know, look just you know, dropping
f bombs all over the place is one thing, but
there's a certain trash talk that is profane that this
That's what I was looking forward to is hearing the
(30:39):
back and forth and the idea that Adam is telling
them that they've got to tamp that down. I'm like,
no way, man, I need that stuff. And should they
add crowd noise or NBA two K sounds or something,
you know what it's it's no I mean, Orlando already
does it in the regular game, and there are other
(31:02):
teams that do. I mean guarantee you teams amplify their
their their noise level, um and so. But no, I'm
not I'm not for that. If we look at trying
to trying to pretend this is going to be the same,
or trying to create it like it's going to be,
it's not going to be the same. So just embrace that.
Embrace it. It's going to be different, and let's let's
(31:25):
go into this and experience something completely new and different
rather than trying to. I mean, look, I don't know,
I would just I would think it was kind of bogus.
Wouldn't wouldn't do it for me. It's like it's like
the last tracks. Last tracks don't make you don't make
things funnier, do they? Mash took it out eventually. I
think you can. You can follow on Twitter with or
(31:48):
without a laugh track. It is at Rick Buker. Bleacher
Report reports one NBA insider. That's a good one. Like
you like that you like to one good stuff was
always butunny. We'll talk to you next week. Have ago on.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm. Eastern seven
(32:10):
pm Pacific. You know, it's a little bit of viperbole
every day when we say this has changed forever. Certain
things in our lives have changed forever because of our
living with COVID nineteen. Certain things are changed for a
little while. But certainly today I think we saw a
sport change forever as the minor league baseball season was
officially canceled. Earlier today, we thought this was coming. We
(32:34):
didn't know what kind of season minor league baseball was
gonna have, and clearly it was too risky in many
circumstances to have minor league baseball continues. So they will
not play. They will begin again with a fresh start
in UH. This is why this is gonna change, UH,
minor league baseball and baseball forever, because minor league baseball
(32:57):
is not a big money maker, right like that. You know,
a lot of the the minor league teams are subsidized
by the major league teams either they're in some are
independently owned. That's right. A lot of them are not
owned by the major league teams, so they have to
pay for the equipment and the salaries, and they don't
have the TV contracts that the majors do. Of course, Yeah,
it's gonna some are gonna be Some are gonna have
to worry about Major League being able to subsidize them.
(33:19):
Some are gonna say, well, we have to sell, and
you're gonna see some own many owners are gonna have
to sell the team because they have lost even more
money now. And what I think this is gonna wind
up being is that we're gonna come back to baseball
next year and you're still gonna see double A and
Triple A. Baseball will be the same, like you're still
gonna see because you need that pipeline to get from
double A to Triple A to the major leagues. And
(33:40):
I think that will stay. But all but all those
lower minor league teams, I don't think you're gonna see.
I'm you may see teams only have single A, double A,
triple A, no short season, single A, no split season
in double A, no no two teams, no rookie leagues. No.
I think you might see all that go out the window,
and it might wind up being just rate A, double
(34:01):
A and triple A. And some teams you might they
might struggle have a single A team. They might say listen, well,
let's we're going to figure something out and just bring
some of our players and maybe, you know, share a
team with somebody. I mean, you're gonna see minor league
baseball in a different way than we've ever seen it
before next year. And this was a problem before the virus.
Remember the contract between the major and minor leagues ends
(34:21):
this year anyway, and Major League Baseball has already proposed
reducing the minimum total of affiliates from a hundred sixty
down to a hundred twenty teams. That's when politicians, especially
with minor league towns, were saying, hey, this is part
of Americana, this part of baseball. We we shouldn't be
getting rid of these teams. Now they're gonna have to because,
as the Association president and the minors said, we here
(34:44):
in the minor leagues are fans in the stands business.
We don't have the national TV revenues, and more than
half of our hundred sixty clubs are in danger of
failing without new money now, without a loan or government assistance. Look,
and I've but to so many minor league games. Most
of my life have been to more minor league games,
and the stands are never filled the stands never even
(35:05):
filled a ten thousand capacity or eight thousand, four thousand
average if you add all the levels. Yeah, we're gonna
see Major League Baseball is going to see their minor
league and minor league baseball across the country change forever.
After this, be sure to catch live editions of The
Jason Smith Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern,
(35:27):
seven pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the I
Heart Radio app. Fifteen more years, the Mets will be
dealing this playing Bobby Benia nearly one point two million
dollars on Bobby a day. Uh, Bobby Banni a day
July one, and you know when the clock turns to July, Steve,
(35:47):
there's always a couple of big days. Obviously Bobby Beni
a day on July from but but July nine is
Jeff Fisher Day. Seven nine is Jeff Fish So we
go from Bobby Benia Day to Jeff Fisher Day, which
is seven nine, please because every year always going seven
and nine. So July nine is Jeff Fisher Day. The
(36:09):
day on the first, we have the fourth of July
and then we have Jeff Fisher Day. It's it's a three.
As far as the Mets thing though, in retrospect, and
it's their job to think of this in advance. Shouldn't
you just not be paying off a player like that
over such a long term simply because the story will
come up again every year? Isn't that reason number one?
(36:31):
Maybe to pay the last sum check, be done with it.
I think if if you could go back to the
two thousand one Mets, I think there's many things they
would want to change. First thing is, don't listen to
Bernie made off. Secondly, Hey, it's gonna be kind of embarrassing.
And you know, this is a team that was worth
in the hundreds of high hundreds of millions of dollars
back in two thousand and one. It was it's like
five million bucks. Let's just figure out a way to
(36:53):
spread it out. Is that to give him that money
had just been on the World Series? Oh? I know,
I know, sorry to bring That's the Mets. That's how
it's That's how the Mets work. That's why I'm happy
that now seven bidders have been approved to buy the Met.
Steve Disager if he's somebody is gonna buy the Mets
and we're gonna be out from under the Wilpons and
that will be That will be the day I celebrate
(37:13):
whatever day that closes. Hopefully that closes in July, and
we have Bobby been the a Day on the first,
and then we have the fourth of July, then we
have Jeff Fisher Day, then we have Mets Freedom Day.
I guess you could call him a year and the
first just got the new owners are gonna say, hey, listen, Bobby,
we're gonna tear that agreement up. Or you know, Bobby,
we're just gonna send you all that money now. Okay.
(37:36):
Actually Mr Mett is not going to be at any
of these games, right there's no mascots and no fans. Well,
I don't know. Mr Met could be there. He's got
the big head on, so he's got kind of got
the mask already. He's social distancing. Uh okay, he could
make a case. I wish he had a strong your union.
I'm not expecting to see any Oh, do the mascots
have a union? Is there a Are you kidding? The
(37:59):
cheer leaders were getting hourly pay and then they went
to court. In sports in general in this country I'm
talking about. This is not like career where you've got
the cheerleaders with the mass on the dugout cheering literally
when they're backs to the field, cheering to no fans
in the stands. It's not now, but I wouldn't surprise
if there was a mascots union. You never know, there
(38:21):
might be. We had some powerful mascots there. Yeah. Sure
you have the Philly fanatic, you have Mr met other people,
led by the San Diego Chicken of course, bring too.
You know, he should have organized the union because he
was famous for one phrase. He was asked about what
it was like being in that hot costume on the
(38:41):
sunny afternoons during the summer ball games, sweating up a storm.
His reply was, if you can't stand the heat, get
out of the chicken. Frankly words to live and also
a labor issue. Yeah that's true, that's true. Hey, listen,
we have to make the that would be the first thing.
Can we make these costumes a little bit more more cooler? Okay?
(39:03):
Can we just can we do that? I mean they're
really really hot. Remember, passing out was the equivalent of
the old MLB wool uniforms, you know, nothing breathing back
then that they didn't pay him off. I actually wore
a chicken suit once at you you are a good story.
I wore a chicken suit at Fox Sports Radio because
Ben Maller and I first my first time around a Fox.
(39:24):
We used to do a weekend show on Saturdays and
Sundays together for in like two thousand one, two thousand
to two thousand and three at the time, and Benny
Yagbayanni were stars on the Mets. Yes right though, Andy Chavez,
sure yeah, all of all those players. Uh. And and
we did a we did a show together on the weekends.
There was a lot of fun. Oh my god, the
food we bought before a show was fantastic. And uh,
(39:47):
Ben and I did a show together. We made a
bet on the n c A tournament and that we made.
The loser would have to wear a chicken suit. So
and I lost on the sidewalk, No no, no, in
the studio for the the loser had to wear a
chicken suit. So no no. But it was still the
Internet was big, and you know Ben had a website
(40:08):
and he was, you know, gonna put it up on
his book and SAI, all right, Greig, we'll do It'll
be fun thing. And I wound up losing. Of course,
I think, I think because I had Gonzaga and I
was stupid because I was way too early on on
the Gonzaga. Uh yeah, So so I had to go
and I went up from Chat too far. Luckily there
(40:28):
was a costume store not too far from the station,
and so I need to run a chicken costume I
longly needed. Fo I go like four hours ago, like
you return it for a day and return back how
much it was like thirty five bucks. I'm like, okay,
that's not bad. So I got a chicken costume and
I got to wear it for the entire show, and
Ben put pictures up on the website of me, and
I was. I wore a chicken costume and I had
(40:49):
to wear the head in between uh segments. But obviously
I couldn't wear it. We were talking because you know
that just like this all the time, and people sound
like that on the air now, right, So I and yeah,
but that this same thing is it's not good radio.
So but you can't have three hours of that. No,
you can't have that. So I would wear and it
sounds like the bad videotape in the old days, yea
(41:10):
having it I thought, I take this game, but joe
Box voice is really not coming through. Check the tracker. Actually,
about the time we were taping Mets games in two
thousands when that occurred, just turn the volume off, just
turn the volume off and wearing it in between segments.
(41:31):
It got so hot within seconds, I'm going, oh my god,
the sweat is and I and I and I I'm
somebody who sweats, you know something. Sometimes I just need
to like look one way to the other and I
start sweating. Uh. And so I'm like, boy, this is
just really awful, like rivulets of sweat coming down my face.
And every time I would take the chicken suit head off,
I was like, oh, oh, I feel like I'm in
(41:52):
an air conditioned room. This is the best. How does
where you do it all? Most of them have, you know,
the cartoon head done? Yeah, but at least they're outside
walking around. I mean, I'm inside in the studio. There's
no breeze, there's no air, but there's also I don't
know how often they get to go take their costume
heads off and cool off for a little bit. I mean,
(42:12):
I have no idea. I mean I assume they get
they get they get regulation breaks to do that during game.
But is it every three innings? Is it every inning
and every half? At least football you've had halftime. I
believe I have seen a costumed person at halftime taking
the at the top of the chicken head off or
whatever the costume was, and just sitting exhausted for the
twelve minute break before he had to go back out.
(42:35):
Oh my god, look that guy's not wearing his head. Oh,
you've completely ruined the image of it. But the b
y U mascot, he was doing one of those flips
in the end zone where you jump on the trampoline
first and then the head flipped off. You might be
right about that, You might be right. It was separate
(42:55):
from the b y U game where they had the
parachutists coming in and landing right before coming one of
them kind of missed the midfield circle that they had
left for him. We went straight into the wall beyond
the item. This is where you're supposed to land. Oh yeah,
I know, we tried that. It was just still not
as bad as the parachutist before kickoff of I believe
it was a duke football game who landed at the
(43:17):
fifty yard line of the North Carolina Stadium eight miles away.
They did, where is everybody? I know this is where
we're supposed to go. I do not see the crowd
from up there. I got everything right. I don't understand
this is the state. I mean, how many stadiums could
there be? I mean, I mean the stadium, but there's
nobody parked. Oh there's you know. Wait, don't I get
(43:38):
the time wrong? Maybe the games in an hour? Maybe
I jumped an hour to or Oh, speaking of getting
the time wrong, I must bring up this hour of
the Las Vegas Korean baseball betting scandal from this past weekend.
I guarantee you some point in the next half hour
I will be bringing that up. Oh boy, all right.
(43:59):
Jason Smith ste De Sager live from the Geico Studios.
Now earlier, we we talked a few minutes ago. We
were talking about two big changes for the National Football
You look, and we'll continue to celebrate Bobby Beni a
day because it's here, uh, that the NFL is considering
for this fall. One is cutting the number of preseason games.
I can't see them playing any preseason games. They want
(44:19):
to buy time, they want to be able. Then they're
not gonna want to risk the season by having players
catch COVID nineteen when they're playing games that don't match.
So no Cam Newton versus Carolinason game not gonna get
that not gonna happen. Realized, they're gonna say, we're gonna
do it, and we're gonna say the NFL is not
gonna make changes where it's gonna be dribs and drabs
like you're seeing with baseball in the NBA. It's gonna
(44:42):
be here's what we're doing, and here's our changes for
the season. And eventually it's gonna be we're playing the
middle of October. There's gonna be no preseason. We're coming
to camp on September one, whatever the days are gonna
be that then that's how we're doing it. And that's it.
It's not gonna be well, we're gonna look and see
how this goes, and see how this goes. They're gonna
make one decision and it's going to come in the
next couple of weeks, and you know, and and mainly
(45:02):
because the the NFL is not going to be able
to see exactly what works because by the time everybody's
got to come to camp which is gonna be you know,
less than a month from now. We're gonna only be
into the first couple of days of the baseball season,
and we're not even gonna have the NBA yet. So
it's not like they're gonna have games and say, Okay,
they're following this philosophy and this seems to be working.
(45:24):
They're not gonna know anything by the time they come
to camp. So that's why if they if they come
in September. Obviously, it gives coronavirus more time to burn out,
for us to get under control, to wear masks out
in public, to be able to make sure we're not
spreading this and slowing the spread. Uh, it gives them
more time to say, Okay, this is what worked for baseball,
this is what worked for the NBA, Maybe this part
can work for us. And I think that that that
(45:45):
will happen sometime in the next couple of weeks. I'll
be really surprised if they wind up coming to camp,
you know, at the end of this month, and everybody
is borrowing from everybody else worldwide in leagues of what work,
because this is also unprecedented. We talked last hour about
our first hour television of sports and how that has
looked different with the pumped in crowd noise. And then
what's really been bad is one of the European soccer
(46:07):
leagues is maybe it's Italy has just been maybe it's Spain.
There they've just been putting the video game type of
fans in the stands so you don't have empty seats
in the background. It is comical, but not in a
good way. Uh So, really what you're saying, if there's
no NFL preseason, then yet again, the Ram Stadium is
still not opening yet because didn't Harmon have tickets to
(46:30):
take his daughter to the Taylor Swift opening of the
stadium before the preseason was due to start. Mid August
is when that new place is due to start as
it stands. If if there's not a preseason, then that
means the first Sunday night game is supposed to be
Rams hosting the Cowboys, right then that would be the
grand opening, and then the Chargers host in the same
(46:50):
place one week after that, assuming again we had that going.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven
pm Pacific
Hosts And Creators
Jason Smith
Mike Harmon
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