February 18, 2025 • 35 mins
Did the NBA set the Philadelphia 76ers to fail for the "Process"? Comedian Alex Gorge breaks down his theory on why the Sixers have struggled to get things right. Also take a look into the second half of the NBA season and another possible NBA conspiracy. Heavy in the Paint
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Welcome once again, General Brown back here in Heavy in
the Paint, don't forget serious sex and m NBA Radio.
Make sure you check us out. Myself, the big man,
mister Rick mahonan who's actually on the men. But right
now with the All Star Game here, the first half
of the season's over. In the second half, it's an
(00:36):
honor and a privilege and a pleasure to bring on
comedian extraordinaries. Gentlemen. It's very, very funny. Mister Alex Gorge
joining me. Alex, how's it going?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah? Not bad, Jared, I'm happy to be here. Yeah,
let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah. So, Alex, I want to first and foremost you
are Do you claim the Phillip What team do you claim?
I want to notice because obviously I saw that you
set uh saw some videos hilarious and stuff as a
comedian and and and I guess born and raised in
North Carolina?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Right, wanna raise in North Carolina?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah? Okay, So who are you claiming from an NBA?
You can't say MLB? I mean, would you say Braves? MLB? Hornets?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
So you know you going up in Carolina?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
You root for the Hornets, but you can only be
suicidal so long before you look for another team.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I grew up with. I grew up a Kobe guy.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I mean that was my team when I was a
little kid. And then, you know, my pops went to Florida,
So I was a big Florida Gators fan growing up.
But yeah, worked for the Sixers, uh for a few
years back in college, covering them for an ESPN affiliate
and covering them down in Summer League when the process
was going on. I do think the NBA kind of
sabotaged them a little bit, But I wanted to get
(01:59):
your thoughts on that.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Actually, Well, first of all, wait a minit, wait minute,
let's back up South Carolina and are.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
You Taro or are you I hate them all to
be honest with this. So my pops, my pops went
to Florida, and he was militant with the Gators. And
when you grow up in the Triangle, everyone's kind of entitled,
whether it's a Duke fan or Carolina fan or NC
State fan for that matter. And Florida had a good,
you know team when I was a kid, back to
(02:27):
back champs, and yeah, that was nice. So you and
see it's the wine and cheese crowd. You know they're
not real fans for the most part, and Duke, you know,
they're smarter than all of us, but no social life,
so God bless them. But uh yeah, I just like
(02:47):
all of them.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
So you said that there's a conspiracy theory where the
Philadelphia seventy six gen you think the league has done this.
I want to hear this. Please enlighten me on what
you believe is the conspiracy that the league has itsued
it pretty much implemented against the Phillelphi seventy six ers.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Yeah, so you remember the process. I'm sure a lot
of losing for a few years. But the media kind
of went crazy at a certain point saying, oh, you know,
Samhnky doesn't know what he's doing, he's a threat to society,
to the point where they stepped in. They brought in
Colangelo's son, right, And what's the first thing he did.
(03:30):
He traded a top three pick to move up two
picks to draft Markelle Fultz. If you don't replace Sam Hanky,
I would argue, Jason Tatum is a Sixer and the
Sixers have another top three pick, and you can go
on and on there where they burned all the assets
to get Jimmy Butler, that wouldn't have happened. And yeah,
I think it destroyed, you know, ten years of six
(03:52):
Ers basketball when the NBA stepped in and did that.
And as you can tell, I'm still totally not mad
about it.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Well way a bit has. I mean, what do you
say that is very interesting? Because first of all, let's
be clear, there's an image. It was widely known that
it was out in the forefront that the Sixers were
taking right tech, trust, trust the process. That's all the
thing that you heard, trust the process, trust the process.
(04:23):
They were not trying to form to fill a competitive team.
Uh okay, you might be right. They might have gotten
Jason Tatum and uh yeah it didn't it didn't work out.
But what has been the excuse since then? I mean, really,
you think about it, when you had the gentleman come in,
(04:45):
dal Morray comes in, and you know you've had this
similar players. You brought in James Harden, he drafted Ben Simmons.
At some point you got to look at the players
and I think the key centerpiece in the nucleus and
all this is Joe LMB. Now the league is not
put Joel and beat up after getting paid to publicly
come out and say I'm not gonna play the second
(05:07):
night of back to back game for the rest of
my career. That's not really fair to Sixers fans, let
alone NBA when you have that. So some of that's
got to be on the players, wouldn't you agree.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Oh, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah, I mean at this point and be injury prone,
they're just not going to get over the hump. I'm
just arguing if they had those assets and thinking was
allowed to finish that process, they'd be a much better franchise, probably.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Wouldn't want a title or two.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
And to your point, you're saying, yeah, they lost intentionally,
and that's kind of why they fired him.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
It was bad pr for the league.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Whereas if you were just the King's GM and incompetent
for fifteen years, that's okay.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
You just have to be incompetent. You can't be direct
about it.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
That is that is that's very curious. But at the
rate think they were going, Alex sam Ikey was really
gonna take this about good ten years. I mean, this
would have been crazy. Come on, ten years.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
I mean there were three years in and they were
about to basically turn the switch.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
On.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
But the way that Colangelo came in and just burned
all the assets, burned the cap, paid Tobias Harris that contract.
I mean, it really burned it all down. And then
you put Tatum on the Celtics. So you know, the
Celtics title I think comes from you know, assists of
the media as well as that front office they have
up there.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, you know, I get what you're saying, right, It's
one of those inevitable what is and that I really
you know again I understand that what is, but you
have to look at it. I give you a perfect example,
the Orlando Magic and what they have done right. And
I thought that was very interesting in how that organization.
(06:53):
Rick and I we went down and visited and preview
the Magic a couple of years ago in Orlando, go
and sat with them for getting ready for this season.
They training camp, and they were adamant about not trading
off their young players to bring in veterans and really
let this team grow together. And at some point you
gotta be in a situation where you got to bring
(07:15):
in veterans because you can't just extremely go, yell, look
at these existence you know last year and all these
young players and also, but you got to bring in
veterans to help the process. I don't know if Philadelphia
would have been like that much. Losing takes a toll
on the players, wouldn't you agree? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I do agree.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I think Brett Brown, you know, did as good of
a job as he could do. And you know, he
might actually might have been underrated in the grand scheme
because of the Australian connection to Ben Simmons. You know,
he coached that national team for a bit and if
it was another coach, you know, maybe Simmons wouldn't have
looked as good early on. Mentally he just broke, you know,
into a broken player at a certain point. But yeah,
(08:02):
you know, it is what it is. The Sixers are,
you know, trying to chase into the first round the playoffs.
Paul George had what two points the other night.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It looks bad. It's dark over there, man, and it's.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Gone for bad to worse when you look at the
whole situation. As I alluded to earlier, Joel and Bid
really really is the guy that I think clearly has
followed suit from Look, they brought in James Harden. Harden,
they brought in Jimmy Butler. Jimmy Butler was like, now
I want out of here. James Harden Harden to get
(08:35):
his money, he wanted out of there. Ben Simmons got
his money, then he didn't want to be there. And
then you just had this thing most recently where Joel
Andbi gets his money is alluded to, makes that statement,
and then most recently you have the situation where the
player Kelly Oubrey really and b got into it on
the sideline and Ubray afterwards alluded to the fact is that,
(08:59):
you know, I'm it's very hard to listen to a
player that doesn't play hard or doesn't show up in practice.
It really doesn't show up. It seems like there's a
lot of issues internally with disfranchise.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, no doubt about it.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
But you know, I did want to move on to
another conspiracy theory of mine, if you'll entertain it.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
So this is a bit of an.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Out there stat but over the past fifteen years, this
is going to sound kind of crazy, but over one
hundred people have died in arguments about Lebron James and
Michael Jordan.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
What role do you feel yourself contribute to that?
Speaker 3 (09:45):
And just the media discourse around Lebron Jordan and why
is Michael Jordan better?
Speaker 1 (09:52):
What I mean, I gotta look over by shoulder. I
don't know what they'd happened about myself for you, but
you know, I'll say this, and it's just been really unfair,
and it's really interesting because what's left in this what
(10:12):
gets left out in his equation are number one, arguably
the player that scored the most points with thirty thousand
points with one signature move that never was ever, ever duplicated,
and that is Kareem Abdul Jabbar. They have Kobe Bryant,
(10:33):
who everybody said he was the second coming of Jordan,
emulated Jordan, all this stuff, rest in peace, but he's
always surprisingly left out of this conversation. They Yeah, Lit Chamberlain,
who still has records that stand on and off the
court until this day.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, ten thousand women.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, he's left out of this. So I just think
the fact is that when you look at Jordan and
when you look at Lebron, I think these are two
individuals that pretty much we've never seen anything like that.
Like Jordan was essentially a center playing a guard spot
and what he was able to do and see how
dominant he was. You know that that was incredible, And
(11:15):
obviously with Lebron, he's this eras I wouldn't say Michael,
but Lebron when it's all over said and done with,
you know, moving around as much as he did didn't
prevent a lot of guys from getting championships. Mike specifically,
Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Sean Camp, Gary Payton,
(11:37):
the name a few of the guys that he pretty
much had a stronghold and stopping them from getting to
the NBA finals. Who let alone winning the NBA Championship.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yeah, no, no doubt about it. And some of those
last two Kobe titles are kind of underrated when you
look back at him when he beat the Celtics, you know,
people act like that was a good Lakes team outside
of Gasol, it really was not buying them was done
at that point. He did not contribute at all. You know,
Sasha Buyacic was playing minutes on that team. Shannon Brown
was arguably the fourth best player on the team, and
(12:13):
that title, you know, is definitely impressed.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
So I agree with you he's underrated in the grand scheme.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
And no, it's just interesting because anytime one hundred plus
people die from arguments about something, it's basically a pseudo religion,
is it not.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
So it's a crazy stat And uh yeah, No, Lebron's.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Great, one of the best ever durability wise, he's you know,
easily the best ever. But yeah, not the not the
goat for me, not when you lose to uh Dirkinson's
construction company, the best team ever assembled at that time.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah. So Alex, you're a comedia. Talk about how you
got involved into this this this this career, which in
terms of the ability to make people laugh, How did
it all start for.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
You mental illness? Probably in a good way, if that
makes sense. But I don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
You know, I've moved up to New York before twenty
twenty and got into it and just started as an addiction,
you know, same way basketball was growing up for me.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
You got to do it every day.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
You can't take time off otherwise you'll get rusty. And
there's no set way to do it, you know. So
I like the kind of the justice and that, and yeah,
it's it's the best going on stage and making a
joke work over time in front of people.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
It's a drug, you know, to me, so I love it.
Are you a stand up fan? Dree?
Speaker 1 (13:47):
I am? I am. I am a big, big stand
up fan, and and really I think it's a unique
skill set in which you could compare to a professional athlete,
be able to have the ability to stand up on
people and with all different backgrounds and whatever might be
going on in their specific live lives. The ability to
(14:08):
sort of in a sense, bring people together and you
could say something and get a response and people laughing
and how the effect. I think that's that's a very
very unique and creative skill to be able to do
that and execute that on a consistent basis. So I'm
I'm a big, big fan of that, especially when you
(14:29):
have the ability to be funny and it's different. Who
has been some of your sort of role models if
you are, if you will in the profession of comedy
that you really sort of sat back and said, I'm
gonna study and take a little bit here from there
and from them.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Growing up, the first special I remember watching and memorize
in front the back was young Dave Chappelle's For what
It's Worth in San Francisco. Gosh, I must have been
ten eleve. You know, a lot of those jokes were
you would think couldn't relate to a ten or eleven
year old, But I could recite that front and back,
(15:08):
probably still at this at this point, but so young.
Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, you know, gotta to do a
couple of shows with with him fortunately here in the city.
And uh, he's a great comedian. But whatever has been funny,
you know lately, it's also great. You know a lot
of everyone knows, obviously the mainstream guys, but I like
(15:30):
local up and coming comics that just make me laugh,
you know these days.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
H How did so? How do you practice? Obviously you
just talked about sports, you know, with basketball players you
go to working out. Uh, I imagine how often would
you say you go to the comedy clubs and and
and then really get up there and work out jokes
and stuff like that. How often do you do that
to stay sharp?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Uh? I try to do it at least four to
six nights a week, you.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Know, I gotta I'll be in a comedy club in
an hour. And yeah, I mean you can mix up,
but you got to go up at least I would
say three nights a week and then coming up with
this stuff. Everyone's got their own process.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
I like to just sit around and you have to
think and stare into the abyss and read stories about
pedophiles or whatever. I don't know, whatever you think is funny.
You know, you can't try and be somebody else or
do someone else's jokes, otherwise the crowd's going to be
able to tell.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah, now, who would be somebody? Like? What is the
goal for Alex Gorge in terms of this comedy, Like,
what is the short term and long term goals for you?
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Man?
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Honestly, just be a touring road comic because I'm still
fairly new into comedy, only been doing it, you know,
really five years now. One of those years, you know,
the pandemic shut down the clubs in New York and
took the rims off the basketball who so I had
nothing to do. But I'm fortunate, you know, to work
at a lot of clubs in the city and go
(17:06):
out on the road and open for you know, some
comics that are big time and they take me out
and we'll see, I'm in no rush. Every comics usually
in a rush to get famous and all that. But
like I said, I treated like basketball, so you know,
we'll see in maybe five to ten years here. Yeah,
(17:26):
just see me go out on the weekends and doing
clubs across the country.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah. Now, Alice, you know what's so funny You mentioned
about the pandemic, and I mean the thing is is
that when clubs was shut down, and really people had
to be creative, and when you look at the evolution
of comedy that's on you know, social media and stuff
like that, would you say that that has been something
that really has helped comedians in terms of developing fan bases,
(17:53):
which translated into being able to bring in people on
the corner road or in clubs or do you think
that there's a certain element that you really get when
you're in front of a crowd, that people are there
and feeling that energy.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
So it's different for every comic with that. Yeah, the
pandemic hit. Clubs closed. Couldn't do anything right. Like if
you were out in public, people looked at you like
you were a serial killer.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
I felt like Harriet Tubman just going to get a
sandwich at the bodega. It was crazy. But so TikTok
comes around, right. Communism aided in this, I guess with China,
but everyone just started making those videos where they were
in their apartment or just walking through the street, and
a lot of people are really funny, and they built
(18:44):
huge followings, and some of them got them to stand
up and they're great. Some of them got them to
stand up and probably struggled because it's a totally different thing.
But it changed a lot in the sense of you're
not relying on the gatekeepers of comedy clubs or this
festival or that festival. You can build it, you know,
(19:04):
on your own. It just depends on what you want
to do with it.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, do you think the next step for you in
the evolution of comedian, of being a comedian and comedy
is translating trans transitioning into television or in movies and
stuff like that? Is that kind of always sort of
in a sense, the sort of process for all comedians
or better yet, yourself, where you add that next layer
(19:29):
in terms of doing television or movies.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I mean, I guess that's always been an option historically
with comics, but you know, personally, I would just like
to commit to comedy and be the best at comedy.
I think, you know, it can lead to other things
like that, but that's not comedy, right, like if you
look at Steve Martin, you know, originally back in the seventies,
(19:57):
was huge, and he became this huge arena tour guy,
and he had this weird thing he would do with
the people at his shows where once he was done
with the show, he would have everybody follow him, like
across the street to McDonald's whatever to get a milkshake.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Really cool thing.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
But then when the arenas came around, people started getting
hit by cars on the way to McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
I'm sorry, you shouldn't laugh at that jerial. There's nothing fun.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
I'm sorry, And that weighed on him. So he got
out and got into the movie business, and he became
such a movie star. You know, he just kind of
laid into that for a while because he didn't want
to deal with the stress of comedy.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
And it's weird.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Kevin Hart kind of same thing. He got so big
with movies. I would argue it kind of affected his
comedy career. Now he's for me, one of the best ever.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
So it's it's interesting. I would say it's a case
by case basis.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
On that comic and if they want to stay in
comedy or use it as a vehicle to get somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, because you look at a guy like Eddie Murphy
and he's mentioned it's funny you mentioned that, and Eddie
Murphy and I think even Martin Lawrence has gotten back
out there and touring and stuff like that, where yeah,
Bill Cosby where.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Great comic from what I hear.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
The thing about it is when they immersed themselves into
the movie business and the television, you know, the ability
to be able to get back out there. It takes
some time to work out a routine and all that stuff.
So you know, it's very interesting to make sure you
don't lose some of that. But obviously stand up and
(21:35):
being into the movie business and stuff like that is
a really really big thing.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Well yeah, My last thing I'll say on that is.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
It depends on when I guess you may get a break, right,
because if you're like we were talking about the TikTok
thing and the pandemic, let's say you were killing it.
You got a million followers on TikTok, that means you
can sell tickets. That means clubs are going to reach
out and you may not have even done stand And
if you do an hour at a club, you know,
maybe you only have five minutes, right, and so you're
(22:06):
going to burn out and that could be a bad
thing for somebody. Ron White has a quote. I don't
know if you know Ron White from the Blue Collar
Tour back in the day, but he said he did
stand up for something around fifteen years and when he
got a break and has to do a special, he
already had two hours built up, right, So he did
(22:26):
his hour and then he went out on the road
with his new hour. So he's not recycling material and
doing the same stuff. I would have loved to do
comedy back in the eighties before TV, because you just
write thirty minutes and call it a day and go
city to city, and it's new to everybody.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
That is true because again, to take thirty minutes to
an hour, it's not a simple simple process. What do
you have upcoming? And how can people follow exactly what
you have going on?
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (22:58):
So I perform, you know, in the city every week
on my home clubs Broadway Comedy Club, New York Comedy Club.
You know, Rich Brooks, Al Martin over there, Broadway, Emilia Savone,
Candy Claire at New York, Joe Checkman, great people, great
clubs to check out.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
In the city on the road.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
In March, I'm going to Dallas to tour with Troy
Bond out there and Plano, Texas right outside of Dallas,
and we're doing a whole weekend of shows there. That'll
be fun and we'll get to see just how mad
these Dallas Mavericks fans are, which I did want to
ask you about this, Gerald.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I try to rack my brain coming up with the
defense for the Luca trade. I can't.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
I can't find one. I don't care how fat he is,
I don't see it. Even if you think he's fat,
you don't do this trade in the shadows. You put
it out there publicly. I'm talking about the Sixers being
you know, sabotage. Is this a conspiracy?
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Well, here's the thing. For what I heard, My soss
told me this, and I had said this on my
show last week. You know, first of all, Nico Harrison
and Rob Polinka had a sort of relationship that goes
back from when Nico worked with Nike. Rob Polinka represented
Kobe Bryant Rest in Peace. So essentially this deal came
(24:17):
down to something that was basically a new ownership group
didn't want to really invest the money in Luka Doncis,
you know, worried about if a guy gets the money,
if he's overweight, all these different things I would say,
and that said this before, if they felt comfortable to
trade him, not only trade him, but trade him in
(24:39):
the conference may there are a lot of things that
we were impriving to know about Luka Doncis, off the
court whatever, like people just really immediately go to the
you know, the conditioning and all that stuff. No, I
think it has to be a little bit more. Maybe
it's something that will come out later on, but you're right,
it was a global superstar is a guy that obviously, look,
(25:02):
they just went to the NBA Finals. Every year he's
been in the league, he's been first team All NBA.
And for them to do this deal, I really had
people tell me that they just didn't want to pay
him and they were worried about moving forward with a
guy that at certain points of that deal would be
making somewhere between seventy and eighty million dollars a year.
(25:23):
That was a tough pill to swallow. Now he goes
he goes to La LA has their superstar, their global superstar.
And the beauty of this is that Nico Harrison, who
worked for Nike, who happens to be a major sponsor
for the NBA. Now they have two brand Jordan Guys
(25:44):
and major markets la U Luka Boston with Jason Tatum
and oh by the way, Now you can see perhaps
this rivalry ensuing. And the thing that I think the
domino effect behind that is we will to see inevitably
the transition from Lebron James team Lakers to Luka Donci's team.
(26:09):
I've heard some things and I said, it would be
very interesting to see how this year works out with
Luca and Lebron. Lebron is gonna play his role and
all this other stuff become contract. He's going to be
a free agent next year. How interesting would it be
if he took a page out of Tom Brady's book
and went to the Knicks next year as a free agent,
(26:31):
come in there with that team, help them get to
the NBA finals. Let it don't have an opportunity to win.
They would build a statue. I mean, you're in New York,
you know that. So it's it's more than meets the
eye with that. Yeah, on the surface, it's a tough
pill to swallow because you just don't get a Luca
(26:51):
Doncies every year. But at the same time, you know what,
like I said before, for them to trade him in
the conference, oh, I don't know, it's a little bit
more than meets the I. And always when you have
these type of deals that on the surface that look
like you know what, it doesn't really make any sense.
I think it's a little bit more than MEETSDI that
(27:12):
they're not really letting everybody know. But that's the biggest
thing that I heard and took away from that trade.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
I mean, unless he killed a prostitute or something that
we don't know about, there's just no justification for it,
or at least not to you know, publicly chop him.
If you want to trade him, fine, just do it
with LA when there's clearly they couldn't offer, you know,
half of what other teams could. And you're talking about
you pointed out the Nike Athlete thing. The ratings are down,
(27:40):
everyone's complaining about fifteen threes a game, and then on
top of that, they get to give do a taking
back sies with Mark Williams and the Charlotte Hornets. Mark
Williams would shoe the sue the NBA for saying he's
damaged goods out there publicly like that, what's wrong with Mark?
But yeah, we'll see. And then I guess my last
(28:04):
take is, you know everyone's talking about the fifteen threes
a game ratings are down, the way the games played,
stuff like that. I actually blamed the two thousand and
four Detroit Pistons for that when they beat that Lakers
team in the finals. They were so good defensively. They
changed the handcheck rule after that, and that just kind
of what ended up with that and Steph Curry, but
a combination.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
You know, it's funny because if you go back a
lot of this stuff where if you remember it was
pointed out, go back when they actually changed and moved
a three point line, like all this stuff really attracted
in where they moved the three point line and it
was all this big hoopline stuff like that. You know,
(28:45):
a lot of this stuff didn't just happen overnight, you know,
where the threes and all that stuff, the realion didn't
happen overnight. But look, let's be honest, the league did
a lot of this stuff to promote more scoring. It
was too much of a bumping grind and physicality that
wasn't really selling, and now you have a situation where
it's an abundance of threes from teams that can't really
(29:07):
shoot the three. That is a central thing, even the
big men. Now you look at seven o clock four
victim Winbyamba, he was twenty thirty years ago. He would
be playing primarily in the post. He's playing out in
the wing. He's saying game, oh my god. Yeah, pretty
much more than that.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
You know, they would have taken him out back and
put him down in the seventies if he did that.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Rick Moore would have had a talk with him, yea,
as well as so many other things. But you know,
I think it's gonna come full circle, you know, when
you're having you know, some of these guys and stuff
like Nicola Jokic, Alfred Sengon. You know, I think that
(29:48):
clearly we're going to see what once was old will
be new again. And look, let's be honest. Yeah, Anthony
Davis is in Dallas. Now you look at the Mavericks.
They have three big guys, right. Granted two of them
are Hurt Davis and Gafford. Gafford actually all three of
them would lively recently. But you look at this in
order to be successful in the league is specifically in
(30:11):
that Western Conference, you're going to need size. And the
interesting thing on that what once was old it will
be new again. It applies really to the Golden State words,
because remember everybody looked at small ball and say, oh,
you can play the you can play a four or
three guy at the five spot and Draymond Green and
you'll win and all this other stuff. That's not the
(30:31):
case anymore. The Lakers have added size, The Minnesota Jimbos
had size, Olahoma City Thunders added size. Denver is still there. Dallas,
as I mentioned, So you're going to have to have
size if you want to compete, especially in that tough,
competitive Western conference.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Yeah, and again we're going back to the Luca thing.
But talking about out of shape, Nikola Jokic looks like
he sells molly at like a racetrack in Alabama.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
It's not effecting them. Joe, who you got in the finals?
What's your NBA? What's your finals prediction?
Speaker 1 (31:11):
You know what my heart says, Oklahoma City. Okay, I
want to say Oklahoma City because SGA I'm hoping and
pulling for him to win the NBA MVP in the
Eastern Conference. Look, well, first of all, with the West,
(31:31):
it's very difficult for me because it's all going to
be about matchups. Right Like if you looked at last year,
nobody anticipated Minnesota to beat Denver, and then you looked
at Dallas, I didn't anticipate Dallas to beat Minnesota. So
you know, it really is going to be about matchups.
In the West, Hart says Oklahoma City, but I wouldn't
(31:54):
be surprised if they didn't represent the Western Conference. Then
in the East, I mean, let's be high. Is Boston
is here, everybody else is underneath. Yes, Cleveland has had
an unbelievable season, but I still have questions about can
Cleveland effectively beat Boston four games in a series come
to playoffs? I don't know that. And when we witness
(32:17):
a few weeks back where Boston played the Knicks, and
that was supposed to be a test, a soil litmus
test for the Knicks, and they failed it miserably. You
got to be able to have perimeter defenders if you're
going to think about beating the Boston Celtics. But there's
such a well oiled machine that the only way that
stops the Boston Celtics from coming out of the Eastern Conference.
(32:39):
I think injuries that's it. I see Boston back in there,
and now it's going to be a big question of
who will be that team in the West. But it
remains to be seen. But it should be fun for
the second half of the season, especially in the West.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, absolutely, I'm with you.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
What about you, I feel like you're doing the interview, etc.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Uh, just picked on your brain. Man.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
In the East, You're right, it's Boston or nobody right now.
I want to see the Boston Knicks series. We need
that city to city that'll be great. I mean, Cleveland's great,
but uh, they're not great for ratings, so I'm sure
you know the NBA doesn't want to see that either.
But they're they're a great team. They've been playing very
well this year. No one's talking about the Bucks. It's interesting,
(33:26):
you know how they've just kind of faded away from
contenting conversation and in the West. Yeah, it's a it's
a crapshoot. It would be interesting to see if okay
See could get over that hump.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
The Lakers.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
I mean, I don't have him get into the finals,
but they've been playing really well lately. Man, they've been
killing teams. Reeves is looking great. I guess you're right
with the size, Alex Lynn. I don't know what what
the house that's going to help unless they human sacrifice
him at half court.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Your comedy is very dark, Alli, Alex costitutes Molly. It's dark, Alex.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Come on, Alex, I told you mental illness in a
good way.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Where can people find you a social.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Media Yeah, you can find me on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Alex P.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Gorge's last name is g O Rge Alex P. Gorge
And yeah, come to a show anytime. And then Gerald,
my buddy Jake Fisher told me they tell you.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Hey, wow, you know Jake. How do you know Jake?
Speaker 3 (34:29):
We both wrote it that same sixer site back in
the day, and we also play a weekly pickup run
in the Upper west Side.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Hey, you know what? Tell Jake you know what. Don't
forget the little people.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Man.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Jake is big time now. He's doing a lot of things,
but you know what, he's a great great guy, man,
great great guy. Listen. I really appreciate the time, man.
You gotta do this again, especially when we get around
playoff time and seeing how this scene and all works out.
Got to get your opinions on that, especially Kevin Durant.
(35:00):
Didn't get traded this trade deadline, so we'll get.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Traded this summer. It's coming.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
I appreciate listen Man, continued success and all that you do.
Appreciate the time you as well. Gerald, Thanks for having
me anytime. Alex Gorge right here, heavy in the paint. Peace,
Welcome once again, General Brown back here in Heavy in
the Paint, don't forget serious sex and m NBA Radio.
Make sure you check us out. Myself, the big man,
mister Rick mahonan who's actually on the men. But right
now with the All Star Game here, the first half
of the season's over. In the second half, it's an
(00:36):
honor and a privilege and a pleasure to bring on
comedian extraordinaries. Gentlemen. It's very, very funny. Mister Alex Gorge
joining me. Alex, how's it going?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah? Not bad, Jared, I'm happy to be here. Yeah,
let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah. So, Alex, I want to first and foremost you
are Do you claim the Phillip What team do you claim?
I want to notice because obviously I saw that you
set uh saw some videos hilarious and stuff as a
comedian and and and I guess born and raised in
North Carolina?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Right, wanna raise in North Carolina?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah? Okay, So who are you claiming from an NBA?
You can't say MLB? I mean, would you say Braves? MLB? Hornets?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
So you know you going up in Carolina?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
You root for the Hornets, but you can only be
suicidal so long before you look for another team.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
I grew up with. I grew up a Kobe guy.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
I mean that was my team when I was a
little kid. And then, you know, my pops went to Florida,
So I was a big Florida Gators fan growing up.
But yeah, worked for the Sixers, uh for a few
years back in college, covering them for an ESPN affiliate
and covering them down in Summer League when the process
was going on. I do think the NBA kind of
sabotaged them a little bit, But I wanted to get
(01:59):
your thoughts on that.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Actually, Well, first of all, wait a minit, wait minute,
let's back up South Carolina and are.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
You Taro or are you I hate them all to
be honest with this. So my pops, my pops went
to Florida, and he was militant with the Gators. And
when you grow up in the Triangle, everyone's kind of entitled,
whether it's a Duke fan or Carolina fan or NC
State fan for that matter. And Florida had a good,
you know team when I was a kid, back to
(02:27):
back champs, and yeah, that was nice. So you and
see it's the wine and cheese crowd. You know they're
not real fans for the most part, and Duke, you know,
they're smarter than all of us, but no social life,
so God bless them. But uh yeah, I just like
(02:47):
all of them.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
So you said that there's a conspiracy theory where the
Philadelphia seventy six gen you think the league has done this.
I want to hear this. Please enlighten me on what
you believe is the conspiracy that the league has itsued
it pretty much implemented against the Phillelphi seventy six ers.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Yeah, so you remember the process. I'm sure a lot
of losing for a few years. But the media kind
of went crazy at a certain point saying, oh, you know,
Samhnky doesn't know what he's doing, he's a threat to society,
to the point where they stepped in. They brought in
Colangelo's son, right, And what's the first thing he did.
(03:30):
He traded a top three pick to move up two
picks to draft Markelle Fultz. If you don't replace Sam Hanky,
I would argue, Jason Tatum is a Sixer and the
Sixers have another top three pick, and you can go
on and on there where they burned all the assets
to get Jimmy Butler, that wouldn't have happened. And yeah,
I think it destroyed, you know, ten years of six
(03:52):
Ers basketball when the NBA stepped in and did that.
And as you can tell, I'm still totally not mad
about it.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Well way a bit has. I mean, what do you
say that is very interesting? Because first of all, let's
be clear, there's an image. It was widely known that
it was out in the forefront that the Sixers were
taking right tech, trust, trust the process. That's all the
thing that you heard, trust the process, trust the process.
(04:23):
They were not trying to form to fill a competitive team.
Uh okay, you might be right. They might have gotten
Jason Tatum and uh yeah it didn't it didn't work out.
But what has been the excuse since then? I mean, really,
you think about it, when you had the gentleman come in,
(04:45):
dal Morray comes in, and you know you've had this
similar players. You brought in James Harden, he drafted Ben Simmons.
At some point you got to look at the players
and I think the key centerpiece in the nucleus and
all this is Joe LMB. Now the league is not
put Joel and beat up after getting paid to publicly
come out and say I'm not gonna play the second
(05:07):
night of back to back game for the rest of
my career. That's not really fair to Sixers fans, let
alone NBA when you have that. So some of that's
got to be on the players, wouldn't you agree.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Oh, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah, I mean at this point and be injury prone,
they're just not going to get over the hump. I'm
just arguing if they had those assets and thinking was
allowed to finish that process, they'd be a much better franchise, probably.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Wouldn't want a title or two.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
And to your point, you're saying, yeah, they lost intentionally,
and that's kind of why they fired him.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
It was bad pr for the league.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Whereas if you were just the King's GM and incompetent
for fifteen years, that's okay.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
You just have to be incompetent. You can't be direct
about it.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
That is that is that's very curious. But at the
rate think they were going, Alex sam Ikey was really
gonna take this about good ten years. I mean, this
would have been crazy. Come on, ten years.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
I mean there were three years in and they were
about to basically turn the switch.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
On.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
But the way that Colangelo came in and just burned
all the assets, burned the cap, paid Tobias Harris that contract.
I mean, it really burned it all down. And then
you put Tatum on the Celtics. So you know, the
Celtics title I think comes from you know, assists of
the media as well as that front office they have
up there.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, you know, I get what you're saying, right, It's
one of those inevitable what is and that I really
you know again I understand that what is, but you
have to look at it. I give you a perfect example,
the Orlando Magic and what they have done right. And
I thought that was very interesting in how that organization.
(06:53):
Rick and I we went down and visited and preview
the Magic a couple of years ago in Orlando, go
and sat with them for getting ready for this season.
They training camp, and they were adamant about not trading
off their young players to bring in veterans and really
let this team grow together. And at some point you
gotta be in a situation where you got to bring
(07:15):
in veterans because you can't just extremely go, yell, look
at these existence you know last year and all these
young players and also, but you got to bring in
veterans to help the process. I don't know if Philadelphia
would have been like that much. Losing takes a toll
on the players, wouldn't you agree? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I do agree.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
I think Brett Brown, you know, did as good of
a job as he could do. And you know, he
might actually might have been underrated in the grand scheme
because of the Australian connection to Ben Simmons. You know,
he coached that national team for a bit and if
it was another coach, you know, maybe Simmons wouldn't have
looked as good early on. Mentally he just broke, you know,
into a broken player at a certain point. But yeah,
(08:02):
you know, it is what it is. The Sixers are,
you know, trying to chase into the first round the playoffs.
Paul George had what two points the other night.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
It looks bad. It's dark over there, man, and it's.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Gone for bad to worse when you look at the
whole situation. As I alluded to earlier, Joel and Bid
really really is the guy that I think clearly has
followed suit from Look, they brought in James Harden. Harden,
they brought in Jimmy Butler. Jimmy Butler was like, now
I want out of here. James Harden Harden to get
(08:35):
his money, he wanted out of there. Ben Simmons got
his money, then he didn't want to be there. And
then you just had this thing most recently where Joel
Andbi gets his money is alluded to, makes that statement,
and then most recently you have the situation where the
player Kelly Oubrey really and b got into it on
the sideline and Ubray afterwards alluded to the fact is that,
(08:59):
you know, I'm it's very hard to listen to a
player that doesn't play hard or doesn't show up in practice.
It really doesn't show up. It seems like there's a
lot of issues internally with disfranchise.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, no doubt about it.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
But you know, I did want to move on to
another conspiracy theory of mine, if you'll entertain it.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
So this is a bit of an.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Out there stat but over the past fifteen years, this
is going to sound kind of crazy, but over one
hundred people have died in arguments about Lebron James and
Michael Jordan.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
What role do you feel yourself contribute to that?
Speaker 3 (09:45):
And just the media discourse around Lebron Jordan and why
is Michael Jordan better?
Speaker 1 (09:52):
What I mean, I gotta look over by shoulder. I
don't know what they'd happened about myself for you, but
you know, I'll say this, and it's just been really unfair,
and it's really interesting because what's left in this what
(10:12):
gets left out in his equation are number one, arguably
the player that scored the most points with thirty thousand
points with one signature move that never was ever, ever duplicated,
and that is Kareem Abdul Jabbar. They have Kobe Bryant,
(10:33):
who everybody said he was the second coming of Jordan,
emulated Jordan, all this stuff, rest in peace, but he's
always surprisingly left out of this conversation. They Yeah, Lit Chamberlain,
who still has records that stand on and off the
court until this day.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, ten thousand women.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, he's left out of this. So I just think
the fact is that when you look at Jordan and
when you look at Lebron, I think these are two
individuals that pretty much we've never seen anything like that.
Like Jordan was essentially a center playing a guard spot
and what he was able to do and see how
dominant he was. You know that that was incredible, And
(11:15):
obviously with Lebron, he's this eras I wouldn't say Michael,
but Lebron when it's all over said and done with,
you know, moving around as much as he did didn't
prevent a lot of guys from getting championships. Mike specifically,
Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Sean Camp, Gary Payton,
(11:37):
the name a few of the guys that he pretty
much had a stronghold and stopping them from getting to
the NBA finals. Who let alone winning the NBA Championship.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Yeah, no, no doubt about it. And some of those
last two Kobe titles are kind of underrated when you
look back at him when he beat the Celtics, you know,
people act like that was a good Lakes team outside
of Gasol, it really was not buying them was done
at that point. He did not contribute at all. You know,
Sasha Buyacic was playing minutes on that team. Shannon Brown
was arguably the fourth best player on the team, and
(12:13):
that title, you know, is definitely impressed.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
So I agree with you he's underrated in the grand scheme.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
And no, it's just interesting because anytime one hundred plus
people die from arguments about something, it's basically a pseudo religion,
is it not.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
So it's a crazy stat And uh yeah, No, Lebron's.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Great, one of the best ever durability wise, he's you know,
easily the best ever. But yeah, not the not the
goat for me, not when you lose to uh Dirkinson's
construction company, the best team ever assembled at that time.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah. So Alex, you're a comedia. Talk about how you
got involved into this this this this career, which in
terms of the ability to make people laugh, How did
it all start for.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
You mental illness? Probably in a good way, if that
makes sense. But I don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
You know, I've moved up to New York before twenty
twenty and got into it and just started as an addiction,
you know, same way basketball was growing up for me.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
You got to do it every day.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
You can't take time off otherwise you'll get rusty. And
there's no set way to do it, you know. So
I like the kind of the justice and that, and yeah,
it's it's the best going on stage and making a
joke work over time in front of people.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
It's a drug, you know, to me, so I love it.
Are you a stand up fan? Dree?
Speaker 1 (13:47):
I am? I am. I am a big, big stand
up fan, and and really I think it's a unique
skill set in which you could compare to a professional athlete,
be able to have the ability to stand up on
people and with all different backgrounds and whatever might be
going on in their specific live lives. The ability to
(14:08):
sort of in a sense, bring people together and you
could say something and get a response and people laughing
and how the effect. I think that's that's a very
very unique and creative skill to be able to do
that and execute that on a consistent basis. So I'm
I'm a big, big fan of that, especially when you
(14:29):
have the ability to be funny and it's different. Who
has been some of your sort of role models if
you are, if you will in the profession of comedy
that you really sort of sat back and said, I'm
gonna study and take a little bit here from there
and from them.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Growing up, the first special I remember watching and memorize
in front the back was young Dave Chappelle's For what
It's Worth in San Francisco. Gosh, I must have been
ten eleve. You know, a lot of those jokes were
you would think couldn't relate to a ten or eleven
year old, But I could recite that front and back,
(15:08):
probably still at this at this point, but so young.
Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, you know, gotta to do a
couple of shows with with him fortunately here in the city.
And uh, he's a great comedian. But whatever has been funny,
you know lately, it's also great. You know a lot
of everyone knows, obviously the mainstream guys, but I like
(15:30):
local up and coming comics that just make me laugh,
you know these days.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
H How did so? How do you practice? Obviously you
just talked about sports, you know, with basketball players you
go to working out. Uh, I imagine how often would
you say you go to the comedy clubs and and
and then really get up there and work out jokes
and stuff like that. How often do you do that
to stay sharp?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Uh? I try to do it at least four to
six nights a week, you.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Know, I gotta I'll be in a comedy club in
an hour. And yeah, I mean you can mix up,
but you got to go up at least I would
say three nights a week and then coming up with
this stuff. Everyone's got their own process.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
I like to just sit around and you have to
think and stare into the abyss and read stories about
pedophiles or whatever. I don't know, whatever you think is funny.
You know, you can't try and be somebody else or
do someone else's jokes, otherwise the crowd's going to be
able to tell.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah, now, who would be somebody? Like? What is the
goal for Alex Gorge in terms of this comedy, Like,
what is the short term and long term goals for you?
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Man?
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Honestly, just be a touring road comic because I'm still
fairly new into comedy, only been doing it, you know,
really five years now. One of those years, you know,
the pandemic shut down the clubs in New York and
took the rims off the basketball who so I had
nothing to do. But I'm fortunate, you know, to work
at a lot of clubs in the city and go
(17:06):
out on the road and open for you know, some
comics that are big time and they take me out
and we'll see, I'm in no rush. Every comics usually
in a rush to get famous and all that. But
like I said, I treated like basketball, so you know,
we'll see in maybe five to ten years here. Yeah,
(17:26):
just see me go out on the weekends and doing
clubs across the country.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah. Now, Alice, you know what's so funny You mentioned
about the pandemic, and I mean the thing is is
that when clubs was shut down, and really people had
to be creative, and when you look at the evolution
of comedy that's on you know, social media and stuff
like that, would you say that that has been something
that really has helped comedians in terms of developing fan bases,
(17:53):
which translated into being able to bring in people on
the corner road or in clubs or do you think
that there's a certain element that you really get when
you're in front of a crowd, that people are there
and feeling that energy.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
So it's different for every comic with that. Yeah, the
pandemic hit. Clubs closed. Couldn't do anything right. Like if
you were out in public, people looked at you like
you were a serial killer.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
I felt like Harriet Tubman just going to get a
sandwich at the bodega. It was crazy. But so TikTok
comes around, right. Communism aided in this, I guess with China,
but everyone just started making those videos where they were
in their apartment or just walking through the street, and
a lot of people are really funny, and they built
(18:44):
huge followings, and some of them got them to stand
up and they're great. Some of them got them to
stand up and probably struggled because it's a totally different thing.
But it changed a lot in the sense of you're
not relying on the gatekeepers of comedy clubs or this
festival or that festival. You can build it, you know,
(19:04):
on your own. It just depends on what you want
to do with it.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
Yeah, do you think the next step for you in
the evolution of comedian, of being a comedian and comedy
is translating trans transitioning into television or in movies and
stuff like that? Is that kind of always sort of
in a sense, the sort of process for all comedians
or better yet, yourself, where you add that next layer
(19:29):
in terms of doing television or movies.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I mean, I guess that's always been an option historically
with comics, but you know, personally, I would just like
to commit to comedy and be the best at comedy.
I think, you know, it can lead to other things
like that, but that's not comedy, right, like if you
look at Steve Martin, you know, originally back in the seventies,
(19:57):
was huge, and he became this huge arena tour guy,
and he had this weird thing he would do with
the people at his shows where once he was done
with the show, he would have everybody follow him, like
across the street to McDonald's whatever to get a milkshake.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Really cool thing.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
But then when the arenas came around, people started getting
hit by cars on the way to McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
I'm sorry, you shouldn't laugh at that jerial. There's nothing fun.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
I'm sorry, And that weighed on him. So he got
out and got into the movie business, and he became
such a movie star. You know, he just kind of
laid into that for a while because he didn't want
to deal with the stress of comedy.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
And it's weird.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Kevin Hart kind of same thing. He got so big
with movies. I would argue it kind of affected his
comedy career. Now he's for me, one of the best ever.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
So it's it's interesting. I would say it's a case
by case basis.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
On that comic and if they want to stay in
comedy or use it as a vehicle to get somewhere else.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah, because you look at a guy like Eddie Murphy
and he's mentioned it's funny you mentioned that, and Eddie
Murphy and I think even Martin Lawrence has gotten back
out there and touring and stuff like that, where yeah,
Bill Cosby where.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Great comic from what I hear.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
The thing about it is when they immersed themselves into
the movie business and the television, you know, the ability
to be able to get back out there. It takes
some time to work out a routine and all that stuff.
So you know, it's very interesting to make sure you
don't lose some of that. But obviously stand up and
(21:35):
being into the movie business and stuff like that is
a really really big thing.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Well yeah, My last thing I'll say on that is.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
It depends on when I guess you may get a break, right,
because if you're like we were talking about the TikTok
thing and the pandemic, let's say you were killing it.
You got a million followers on TikTok, that means you
can sell tickets. That means clubs are going to reach
out and you may not have even done stand And
if you do an hour at a club, you know,
maybe you only have five minutes, right, and so you're
(22:06):
going to burn out and that could be a bad
thing for somebody. Ron White has a quote. I don't
know if you know Ron White from the Blue Collar
Tour back in the day, but he said he did
stand up for something around fifteen years and when he
got a break and has to do a special, he
already had two hours built up, right, So he did
(22:26):
his hour and then he went out on the road
with his new hour. So he's not recycling material and
doing the same stuff. I would have loved to do
comedy back in the eighties before TV, because you just
write thirty minutes and call it a day and go
city to city, and it's new to everybody.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
That is true because again, to take thirty minutes to
an hour, it's not a simple simple process. What do
you have upcoming? And how can people follow exactly what
you have going on?
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (22:58):
So I perform, you know, in the city every week
on my home clubs Broadway Comedy Club, New York Comedy Club.
You know, Rich Brooks, Al Martin over there, Broadway, Emilia Savone,
Candy Claire at New York, Joe Checkman, great people, great
clubs to check out.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
In the city on the road.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
In March, I'm going to Dallas to tour with Troy
Bond out there and Plano, Texas right outside of Dallas,
and we're doing a whole weekend of shows there. That'll
be fun and we'll get to see just how mad
these Dallas Mavericks fans are, which I did want to
ask you about this, Gerald.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I try to rack my brain coming up with the
defense for the Luca trade. I can't.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
I can't find one. I don't care how fat he is,
I don't see it. Even if you think he's fat,
you don't do this trade in the shadows. You put
it out there publicly. I'm talking about the Sixers being
you know, sabotage. Is this a conspiracy?
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Well, here's the thing. For what I heard, My soss
told me this, and I had said this on my
show last week. You know, first of all, Nico Harrison
and Rob Polinka had a sort of relationship that goes
back from when Nico worked with Nike. Rob Polinka represented
Kobe Bryant Rest in Peace. So essentially this deal came
(24:17):
down to something that was basically a new ownership group
didn't want to really invest the money in Luka Doncis,
you know, worried about if a guy gets the money,
if he's overweight, all these different things I would say,
and that said this before, if they felt comfortable to
trade him, not only trade him, but trade him in
(24:39):
the conference may there are a lot of things that
we were impriving to know about Luka Doncis, off the
court whatever, like people just really immediately go to the
you know, the conditioning and all that stuff. No, I
think it has to be a little bit more. Maybe
it's something that will come out later on, but you're right,
it was a global superstar is a guy that obviously, look,
(25:02):
they just went to the NBA Finals. Every year he's
been in the league, he's been first team All NBA.
And for them to do this deal, I really had
people tell me that they just didn't want to pay
him and they were worried about moving forward with a
guy that at certain points of that deal would be
making somewhere between seventy and eighty million dollars a year.
(25:23):
That was a tough pill to swallow. Now he goes
he goes to La LA has their superstar, their global superstar.
And the beauty of this is that Nico Harrison, who
worked for Nike, who happens to be a major sponsor
for the NBA. Now they have two brand Jordan Guys
(25:44):
and major markets la U Luka Boston with Jason Tatum
and oh by the way, Now you can see perhaps
this rivalry ensuing. And the thing that I think the
domino effect behind that is we will to see inevitably
the transition from Lebron James team Lakers to Luka Donci's team.
(26:09):
I've heard some things and I said, it would be
very interesting to see how this year works out with
Luca and Lebron. Lebron is gonna play his role and
all this other stuff become contract. He's going to be
a free agent next year. How interesting would it be
if he took a page out of Tom Brady's book
and went to the Knicks next year as a free agent,
(26:31):
come in there with that team, help them get to
the NBA finals. Let it don't have an opportunity to win.
They would build a statue. I mean, you're in New York,
you know that. So it's it's more than meets the
eye with that. Yeah, on the surface, it's a tough
pill to swallow because you just don't get a Luca
(26:51):
Doncies every year. But at the same time, you know what,
like I said before, for them to trade him in
the conference, oh, I don't know, it's a little bit
more than meets the I. And always when you have
these type of deals that on the surface that look
like you know what, it doesn't really make any sense.
I think it's a little bit more than MEETSDI that
(27:12):
they're not really letting everybody know. But that's the biggest
thing that I heard and took away from that trade.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
I mean, unless he killed a prostitute or something that
we don't know about, there's just no justification for it,
or at least not to you know, publicly chop him.
If you want to trade him, fine, just do it
with LA when there's clearly they couldn't offer, you know,
half of what other teams could. And you're talking about
you pointed out the Nike Athlete thing. The ratings are down,
(27:40):
everyone's complaining about fifteen threes a game, and then on
top of that, they get to give do a taking
back sies with Mark Williams and the Charlotte Hornets. Mark
Williams would shoe the sue the NBA for saying he's
damaged goods out there publicly like that, what's wrong with Mark?
But yeah, we'll see. And then I guess my last
(28:04):
take is, you know everyone's talking about the fifteen threes
a game ratings are down, the way the games played,
stuff like that. I actually blamed the two thousand and
four Detroit Pistons for that when they beat that Lakers
team in the finals. They were so good defensively. They
changed the handcheck rule after that, and that just kind
of what ended up with that and Steph Curry, but
a combination.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
You know, it's funny because if you go back a
lot of this stuff where if you remember it was
pointed out, go back when they actually changed and moved
a three point line, like all this stuff really attracted
in where they moved the three point line and it
was all this big hoopline stuff like that. You know,
(28:45):
a lot of this stuff didn't just happen overnight, you know,
where the threes and all that stuff, the realion didn't
happen overnight. But look, let's be honest, the league did
a lot of this stuff to promote more scoring. It
was too much of a bumping grind and physicality that
wasn't really selling, and now you have a situation where
it's an abundance of threes from teams that can't really
(29:07):
shoot the three. That is a central thing, even the
big men. Now you look at seven o clock four
victim Winbyamba, he was twenty thirty years ago. He would
be playing primarily in the post. He's playing out in
the wing. He's saying game, oh my god. Yeah, pretty
much more than that.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
You know, they would have taken him out back and
put him down in the seventies if he did that.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Rick Moore would have had a talk with him, yea,
as well as so many other things. But you know,
I think it's gonna come full circle, you know, when
you're having you know, some of these guys and stuff
like Nicola Jokic, Alfred Sengon. You know, I think that
(29:48):
clearly we're going to see what once was old will
be new again. And look, let's be honest. Yeah, Anthony
Davis is in Dallas. Now you look at the Mavericks.
They have three big guys, right. Granted two of them
are Hurt Davis and Gafford. Gafford actually all three of
them would lively recently. But you look at this in
order to be successful in the league is specifically in
(30:11):
that Western Conference, you're going to need size. And the
interesting thing on that what once was old it will
be new again. It applies really to the Golden State words,
because remember everybody looked at small ball and say, oh,
you can play the you can play a four or
three guy at the five spot and Draymond Green and
you'll win and all this other stuff. That's not the
(30:31):
case anymore. The Lakers have added size, The Minnesota Jimbos
had size, Olahoma City Thunders added size. Denver is still there. Dallas,
as I mentioned, So you're going to have to have
size if you want to compete, especially in that tough,
competitive Western conference.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
Yeah, and again we're going back to the Luca thing.
But talking about out of shape, Nikola Jokic looks like
he sells molly at like a racetrack in Alabama.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
It's not effecting them. Joe, who you got in the finals?
What's your NBA? What's your finals prediction?
Speaker 1 (31:11):
You know what my heart says, Oklahoma City. Okay, I
want to say Oklahoma City because SGA I'm hoping and
pulling for him to win the NBA MVP in the
Eastern Conference. Look, well, first of all, with the West,
(31:31):
it's very difficult for me because it's all going to
be about matchups. Right Like if you looked at last year,
nobody anticipated Minnesota to beat Denver, and then you looked
at Dallas, I didn't anticipate Dallas to beat Minnesota. So
you know, it really is going to be about matchups.
In the West, Hart says Oklahoma City, but I wouldn't
(31:54):
be surprised if they didn't represent the Western Conference. Then
in the East, I mean, let's be high. Is Boston
is here, everybody else is underneath. Yes, Cleveland has had
an unbelievable season, but I still have questions about can
Cleveland effectively beat Boston four games in a series come
to playoffs? I don't know that. And when we witness
(32:17):
a few weeks back where Boston played the Knicks, and
that was supposed to be a test, a soil litmus
test for the Knicks, and they failed it miserably. You
got to be able to have perimeter defenders if you're
going to think about beating the Boston Celtics. But there's
such a well oiled machine that the only way that
stops the Boston Celtics from coming out of the Eastern Conference.
(32:39):
I think injuries that's it. I see Boston back in there,
and now it's going to be a big question of
who will be that team in the West. But it
remains to be seen. But it should be fun for
the second half of the season, especially in the West.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah, absolutely, I'm with you.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
What about you, I feel like you're doing the interview, etc.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Uh, just picked on your brain. Man.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
In the East, You're right, it's Boston or nobody right now.
I want to see the Boston Knicks series. We need
that city to city that'll be great. I mean, Cleveland's great,
but uh, they're not great for ratings, so I'm sure
you know the NBA doesn't want to see that either.
But they're they're a great team. They've been playing very
well this year. No one's talking about the Bucks. It's interesting,
(33:26):
you know how they've just kind of faded away from
contenting conversation and in the West. Yeah, it's a it's
a crapshoot. It would be interesting to see if okay
See could get over that hump.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
The Lakers.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
I mean, I don't have him get into the finals,
but they've been playing really well lately. Man, they've been
killing teams. Reeves is looking great. I guess you're right
with the size, Alex Lynn. I don't know what what
the house that's going to help unless they human sacrifice
him at half court.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Your comedy is very dark, Alli, Alex costitutes Molly. It's dark, Alex.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Come on, Alex, I told you mental illness in a
good way.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Where can people find you a social.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Media Yeah, you can find me on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Alex P.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Gorge's last name is g O Rge Alex P. Gorge
And yeah, come to a show anytime. And then Gerald,
my buddy Jake Fisher told me they tell you.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Hey, wow, you know Jake. How do you know Jake?
Speaker 3 (34:29):
We both wrote it that same sixer site back in
the day, and we also play a weekly pickup run
in the Upper west Side.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Hey, you know what? Tell Jake you know what. Don't
forget the little people.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Man.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Jake is big time now. He's doing a lot of things,
but you know what, he's a great great guy, man,
great great guy. Listen. I really appreciate the time, man.
You gotta do this again, especially when we get around
playoff time and seeing how this scene and all works out.
Got to get your opinions on that, especially Kevin Durant.
(35:00):
Didn't get traded this trade deadline, so we'll get.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Traded this summer. It's coming.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
I appreciate listen Man, continued success and all that you do.
Appreciate the time you as well. Gerald, Thanks for having
me anytime. Alex Gorge right here, heavy in the paint. Peace,
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