The biggest media story involving Atlanta last week was WITHOUT QUESTION the Hawks. The Hawks made the biggest splash but for all of the wrong reasons last week. As Atlanta faced the Orlando Magic, ESPN and ABC awarded the series Mike Tirico and Hubie Brown as an announcing crew. These two certainly are one of the top crews in NBA basketball and while not the A-team, certainly a B+ to be sure. Both Tirico and especially Brown were critical of the Hawks effort in the first two games of the series. Brown seemed openly frustrated by Josh Smith’s effort in the contests, calling Smith out by not running back on the defensive fastbreak. Brown has forgotten more about basketball than I will ever know, and it is nice when a commentator doesn’t just sugarcoat or gloss over the player’s effort because they are friends or they used to play together. I have heard about the athlete/coach code of not overly knocking a former teammate or charge, but it is refreshing to hear Brown and Jon Gruden and Bobby Knight tell it like it is up there in the booth. You don’t need a Simon Cowell impersonator to tear someone apart, but it is nice to hear that YES the player is loafing or the shortstop just plain MISSED that grounder.
The Hawks effort apparently was so bad in the first two losses to Orlando that upon arrival at Philips Arena, Tirico and Brown were nowhere to be seen and instead a crew including Doris Burke was calling the game. Not that Burke isn’t qualified to talk NBA, but come on. Couldn’t she do the WNBA and we have one of the seven former players that ESPN uses in studio to do the games? Does Burke REALLY know what it is like in an NBA lockerroom? No. Does she really know what it is like to even dunk? No. Call me sexist, whatever. Serve as a sideline reporter if you want to be involved. Don’t take a spot from someone that REALLY KNOWS the game. (Weird, normally I am calling out for the former jocks NOT to get jobs over the trained commentator/announcer, but in this case, come on. I could at least fake that I’ve been in the NBA. Doris Burke cannot.)
After the Magic annihilated the Hawks by 30 in Atlanta’s own building, Joe Johnson put his foot in his mouth in front of reporters and credit the AJC’s Michael Cunningham for following through on the story. Johnson told reporters after he had had time to cool off that he “could care less if they showed up or not.” That quote was NOT taken out of context. In fact, here is what Johnson said to Cunningham in Cunningham’s blog following last Saturday’s game: “That [the booing] doesn’t bother me and I hope it doesn’t bother anyone in this locker room. It’s about us in this locker room. We could care less if [fans] showed up.” Cunningham appeared on 790 The Zone Sunday morning and Sam Radin got him to set the exact scene of how the comment happened. Cunningham said that Johnson got out of the shower with a towel, walked up to reporters and addressed the booing with his statement. The next day, Johnson didn’t exactly take the comment back when given a chance, telling Cunningham, “In the heat of the battle you tend to say a lot of things. But it was tough, man. I was a little [ticked] off but I am over now.” Two parties need to be given gold stars here. First off, Johnson could have been a little “ticked” off after all of the hubbub that these comments surely brought to the AJC as well as to 790 The Zone. On my way to hosting Score Atlanta Sports Sunday I heard Sam taking call after call on the issue and the calls continued for over an hour into our show. The negative pub could have turned Johnson into Marcel Marceau whenever Cunningham approached him for a comment. But Johnson continued to talk to the AJC beat writer, so gold star to Johnson. Also, Cunningham himself earns a gold star for realizing he had a story and going with it, not in a malicious way but in the most-truthful and forthright way and even appearing on 790 to give the full background as well. Most reporters witnessed what happened when the Florida Gators beat writer went to his Orlando blog with an actual quote taken in context and Urban Meyer went crazy. That might scare some beat writers from going through with a story that needs to be told for fear of losing a job or beat if that guy that popped off tries to pull an Urban. Gold stars for both of the parties involved.
I caught the Braves Wrap Up show on 680 The Fan following the postgame show for the first time last weekend. The major format of the show, at least from what I heard is simply Steve West taking phone calls from everyone that couldn’t get through on the postgame show with Chuck Dowdle. I remember listening to the late, great Skip Carey on some of the Braves pregame shows back in the day and you could tell when Skip would get irritated with callers, and I must say that West has a bit of Skip in him. Perhaps it was just the one show I happened to tune into but West was Mr. Negative towards several callers. Just to make sure I didn’t catch him on an off-day, I tuned in the next day to the wrap up show and sure enough, Steve-hater was back, either giving inane stats that had zero to do with what the caller had said or simply ignoring callers’ questions. I enjoy West’s work during the high school football season but you cannot just disregard the callers’ thoughts and questions. That is the point of the show. I assume that if you anger enough people and the calls stop, the show likely will stop too. Don’t bite the hands that feed you, even if they ask 13 straight questions about Terry Pendleton.
CAN YOU BELIEVE HE JUST SAID THAT?
“Josh Smith is kind of like George W. Bush.” Brandon Adams tried to say that Josh Smith’s attitude may be of a go-getter but we just see him appearing to loaf and pout and not care. Adams made the point that perhaps Bush was intelligent but we just saw the confused eyebrows furled up everyday in news segments. I don’t think anyone outside of Adams’ family enjoys and respects his radio work as much as I do, but I didn’t follow the “Josh Smith as W,” logic. In Brandon’s defense, he was three hours into a solo show.
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