I didn't grow up in New York so I didn't get to listen to Mike and the Mad Dog. My most vivid memories of Chris are when he worked lunch shifts at a restaurant and watched his lips flap open and closed at 3X speed on a bar television. I was more concerned about whether or not it would be worth it to work through my break on a double or take a nap upstairs in one of the party rooms.
If this is your sports talk radio, you people do it better than everyone else. Every Wednesday, at 10 a.m., Russo sits across from Smith. It almost knocked him out of his seat, but he kept going. The man is a champion.
It's like a flyweight boxing title match when he and Stephen A. go back and forth. They exchanged blows for 12 rounds. They throw punches until the bell rings, spit some coffee in the bucket during the commercial break and get right back at it.
This Wednesday, a new challenger entered the race. J.J. Redick, a former NBA player and Duke champion, was on set. He doesn't swing wildly like these two legends of the hot-take game, and he lets it fly himself when on the program. Redick is patient. He tries to set up the big shots by bobs and weaves.
They were talking about Chris Paul when he stung him. They were talking about his poor performance in the Los Angeles Clippers' loss to Oklahoma City. When Redick told him that the mistakes were two turnovers and a foul, he kept harping on about the missed free throws. The free throws were denied.
He transitioned like a jump cut into a bad Paul game in last year's NBA Finals. Game 3 was the correct game. Did Paul score five points, no he scored 10, and shot 38.5% from the field? Redick couldn't get to that on the fly, because he's not letting go.
Redick said that if the Suns win the title this year, Paul will be considered the best point guard of all time. That wasn't the best part, but it was the best part. He stopped Redick right in his tracks.
I tell you that Redick was shocked. He slammed his hand on the desk and said, "Now the fight was on."
The back-and-forth continued when Russo got in a good one that startled Redick a bit, when he mentioned that Cousy was first team All-NBA when Oscar Robertson and Jerry West were playing. Redick couldn't shoot down the ridiculous question about if Paul had ever made first-team All-NBA. Redick tried to come back with the hammer that he never shot 40 percent from the field for a season. He also had 29 assists in an NBA game, but then he slipped in and said it was true.
Even though he was off by a single assist, Round Russo was still able to give 28 assists.
In a discussion about the greatest point guards of all time, he didn't include Magic Johnson, John Stockton, Isiah Thomas, or even Jason Kidd. The man who was drafted fourth overall by the Tri City Blackhawks was with him. He is one of the original NBA superstars, but the best point guard of all time? I think he would have reigned buckets on him.
Mad Dog got Stephen A., the sports media star, on Wednesday as he turned back the clock to the Fort Wayne Pistons era of the NBA. I wish I had a cousin who lived in New York in the 1990s so I could spend summers there.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
