NBA Open Court | LEGACIES

i think charles came to play tonight and a steal miller retreats to the [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right all right welcome to uh another edition of uh of that show in which seven former nba players compete for valuable prizes and cash actually they sit around and talk for an hour about various topics it's open court here on nba tv i'm ernie johnson and let me introduce the panel uh once again uh the big fella shaquille o'neal uh is with us and a newcomer to the panel this is very exciting for all of us uh bonesbury brent is here as kenny the jet smith takes a sabbatical you know what i don't know what sabbatical mean i hope it means fire fire but but we digress uh next to brent is uh is reggie miller uh next to me is chris webber my fan night compatriot charles barkley looking wide awake ready to roll and for now next to charles uh steve kerr and uh and steve smith uh who have just a bundle of championship rings between them most of them steve kurz topic number one on this show is legacy and what better place to start than with david stern who's been the commissioner of the nba since 1984. uh and his his tenure will come to an end in february of of 14. uh you're the newcomer brent you got the first crack at it how do you remember david stern well i'm also the youngest guy so i i don't have as much history as shaq and shaq and and charles and and reggie have but uh i guess for me it's it was about being a fan of the game and then actually working for david stern later on in life and he made the game watchable for me in the 80s growing up and being a teenager and getting a chance to see the game in terms of the product of the game take steps towards you know being the favorite thing that i wanted to do and that's watch nba basketball so as far as growing the product and making it what i wanted to do later in life as maybe the best first job out of college you know david stern was responsible for the product uh taking those strides in the 80s when it was that i was looking for something to latch onto you know and he took the reins here things hadn't been exactly smooth uh steve kerr in the nba before the commissioner arrived on the scene yeah tape delayed finals in the late 70s and then david came around and i love those early shots of him at the draft by the way looking very svelte with the mustache he looked like schneider from that uh what was the day at a time no when i think of david stern i think of when you think of the best coaches in sports you know whether it's you know greg popovich or you know phil jackson it's these guys with incredible presence and there's a there's even a little fear factor from the people who are working for him and i always looked at stern in that regard he always had this amazing presence and it was necessary i mean you had a league as you mentioned that was struggling you had some unbelievable young stars coming into the game with magic and and larry and then later on michael and charles but somebody had to put all this together and somebody had to make some hard decisions some unpopular decisions including among them like the salary cap and they had to figure out you know david had to figure out how we're going to implement this between the union and the owners in the end i always felt like he was working for the owners you know as a player you're looking at him like he's he's not working for us he's working for the owners but when you sit back and look at it as a player as a former player thank god for david stern because he he created this whole machine that has allowed all of us uh to to flourish uh in our careers not only playing but but post playing days too but smitty i mean the league had an image problem i'm not saying that in the year like the year you know he came in and changed all that but the league had an image problem leading up to the time that david stern took over you're right ernie i mean we talk about the drug infested league in the 80s and he brought the league out of that but i think also lack of image for players i think when you start thinking about david stern the nba product you start thinking globally where he took the game i was reading something where when he entered the league it was 23 teams combined they were worth 400 million you look now the average team individually is worth 400 million approximately so i think financially took us to a definitely another another level what what is a player commissioner relationship like when you look at your career charles what what kind of a relationship did you have with well let me say this as a player when you get to meet to commissioner it's not good unless he's drafted yeah yeah like i've been called to the carpet i think three times because i screwed up but let me pick it back on something these guys said me i feel personal about david struggle we came into the nba both together in 1984. and the average salary there was 200 000 the average salary now is 5.5 million dollars that's unbelievable that's the average salary it was 200 000 a week came in at 84. now the average salary is 5.5 million just take that alone that's remarkable so he took care of the players also obviously you know these guys talk about how much the teams have appreciated it's been great for the players also but for me taking the game international you know his push to get us in the olympics on the dream team it's become a worldwide game it wasn't a worldwide game and talk about something else these guys said it was back in the day it was like we got a bunch of black guys making a great living smoking pot that was the nba's image he took it from there you know we did have an image problem because we all thought like oh we got a bunch of black guys making money but they're all smoking dope and that's a hard product to market because this thing is driven by television and revit and ad sales and he he may i i would take david stern and say he is the best commissioner you know you look at the nfl you look at hockey look at baseball it's hard to say there's been a better commissioner to take to go for the image problems now you look where we are financially but also where we are worldwide i mean we play games overseas now and they draw 20 30 000 people to see us play in japan and china in germany in italy france i mean it's an international game and david stern deserves a lot of credit for that to me and you are absolutely right because that's the key if you look in 1984 how many international players were actually playing in the nba maybe a handful but now obviously this is the league where you want to be and you want to be focused in and you want to display your talents and it's funny because you talk about getting called to the principal's office yeah i was called to the principal's office a few times too from david stern and you get a little bit intimidated when you walk in because you know what is you know what is your dad basically doing calling you to the office for some of the screw-ups you've done you know whether you're you know cursing on the court or getting into fights or whatever so it could be a little bit jaw-dropping when you get that call from the new york office that david stern wants to see you international like you guys said him building up the league but having played with so many international players and going to serbia going to other places i was serving with popovich and it was 200 000 people in the middle of the street for vladi's retirement it was all because of the nba i don't think we'll be able to really see what david stern's impact we can see it now but i think his impact is gonna last in this game a long time even players seven foot players shooting threes or all of that is from international players in the world coming together and saying hey you can move your skills up so i just think the whole game has changed because of them hey shaq i know you're you're big into leadership and you like to and and you kind of look at those who have taken leadership roles and see what's made them successful what leadership qualities have you seen in david stern in the course of almost 30 years well as you can see from all the good that he has done we you can come to the conclusion that he's not a micro-manager you know even though he's an older fellow if you look at where the game is at now with all the social media you know he's he's smart enough to hire people that's actually probably smarter than him to handle all that for him you know we all talk about david's turn but we have to realize he didn't do that by himself but again you know he was smart enough to hire people that were capable and have the ability to you know do things that's going on now because you know back in 84 when he came in nobody knew about social media so you know where the game has gone now and you know where david stern and his team has took us you know we could say that he's a great leader and i have to agree with chuck you know he's probably you know the greatest uh uh commissioner in sports the the good thing too is having adam silver attached at the hip to him for the last you know 10 15 years you know i think where this league is headed because adam silver really learned under david stern is really going to take the nba to a different level can i say one thing ernie too is that david stern for all the years that he's been the commissioner of the league always talks about the players the talent of the players the ability of our players to impact not only the franchises that they're with but their ability to impact the communities that they're involved with and i think that's one of the things that as much as a task master and task master and uh we know how domineering he can be there's a side to david stern that not a lot of people get to see that i really truly believe deep down that he cares about not only the game of basketball certainly about the product but deep down there is a concern for the players and how they're represented and how they represent the franchises and that part of his legacy to webb's point about going international impacting communities outside the united states is something that you're going to see for generations that david stern's not going to be a part of but for those of us who've been around this long we know the genesis is from what it is that he started you know ernie also you talk about endorsements when when when i when we came in 84 players were not doing endorsements you know you know like you think about magic johnson lara bird they had like a little converse commercial then micah came in and he started doing nike but you look now and you started doing antiperspirants yeah i did but like that that that yeah i did like stopped you know so he has to take some credit he started marketing stars you know because the nba is about marketing stars you know i give a lot i've always given credit for magic and larry and michael for taking him to a whole nother level but you know he made it cool to go out and do advertisement you know because players you know everybody talks about okay there's a team that's a team but realistically it's about marketing individual players to to make the brand grow because people want to see stars they might like their team but they want to see stars what was the last line anything less uh uncivilized would be on civilians that's it a pretty good description of this show open court continuing with legacy after this listen i'm not going in the hall of fame but i got a really damn big house to sit in while people calling me names like it ain't no right session no that's it's interesting that's my point back here on open court and we're talking legacy and i i guess this is kind of a one of the downsides of sport when you talk about the legacy of performance-enhancing drugs and you can talk about specific players who have been caught up in that net you can just talk about how pervasive it's been in various sports are we ever going to after we've gotten to this point are we ever not going to be talking about that are we ever going to get to a point where everybody's just playing the game on the up and up play it clean rehab your injuries the right way or are you always looking for the next deer antler spray steve i think we're always going to be talking about this stuff because it seems like it's impossible to differentiate between one thing and another every athlete's going to push the limit as far as they can in terms of what they can do to get better and then it's up to the individual athlete to decide if he's going to cross that line but i think there's a gray area that some you know sometimes guys kind of get into where they're not even sure if they're if they're taking something that's uh that's illegal or not science is ever-changing and i think we are always going to talk about players taking performance enhancing drugs because what's interesting is i've asked myself this question if we could take a pill or deer antler spray that could make us perform to the level of michael jordan to compete at that level because he was so far advanced over everyone if you could take a pill and compete with michael jordan at that level would we have taken that in the 90s the memorial question though no i'm just saying if it wouldn't if it wouldn't hurt you if it if it wasn't going to hurt you but make you perform but if you're at that level but if you knew it was against the rule of year here's my thing i don't i don't know oh let me take this one i don't know see i i i don't think it has anything to do with morality ernie i think it has something to do with economics and i've said this before if i'm poor and i'm not quite good enough and let's say i don't want to single out any country or something but if i'm poor and i'm coming from some little island and i got a chance to make 10 20 30 million dollars a year i ain't gonna lie i'm shooting some in my ass well that's what most people you know what you're talking about the baseball players i am yeah yeah because that's that's seriously i i try not to ever be a hypocrite i i don't ever want to be a hypocrite it's so easy for these guys who got great lives say i wouldn't do this but if i'm from some little island and the whole island is poor and i got a chance to make 20 million dollars a year like i like i'm not worried about the moral high ground i'm trying to make life better for my family and well i see i see that part of it but the other part of it is that you do have guys who are well off and who have established careers and are stars in their various leagues who still see a need to cross that line they do that because the pressure of winning gets so high you know we're all in the business of you know being analysts now we we put a lot of pressure on them the critics put a lot of pressure on them they put a lot of pressure on themselves so the pressure winning is so high that you know sometimes you do things you're not supposed to do i don't lie every now and then i used to look at the the things of the nba which was letter of the law so and i go in gnc and i see some fat boy burner plus and i check it so if i didn't see something that was on the letter of the law i would think it's okay but see a lot of time where these guys get in trouble is the derivatives of something that's on the letter of the law of c we don't know that see like you know we'll just go in g and c fat boy burn it plus lose 20 pounds 10 days we'll check it boom boom nothing is that what it's really called no but you know i always used to go in ernie i think we did though i think when i was young you know people say go get a weight vest i ran out and got a weight vest then little moon boots to jump creatine i had no clue what was in creatine i started taking it because they said i need to be stronger i mean creatine could have been something that was banned so i think we did do in our generation it just wasn't a lot of stuff out there and i think also you look at different sports in basketball you probably don't see it our contracts are guaranteed probably if i was playing football and my contract wasn't guaranteed to feed my family you never know what you would do because you don't have guaranteed contracts like we have in professional baseball and professional basketball it is interesting that and i don't know if you guys ever experienced any of it but i can honestly say in 15 years of playing in the nba i never suspected a single teammate of taking a ped maybe i'm a little naive but i really believe that it was just not part of the basketball culture but i don't know why that's that's the case because there's got to be stuff that we could have taken to to help recovery you know all the stuff the tour de france guys were doing maybe that would help nba players but do you guys ever remember i never saw a guy use pd's in any shape form whatsoever but like i say i try not to ever be a hypocrite on television or whatever if if i wasn't quite good enough because obviously there's so many players who are really close to being good enough to play at the nba if i could take a shot or take some pills i probably would do it because this is like basketball was going to be my job my career and there's a lot of guys who ain't quite good enough to play in the nba like and it's such a fine line you guys know that and if i hear the question do you take that pill to make it into the nba are you taking that pill once you're in it to take you to another level to compete with the shaquille o'neals with the lebron james with the kobe bryant's see that's the gray area that people are talking about you've got guys that are already in professional baseball in football that have made it that are stars and then they take it they blow up to make all these enormous records but to me that's what i have about but they've already made it and now they're trying to solidify themselves and take it to a different because there's so much pressure on stars to put up numbers like shaquille said i don't think there's a right or wrong answer to be honest with you because you know you're going to get killed if you don't play well so you're like i want to stay at this level because because players aren't judged by they're judged by how much money they make right you know so they're like oh this guy's making 25 million dollars he's got to do this he's not playing well so there's enormous pressure on you to be honest with you i was battling a shoulder injury throughout my workouts i took something that i shouldn't be taking i should double search research whatever it should take and shouldn't be in this situation right now but i'm really sorry you know to put myself in this situation and the organization too one of your one of your former teammates suspended this year in the nba you know triggaloo yeah i think you got to watch your trainer you know a two because these guys said you trust so when i played there were several trainers i'm sure all you guys worked that i worked out with and i trust blindly you know give me eggs give me your food and things like that so i've never though seen or suspected anybody in the history and if you look at hidden body he taking the wrong tv look at his numbers may not be the right thing to say exactly enhancing anything i played with lindsey hunter in detroit and it was funny he got suspended 10 games for taking his wife's diet pill and we were teasing him because he was just out of shape and that was probably worse than the suspension just hearing what you guys said yeah you know you know but one thing though is that in basketball i think we're a little bit lucky and different like you said you know you can't just sit here and judge but in basketball you know your skill set kind of makes you you could be a fat slow guy and still be able to post up you could run you know i don't i don't think we've we've ever had to really see that and i hope in basketball you never do see that because of the skill set now in other sports you know i don't know why but when you have guys i will say when you have guys that are already there and have won something six seven times eight times and you take you know the community's trust and things like that i think morally you might have a responsibility once you're already there but like you said if i'm coming from another country or if i have nothing or you know who knows what it is i'm just glad we were never put in that position after denying it for years lance armstrong admitted to oprah that he used performance-enhancing drugs during a cycling career did the lance armstrong thing tick you off or how did how did you view that when you when all this came out well first of all i wasn't shocked you know if everybody else in the race has everybody else every tour de france winner has gotten busted for drugs to think that the one guy who had cancer beat those guys who were doing drugs didn't take drugs i think you have to be a total idiot to be like oh knock me over with a feather so i was i wasn't surprised at all to be honest with you not surprised but i think what separates lance is how he handled things and the people around him who was calling him out he made their life a living hell when all they were doing was telling the truth and because he had so much power in that sport of winning all those championships and lying he threw everyone underneath the bus and the way he treated people around him the people that were calling them out that's the problem i have with lance armstrong and i wanted to i'm agree with reggie and i and i've said this before listen the drug thing is different the way last treated people behind the scenes he owed those people an apology the last ballot for the baseball hall of fame you had barry bonds you had roger clemens rafael pimera all these guys that were allegedly using peds should they be in the should they be in the other okay so there should be a different wing there no if you're if you're hank here but if you're hank aaron i'm gonna tell you what you're hank aaron you're sitting back saying you got to be kidding me let me tell you what you got to be kidding me and everybody benefited from mcguire and sosa i agree they say baseball roger clemons bear buzz the problem i have with that is baseball benefited the whole thing all all the teams the franchise the blind eye i agree with you but that starts with the commissioner yes but my problem i have with the whole thing is richie the only guy they're only penalizing the five hall of famers let me ask this charles is the the weight and the pressure of having to handle now the responsibility of you being caught cheating during your athletic career does that outweigh the glory that they had when they were playing the game that go that goes back to what i said earlier like listen i'm not going in the hall of fame but i got a really damn big house to sit in while people calling me names like it ain't know where it says no that's it's interesting that's my part it's an interesting level like you know we talk about track and field if i'm in one of those island countries and the only way i can really make a good living is running a 100 yard dash in eight seconds i'm doing it you know because we all bend those islands we go to the resort part of the album we don't see how the other island is so i agree with you i would i would probably do the same thing but are we drawing two different moral lines one for the poor people and one for the rich people like are we saying it's okay no no no poor people not on an island to do it but the rich guy who's trying to take the next step like we're gonna we're not gonna allow that well no i i don't think there's a double shot but i'm saying we have to we not in other people's shoes and if you got a chance to take a pill and you gonna make millions and millions of dollars a year you gonna take that chance how about you put him in the hall of fame but there's no ceremony see i disagree with that everybody benefited the players all around benefited in the short term in the short term but no baseball did not benefit from this whole this whole steroid baseball financially players benefit the players benefit and the team's the baseball took a hit these fans all over the place attendant's not down attendant's not done no i'm talking about in the midst of all that they certainly did well but attendance i don't think you don't think that gave baseball a black eye it gave baseball to blackout but a readings and attendance have still been going through the roof they have rebounded to an extent yeah but i'm still saying if baseball if you're the commissioner of baseball and you say let's see would i like to have a a steroid scandal no oh sure um baseball turned a blind eye sure what was going on sure i thought what charles is saying is that the numbers went up in terms of like stats rbi so a lot of and then all of a sudden everybody's salaries go with it and so you're saying financially yeah players benefit and like i said yeah it was a scandal but revenue has continued to climb but to penalize those four guys when everybo first of all everybody knew what was going on everybody knew what was going on listen that's like listen when god's heads are bigger than mine when you're fired too in your head bigger than mine it ain't like you got it you don't know something going on i'm saying you give them the dude they're in the hall of fame we're just not going to celebrate it you're just not going to be at the podium telling me how you did it but the four guys or the five guys you mentioned if you want them to go in the hall of fame has any one of them come out and said i actually took it so now you're going to take away their public spectacle of getting to the podium and thanking everyone when they've said look i've never taken any peds so why are you taking away my time to shine if i'm in the whole thing they did what's that do you doubt that they did no i i'm assuming neither does anybody else i'm assuming they did but i will say this look my neighbor in malibu ryan braun one of the biggest stars in baseball allegedly is under fire for the same thing he has sworn up and down to me and to you know america that he's never done anything but there will always be that public perception because of what he went through we don't know they've all said they haven't done anything we can assume we can look at barry bonds and say look he won three mvps in pittsburgh and he was my size when he got to san francisco he ended up like charles so apparently something was going on how about this if you admit it we'll let you in if you come out and come clean and help help the whole process we'll let you in oh let me make one point though early it wasn't they weren't testing for those drugs either that's the one thing people don't talk about they were not tested for those drugs they weren't technically illegal were they immoral if you want to go that way i think early they were legal but yeah at the end but they were not testing for it and they were like the andro stuff that yeah that was legal that was legal right so so they started when guys started hitting 70 home runs they wanted to start testing for it but during that entire period the mcguire social era they were not even testing for those drugs most of the people i know use peds in their 60s anyway you know [Laughter] i remember how much players embraced the fact that president obama had won the election they all were writing things on their shoes they were wearing special edition this and special edition that but what really was happening was there was a seed planted for a whole another generation and mostly young african-american black kids about being politically active a few young people here they're like being present if you'd like to don't give it up you don't have to give it up because in spite of everything [Music] i want you to remember one thing you can do anything that you want to do if you want to do it bad enough thank you very much [Applause] bill russell the man is someone who stood up for the rights and dignity of all men he marched with king he stood by ali when a restaurant refused to serve the black celtics he refused to play in the scheduled game but he kept on focusing on making the teammates who he loved better players and made possible the success of so many who would follow obviously a powerful piece of uh of video of bill russell from from years and years ago and saying you can be anything you want and then later to be awarded the medal by president obama what when you talk about legacy there um smitty what did it what did it mean first time you saw barack obama uh inaugurated you know that moment me for me was special my dad who's 83 cried said in his lifetime he never thought he'd see african american be president so just to see his emotion from what happened obviously i was moved as well but i would never forget the emotion of my dad saying this is something in my lifetime that i would never ever thought would happen but getting a chance to meet obama being around he spent some time with him i actually played basketball with him you know he's one of those presidents that's approachable he's one of us not like that other presidents are not uh one of the most socially conscious presidents we have one of the most relatable presidents we've had and i think he gets it do you think this is a strange question charles but do you think when bill russell said that in that piece of video that he actually ever thought he would see it no you know the night the president got elected i cried because being from alabama you know i grew up during the town where they bombed the church church the selma march the montgomery boycott things like that so my grandmother who's the greatest person i've ever met in my life talk to me constantly growing up about civil rights telling me talking about like understand you're too young now but then when i got older she explained everything to me bill russell to me you know people talk about raising taxes all the time about president obama and bill russell says telling me one time because he wanted a great man a great man he was talking about higher taxes and things in the 60s and he he's telling me the story he said this guy came up to him after he says mr russell i got to disagree with you about taxes he said yes sir you tell me why you disagree he says when i'm successful why should i pay more in taxes and this is what mr russell was talking about in the city he says hey you go to school don't you you went to school didn't you he's the guy said yeah he says somebody paid taxes for you to go to school he said when somebody committed a crime don't the cops come to your house he said yeah somebody paid taxes so the cops can come to your house and it was so profound to me now that i'm successful because when you become successful you kind of go in your own little world i said you know what i am successful i should pay more in taxes and when we talk about this and and trying to keep it away from politics and i think this you think this but i think when you when you see uh the inauguration now for a second term um and you hear bill russell say that did you grow up thinking that you would see an african-american president i think when we talk about president obama and going forward the word obviously and he ran this in his first election hope comes to mind because we never thought we would see an african-american a president and there are young african-american boys and girls that are looking at this and watching him each and every day giving press conferences from the oval office and from the white house briefing room saying i can do that because of what we did on this day in this election at this defining moment change has come to america and during his first election when he came out for his acceptance speech in chicago and there was two 300 000 people there and they just kept showing the audience and there was black people white people all together mixed crying together and you talk about the marching and the alabamas and the bombings we've come so far and his legacy going forward i think he's brought this nation closer together in race relations and i think that's what people will hang their hat on when it comes to obama going forward when i watch what he has to go through and he keeps his cool he's inspired me you know being a monkey on the newspaper and you know they painted him as a monkey them talking about his wife and he always keeps cool we're the only ones talking about about being black you never hear him say any of that and i know he's getting stabbed by his people people around and so what i take is that he hasn't made any excuses once he's been up there and he's one of the most coolest cats because he won't call out the obvious of everybody not accepting him and i think not only inspiring but he also says listen once i'm here i'll have an excuse the great thing for me about president obama he lets these young black kids know they can be academically successful because i love sports because sports have given me everything in my life but i'm not sure it's great for black kids because our when you go speak to black kids all they say they want to be chris webber reggie mills shaquille o'neal steve smith or they want to be jay-z kanye west like you got a better chance of being a doctor lawyer engineer teacher firemen policeman things like that that to me is pretty president obama's greatest legacy but you know he's an ivy league educated guy and they're not going to be chris webber or charles barkley or steve smith but they can be academically successful that's what i think his greatest legacy is one of the biggest impacts i think chuck is i was still playing at the time when president obama was first elected and i remember how much players embraced the fact that president obama had won the election they all were writing things on their shoes they were wearing special edition this and special edition that but what really was happening was there was a seed planted for a whole nother generation and mostly young african-american black kids about being politically active about being involved in politics about having a chance to have your voice be heard so you know whatever it was six seven years ago now you know dwyane wade lebron james now their kids are going to see that the impact that president obama made on made on them during this time while they're impressionable young men is going to carry on for generations of their family that now politics is something that actually they can be involved in and that it's okay to be involved in and it's okay to use your voice i think that's where the legacy comes in i agree but in l include us i'm just going to be honest i never really celebrated the fourth of july until obama was president it was just it was just a vacation because you know sometimes you don't feel like you're part of it you know if your mother's a community organizer and you're doing this or if you're in the poor rural part of america and you don't see that you can become one of them and that was one of the funniest things of me going around talking to people about the fourth of july like it's not just a barbecue anymore they're actually waving flags like i'm a part of this country you know i've always known that and felt that but i'd always haven't seen that or or or felt like it had come together someone who said you know he brought the whole country together and i think you know it added patriotism for a lot of people a lot of people love the country they don't want to go anywhere else this is my country but i think it it made people not only want to get involved in politics but it made people feel like yeah wait a minute you know this country does care about everyone i think that you know the patriotism that he's brought about people saying you know i've always been proud to be here i always loved it but wait a minute it does mean a little something more reggie mentioned the race relations going forward and the legacy in that regard i think one of the most important things that obama has done in his tenure is embracing same-sex marriage you know because there's discrimination of all sorts right right yes and so for the longest time in our country there's been discrimination of gay and lesbian people and now all of a sudden you you have a black president for the first time ever trying to push forward more equality for everybody there's a lot of issues besides you know just pure racism there's there's inequality there's injustice and i think just the fact that he's in that office that he carries himself the way he is the way he does and that he's tried to push forward some of these other social agendas to bring people together i think that's that's huge shaq i'll give you the last word you know when you you know if you go back to as far as the martin luther king speech you know we're all dreamers we've never thought this this day would be here but you know we all made great points but i'm gonna go go off of what chris weber said you know guys is under a lot of criticism all the time and he never cracks under pressure you know i just love that he's so eloquent he's so smooth uh and you know i just love the way he handles pressure and you know he's doing a he's doing a good job behind him tough job sorry tough job you know he can't please everybody all the time but you know he wasn't he wasn't handed a silver platter you know he was handed a mess and you know i think he's doing beautiful and you know he's a beautiful family he's a family man and he's a great president and i'm just glad that i'm still around you know to see this day as well as my children and behind every great band there's a great woman we got to give michelle obama a lot of credit too seriously because what she does in the white house especially raising two daughters another scrutiny in the hot lights of being in the in the white house yeah it's it's pretty remarkable as well how amazing is it you see the clip of russell that was 1968 right and he said in 40 years we could have an african-american president it was exactly 40 years right 2008 when it happened i mean that when i first saw that russell clip it kind of you know took me a second to do the math because i'm you know university of arizona but isn't that incredible but i'm glad you mentioned mentioned michelle because uh like you said she's the backbone of obama and yeah you know their royal family and i'm glad to be a part of it legacy on open court we'll be back welcome back to open court when you talk about legacy um where is lebron right now because for a while we're seeing him do things nobody's ever done so on a scale of one to ten where is lebron james right now steve smith you know i don't think we've seen the best of lebron james because of the competition he's playing against i i think in this era nothing wrong with this error i don't think he's getting challenged enough so what give me a number well i i would say round of nine the one area i would love to see which is scary for the league if he started shooting about 85 percent from the line nine i'll give him a nine nine i think nine's fair room for improvement eight plus over the last month i'll spinal tap it and say 11 11. i'm gonna give him a seven and this is the reason why unfortunately he's gonna be always compared to kobe and mike mike has six kobe has five so i think you know we the critics you know when they keep saying you don't have as many rings i think that's going to fuel him even more so i think he's at seven and i think you know there's more space for him to even dominate more lebron i believe has done the most on the court with the most expectations out of any player that's ever played in the nba jordan didn't have this expectation on him having a hundred million dollars before he stepped on the court before he stepped on the court you're hearing about this kid in high school you know even taking you know i jordan had good teams and kobe as well but even taking that cleveland team to the finals kobe bryant struggled coming out of high school kevin garnett struggled coming out of high school lebron james he played well the first game this kid from day one came to the nba and has exceeded everybody's expectation you know lebron's rookie year um because i had a chance to play against him and i was like you know the hype was coming in and i'm like you know i'm going to throw some of these old tricks on them you know we're running the single double action you know where you can come off and you know how i used to throw you guys off when you guys were holding you know throwing won't go one way i'm going to use this on this young cat you know he doesn't know the game yet i go to throw him he's right there i tried to throw him to the left he's right there i'm like oh i'm in trouble down here i mean he was so much stronger at that age like we're in trouble tonight with this young kid so it lets you know that physically i don't think we'll never see physically gifted another player like that for a long time there's only been three guys michael who i said they're physically gifted to everybody at their position they're more physically gifted michael lebron and shaquille the first time i met shaquille oscar throwing an oscar too and wilt i mean just for yeah well guys i it doing my time yeah i was like they're going to be better than everybody they play against every night like there's tons of great players but there's only three guys i've seen i said oh it like some nights when you're a great player you have an advantage nine and nine percent of the time and the rest of the time like okay i gotta bring it tonight this guy's just as good as i am but every time michael lebron and shaquille stepped on the court there's nobody they're always better than some and that's the only three times i've said that you're watching open court we're talking about legacy and and when we come back it's the ever popular lightning round short answers back in a minute i told my father magic was coming to the house and uh he woke up cut the grass and everything and he had worked for cadillac in 30 years and never could buy a cadillac and so i got him a cadillac and he still wants to know where magic was and we welcome you back to open court with a reminder you can catch more episodes on nba.com all right welcome back to uh to open court time for the lightning round uh just one question and uh and you just fire away first thing you bought with your first nba check smitty a car what kind i'm trying to give me a car cherokee limited i was playing uh m.c breed ain't no future in your front i'm steve kerr uh a set of golf clubs yeah what set of golf clubs i was in phoenix it's my rookie year went out to the ping factory got sized up and started playing golf okay chuckster i bought my mom and my grandmother car which what'd you get some type of oldsmobile uh two oldsmobile same kind uh no different models but they were oldsmobile okay see i told my father magic was coming to the house and uh he woke up cut the grass and everything and he had worked for cadillac in 30 years and never could buy a cadillac and so i got him a cadillac and he still wants to know where magic was i love that bridge very nice uh a new wardrobe when i got to indiana and really it was a a winter coat herb williams john long said you're from california aren't you yeah it's cold around here and it took me to get a new winter coat uh i didn't have a car early so i bought the album ain't no future in your front and i just put that in my buddy's car honestly the first check i i still have it do you really did not catch it just held on to it and think about the work that i put in and the things that i did to get there so i still have it you know you could have cashed it it could have cost symbolism i do have it i bought a black on black bins with some hammers on that thing and the uh alpine pullout cd deck and when i got home my father was like that's nice where's mine at so then we got in the car and i had to go buy him one too wow wow that's a small world number one thing i did with my first turner channel number one big money right there all right ernie with my first turner yes same story as shaq for open court thank you for watching us we'll see you next time here on nba tv

Channel: Gerry Cash

Views: 387,960

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Id: DEz4dFNvKsA

Length: 46min 6sec (2766 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021