The Future of Celtics Broadcasting w/ Sean Grande | Celtics Beat
On the latest episode of Celtics Beat, Adam and Evan are joined by Sean Grande! Grande is the voice of the Celtics for the Boston Celtics Radio Network. Sean joins the show to discuss his future with the Celtics and what Boston could be in store for with Kristaps Porzingis. Twitter: @SeanGrandepxp
0:00 This year should be about celebrating Mike Gorman
14:19 The origins of “GOT IT”
24:18 Defense of Kevin Brown
38:02 Get used to nagging Porzingis injuries
This episode of the Celtics Beat Podcast is brought to you by Fanduel Sportsbook, the exclusive wagering partner of the CLNS Media Network. Visit FanDuel.com/BOSTON and start earning BONUS BETS with America’s #1 Sportsbook! Because right now, when you bet on a Super Bowl Winner, you can GET BONUS BETS EVERY TIME THEY WIN IN THE REGULAR SEASON!
21+ and present in MA. First online real money wager only. $10 Deposit req. Refund issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at fanduel.com/sportsbook. Hope is here. GamblingHelpLineMA.org or call (800)-327-5050 for 24/7 support. Play it smart from the start! GameSenseMA.com or call 1-800-GAM-1234.
- #celtics #NBA #CelticsCLNS
The CLNS Media Network is the leading provider for video/audio content. CLNS is a fully credentialed member of the media with access to all NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB teams & venues.
0:00 This year should be about celebrating Mike Gorman
14:19 The origins of “GOT IT”
24:18 Defense of Kevin Brown
38:02 Get used to nagging Porzingis injuries
This episode of the Celtics Beat Podcast is brought to you by Fanduel Sportsbook, the exclusive wagering partner of the CLNS Media Network. Visit FanDuel.com/BOSTON and start earning BONUS BETS with America’s #1 Sportsbook! Because right now, when you bet on a Super Bowl Winner, you can GET BONUS BETS EVERY TIME THEY WIN IN THE REGULAR SEASON!
21+ and present in MA. First online real money wager only. $10 Deposit req. Refund issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at fanduel.com/sportsbook. Hope is here. GamblingHelpLineMA.org or call (800)-327-5050 for 24/7 support. Play it smart from the start! GameSenseMA.com or call 1-800-GAM-1234.
- #celtics #NBA #CelticsCLNS
The CLNS Media Network is the leading provider for video/audio content. CLNS is a fully credentialed member of the media with access to all NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB teams & venues.
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SportsTranscript
00:00 Celtics Beat is brought to you by FanDuel, the exclusive wagering partner of the CLNX Media Network.
00:08 What's up everyone? New Celtics Beat. We have the preseason schedule. That's fun.
00:13 We can review that a little bit later on. Still waiting, of course, for the regular season schedule.
00:18 But there's news concerning the Celtics, both as it relates to the team and its players.
00:23 There's some drama around Chris "Dampse" Porzingis, who you may know has a nice fat new deal and possibly a foot injury.
00:29 So we'll get there. And also, off the court, as it relates to who we will be listening to broadcast Celtics games.
00:37 We certainly know this coming year, it is the final year, at least in full.
00:42 Maybe he'll pop up down the road for some honorary broadcasts.
00:46 But the least, the last year that we will have Mike Gorman on the television broadcast.
00:51 And here to talk in part about that anyway, Sean Grandy, our good pal who comes on kind enough with his time.
00:58 Way too often for what we deserve, probably. But he's here yet again. Sean, good to see you.
01:04 I'm more interested in the fact that you guys had this fan-duel thing going for a while.
01:09 You were at the forefront. You were at the cutting edge of the now multi-billion dollar gambling and broadcasting tie-in,
01:18 as we've all learned to tiptoe. And man, is that ever dominating the headlines this week.
01:23 You would think being at the forefront, the checks would be bigger.
01:26 You would think, right? But yet, the first one through the wall, right?
01:31 It's always the one that has to suffer. It's always the one that has to, you know.
01:36 Help pave the way. So, well, in the spirit of sports betting, obviously, I don't think there are any lines out for, you know,
01:45 favorites or long odds to replace Mike Gorman on the television broadcast.
01:50 But frankly, Sean, and I don't know if this is, you know, how heavily this has hit you from friends and colleagues and fans on Twitter and all of that.
02:01 The question that I get more frequently is not who's going to replace Mike Gorman on the television side.
02:07 It's who's going to replace Sean Grandy on the radio side, because it seems like a foregone conclusion that you're going to go over there.
02:14 You already obviously are a, you know, a contributor to the television side.
02:19 You do X number of games a year. You have for years as you and Mike have kind of split time as he has traveled less and, you know,
02:25 kind of going back to COVID hitting and schedules getting wonky for you guys and everybody.
02:31 You always tell us nothing's off limits, which I appreciate. So tell us, where do we stand?
02:36 Are you the next TV voice of the Boston Celtics?
02:39 Well, I think I don't want to wet blanket anything. I'll say to you what I'm going to be saying to everybody,
02:44 what I've been saying to everybody, which is I really think this year should be about Mike.
02:49 I think this is Mike's last go. This is Mike's last run. He's been here for 40 years.
02:55 And I think that's what this year should be about. Obviously, you know, I don't want to get into all the inside baseball nonsense.
03:00 There's complication that is created when Mike misses games.
03:04 And then I slide here and then John Wallach, who's on with Toucher and Rich on 98.5.
03:09 And all of it is a, you know, it's a complication. So to me, the whole thing has been about 2024.
03:15 Mike, you know, sort of made his announcement. For those of us on the inside, I don't think anybody was surprised.
03:22 It's sort of what we've been expecting for several years that it was going to be 2024.
03:26 So to me, it's a 2024 question. I think you guys know, as everybody knows, how much I've enjoyed the last couple of years,
03:35 particularly last season was my favorite year of the 22. I've done with the Celtics and maybe my 25 in the NBA.
03:43 Last year was my personal favorite because I got to do both.
03:49 I got to work on both sides and I got to be with Scowl and with Eddie House and with Abby and with Paul Lucy and Jim Evans,
03:56 who are two names behind the scenes you don't know, but they've affected your life as Celtics fans far more than you realize,
04:02 because they've been the producer and director of the television side for a quarter century.
04:07 And then I was able to slide over and keep the thing going with Max's you and I, as the three of us have discussed.
04:14 What made last year kind of fun was Max and I were a little fresher together because we weren't doing all 82.
04:21 So I do a couple of games on TV and then come back and it was a little more special.
04:26 Plus, again, as we've discussed, the other the other side of this is NBA television.
04:32 You're not doing the best games in the regular season and you're not doing the playoffs.
04:37 So therein lies to me. That's why last year was awesome, too, because when it was done and we filled the gap on the TV side and I think it created I guess the point is that it created different radio broadcasts, different energy there.
04:50 And I think the number one piece of feedback I got last year was how it was a different energy on the TV side.
04:58 And that was great, too. It just was sort of an influx and it was almost the perfect to me.
05:03 It was like the perfect scenario. So what happens in twenty twenty four happens in twenty twenty four.
05:07 But I think what we learned last year is what we've known all along, which is that we're just one big team.
05:12 And I think all of us, all the names I just mentioned, Max included, we're all interchangeable and could all plug in anywhere.
05:20 Your point as far as like the the whole South Exped on the forefront thing, and obviously it's kind of a joke.
05:25 But with my Gorman, I mean, he said two years ago what his timeline was going to be on this podcast before it started.
05:32 You know, so he has been to your, you know, as you said, like he's he's been pretty up front about what he's been thinking over these years.
05:39 You know, and it's it's played out here to him making that announcement with NBC Sports Boston, really the athletic before that.
05:48 If you. I guess asking you to forecast how you think it plays out, I'm not talking about who does what I'm talking about.
05:55 Do you think the desire is we're going to have one TV voice, we're going to have one radio voice versus what it's been the last couple of years where, as you said, schedules have caused you to do this or wallet to slide in here and so on and so forth?
06:10 I don't know. It's too it's really too early to know.
06:13 We've got there's a lot of different things that we've got to decide.
06:17 All of us have to decide what we want to have happen, what everybody's long term future is on both sides.
06:24 I think that, as you know, as I've said, I'm not I'm not trying to tip my hand other than saying not just the significant games are important to me.
06:33 The other thing is, and I can announce you want some breaking news.
06:37 I can announce that Max is officially signed his contract.
06:39 So he is back, you know, for multiple years.
06:42 Excellent. And you don't necessarily want to break up.
06:46 You know, Max and I are a thing. Right.
06:49 So I'm not trying to put you off other than to say, why not enjoy if we have the best case scenario for this year, which is.
06:59 A lot of some variety.
07:02 Let's enjoy that, because here's what we do know.
07:05 This will be the last year you're going to have Mike in the mix.
07:08 Hopefully not.
07:10 Listen, do I hope he changes his mind and those own gate does whatever he wants to do forever?
07:14 Yeah, I do.
07:15 I'm all for like, hey, four more years, four more years. But Mike gets to do whatever he wants to do after the number of years that that he's put in.
07:22 So for now, let's enjoy this year and let's enjoy, you know, I think you guys know what my goal is, which is for the Celtics, the Boston Celtics, the most storied franchise in NBA history to have the best broadcast, whether it be on the radio side of the TV side.
07:39 And I'm going to try to do my part to make sure that happens, no matter which chair I'm sitting in on or wearing makeup or not on any given night.
07:48 So that's the plan. And when we get to twenty four, twenty, twenty four, we'll, you know, we'll see what we'll see where we go from there.
07:55 It's a long time in the world. Like, I just I know it's what everybody does.
08:00 What's going to happen when this happens?
08:02 Why not say if this really is going to be Mike's last year, let's enjoy it for what it is.
08:09 So you blew it. That's normally when you give us the I serve at the pleasure of the president of the Boston Celtics.
08:14 And that is the answer, because you're asking me what I want to do.
08:19 I think I've made it pretty clear to everybody that my the perfect scenario for me and what probably is best for the team in a lot of ways is that I do both.
08:28 I do as much as I can. Like I you know, you want me.
08:32 People seem to want me on the TV side, and that's great.
08:34 But do you want Max and I do in the playoff games and the big games in the regular season?
08:39 I run this for you guys, I think, before, but it always underscores it to me.
08:44 There was a period of I want to say it was five or six years that Mike and Tommy back then did not do a single game against LeBron James.
08:54 Now, let that sink in for a second. Yeah, it's wild.
08:57 As you introduced me, because I know you love to stick in the word long time. Right.
09:01 And I get it. I'm fine with it. I've leaned into it.
09:04 I have an 11 year old son who reminds me every day how old I am and I get it.
09:08 But being the voice of the Celtics means being the voice of the Celtics.
09:12 And are you the voice of the Celtics if you're not doing all the good games and the playoffs?
09:17 I don't know. We'll deal with all this. This is why I usually start and end with.
09:22 I serve at the pleasure of the president of the Boston Celtics because whatever they want me to do is what I'm sure I'm going to end up doing.
09:30 So when I say I serve, it's true. I serve the team.
09:33 I serve the fans of the team and wherever anybody wants me, that's where I'm going to go.
09:39 Before coming here, you were TV in Minnesota, correct? Yes.
09:43 So moving to the radio side in Boston, because you mentioned a number of times not being able to do the biggest games when you're doing the local TV,
09:51 as opposed to obviously national TV broadcasts as a whole of the story.
09:54 But if you are the team's voice, is that something that just you in your mind and in your career,
10:00 is that something that gives you pause going forward saying, OK, I mean, yeah, it used to be TV and you still do plenty of TV,
10:07 whether it's filling in for Mike on the TV side or obviously the MMA and you've called TV, you know, across sports.
10:15 You're a veteran of TV. But doing radio in Boston, as long as you have, is that something that makes you say,
10:20 man, it's this is actually more fun than I expected it to be?
10:25 I don't know if it's more fun than I expected it to be. But the answer to your question is yes, it is.
10:29 It is a point of concern. But again, you're asking me about me individually as opposed to how I best serve team.
10:38 And those those two things could be at odds, let's face it, with the bigger game.
10:43 You know, the perception is that television is the bigger job. Depends on what you consider to be a the voice of the Celtics and be.
10:52 What is the most important element of being a team's broadcaster?
10:55 To me, that's calling as many games as you can, you know, all of the above.
10:59 I think it was my second year in Minnesota. We didn't do the last game.
11:04 I remember that feeling. I remember being at the game at Target Center was on NBC.
11:08 It was probably a Bob Costas broadcast in 2000. And it was a strange feeling of no closure when you're with a team from the start of training camp.
11:18 And, you know, you just get kicked off. Listen, I had this I've had this conversation, as you can imagine, with many, many people inside the industry.
11:25 And maybe the most interesting one was Gary Cohen of the Mets, who had this exact same decision to make a few years ago when he went from radio to TV.
11:33 And suddenly you're not doing the postseason. And again, it's perception. Reality does 30 year.
11:41 When it comes to doing TV or radio, just 30 year old Randy and 50 year old Randy have two different answers to that.
11:47 Probably, you know, again, it isn't. Of course, it's been there, done that with all this stuff.
11:54 If you're if you're me, you just want to do as much as you can and have the variety.
12:00 And it was, as I told you, not only was it fun doing a game with Scow and Abby one night on television and then doing a game with Max on radio the next night.
12:10 That's not easy. That's two very different jobs.
12:13 If you know those guys and the way they approach their jobs and the way they cover the league and the way they handle it and the approach they come from, plus the format that you're calling play by play.
12:22 I love the challenge of that. That was, you know, it was it was complicated.
12:27 It was challenging in a job that, you know, when you've been doing it for a long time is, you know, Max and I have our thing.
12:33 We can we can show up and do do what we do together.
12:37 So there's a lot of different elements. Again, you're asking me individually.
12:40 And if it sounds like I'm hemming and hawing, it's because. Again, I serve the fans and the team and whatever makes the most sense is is going to make the most sense.
12:51 But I don't want I just hate the idea of the conversation about twenty twenty four.
12:56 Coming in front of, hey, Mike's been doing this for.
13:00 Forty three years, 43, that sounds right to me, 81, I think was the first year.
13:05 And again, Mike only did.
13:09 The first 20 years, Mike was just doing the home games on. It's funny.
13:12 That's kind of come full circle, but he had different iterations of this job in his time as well.
13:19 So I just don't want twenty twenty four to overcome this coming season when for the people that love Mike Gorman.
13:28 Let's let's lean into it and enjoy the time we have.
13:32 We were talking before we came on, too, and you had mentioned that obviously there are some similarities in in specific calls.
13:40 The people think got it. They think of Mike, they think of you, they think.
13:44 And so you had mentioned that there's there's been a years long process of discovery to finally find out kind of how that all happened and how you guys overlapped a little bit.
13:55 I remember this is a conversation of many, many like I don't say a thousand pregame dinners with Mike, right?
14:02 Like in media rooms around the NBA. But it feels like that after all those years, Tommy tends to dominate a lot of those conversations, which was awesome.
14:09 But I remember when it first came up, because we both we both do use it.
14:14 And what was interesting to me was I didn't because I mentioned Mike only do the games on cable.
14:20 This is going to sound absolutely archaic. But when I was at BU in the early 90s, we didn't have cable.
14:27 You didn't have cable to I know college students didn't have cable TV. Oh, my God. That's so primitive.
14:33 Yeah. Well, there was no Starbucks either. Right. When we were in college.
14:35 So there was no cable TV. I didn't hear Mike until like mid 90s, like after I'm out of school.
14:44 And I've already been doing basketball games at that point and had already been used.
14:48 You know, I don't like use it every time, but got it. To me, it has consonants.
14:51 I don't want to get too far down this 500 level play by play class. It has consonants in it.
14:57 So it's a stronger thing. There's always a big debate about and hockey. You say score or a goal because it is a goal.
15:05 A goal is actually what's happened. I never liked that because shot and a goal is coming down to me.
15:12 The cadence comes down where you want to say shot, score, and it gets higher and loud.
15:17 You know, it's a different sound to it. And I think it draws people's attention, particularly on radio, even though it is a goal.
15:22 So you can have these kind of debates. The got it thing was interesting. And so I couldn't figure out why was I saying got it when I never heard, you know, Michael.
15:31 So Michael tell you that he talked to Johnny most about that when he came up with it.
15:35 Or I don't remember Mike's origin story, forgot it, but that Johnny most told him, yeah, you should use that because nobody else does.
15:42 And the funny thing was, I was using it before I heard Mike.
15:45 And I finally I don't know why I think I was maybe watching a show one day and it occurred to me as a kid, college kid of the early 90s, high school, college kid.
15:55 You're watching SportsCenter all the time. The 18 who is the number one guy in SportsCenter late 80s, early 90s, Dan Patrick.
16:03 Dan Patrick, when he would do highlights, I would narrate home runs. What do you say?
16:10 Got it. Got it. It was a got it. And it wasn't a big loud guy.
16:17 It was a down, you know, it was a down cadence. Got it. But that's where I'm 99 percent sure that's where it sunk into my head when he was narrating a highlight.
16:26 And, you know, for Fernando Valenzuela on the mound and Tony Gwynn at the plate.
16:29 Got it. As you know, you narrate, you narrate a highlight to say that as the bat hits the ball.
16:35 You know, it's just sort of the art of doing the of doing highlights. But I feel with great confidence as watching Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann every night that almost assuredly this is 30 years ago now or more where I got that from.
16:51 And two people have both of you's got it have been the so that's the one thing that will continue.
16:56 Right. The Celtics, we know that is that you'll always have you'll have got it.
17:00 That will live on if Mike Mike decides to step down. I keep saying if I know he said it a million times, but I can I can still cross my fingers that he says, hey, this wasn't so bad.
17:12 I can I can keep going. It's a strange time for me. You talk about I'm looking age wise. I'm like halfway.
17:18 I'm looking at starting with the Timberwolves on TV in 98 and looking at where Mike is now and I'm literally I'm like literally halfway in between.
17:28 And you're sort of looking at both. You realize again, we're all older than we think we are.
17:33 Would you want to do it that long? I mean, we're all different. We all different.
17:36 Here's the answer. Everybody gets right. I'm never going to want to do it that long. I'm never.
17:42 I'm lucky enough to be alive in 25 years and the ability to do it. Who knows? I just I never thought of it that way.
17:49 I never thought of myself as someone who's going to be going that long that I don't think people.
17:55 You know, really do what is what's going to change? What does the industry look like in 25 years?
18:01 What does I'll give you an example of radio. And this has come up MLB TV right now.
18:10 Let's all agree for the sake of this conversation, counselor, that we are moving in some direction more towards streaming in every capacity.
18:19 So even if you're projecting the games onto your TV or whatever your big device is at home, you might be watching the games through NBA dot com or through MLB TV or whatever you're on MLB TV.
18:30 Right now, you click on the game you want to watch and then you pick the audio you want.
18:37 To match up to it. Right. That didn't exist in the old days, you had to sit and try to match a radio.
18:43 We have a lot of people, God bless them, and try to match our audio so they can hear Grandi and Max with the television.
18:50 And as anyone who's tried to do it, I'm sure is already nodding their head.
18:54 That is it's really hard to do because everybody gets the video feed delivered to them at a different time.
19:00 It isn't the old days where you could just match it up and everybody's video was delivered at the exact same time.
19:05 Everybody's a few seconds off. So it takes work. You can do it on the DVR. You pause your DVR and match it up.
19:10 I try to get more time queues than I used to. But in any case, even now, MLB TV, you can listen to any audio you want.
19:17 Is that coming to the NBA? Probably. Is audio going to be a different thing? Is it tied into podcasts? Is it tied into...
19:26 We don't know where anything is going right now, other than gambling is probably going to sponsor it.
19:31 That's about the only thing we know right now.
19:35 So again, this is going back to what you started with from the beginning about choosing and why the team's going to decide where I land,
19:43 whether it's TV, radio or both. But it's not what it used to be. And you can't look at it that way.
19:50 When I came here, and I'll tell all of you this, if it's not because there's no reason in hiding anything.
19:56 I was recruited here from Minnesota because I was doing TV there.
20:00 And the pitch was come to Boston, do radio for a couple of years, and then you'll slide over to do TV.
20:06 Well, that couple has turned into 22 years or whatever it's been.
20:10 And that's how I know I was the first guy ever misled in broadcasting history. It's never happened before.
20:15 But none of that matters now. The point is that you can't look at it.
20:19 I don't look at it as if, "Wow, the TV job is far more prestigious than the radio job."
20:25 I look at it like we have a job to do either way to deliver these games.
20:31 Somehow, some way, I'd like to think I can do both. And the ability to do both at a high level.
20:38 And so however it plays out, it plays out.
20:40 But I think I'm bringing up all that matching up audio stuff because the one thing I've learned getting older is that you cannot judge what is going to be by what was, particularly in this industry.
20:55 And famously, we're coming up on the 30th anniversary of the Jay Leno, David Letterman thing, right? Battling for the Johnny Carson spot.
21:03 And if you know the history of that, and I've studied it, the seminal moment is when David Letterman gets this terrible offer.
21:10 After Leno already has the job, they give Letterman this terrible offer to take over the job a year and a half later.
21:16 And he's so obsessed with hosting The Tonight Show that he almost takes it, as bad a deal as it was.
21:22 And I think Peter LaSalle, who was Johnny Carson's longtime producer, says to him, "What are you doing?"
21:27 He goes, "I want that show. I want that what show? Because that Johnny Carson Tonight Show is gone."
21:32 So you've got to look to what is ahead and not what was behind.
21:37 And does that mean, "No, I'm not going to go do TV full-time in a year"? No, it doesn't mean that.
21:43 Whatever, if that works out to be the best thing for the team, then I'm going to do it.
21:46 But I think we can't look as linear as, "Well, this job is better than this job or better than this job or whatever."
21:54 I am proud to serve. And I think of, over the last 20 years, how many memorable moments?
22:02 When you think of Boston Celtics history in the last 23 years and the great moments that have happened that you'd want to document,
22:09 how many of them happened in games that were locally televised?
22:13 Not that many.
22:15 Not that many is the answer.
22:17 So it's just something to ponder as we sort this all out.
22:24 But again, I would say it's a good problem to have, right?
22:27 I mean, you've had Mike Gorman here since 1981, and you're going to get another year out of him.
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23:12 Max has just re-signed, and obviously I have no reason to expect that I'm not going to be here doing one or both or the other, or however that plays out.
23:25 We have Abby here. We have Scout here.
23:27 I thought Eddie House is an emerging star player on maybe both sides.
23:35 He probably would have done a game with me in the finals, not forgotten part of history.
23:40 He had Jason Tatum not turn his ankle in Game 7.
23:42 Max, I think, was going to miss Game 2. He was going to miss one of the games in the finals.
23:46 That probably would have been an Eddie House game.
23:50 I think that it's going to suck to lose Mike in every way there is, but I think we're on TV, on Boston Celtics broadcasting,
24:01 I think we're pretty deep for the next generation, if there's ever a group that can survive it.
24:07 Hopefully we're it.
24:09 Well, just do us a favor. Don't go on the air and start reciting any negative stats and get yourself suspended.
24:15 I know one job, if I ever left here, I know one job I would not get.
24:18 I can assure you I will not be doing Baltimore Orioles games in the future.
24:25 How embarrassing is that for a team and for an owner of such a proud franchise that has had so many bad years,
24:32 and now the Orioles are the best team in baseball right now, or one of the best teams,
24:36 they're having their best year in decades, and their ownership embarrasses themselves
24:41 and diverts attention from this amazing year they're having to say, "Look how ridiculous we look."
24:49 We're pulling one of the great young boys.
24:51 By the way, people are saying, "Oh, Kevin Brown is a great," and there are people who haven't really heard him work.
24:55 As you guys know, I did some Mets games in spring training, and to do that, I was watching a lot of baseball
25:01 in the early weeks of spring training to get ready for it.
25:05 I remember hearing, there's a lot of great young broadcasters.
25:09 There's Fleming out in San Francisco, and there's Jason Benetti with the White Sox.
25:13 I heard Kevin Brown do a game. I don't know if it was ESPN or an Orioles game. It doesn't matter.
25:17 I said, "I better step my game up," because again, talking about how fast we get old,
25:22 I used to be the young guy. I was the young guy who was the next big thing.
25:26 Now there are some serious, high-level, 30-year-old, younger guys out there,
25:32 and Kevin Brown was absolutely one of them.
25:34 Now, time goes by, and hopefully Kevin Brown will be remembered for something else,
25:40 but now you've tagged him with this for no reason.
25:43 This is going to be what a lot of people think of when they see him or hear him,
25:47 and he never, ever should have had to go through it.
25:49 Oh, but isn't this-- I mean, I think of this--
25:52 I know you do. You're going to say, "Well, it makes him bigger," but also,
25:55 people are going to remember, "Oh, yeah, why didn't I know that?"
25:57 I feel like this is the best thing that ever happened to his career.
25:59 Maybe-- Listen, I was going to say maybe it helps him, but my point is,
26:02 he's a great young broadcaster who should be on the fast track anyway.
26:06 But now, he's tagged with this. I think I'm putting myself in that spot 20 years ago
26:12 that I would have been really upset if somebody had tagged me with that.
26:15 Fans chanting-- That's not-- I can assure you, we all have enormous egos, okay?
26:24 I get that, but that doesn't mean we want people chanting our name.
26:29 If I'm Kevin Brown, I don't want Orioles fans chanting, "Free Kevin Brown."
26:33 It should be his ringtone.
26:35 Well, again, any publicity is bad publicity.
26:39 When Don Arcelo left the Red Sox and the players came out of the dugout,
26:44 that's different as far as being part of the story,
26:47 but this is not the way you want to be part of the story.
26:50 You could say maybe it's going to help him.
26:53 Maybe it will because people know the name, but I'm just speaking for myself.
26:57 This is not why I would want to be known.
26:59 It makes me grateful to Timberwolves.
27:03 It was only three years, but the last 22 years here in Boston,
27:06 that I have been trusted with my voice and my opinions.
27:11 You guys know-- By the way, this is another conversation about TV and radio.
27:15 Max and I are pretty outspoken about things that don't get discussed in other outlets,
27:21 but we do it in a way we just don't insult anybody.
27:25 That's what the Orioles are asking their broadcasters clearly to do.
27:28 By the way, this is not an isolated incident.
27:31 John Miller, Gary Thorne, he's a great broadcaster.
27:34 They're great broadcasters, but essentially run out of Baltimore.
27:37 Why? Because they wanted to do their job.
27:40 You cannot insult-- Your fans are the customers.
27:44 You cannot insult them by pretending things don't exist.
27:50 When we did the first preseason game last year--
27:52 See how I'm segueing to the preseason schedule being released today?
27:55 That's how desperate we are for the preseason schedules out.
27:58 Oh, my God.
27:59 A year ago, we did the first preseason game.
28:02 It was also a Sunday game in Boston, and I refused.
28:05 I'm not going to go on the air and say, "Timeout taken by Joe Mazzuola,"
28:10 with not acknowledging what had just happened a week earlier.
28:14 Max and I, we did a 10-minute bit.
28:17 It lives online because you cannot insult fans that way.
28:23 We're all in this together.
28:25 That's where you have no credibility.
28:27 If Kevin Brown says, "Boy, the Orioles are back here in Tampa
28:30 where they've had unbelievable success."
28:32 Remember that one game they won here five years ago?
28:34 That was great.
28:36 By the way, I know I'm ranting about this.
28:39 It was actually a positive story
28:42 that the Orioles had gotten crushed here in Tampa,
28:45 but now look at what's happened.
28:48 I don't get it.
28:50 I thought it was just awful for Kevin, and I thought it was just terrible.
28:55 I felt bad for the fans of the Orioles
28:57 who should be enjoying every second of a year like this,
29:01 which again, in Boston we've gotten used to it,
29:04 but for most teams and most major league sports,
29:07 a year like that is once in a generation,
29:10 and for a week no one's talking about it.
29:13 Have you and KB, your buddies, have you reached out?
29:15 No, I have not.
29:17 I am happy for Kev, and just everybody seems to be throwing love Kevin's way.
29:22 I've known him since we worked together in college,
29:26 and when I saw the headline, I was like,
29:29 "There is absolutely no way Kevin Brown said anything
29:31 that would get him suspended from television.
29:33 There's just no way."
29:35 But I was like, "I've got to find out whatever this is.
29:38 I've got to hear it. I've got to dissect it.
29:40 I've got to listen to it."
29:42 And I just was like, "Yeah, that sounds about right for Kevin Brown."
29:44 The one thing I liked was, speaking of SNY,
29:47 Gary Cohen did a couple of minutes on it,
29:50 and Sean, you touched on it.
29:53 You owe your fans the truth.
29:55 You owe it to them.
29:56 Now, will you dress it up a little bit sometimes?
30:00 When a guy's having a bad season and you've got to talk about it,
30:03 it's just been a rough go for Alex Verdugo.
30:06 It's just been kind of a rough patch of the last night.
30:08 Nice job coming in clutch last night.
30:11 But it's been a rough season for Alex.
30:13 He's talked about how frustrated he is,
30:15 and there's been a lot of talk about his place in the team next year,
30:18 but he's obviously working through some stuff to try and turn it around.
30:23 You don't have to go crazy here,
30:25 but you can't not address the fact that he's not having a great season.
30:29 In this case, again, it was a positive stat.
30:31 You can't just neglect the fact that the Orioles have been great in Tampa
30:36 for the past five years.
30:38 Again, it highlights the fact that they're doing a great job this year.
30:41 To me, it's crazy.
30:45 It oversteps a boundary, Sean.
30:51 Again, you owe it to everybody to paint narratives and tell stories.
30:55 That's what this is.
30:57 To overstep your boundary to interfere with what Kevin's doing, I think,
31:01 is crazy.
31:02 I'm glad you experienced that.
31:04 Let me phrase it like this because this has become a broadcasting clinic
31:06 anyway.
31:08 The way I phrase it now is that you have to be bilingual because the other
31:13 21 hours of the day,
31:15 you are besieged with largely negative, often over-the-top,
31:21 talking head conversation.
31:23 I'm not tearing that stuff down because that stuff makes money.
31:27 I get it.
31:29 But fans are hearing it and they are deluged with it for 21 hours of the day.
31:33 The trick is to understand what they have been hearing.
31:38 You guys know there was a broadcast host who has now gone to another station
31:44 who was on directly before the Celtics games for several years on the current
31:49 flagship station.
31:50 Oftentimes, a Celtics game would begin seconds after a rant for the ages
31:59 about how horrific the state of the Boston Celtics was.
32:02 Now, you have to find the line.
32:05 You have to know that your audience has been hearing that all day.
32:08 If you come out and say, "Everything is sunny and happy and nothing to see
32:12 here, please disperse," you sound like an idiot.
32:16 If you continue some absurd rant about some nonsense,
32:20 you also sound ridiculous.
32:22 So it's called credibility, and that is the fact that fans,
32:28 you guys know when Max and I come on the air, we're going to tell you the truth.
32:31 Now, dressing it up is a way to phrase it.
32:34 I think it all sounds dressed up after what you've heard the last 21 hours.
32:38 So Mark Jackson just got let go by ESPN, and we were texting this week.
32:42 I tweeted about it, and we were texting this week, and what I said to him was,
32:48 "I think what Mark does is so important."
32:51 And I know if you don't like Mark Jackson, I get it.
32:53 The internet does what the internet does.
32:55 The internet has its favorites, and the people it doesn't like,
32:57 I understand how all that works.
32:59 But after the other 21 hours of the day, being negative or heavy or this guy
33:04 doesn't like that guy or James Harden wants to get traded,
33:06 all the other stuff that is not the game, Mark Jackson would come on
33:10 and celebrate the game.
33:12 That's what Max and I are trying to do.
33:13 When you call the game, you should be celebrating the game.
33:16 You should be enjoying the fact that for three hours, we're at a game.
33:19 And you know what?
33:21 Verdugo has had ups and downs.
33:23 But overall to me, if I were calling Red Sox games this year,
33:26 I'm enjoying this team.
33:28 It is a scrappy insurgency in a lot of ways that has overachieved
33:33 what a lot of people thought.
33:34 This is a bad time to talk about it because they've had a bad August.
33:36 We were talking two weeks earlier,
33:38 be saying they were the best team in baseball in July.
33:41 So it's been fun to watch.
33:43 There have been fun players to watch the year that, you know,
33:45 clearly Kassus is going to be something.
33:47 I don't think anybody expected Durant to have the year that he's had.
33:50 Yoshida has been competing for the batting title.
33:52 There's a lot of stuff happening here.
33:54 But in Boston, after the last 20 years, nobody cares about scrappy insurgencies.
33:59 You got to compete for a championship or else.
34:01 I get it.
34:02 You still be celebrating to me.
34:04 You still celebrate the game.
34:06 And that is what I enjoyed about Mark Jackson.
34:09 And it's what we try to do.
34:11 You can celebrate the game without completely ignoring something,
34:16 you know, bad that has happened in a week.
34:18 Listen, this year you've got, it's been how long we've been talking.
34:21 We haven't mentioned Marcus Smart yet.
34:22 And we get the schedule.
34:23 To me,
34:24 the Marcus Smart thing isn't real until schedule comes out next week.
34:27 And Memphis is on the schedule to come to Boston.
34:30 E-Man Houston coming to Boston this year.
34:32 On those nights, that's going to be the story.
34:35 You know, Gallinari, you know, coming back to Boston, you know.
34:38 He's going to have it circled on his calendar.
34:40 Right, with the Porzingis syndrome, because that's almost exactly a year.
34:45 Hopefully Gallo doesn't get a tribute video.
34:48 It would just be him really well-dressed walking into the arena.
34:51 It really is.
34:52 By the way, I mean, if you guys knew, I know to some degree, you know,
34:55 if you knew how much he just wanted to be a Boston Celtic,
34:58 how much it mattered to him, it's really awful.
35:00 A fan, Larry Bird, all of that.
35:03 It's, you know, bad luck, bad luck, the way it worked out on every,
35:07 on every level.
35:08 But that's, that's a shame that, that I know it was just,
35:11 it's his birthday a couple of days ago.
35:13 I know that because he wears the number eight.
35:15 So one of the best NBA nonsense trivia,
35:18 he wears the number eight Gallo does because he was born on August 8th,
35:22 1988.
35:23 He was born 8, 8, 88, which is why he wears the number eight.
35:27 But yeah, this is what you talk about.
35:30 When the NBA doesn't release the schedule and it's been two months since you
35:34 alluded to it and we won't go into detail breaking this down,
35:38 but the preseason schedule is out.
35:39 It begins October 8th.
35:41 Let's break it down.
35:42 Let's break down the matchup.
35:43 Cause there's a back to back on there.
35:44 And if the Celtics and back to backs are going to look shaky in a regular
35:47 season,
35:48 what do you think a back to back is going to look like champagne?
35:52 He's going to start probably.
35:54 So the 8th of October against Philadelphia that's at,
35:59 at home at the TD garden.
36:00 And then there's that back to back against New York at the other garden in
36:04 New York. And then games on the 11th, again, Philadelphia, Wells Fargo,
36:08 October 17th, again, against the Knicks,
36:10 this one in Boston and October 19th in Charlotte at the spectrum center
36:16 where Michael Jordan will no longer hang out. But.
36:19 You know, we've, we've, we've touched on it a couple of times.
36:22 Let's actually talk about it is Chris.
36:24 Now supposing it's going to be available for any of these games.
36:26 What do you make of these overseas reports of this foot injury,
36:30 especially in the wake of what happened with gallon Ari last year.
36:33 Get used to it. This is in the Porzingis. This is the deal.
36:37 You knew, you know what you're going to get.
36:39 This has not been an 82 game guy.
36:40 And that's part of why the Celtics have to be as deep as they are.
36:43 Cause there are guys on this roster who are not going to be 82 game.
36:47 I mean, everybody's not Derek white, right?
36:49 And even Derek white's going to miss games this year.
36:50 People be like, what, what did you mean? Derek white's not playing.
36:52 He's played a hundred and something, you know, games in a row.
36:55 And that's, that's sort of the way of it.
36:57 I think what we have learned for better or worse over the last couple of years
37:01 that you have to manage your way through the regular season to get your team
37:04 healthy for the playoffs. I think it is,
37:07 this is a subset of a different podcast,
37:09 but I am becoming increasingly concerned about.
37:13 We just are coming off the least effectual regular season,
37:18 probably in NBA history. As far as it's the NBA was the most predictable sport.
37:23 As far as the regular season,
37:24 determining what was going to happen in the playoffs for giving you a good
37:27 idea. We had less of that this year than in any of the 25.
37:30 I was in the league because of the load management thing and all of the other,
37:35 you know, the elements that combine, I think it's dangerous.
37:38 I don't think the NBA can ask for $600 billion in television rights and then
37:43 have guys constantly sitting out. So I think it's a problem.
37:46 It's one of the reasons that scale and I separately and then together when we're
37:51 together have been campaigning so hard for the totals versus averages.
37:56 Cause I think we have to change the way people think about player availability.
38:00 You know, that became a big, again, a great example,
38:03 the Embiid Yokech MVP debate was one example of how things just got absurdly
38:08 nasty outside in the other 21 hours of the day for no reason whatsoever,
38:15 which was absurd.
38:16 And then the whole people taking the scoring title thing so personally this
38:20 year when Jason Tatum led the league in scoring Joel Embiid led the league in
38:25 scoring per game and Yonis led the league in scoring per minute. And it was like,
38:29 Hey, shoot, whichever one you like, choose,
38:31 that can be your scoring champion and people would lose their mind about that.
38:34 People just want to get irrationally angry. But I think it does.
38:37 I think there is a point here that the,
38:41 we as a league have to be aware of about sort of the cheapening of the regular
38:45 season. And this is just me because I'm a regular, I'm a play by play geek.
38:49 To me, game 12,
38:50 which I'd love to tell you was at Toronto on November 14th,
38:54 but I can't because the schedule is not out.
38:56 I can tell you where the Red Sox are playing next September, but we don't,
39:00 I laugh because in the NBA we're literally are on the forefront of so many
39:07 things in technology and organization and whatever. And yet every year,
39:12 it seems like the schedule comes out like three days before training camp.
39:16 And it's funny to me that the base next year's baseball schedule was out always
39:19 before the NBA schedules. So, but I think it's a, it's a growing concern,
39:23 the cheapening of the regular season.
39:25 The fact that we're talking about when you bring up Porzingis,
39:27 how many games are you going to play?
39:29 And then it's more like how many games do you need to play? And I remember this,
39:33 this is where there was an eyeopening moment for me.
39:36 If you guys remember the start of last year, Jason Tatum played every game.
39:38 The first, I don't know, 15, 16 game. You can look it up.
39:42 I remember being with a national game somewhere and I remember talking to
39:45 Doris.
39:46 Doris was doing it and we're just having a regular pregame conversation in it.
39:50 She sort of said to me, like we all would, as a lot of people had asked me,
39:54 when is he going to take a day off? Like,
39:56 when is he going to miss a game as if it was just a foregone conclusion?
40:01 Like it was almost stress that he had not taken a day off yet.
40:06 And boy, was that, is that a 180 from the NBA?
40:10 I came into, you know,
40:11 a generation earlier where you were pressuring yourself to play every game.
40:15 And again, that's not on, that wasn't on Jason.
40:18 That was just a conversation that came up, man. He's played every game.
40:21 He's a superstar player who's played every game.
40:23 When is he going to take one off? Like that, that didn't used to happen.
40:27 You didn't used to get that question.
40:29 Well, he talked about that. He has that clip that circled online about how,
40:33 and I don't know if this is how he actually feels versus him saying the right
40:38 thing because he's on camera in front of kids in front of people.
40:41 Like, but he did talk about, you know, the people that, you know,
40:44 in a road game in Charlotte,
40:45 I love how people love to use the road game in Charlotte as an example of like,
40:48 I need to go out there and play tonight because there are,
40:50 there are fans in the arena that have my jersey on that came to see me play.
40:55 They spent good money. Like how many examples last season did we have?
40:59 I think there was one,
41:00 I want to say with Jimmy Butler where somebody came from like across from
41:05 Europe to watch Jimmy Butler play. He didn't play that night,
41:08 but he ended up hooking up with some sort of package.
41:10 And I think he ended up coming to another game at some point.
41:12 I don't know if Jason's him actually believes that,
41:15 or if he just said it purposefully,
41:17 but I find it refreshing that this young 25 year old superstar player,
41:23 it's hard to take him off the court because he just doesn't want to miss
41:26 playing. He loves playing basketball. He loves playing with his teammates.
41:30 I find that extremely refreshing.
41:33 It is. And he's old, he's old school.
41:35 I think a lot of the guys are that way. And again, this is going,
41:39 it's easy to villainize the medical staffs and the sports science.
41:44 It's what the sports science says. So the teams have just invested.
41:47 I don't know if you guys heard about this,
41:49 but the Celtics recently gave Jaylen Brown the super max.
41:53 I don't know if that got out or there was any,
41:54 it might've leaked, you know, people aren't paying attention to stories.
41:58 Don't get much coverage.
41:59 But point is that if you're paying somebody $300 million for,
42:05 as a random example, for five years,
42:06 you're going to listen to the sports scientists when they say he shouldn't
42:10 play this second night of a back-to-back at Detroit,
42:13 no matter how many kids have Jaylen Brown jerseys or not.
42:16 And is that what a team should do to protect this investment? Yes.
42:20 Is it good for the game? It's not. And I'm a big believer in that.
42:24 I struggled again,
42:26 saying things that I would not have been able to say on an Orioles telecast,
42:30 but when Jason missed the game against Orlando and then tweeted Instagram
42:35 pictures from Deuce's birthday party, my thought was, well,
42:40 there might've been a kid on his five-year-old birthday party at the game that
42:44 day that came to see Jason to hit and play. So I listen,
42:48 it's an impossible situation. You want everybody to play every game,
42:52 reducing the schedule. First of all, is never going to happen.
42:55 That's not happening. So don't bother with that. And people,
42:58 even if you reduce the schedule,
42:59 if you reduce the schedule from 80 to 60 games,
43:02 they would just take more games out of Kauai's, you know,
43:06 the number of games Kauai would play. So it's not like they would say, Oh,
43:10 Kauai's going to play every game because there's 60 instead of 82.
43:13 That's not how, how it's going to work.
43:15 So we have to continue to find the, find the balance. And you know,
43:20 the league is outrageously healthy.
43:21 So it seems like a ridiculous conversation to have.
43:23 I'd say in the grand scheme of things, this is all,
43:26 all the sports science and load management.
43:29 It's all still generally new that it almost takes a generation of players to
43:34 check the data, right? You know, like we don't have the sample size,
43:38 but do you feel like whether just in your opinion or the people you've talked
43:42 to or, or gauging how the Celtics may feel about it,
43:45 or however you want to answer this,
43:47 but do you feel like this load management and guys not pressuring themselves to,
43:53 to play every game? Cause you know, I,
43:55 I came up in the same NBA that you came up of for all in,
43:59 for all intents and purposes of, of load management being like,
44:02 it would be a joke back then versus what it's become now.
44:05 Is it actually adding time onto guys' careers?
44:09 Well, number one,
44:10 I don't think we know yet because a lot of the guys were relatively new in the
44:14 load management era and we're load managing guys that are in their mid twenties
44:18 or late twenties or early thirties. We don't know 10 years from now.
44:21 I see LeBron James out there.
44:23 It looks like he could still play in the NFL and he's going to be 39 in
44:27 December. That's a, you know, one random example of a guy who's, you know,
44:30 just freakish in a lot of ways, but I don't,
44:34 we just don't know yet what load management is going to look like down the
44:37 road. But I can tell you this, you ever seen Kevin McHale walk lately?
44:41 Ever seen some of the guys like that? You know, it's so,
44:46 and I'm making reference to an injury that Kevin McHale played through in 1987
44:50 and there are, there's a price to pay when you play in the NFL.
44:55 There is a price to pay. If you're a boxer, if you're a MMA fighter,
44:59 if you're a pro wrestler,
45:00 there is a price to pay for treating your body a certain way when you're young
45:04 that you don't feel when you're young, you feel it when you're older.
45:07 So the load management studies are going to take decades. Again,
45:12 I will be Mike Sage by the time we have any, any real enough data,
45:17 you know, to, to see if load management really did extend careers.
45:23 Chances are that it probably does.
45:25 You could also argue that a guy's going to slip on a banana peel.
45:27 He's going to slip on a banana peel, whether he's playing 50 games or 75. So,
45:33 you know, we just, we, we don't, we don't know what we don't know,
45:36 but it's not fair to ask ownership to pay somebody $300 million and then not
45:40 listen to the doctors.
45:42 They are also paying and the sports scientists they are also paying who have
45:45 dedicated their lives to this research or saying,
45:48 don't play Al Horford on the second night of back to back.
45:52 You got to listen. I don't know. It's, it's, it's a problem without the only
45:57 solution. I don't know if there's a solution.
46:00 Do you mess with the schedule a little bit? Do you extend the season?
46:03 Then they certainly have to put the schedule out earlier.
46:05 Do you extend the season and make it instead of a 24 week season,
46:10 that's 26 or 27 week season. So maybe there are fewer games there.
46:14 Maybe there's fewer games earlier in the year. I,
46:17 I think at some point you're going to try everything I'm in favor.
46:21 I'm a try everything person. Maybe that's why I like doing both TV and radio.
46:24 Try everything. You want to do an in-season tournament and people that are,
46:29 I almost said a word I shouldn't say people that are kicking at the in-season
46:33 tournament. Why, what,
46:36 how does it adversely affect your life to try this in-season tournament?
46:39 Maybe it'll be terrible and everybody will, and we won't do it anymore.
46:43 Maybe it'll be great. Maybe it'll be fun. Try new stuff.
46:47 The only one in the history of sports that I was against was I think it's 40
46:52 years ago when they tried to do the game without broadcasts,
46:55 the NFL game that they, that they did.
46:58 I think it was the jets back in 1980 and luckily, you know,
47:01 thankfully for all of us who need to feed our kids that that didn't work out,
47:06 but you try everything, right? Like try everything and see what happens.
47:11 So I'm, I'm in favor of let's try extending the schedule.
47:14 Let's try all these different things to get guys to play as many games as they
47:17 can. And especially if that means changing averages,
47:20 the totals and the stats so that maybe on these nights we're sitting guys for
47:25 load management, maybe that's because you don't want them playing 35 minutes.
47:29 Maybe they could play 15 minutes.
47:30 They don't want to play 15 minutes because that affects their averages and
47:34 they're not going to win the,
47:35 they're not going to average 20 points a game if they're only playing 15
47:38 minutes, 10 times a year. Well, so what,
47:41 as I've said many times throughout the course of the last year,
47:44 Aaron judge did not break the Yankee record or lead the American league
47:49 last year with 0.41 home runs per game, right?
47:54 I don't know how many home runs per game Hank Aaron or Barry bonds hit.
47:58 I don't know. I know the totals. I know the total body of work.
48:03 And it's why again,
48:04 Jason Tatum led the league in scoring because he scored more points than
48:07 anybody else last year. And that's how I have to start,
48:10 start looking at things.
48:12 And maybe that helps guys realize that you don't have to play 40 minutes,
48:16 play 10. And by the way, that creates a strategic,
48:18 you get to a second night of a back to back and you're thinking, Oh,
48:21 maybe Jason Tatum is not playing it to back to back.
48:23 And then all of a sudden he's there,
48:24 but he's only playing in the second half or he's only playing in the front.
48:27 There's a lot of different ways to think of things. As I said at the start,
48:32 when you're thinking about TV and radio a certain way, change your thinking,
48:36 open your mind to maybe a different approach.
48:39 And maybe there's a different approach to load management that involves guys
48:42 playing, playing every game or almost every game,
48:45 but maybe playing 15 minutes one night instead of 35. There's just
48:49 open.
48:52 NBA is really the only one that does it that way. Isn't it funny about that?
48:56 And I've been trying to figure out, nobody really has an answer.
48:58 It's just NBA, right? There's no,
49:02 there's no like home runs per game. There's no, Hey, Wayne Gretzky scored 1.13,
49:07 goals per game.
49:10 Well, I mean like the NFL, I guess would be the closest to a hybrid.
49:13 Yeah. Yeah. We'll talk about passing yards per game, rushing yards per game,
49:17 receiving yards per game.
49:18 But ultimately the leaders are still defined by the totals.
49:21 And by the way, colossally stupid.
49:23 The way we've always looked at football stats about, Hey,
49:25 this team throws for 280 yards a game. So the number one passing team,
49:29 no, they're behind. They're a bad team. So they throw the ball all the time.
49:33 When I, when I do football, when I'm doing a play by play game football,
49:36 in my charts, I have, I keep all that stuff, but I want,
49:40 what I want to see is yards per rush, yards per pass and yards per play.
49:45 That is the story. That's what you're going for. Not. Yeah.
49:49 This team threw a lot. And when I,
49:51 back in the days when I was playing fantasy football, I drafted,
49:54 I always drafted Tony Romo every year because the Cowboys were terrible
49:58 defensively. They would fall behind.
50:00 And Tony Romo would throw for 330 yards a game because he had to throw.
50:05 That's not, you're not the leading passing team in the NFL because you throw
50:09 for 300 yards a game. How many yards per play, how effective are you?
50:13 And are you probably not throwing the good teams aren't throwing the ball
50:15 because you're up by two touchdowns in the second half. So you're running it.
50:19 But again, this is all,
50:20 I come from a world in which the guy sitting next to me for 22 years once said
50:25 as a Mike Budenholzer, the coach of the Atlanta Hawks,
50:28 put a guy you don't remember named peril Antich in the game in the final
50:31 seconds down by three, this sort of innocuous big.
50:36 And Max said, well, he's shooting 50% from three. I said, Max,
50:39 he's one for two. I mean, there's stats in there.
50:42 You have to learn out. There's never been more information available.
50:46 And I love it. You know, one of the things that happens to me,
50:49 I find it funny when people are like, oh yeah, you're the stat guy.
50:51 I love your stats on Twitter. It's the last thing I am. I love information.
50:55 I can't call a game on Twitter.
50:58 All I can do is share what essentially are TV graphics
51:02 that I share on Twitter that I would use because it's how people are.
51:06 If you are following on Twitter or whatever,
51:09 we're calling it these days and watching the game or listening to the game,
51:12 I can tweet something that will be a supplement, be a television.
51:17 I do love television graphics, even the ones that Kevin Brown reads.
51:20 So you want people to be able to see information and take it in.
51:24 Sometimes it's relevant. Sometimes it's not.
51:26 That's not always for me to decide, but you're trying to use it.
51:29 There's never been more information available,
51:32 which means there's never been more bad information available.
51:35 So again,
51:36 all of these are just different ways to look at things and different ways to
51:40 change the thinking.
51:42 Do you have anything to add?
51:44 No, I, you know, we can save the Jason Tatum for Stephen Booker talk for another time.
51:48 That took over. That was a great Barry. Remember the Barry Gibbs show?
51:54 Anything you want to add? No, no,
51:57 I'm like Lindsey Buckingham from a time this week.
52:02 I'm not sure how many total minutes we've talked to Sean on this podcast,
52:07 but I think we're in the vicinity of an hour. So we'll, yeah.
52:10 Which, which puts us right around 60. So we'll, we'll let him go with that.
52:14 But yeah, let me say one last, last thing about this.
52:17 The one thing I really appreciate and it doesn't go lost is again,
52:22 Twitter is a place of essentially,
52:24 I talk about a lot, the, how's my driving bumper sticker, right?
52:29 Like because nobody in the world we live in on Twitter and the shows that I'm
52:33 talking about the other 21 hours of the day,
52:35 I use the example of the house, my driving bumper sticker,
52:38 because nobody in the history of how's my driving has ever picked up the phone
52:42 and called that number and said, you know what?
52:45 I just saw your guy back out of a loading dock through two lanes of traffic
52:51 and he merged in perfectly with it.
52:53 And I just wanted to call and tell you it was the best truck driving thing I've
52:56 ever, nobody's ever done that history of how's my driving.
52:59 So therefore it's just a world of complaints and negativity. But the, I,
53:03 the response I've gotten for, you know,
53:07 when I've slid over and done a TV has been overwhelming and for, you know,
53:11 for Max and I in the playoff run and I appreciate it.
53:14 And it's why I remain loyal to all of you, to the fans and to
53:20 whatever you, however this plays out, however we work it out,
53:24 whatever's best for everybody, we're going to do it. And I do, it's,
53:28 it doesn't go unnoticed and I do appreciate it when I slide over because again,
53:33 Mike has done this for 40 years. That's a delicate spot, right?
53:39 To slide in and whoever ends up doing it,
53:43 whether it's part-time or full-time, but however we end up doing it,
53:46 that's a delicate spot.
53:47 And then the natural reaction is to be negative and not accepting of the person
53:54 that is going to be in that spot. So when I slide over and take it and granted,
54:00 I've got, you know, the,
54:01 all the years of Max and all the years of the organization,
54:03 but it doesn't go unnoticed and I appreciate how generous everybody's been in
54:09 their, in their comments. And I'm glad that it was as well received as it was.
54:15 Once upon a time, I called him the longtime radio voice of the Celtics.
54:18 You will notice earlier this show, I simply said the longtime voice of the Celtics.
54:22 Well, the man does both. He does both.
54:25 And we'll wait. Future is still to be determined as it is, I guess,
54:29 for all of us. But Sean, thanks so much for hopping on with us.
54:33 We'll definitely bug you again as we get even a little bit closer to the season.
54:36 And at some point, maybe we'll even know when the schedule,
54:38 when it'll be out and when the first game will be played.
54:41 So it'll be great.
54:42 As long as you tell us the day before so we can get there. We're good.
54:45 Brim Valente for Sean Grandy. I am Adam Kaufman. This is Celtics Beat.
54:49 Thanks for being with us. Rate, review, subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts.
54:52 We'll talk to you again next week.
54:53 Sign up at fanduel.com/boston and make every moment more on America's number one sportsbook.
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