Call of the Day: Tracy Morgan + Sarah Palin = Hilarity, TNT Apology

Here’s the biggest issue I have with the video below, that spread like wildfire yesterday evening after Tracy Morgan popped into the TNT pre-game show and said that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is “serious masturbation material” on live television…

…Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley have the argument of who is more attractive — Tina Fey or Sarah Palin — ALL THE TIME????

Seriously, Kenny, you guys are rich and famous. Not even loser schlubs sitting at home with nothing else to do but watch old SNL bits on Hulu have that conversation any more. And it’s an argument between the two of you? Not a debate, but it devolves into an argument? I mean, come on, Kenny, one is smart and funny and quirky and the other has a funny accent and knows her way around a shotgun…hmm…tougher than I thought.

Anyway, Fey’s 30 Rock co-star didn’t let the question go without a quip that rendered Barkley and Smith speechless, and left Ernie Johnson with a look so uncomfortable, it was barely even funny to watch him awkwardlyREAD MORE

Over/Under: Reaction To The Cavaliers, 57, LeBron, Karma

DL506: The BCS Title Game Was One Heckuva Show

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Nick and I recap the BCS title game, focusing mostly on the coverage by ESPN during (and before) the game.

In short, we both seem to love the work of Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit and, I’ll admit, I have a media crush on Chris Fowler. He’s the best studio host in the business, covering any sport on any network.

Speaking of that, we talk about why the college pregame show can be handled professionally and with a modicum of class and seriousness (yet still be fun) while almost all the professional pregame shows are yukfests. Why are the guys who cover amateurs more professional than those covering the actual professionals, who come off looking like amateurs by comparison?

HOUSEKEEPING:

We touch briefly on the Carmelo Anthony rumors and how ESPN reported that the Nuggets are upset that media reports keep leaking out about the deal, something we find funny coming from a media source that has gotten beat on the exact reports the Nuggets don’t want out. So meta.

We talk about Pitt sneakingREAD MORE

DL499: Here Are Ten (Or Eleven) Of Our Favorite Show Memories

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I always hated when, around the holiday season, my favorite shows would be listed in the TV Guide as *NEW* but wouldn’t be anything more than a damn clip show with five minutes of “new” material only used to transition from one clip to the next.

So, with that, I ask this: what would you do, baby, without us? IT’S A CLIP SHOW!

The difference in our situation, of course, is that we’ve been gaining listeners over the course of the last few years, so you, dear reader, may not have been around to hear Rick Telander talk about running into Jay Mariotti in a sauna, or Ian Eagle tell the story of when Bill Raftery invented the term “Onions,” or when Tony Kornheiser called me a narcissist. (Note: all in the show).

There are hundreds of clips we could have pulled. Some of the notables NOT in the show include: Norman Chad telling us that Kornheiser is dead to him, Annie Duke talking about just getting back from speaking in front ofREAD MORE

Call(s) of the Day: Two NBA Game Winners, Called By The Losing Announcers?

For the life of me I’ll never understand this: you’re a sports league that’s constantly trying to keep your sport relevant in the growing landscape of options for the entertainment dollar. You’re savvy enough to clip up highlights to put on your website, some of which you allow other sites to freely embed (note, not these two) all, seemingly, in an effort to promote your product.

Why, then, do we get highlights on NBA.com or NHL.com with announcers from the LOSING team. Wouldn’t a highlight be better if the announcers were going nuts on a buzzer beater just like the players (and fans)? And it’s not a situation where the home team has the feed, either. It really just makes no sense.

First, listen to Andrew Bogut’s game-winning tip in from last night. The call starts out excited, but quickly turns into how terrible the Pacers have been against the Bucks.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE CLIP AT NBA.COM

The actual call of the clip above isn’t bad, but the excitement surely comes from the surprise at such anREAD MORE

DL490: Bethlehem Shoals On The Hornets, George Shinn, Chris Paul & Post-Katrina New Orleans

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Bethlehem Shoals wrote an interesting column for Fanhouse the other day about (former) Hornets owner George Shinn, wondering aloud (or at least in words) if the NBA was actually doing Shinn a favor by taking over the team, like the NBA’s version of a government bailout program.

With that, I emailed Shoals and here he is, in voice form.

Shoals and I talk about the FreeDarko party and how amazing it is that some of the authors of their new book had never met until that day. Is there something romantic about never meeting someone you know so much about and work with every day? Did I just call the blog world romantic?

We then shift to the Hornets, and Shinn. We talk about the prospect of Shinn moving the team, or selling the team to a group that would put it in another town, and wonder if the league bought the team because it simply couldn’t let the team leave New Orleans.

Shinn couldn’t care less about about his own person PR — canREAD MORE

DL487: LeBron, NFL v NBA, Ron Santo & Soccer’s Future in a Cupless USA with Jon Tannenwald

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Second show of two today. It would be odd to not have Tannenwald on the show after the World Cup announcement, given how much time he and I talked about this day for the last six months.

Alas, it’s Qatar. We talk about the bid, what this means for the growth of soccer in America and what it might mean for the head of US Soccer, Sunil Gulati. Tannenwald is, to understate, mild-mannered. This is as heated as he gets.

But first, we discuss the passing of Ron Santo before talking about LeBron’s return to Cleveland. Is it just me, or my Philly sensibilities, or did nothing really happen? There was booing, there was a blowout and that’s about it. I actually expected worse, and while it’s good that most Clevelanders handled themselves calmly (there were tweets of inappropriate slurs thrown his way during the game and the TNT online cameras caught at least one fan in the stands trying to goad LeBron into a war of words (or more).

But it allREAD MORE

DL485: SLAM’s Lang Whitaker on Hoops History, LeBron & NBA v. EPL Parity

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LeBron's 2004 SLAM cover

Lang Whitaker of SLAM Magazine is one of the co-authors of FreeDarko Presents: The Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History. Go buy it, now.

Lang and I talked a lot on Tuesday night at the FreeDarko party about many of the topics I brought up on Wednesday’s show, so it made too much sense to have him on today to discuss that, and a whole lot more, about the goings on in the NBA.

We talk a bit about the book, his role and try to put this iteration of the game of basketball into proper historical context. Is the game — and the NBA — better off now than it was when the Knicks were winning games in the 70s and 80s? I’m talking point totals, not generations, by the way.

We spend a good deal of time talking about perception and reality of the league, fighting and why David Stern has been so hell-bent on cleaning up the game during his tenure, even though the game is far cleanerREAD MORE

DL484: Free Darko Book Party Recap

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I brought my recorder to the Free Darko Book Party. That’d be pretty good sound, right? Well, they recorded it, so I assume it’ll either be on the Blogs With Balls site or on the Free Darko site. I didn’t feel right aping it from them.

Instead, here are my thoughts on the night in New York, the book and why it sure as heck felt like Hipster Hanukkah. Jews sure loves hoops.

Thanks.

What We’re Thankful For In Sports

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This is show 481. That’s a lot of shows, which necessitates a lot of thanks. Thanks for listening, be it for just this show or every one since we started. Thanks for taking the time to visit our site — even though it’s far from what it’s going to be in the new year, I greatly appreciate those who stop by every day — and thanks, sincerely, for allowing me to play in this internet sandbox.

As for my “thankful in sports,” it’s mostly about baseball. I’m thankful the sport is more about advanced stats and new math and a player’s clutchness and contract squabbles and less about the game being tainted and full of cheaters. Sure, there are still cheaters, but we seem to be past that “era” and into one that’s a whole lotta fun to watch and fight over.

Since we do this show every year, it’s great to have an array of friends who share their stories as well. This year, we have three conversations framed inside aREAD MORE