00:00Chuck, is it going to be weird, though, when when you go back and and watch your show or see highlights from your show and you see ESPN, you know, on the bottom ticker?
00:09Is that going to be something that's going to be different for you?
00:11Because, you know, you had to have a lot of pride with your show being on TNT for for so many years.
00:17And and I'm sure that there was times where you look at the opponents, you know, their postgame shows every ESPN and thinking, man, they can't hold a candle to what we can do.
00:27And now all of a sudden you got ESPN on your bottom ticker of your show.
00:32You know, there is some trepidation and nervousness for several reasons.
00:37You know, number one.
00:40It's going to be totally new, but and there's been a really lack of communications from everybody because I don't think nobody knows what's going to happen, to be honest.
00:51So, oh, yeah, the best part of our show is like that 45 minutes to an hour.
00:56We get to go crazy after the game.
00:58That's the best part of our show.
01:00Our question, which we haven't got an answer for, is do we have to go right to SportsCenter or when we're on ABC, do we go right to local?
01:14Those are two.
01:16Those are two important questions that we actually getting together in about two weeks and going to finally sit down with ESPN face to face and says, hey, can can y'all tell us how this thing is going to work?
01:27Because I've talked to some of their people.
01:30They're like, you know, sometimes we get like three minutes.
01:33They're like, we got to go local.
01:34We got to go to the local affiliate.
01:36So that's it.
01:37You got two to three minutes.
01:38I'm like, we can't even discuss what happened in the game in two to three minutes, which sucks.
01:43Or they're like, you got seven minutes or ten minutes, then you got to go to SportsCenter.
01:50To me, that would really hurt our show because you can't really tell what happened in a game in two or three minutes.
01:59Like, I like to explain, like, what happened.
02:05But good coaching.
02:06I think the coach made a mistake.
02:08The player made a mistake here.
02:10So it's all going to be new.
02:13But the answer is, of course, yeah, it's going to be weird.
02:15But the weirdest thing is like, yo, man, do we have to go right to local news right now?
02:20Or do we have to go right to SportsCenter?
02:23How much time do we have after the game to actually talk basketball?
02:26So that's when we had some of our best communications.
02:30But we don't know.
02:32Well, like I said, we're going to get together.
02:33I think it's the 24th.
02:36They sent us out a mass email saying, hey, can you guys be in Atlanta?
02:40ESPN is going to come down and want to explain everything.
02:43I'm so sure.
02:45Let's do it.
02:46Did you consider retiring through all this?
02:49You did.
02:50Well, I did for a couple of reasons.
02:53The reason I didn't retire, we got to keep everybody hired.
02:55You know, the last year really sucked for me, Smiley, to be honest with you.
03:01Because, you know, I've always lived in a fantasy world where I've been around risk jocks and my friends.
03:08But to be around people who talk about their mortgage, having their kids have to switch schools, it was really painful.
03:19Because, you know, I've known these people for 25 years, and we never thought we were going to lose the NBA.
03:25But to be around my friends and having them say, yo, I've got to find a job because I've got to worry about my mortgage.
03:33I'm about to send my kids to a different school.
03:36So, that was really painful for me and Ernie, Kenny, and Shaq, because we would have been fine.
03:42So, in my mind, I had decided to, like, yeah, okay, I don't know if I want to do this.
03:50And Ernie's, me and Ernie are always stepping together.
03:56And then when this opportunity came up, because I met with NBC and Amazon, and even if I went to one of those networks, I would have a whole new team more than likely.
04:07So, I had, was worried, concerned about that.
04:11And then all of a sudden, this thing with ESPN came up, and I was like, wait a minute, we can keep 200 people jobs who I really like and admire.
04:22Let's do it.
04:23And Ernie and Kenny and Shaq were like, yeah.
04:27Because all three of us probably would have, well, all four of us would have got hired.
04:30Ernie would have, I don't know if Ernie would have went to another network.
04:34I can't answer for him, but we all had, I definitely had opportunities, but to keep the people at Turner employed, that to me was the selling point.
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