00:00The chemistry that you guys have on Inside the NBA, which, by the way, congrats on an incredible run to over 25 years on TNT, moving to ESPN for this season.
00:10But you can't fake the chemistry. And I'm curious from your standpoint, when did you feel like at U4 as a unit that you started to say, like, man, this is this could really be something special?
00:22Was it day one or was it a year or two in? You know, when did you that light bulb kind of go off for you?
00:28It doesn't it takes a while because you have to understand. So it was when we when I started, it was just me.
00:34It was Kenny and Ernie. So it took me a while to figure out my my thing.
00:41And I think we probably did 15 years, maybe 17 years.
00:48Maybe not that long, 12 or 13 years together. Then Shaq came in and there's another adjustment.
00:54So there's always an adjustment period. Right. But but so.
00:58There's two things that are important. Only two things are important.
01:02The games are the first and foremost important thing.
01:06The second thing is make sure people are having fun watching, because I don't think people understand we're on from seven o'clock to two in the morning.
01:14That's a long freaking time. And nobody nobody want to watch basketball that long.
01:20Nobody want to watch basketball from seven to two in the morning.
01:23Like I love basketball, but I don't want to watch basketball from seven to two in the morning.
01:27So I try to say if there's a dude there with his wife or a dude there with his girlfriend, hopefully a dude there with his son at some point or even his daughter who likes basketball.
01:41I want to make sure the woman, the girlfriend and the kids, because, you know, most dads, like my grandson says to me, my big pop is weird.
01:54He just watches golf, football and basketball because that's all I'm going to watch.
01:58My grandson says that to me. My daughter sends me a video one day.
02:04He says, you're going to go spend a day with big pop.
02:08And he says, wow.
02:11And my daughter says she's taping the whole thing.
02:14He says, he's weird. And he said, why do you say that?
02:18We have to watch golf, basketball and football.
02:21That's all we watch.
02:23And I was like, that's true.
02:27And so to get back to me, too, that's it.
02:30The thing is, so I'm hoping that somebody's sitting home with one of their people like, hey, let's just have fun.
02:38But there's always adjustment period when you bring somebody new into the mix.
02:42Me and Ernie and Kenny went through it.
02:44And then when we brought on Shaq, the only problem with Shaq was, Smiley,
02:48the first show, Shaq does something crazy.
02:55The second show, Shaq does something crazy.
02:59The third show, Shaq does something crazy.
03:05We're only three weeks into the season.
03:07It's still October.
03:09We have to have a team meetings like, yo, man, what are you doing?
03:15He's like, I want to entertain people.
03:18I know we want to entertain people, but we're just on show three.
03:22We got six more months to, seven more months to go.
03:25He's like, what do you mean?
03:27We can't keep doing crazy stuff every night.
03:32The joke, Smiley, became, so we had a meeting like, yo, man, you got to calm down.
03:38We got to, it's like, we're still in October.
03:40We don't finish until June.
03:42And so what the joke became, our producer said, how many shows do you think we get?
03:50We're probably about six shows before he sets himself on fire.
03:54And that became like a joke.
03:57Like, yeah, how many shows before he sets himself on fire?
04:01And we started laughing.
04:03We told him, like, at the rate you're going, we're about six shows before you set yourself on fire.
04:09And we're like, yo, man, we're not trying to keep escalating.
04:14It's impossible to go crazy for all these months.
04:19But the thing is, we hope, I said, we hope that the game, like, go back to my original point.
04:27We hope the games are great.
04:29Because let me tell you something.
04:30There's nothing s**t here.
04:32There's nothing s**t here than two bad basketball games from 7 to 2 in the morning.
04:37There's nothing worse.
04:39Like.
04:40Because you got to find something to talk about.
04:42Oh, my.
04:43Smiley, that, you know, I said we go from 7 to 2 in the morning.
04:48When you have two bad games, it's like we've been on for, like, 12 hours straight.
04:54And we're like, what can we do to make people stay watching?
05:00That's really the only time we're like, we get together.
05:03Like, what can we do to something stupid and fun?
05:06What can we do stupid and fun?
05:08Because, like I say, when you own that long and you have two bad games, it is the longest night ever.
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