This latest podcast was another sports-filled commentary of current events across different leagues. We dove into the emergence of Kwame Brown sounding off on Matt Barnes, Stephen Jackson, and anyone not worthy of speaking on his name. The question of transgender women playing women’s sport is a debate that has only began to play out in sports, as well as politics. With the beginning of the NBA playoffs under way, we address the themes that have been established and the emerging stars. As always, here is what we learned from the last podcast:
1. Bradley Beal does not fuck with Joel Embiid. He has pure disgust for the man.
2. Nuggets fans booing Carmelo Anthony only proves to me that NBA fans are the dumbest in any league in the world.
3. Who is Alec Burks (Knicks)? Who is Dillon Brooks (Grizzlies)?
4. I don’t want to know about Kwame Brown’s business ventures.
5. If your last name is Brown, you ain’t wrapped too tight.
6. Transgender women in sports might not be right, but it may be profitable.
7. You learn a woman’s period when y’all get serious.
8. College sports needs to make sure they get the likeness deal right.
9. Comparing Derek Carr and Matt Ryan is like asking if you like 1-ply toilet paper or 2-ply.
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I am a fan of the show, The Blacklist, ever since it’s been on the air. Now in its 8th season, it still holds up for me and does an incredible job of not being predictable. This season, a new villain has risen into action by the name of Neville Townsend. He has proven to be a formidable foe for the show’s two main characters Elizabeth Keen and Raymond Reddington. Townsend is every bit of a deranged psychopath that network tv is allowed to display on its airways.
On a recent episode, he said something that hit home for me. It’s rare when you have a psychopath that has too much wisdom. He said, ‘There can be no space between what you want to happen and what you’re willing to do to make it happen.’ This quote has so many levels of deepness for life, but it didn’t hit me on a personal level. It only made me think of Kwame Brown.
It all started with the All the Smoke podcast with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson making joke references to Kwame Brown and his career. They did this 2 shows in a row. The first time when they had Los Angeles Lakers’ owner, Jenny Buss, on the show when she talked about the Pau Gasol trade and how important it was. In that trade, Gasol was traded for his brother, Marc, Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittendon, Aaron McKie, the Lakers 2008 and 2010 1st round draft picks, and their 2010 2nd round draft pick.
Barnes and Jackson joked that the trade was a one-man trade, disrespecting his career in the process of the conversation. The next week with Gilbert Arenas as the guest, he commented on why Brown’s career wasn’t as successful as it was. Being drafted #1 overall and playing with a highly competitive Michael Jordan who consistently digs into his teammates to get their absolute best, is one of the reasons his confidence was shattered, and he never reached his full potential in the NBA.
At this point, Brown had had enough. He reached out to Barnes and Jackson to let them know that they went too far, and can they talk about why they keep talking about him in that manner. To no avail, the stars of All the Smoke podcast didn’t in fact want the smoke, and they did not take his phone call. Brown took to Instagram and let them have it. The verbal ass whippings or how he likes to call it, Momma’s Cooking, weren’t limited to Barnes and Jackson. Jemele Hill got her shots, the Odd Couple Chris Broussard and Rob Parker got their shots when they commented that Brown was speaking out from pain right now.
The biggest two fallouts came from The Breakfast Club, Skip Bayless, and Stephen A. Smith from their days together on the morning ESPN show First Take. Brown took aim at the Breakfast Club’s Charlamagne tha God for airing out his family’s violent past in an effort to emphasize how crazy they are, so therefore, people should not go around talking reckless about Kwame Brown. Brown shot back at Charlamagne for bringing up his family history, hist
ory he did not know about because he is not that close to his side of his family, in an effort to show that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
While Charlamagne was brewing in the pot of Momma’s Cooking, Brown brought up the fact Charlamagne beat a statutory rape charge and plead guilty to a lesser charge. If you are familiar with Charlemagne, he famously says that there is nothing you can say that bothers him. Oh, but there is 1 thing! Don’t remind him that he is a rapist. Brown was sent a cease-and-desist letter to retract his statement and apologize for speaking on the matter. Momma’s Cooking wasn’t done just yet.
Brown got the actual accusing statement of Charlamagne’s charge, which is public record and it stated that he was being charged with willfully, unlawfully, and feloniously engaged in penile/vaginal intercourse with a fifteen-year-old female child. The young lady that was involved refused to testify at the time under her Mother’s direction that a trial would be too emotional for her to go through.
Years ago, Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith famously went after Jalen Rose for saying he didn’t believe the Kwame Brown was a bust. Rose is of the opinion that no player is a bust in any league if they last a decade plus in it. There are a lot of circumstances that go into the outcome of a player’s career that Bayless and Smith did not want to hear about, mainly because it did not fit their narrative of Brown being a scrub.
The main beef that Brown had with Smith, outside of being call a scrub for the past 20 years was that early on Brown’s career, Smith would visit college campuses and speak to young college athletes with aspirations becoming professionals. During these visits, Smith would use Brown as an example of what not to be. Brown’s message to Smith and to all media is that when you make the vitriolic comments about players like him, at the end of the day, you are taking money out of their pockets. When you don’t know the inner workings of a team franchise, and their front office and locker room dynamics, you hurt that player for years to come after basketball.
When Kwame Brown first started making his rounds, I asked myself, Why now? Why was now the time for Brown to defend himself after all this time had passed? From the optics, Brown has built a comfortable life for himself after basketball. Now that he has reached a place of peace and prosperity, is he really going to let these 2 clowns continuously insult him? Imagine where we would be if Barnes and Jackson had just taken his phone call and smoothed things out.
Would we have the viewpoint of the Black Sports Media that Brown has successfully put on display these last 2 weeks? One of the easiest ways for a black man to become successful, is by tearing down another black man. While Stephen A. Smith hides behinds lines like I’m just calling it like I see it. The harm in a line like that is that he doesn’t see the bigger picture. He doesn’t see how these comments not only affect the players, but their families as well.
To this Day, the family of former Washington Football Team great, Sean Taylor, expresses the hurt from comments Michael Wilbon made about him in his Washington Post column. Claiming he wasn’t surprised by Taylor’s death. Wilbon has refused to apologize for his comments. Kwame Brown’s rise from the shadows stirred a lot of emotions for me and it demonstrated that as a man, you can have no space between wanting people to respect you and willing to make people respect you. With the emergence of social media, us as fans are getting to hear the players’ side and not the media’s narrative. At the end of the day, you can kick a man when you think he’s down for so long.
Tony Love
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