The Rush: NBA stars disagree about whether or not to resume the season
LeBron James and Kyrie Irving disagree about whether it’s appropriate to finish the NBA season, Baker Mayfield and JJ Watt tweeted out some big clues about whether NFL players intend to kneel for the anthem and MLB owners signed a multi-billion dollar contract with TBS while continuing to cry poverty in the negotiations to restart the 2020 season. PLUS: Sabrina Ionescu cuts a little rug with Kobe’s daughters, New Zealand will make you want to learn rugby, and Jared learns he’d rather be poor than rich.
Video Transcript
[MUSIC - STAYSOLIDROCKY, "PARTY GIRL"]
STAYSOLIDROCKY: (SINGING) I tell her, "Call me Rocky." She says she not gonna call me that. You say you come with a lot, well baby I want all of that. Lil mama a party girl. She just want have fun too.
JARED QUAY: That was New York Liberty star Sabrina Ionescu, cutting a little rug with Kobe's girls. And if you think that looks like fun, we'll check out this party. Damn! This was at a Super Rugby tournament in New Zealand this weekend. And those fans are real, living, breathing, sneezing, coughing human beings, all up in each other's business, because they haven't had an active case of Rona in three weeks.
- Competent.
- Right?
JARED QUAY: Meanwhile in America, the last three weeks have been a little different. The US needs fixing, and everyone has a different idea about how to do that. That's also true in the NBA, where players are reportedly split about if finishing the season is the best way to create change. On one side we got players like Pat Beverly, who's so ready to play he threw in with LeBron. And if you know their history--
- Right here. Right here.
JARED QUAY: --you know it's pretty much impossible to tell if he was being sarcastic.
- Was that sarcasm?
JARED QUAY: Then there are players like Dwight Howard, who think that games would only distract from the current moment. Which is pretty much what Kyrie Irving said last week in an inspiring conference call, according to Yahoo Sports Chris Haynes. Of course if all you saw was this Woj bomb, you would think Kyrie Irving was being a disruptor. Which reminds me, ESPN is owned by Disney. So what exactly is Kyrie disrupting?
MICHAEL WILBON: They would play these games at various courts, at multiple courts on the Disney sports complex. I've been there. It's fabulous.
JARED QUAY: Oh. Cool, cool, cool. I get it. Meanwhile in the NFL, most of the beef is between players and a few internet trolls.
- Internet trolls are truly predators of society.
JARED QUAY: Baker Mayfield responded to one who assumed the Browns QB wouldn't knee for the anthem. And JJ Watt informed another that kneeling has nothing to do with the military. And as long as we're giving trolls some air, we got to talk about the baseball [INAUDIBLE].
- Trolls! Trolls! Trolls! Trolls! Trolls! Trolls!
JARED QUAY: This weekend, Major League Baseball signed a $3 billion deal with TBS.
- Wow. That's a lot of money.
JARED QUAY: That's in the midst of a work stoppage, where owners are claiming that they're so poor they can't even pay for a full season. Cardinals Chairman Mike DeWitt even said last week that the industry isn't very profitable. Oh, well, let's take a look. So DeWitt took over the team right here in 2008, when it was worth $480 million. Seems like a lot of money, right? But now, way over here on the top right, right there, $2.2 billion dollars!
- Billion?
JARED QUAY: $2.2 billion dollars isn't profitable? Yo, if $2.2 billion dollars makes you poor, well then sign me up, baby. Because I guess I've been rich all my life. It's time to travel. How about this? Why don't you give away your $2.2 billion dollars to me and we'll go be poor together?