Remembering Jim Brown

The Andy Pullen Show. We got to go after this with everything we got. They're going to come with everything they got. I'll start off by saying I'm bored, I'm broke, and I'm back. The Andy Pullen Show on ESPN 630 starts right now. And we do have a Tony show on this Monday, and if you're looking for golf, that's really where you're going to have to find it, because I really don't have a whole lot to say. Yes, it was historic yesterday, Brooks Keftko becoming the first lived player to win a major, and I watched the end of it, but I don't really have any real special thoughts on that. But Tony is really into golf. Michael is into golf, and I would expect them to spend some significant time on that when they come up at 11 o'clock. I would also think that Tony will talk about Jim Brown, and I'm going to have a lot to say about Jim Brown in the next couple of hours. I never saw him play. First NFL game I remember watching was 1966. But I grew up with the mythology, and who knows, maybe it's still correct, that Jim Brown was the greatest football player who ever lived. And it really wasn't until the last 10, 12 years that there was any real dispute about that. The NFL network counted down, I think the top 100 players ever, like, seven, eight years ago, and they named Jerry Rice number one. Well, Jerry Rice played in an era where if he was in Jim Brown's era, there's no way he would have caught passes like that, because they were able to mug wide receivers over the middle. He wouldn't have done that. And, you know, now you could say Tom Brady is the greatest of all time, because he's got seven Super Bowl championships. But as an athlete, he's not even in the same universe as Jim Brown. And Jim Brown, you wanted more when he left. He left after nine years. He was the MVP of the league. He had the all-time rushing record, which stood until 1984. It stood for, she's almost 30 years before Walter Payton broke it. So, you know, he was considered to be, they didn't use that term then, but he was the goat. And now, as he's passed on at the age of 87, there are many things being said and written about him. And many of them reflect a man who was very complicated. He was a great, great football player. He was a civil rights activist. He was fearless in the way he went into the ghettos and began to work with the gangs. But he was also an abuser of women. I don't think there's any doubt about that. And while he never spent time in jail directly because of that, when he smashed out the windshield of his wife's car, he went to jail for six months. And he went to jail because he refused community service. He said he wasn't going to walk along the side of the road in an orange jumpsuit picking up trash. So, he spent six months in jail. And he was charged with, I think, was destruction of property or something. He was a relatively minor charge and he could have covered it with community service, but he didn't roll that way. He stayed in jail. So, we're going to deal with his complicated life coming up. So, this today, out of town over the weekend and wasn't fully engaged in everything, I am aware that the NBA finals are set because 149 times in NBA history, a team has been down 03, 149 times they have lost. And now we have the Eastern and Western Conference at 3-0 leads for the Miami Heat and the Denver Nuggets. So, get ready for that finals. And I'll get to that in a minute. But I saw this this morning and didn't pick up on it over the weekend. But according to Mark Stein, I don't think he's with ESPN anymore. Maybe New York Times or maybe he has his own website. He says that the Wizards have reportedly expressed quote, formal interest in Golden State Warriors, President of basketball operations and General Manager Bob Myers to replace Tommy Shepherd. And his contract is coming up next month. And you would say, well, you know, what would be the attraction for Bob Myers to leave Golden State and come to Washington? Well, maybe just to say he did it in two places. But according to Stein, the Warriors will make him an offer to be the highest paid executive in the NBA. So, I'm not sure why he would leave other than he may say, well, it's kind of over now. It's a rebuild situation in Golden State because these guys have gotten older. You're going to bring back Draymond Green, maybe Stefan Klay still have some tread left on the tire. But the reality is you may not be in position to compete again with this team. And as you rebuild, you're going to take a lot of heat from the fans or wrestlers for all the success coming back that you've had over the last, what, eight, nine years starting in 2015 when they won the first title. So he may look at this as less of pressure, you know, here in Washington, you make the playoffs. It's a good year. So he may look at it that way. But I think the reality is he's not coming. I think they're totally missing the boat here. You know who they should be pursuing and I don't know if they would get him. But the guy they need to go after is probably someone you've never heard of. And if you saw him walking down the street, you'd say, that guy? Andy Ellesberg is the senior vice president of basketball operations and general manager of the Miami Heat. Been on that job since 2013. He's done it for 10 years. He's fat and he's bald. And he looks absolutely nothing like Pat Riley, who's usually seen dressed to the nines in an Armani suit. He looks like a shlump. And he, he, he, he, he has deceiving looks, as we would say. Not only that, Ellesberg's from Potomac. He went to Churchill High School, graduated 85, went to St. Thomas University in Miami from 85 to 89. Got a degree in sports administration. He was the student manager of the basketball team and editor of the school paper. And when he came home for the summer, guess what he did during college? He was an intern for the Washington Bullets, working for Mark Pray, who when the Miami Heat came in as an expansion team in 1989, when he was graduating from college, he got a job with Mark Pray as his assistant and stayed in the organization. They probably know money for a long, long time. And then finally, in 2013, he was promoted to general manager. Now, it's a little bit different in Miami because you're, you're answering to Pat Riley and Riley makes all the final decisions. But the legwork is done by guys like Andy Ellesberg. And do you know what he's done with this team? Yeah, everybody talks about Jimmy Butler and, and Jimmy Butler is, you know, maybe one of the great postseason players in the history of the game, you know, especially the way he's able to, to step up when it gets to the postseason. He's good during the regular season. He's unbelievable during the postseason. But there are, you ready for this? There are nine undrafted free agents on the Miami Heat. Nine undrafted. Seven of them are on the roster that they put out. You know, there's some guys that are inactive, obviously, but, but nine on the total roster for the team. That includes, you know, the two way guys who go back and forth from the G league. More importantly, last night in, in a game that was pretty much over at halftime and at one point, Miami was up by 33 points. They, they got contributions from big contributions from their undrafted guys. They got Jimmy Butler had 16. So if you hear that one team won by 26 and Jimmy Butler has 16, you would assume, okay, Boston got back in the series. And they managed to pull off the court. They held Jimmy Butler in check. Well, Butler had a rough shooting night. He was five of 13. He only put up one three pointer missed that. He did get to the line, hit six of seven, 16 points, respectable night, but not a great night. They got from Gabe Vincent, who was undrafted coming out of Cal State Bakersfield or one of these schools. What was the school? You see Santa Barbara, you see Santa Barbara in 2018 undrafted was in the G league for Sacramento, acquired by the heat in 2019. And he's a role player. He's, he's never averaged more than nine and a half points a game. But last night, 11 of 14 from the field, six of nine from three, he had 29 points, 29 points. And Duncan Robinson, who actually makes a little bit of money compared to all these other undrafted guys. Remember, he started his career at Williams and transferred to Michigan when undrafted. And he has been a significant player from Miami, but he's also been buried in the bench. They bring him out when they need him. And last night they needed him and he was terrific. Seven of 11 from the field. He was five of seven from three. He had 22 points. So between the two of them, they had 41 points, 41 points from two unknowns. Two undrafted free agents last night. Well, Boston with their two big guns, Tatum and Brown, they combined for 26. Jason Tatum, six of 18 from the field for 14 points. He was one of seven from three and Brown, six of 17 from the field. Oh, of seven from three for 12 points. The two big guns, 26 points made 12 shots between him. And, you know, I don't know who's been sleeping on this guy, Ellis Sberg. Again, if you looked at him, you'd say, that guy is a general manager? Yeah, that guy is a general manager and he's got local ties. And he clearly knows what he's doing. You know, this team now you could say, well, how the hell did they finish 8th during the regular season? How did they have to play in the playing game? I don't know. But it's all about what you do in May and June, right? And this team is going to be playing in June. It's pretty clear unless they have an historic collapse, but nobody sees that coming. And I'll tell you this, Joe Missoula got a contract extension during the season from Boston. Remember, he took over at the beginning of the year and did a good enough job. And look, he's gotten them to the Eastern Conference Finals. But they have been a disaster in the Eastern Conference Finals. And they're now down 03, which again, no team has ever come back from 149 times. It's been 03 and 149 times they have lost. And they have just been got off. I mean, they did a great job in closing out Philadelphia after falling behind in that series. But now in this series, they are now 31 of 106 from 3. So they're shooting 29% at Celtics, whereas Miami is shooting 57% overall at 54% from 3, 44 for 92 for the series. They're clearly being outplayed. And I heard this from John Thompson working with him over the years. Don't tell people that you've done a poor job coaching because sooner or later, people are going to believe it. Now, great coaches will often take the heat themselves. They'll put it on them. This was a god-awful performance from Boston. This was terrible. Joe Missoula, you don't want to point fingers. That's not a good way to do things either. But using I all the time instead of the collective we, I'm not sure that was the right way to go. So these were the comments that were played in his postgame news conference, followed by the reaction from the TNT crew, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O'Neal and Kenny Smith, with Ernie Johnson running the show. This was after last night's blowout. 26 points was the margin of victory. And it wasn't as close as that. It was eight at the end of the first quarter. It was 15 at the half. And then Miami blew it open in the third quarter, outscoring the Celtics 32 to 17 on their way to winning by 26. So this is Joe Missoula, coach of the Celtics, reaction from the TNT crew. Joe, the biggest game of the season, again you had to have, and you guys just look completely lost after the first six minutes. What exactly happened out there? I just didn't have a ready to play. The last 48 hours? Yeah, I just didn't have a ready to play. I should have, whatever it was, whether it was a starting lineup or was an adjustment. I have to get them in a better place, ready to play. That's on me. Joe, I'm sorry, you keep saying it's on you, but can you be more specific? Was it the speech making? Yeah, I just didn't have them ready to play. I just didn't have the execute the proper game plan. I didn't put them in the right mentality to be ready. And you know, it's my job to make sure that they're connected and that they're ready to play, and I didn't do that. I don't want to say if you lost this team, but is there a disconnect between you and the players at this point? Is there something not quite working that might have worked in February or January that you're not telling them to lose by 28 points? But they're telling them to try. So is there a disconnect? Yes, where I have to be better is figure out what this team needs to make sure that they're connecting their physical and they're together by the time we step on the floor. You can cause that disconnect. Um, not sure. Well, well, first of all, Coach, need to quit saying me and say we, we were not ready to play. I know he's trying to do the right thing, take a bullet for the team, but he can't be saying me. I didn't have like we were not ready to play. That was embarrassing for the Boston Celtics, one of the greatest foreign child in sports history. But he took all the bullets. Hey, man, let me in shack disagree sometime. Shaq don't think the coaches important. I don't ever always blame the coach, but he can't take all the blame for what these, what these judges are doing. But the disconnect is not, he's like playing. Somebody asked the question January, February disconnect last series. They won. You know, so they were connected to get to the Easter conference final. So it's really the Miami Heat has pulled the plug on the disconnection. And their disconnection has come from the ability to have multiple guys do multiple things and multiple, multiple responsibilities. I think coming out of, you know, other series, there's one or two guys that have a bulk of the responsibilities. And Shaq has said it from day one, and we really didn't listen hard enough is that they have multiple guys who have the same responsibility on the Miami Heat. Everyone has to be a playmaker, even though Jimmy is the ultimate playmaker on the team. But every guy there is a playmaker, which is a lot different from every other team. I respect Joe Mozilla for taking all the blame, but I don't want to hear that. As a superstar, I cannot go six for 17. If Shaq is my other superstar, he can't go six for 18. Let's just keep it real. Something's way too cool for me. You're too cool. The way the dribble them out, the other back. Jimmy and them, they're coming out of the playing. Good clean basketball. Don't have a shot. Take your time swinging to the open man. Celtics came out with no sense of urgency. They knew what they had to do. And they're committed to doing it. They've been doing it all year. Again, there's no pressure on the Heat because they've never been that situation before. Game one, we're going to play hard. Oh my God, we won game one. Game two, we're going to go for it. Game three is not going to be different. They know what they have to do. They stick with their game plan and their focus. So, listen, no coach got to tell me when I'm a superstar what to do. Pat Riley and Phil Jackson come in and say, let's go. That's all it needs. Let's go. Not a, oh, not a hey. I don't want to hear that. I already know Turnfly, get me the damn ball. I got to get, listen, I was 28 during the season. I got to get not five. I got to get 10 more tonight for us to make some noise. I got to get 38 or 40 points tonight without the free throws. So, this is over. This is done. It's only a question whether it's a gentleman's sweep, which is five games, or it's a traditional sweep for games, or maybe it goes six, but the reality is Boston is cooked. They're just done, and Miami has it together, and they're much deeper team. They're pulling guys who are undrafted, guys who are buried on the bench like Duncan Robinson, and they are just, I don't want to say it's a statement, but they have just really embarrassed the Celtics. I mean, it's really unbelievable. How about this? How about the numbers on money? Again, I'm pumping Andy Ellesberg, who's the general manager of the Heat, but look at this with these nine undrafted free agents with the exception of Duncan Robinson in his $16.9 million salary. The Heat's three other undrafted players who had big nights last night earn a combined total of $10 million. They combined the three players for 57 points last night. The Celtics all saw a duo of Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown. They earned a combined total of 59 million, 26 points, 26 points. So you had Caleb Martin, gave Vincent Duncan Robinson, combining for 57 points, earning an average of $3.4 million a piece, while Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum earned $59 million this year. Wow. Nuggets go for the knockout punch tonight, same situation. Maybe the Lakers steal a game at home, but who knows? That's a series that really has been dominated, start to finish, because they have the best player. They have the better team. I mean, LeBron James may be the second best player who ever played in the NBA, but the Yokic is dominating them and they have others who have really done them in. And here we go for the knockout punch tonight. Jeff Green, who's been around, played at Georgetown a million years ago, has been all over the league. He's now with the Nuggets and he says, God do it tonight. He says, this is LeBron, man. He's done amazing things for those last 20 years. For me, we have to end it. It's like you can't continue to give him life. The more life you give him, the more confidence he gains, the more confidence he instills at his teammates. So for me, it has to end tonight, like West Side Story. Tonight, tonight, got to be tonight. So I would think, I would think they'd take them out tonight, but you know, maybe it goes five. These two are over. Just get it started. And I have to check when the NBA Finals start, but they have to allow that both series go seven. So I would imagine it's not supposed to start until like a week from Thursday, something like that. So you're going to have two teams, most likely, heading into the finals that we're going to be asking the question, is it rest or rust? But no question that both teams seems like no question. Crazy things could happen. It happens once in baseball that team came from 3-0 down, but most likely you're going to have two teams that won't have played for a while once they get on the court sometime next week. Coming up more on the death of Jim Brown passed away on Friday afternoon. Tim Layden used to write for Sports Illustrated, wrote a great profile of him in 2015 and talked about it. We'll get to that and more as we continue. Tony's coming up at 11. It's the Andy Poland show right here on ESPN 630. The sports capital. Tony's coming up at 11. And I believe he's going to talk about Jim Brown. Tony's 10 years older than I am and probably got the opportunity to see him play. The thing about Brown for people my age, and again, I think I saw my first NFL game 1966, Brown's last game in the NFL was 1965, which is also part of his legacy, part of his story that he walked away from the game at the absolute top that he was the best player in the game by far really and decided he wasn't going to play again. There's some extenuating circumstances on that, which we will get to. But not only was he the first real superstar that was of the television age, but he's also a superstar of which there is little footage that is left over. We saw all of Tom Brady's career and Tom Brady was miraculous in that he played as long as he did. He played more than twice as long as Brown did. I think it was 23 years and Jim Brown played only nine. And nobody said, you know, boy, look at Tom Brady hanging around too long. It's pathetic. Because he won a Super Bowl in his, what, third to last year and was considered a contender to win another one, got him back to the playoffs last year, but the year before. And you know, he was a guy that people marveled at for how long he stayed. But Jim Brown, we marveled at what he left behind, like, wow, how can he walk away like that? He was still a dominant player. He could have dominated for five, six, seven, eight years if he wanted to. But he walked away and he left. And some of that had to do with a movie that he was making at the time. But there's very little television footage that is left over. Remember, the Super Bowls, verse two, which happened several years after Brown retired, those were taped over for soap operas by CBS. There's not much television footage of that that exists. What is left is NFL films. Well, Jim Brown's last year was 1965. The first thing that NFL films did was the 1962 championship game. So there were only three years where NFL films were shooting all of his games. And I don't even know, matter of fact, I say shooting all of their games. They do it now. I don't even know if they did that back then. There were fewer teams. I think there were only what eight teams, nine teams, something like that in the NFL. And so, excuse me, 14 teams in the NFL at that time. So seven games a weekend. I don't know if they were able to have seven crews shoot the games. So there's not much. There's some grainy video, but not a whole lot. Few highlights of his career. But nothing along the lines of Tom Brady who played into the age of cell phone cameras and where everything got recorded. So there's no shortage of Tom Brady highlights. Tom Brown, really not much. So he exists in the legend that has passed on from generation to generation, including my father, who used to talk to me about how Jim Brown played. And he said, look, every time he got knocked down, no matter how hard the hit, he would bring himself up like he'd just been, you know, had his ribs broken or something like that. He'd live back to the huddle and then he'd come out and then run over you again. And you know, his skill level as an athlete was so far above anybody else that he was playing against. And he was bigger than some of the defensive linemen in the league at the time. He 235 pounds was a big man at that time, 6-2. And he was fast. He was such a great athlete that when he left high school, he had 13 letters. He was the best football player. He was the best basketball player. He was the best lacrosse player. And he was the best track athlete. And he went to Syracuse level up. He left there with 10 letters. He played varsity basketball and some consider him to be the greatest lacrosse player who ever lived. He was that great of an athlete. Didn't win the Heisman Trophy. And Dick Schapp went to his grave grumbling about that. He said he gave up his voting for the Heisman after that. Paul Horning won with Notre Dame for a team that didn't have a winning record. And he said there was absolutely no comparison between Jim Brown and Paul Horning. Although Horning's now in the Hall of Fame in the NFL, Brown was that much better. And he said that that was just pure racism that Horning the white man won and Brown did not. Went to the Cleveland Browns and instantly became the best football player in the game. He was the rushing champion eight of the nine years that he played. He never missed a game and just was considered to be as I was growing up and hearing it for all those years. That's it. He's the best. He's the best that ever. It's like a kid coming along who never saw Michael Jordan play and the older generation. So yeah, Jordan's the best. Well, what about LeBron? No, no, Jordan was better. And there really wasn't anybody close to Jim Brown and the fact that his rushing record remember, he played the first half of his career, only 12 games. And then the second half of his career was 14 games. Walter Payton comes along and it took him until the 84 season. So Brown left after 65 and 30 years later, the record was still standing until Walter Payton passed it with more games in a season. Payton came in the league. I think it was only his first, maybe it was only his first year or maybe it was even the year that he came in. It went to 16 games. But he was playing at the beginning of his career like Brown was only playing 12. He was playing 16. So that had something to do with it to take nothing away from Walter Payton and to take nothing away from him. And it's Smith who broke Payton's record. But this is what Tim Layden wrote in Sports Illustrated when he did a profile of Brown in 2015. So this is eight years ago. And I'll just read you two of the paragraphs which I think paint the biggest picture of who he was. We'll get to the domestic violence part of it. That's part of the story. He was a flawed man. There's no question about that. But as a football player, if he's not the best, he's in the conversation. This is what Layden wrote in 2015. Jim Brown was not just the best football player ever to pull on pads and a helmet. He was also one of the most complex sports characters of the 20th century. Along the field, a transcendent ball carrier and offered a forceful social activist and a leader among the first generation of black athletes to use their status as a weapon in the nascent civil rights movement. He walked away from football in 1966 at the age of 30 while still dominant, leaving not a period at the end of his football biography, but an ellipsis. By then, he had already begun building a formidable career outside of football. He helped start the Negro Industrial Economic Union, later renamed the Black Economic Union, which would provide financial assistance to more than 400 black businesses. He launched a movie career in 64 that would span five decades in 43 movies and help expand the breadth of roles offered to black actors. In the early 90s, dispirited by gang violence in the inner cities, Brown founded America I Can program, whose fundamental purpose was teaching life management skills to young black men both on the street and in prisons. Hundreds of gang members have visited his home in the Hollywood Hills and in turn, Brown has made hundreds of visits to prisons. His physical presence never dulled by age, often with a green African kofi on his head. Brown's conscience never lost its force. His voice never lost its impact. Yet his relevance was irreparably damaged by a history of domestic violence that stretched across nearly his entire adult life and became even more pertinent to his legacy as society became more acutely intolerant of men and especially athletes who abused women. The NFL star and activist faced numerous assault charges. In the first four cases, the charges were either dropped or he was acquitted after female survivors decided not to testify against him. In 1999, Brown, who was 66 at the time, was arrested after Modique, his wife, then 25, called 911 from a neighbor's house in Hollywood Hills to report that her husband had smashed the windows of her car after an argument with her. And that's when he was offered community service and he said he wasn't going to do that and he spent six months in prison because of that. So that's part of his legacy too. You cannot escape that. But as a football player and as an activist, there have been few like him, if any. Bill Belichick quoted as part of this story. Now this is 2015. So Brady only has four Super Bowl championships. But Brady has won four rings for him at that point. And Bill Belichick in 2015 said, quote, the greatest football player ever, no doubt. Think about that. And think about the time that Bill Belichick, even at that point, had spent in the league. At that point, he had been in the league for 40 years as an assistant coach and a head coach. And it's just a remarkable athletic story and it's a remarkable life story. Is he a role model? No, no, no, the domestic violence. You can't run from that. That's part of his life story. But also as an athlete, he gave you his best and he walked away on top, which few have ever done. And as an activist and someone who took on some of the toughest parts of the civil rights movement, I mean, walking unafraid into gangs and helping to deal with them and helping to lessen violence and also concentrating on the economic aspect of civil rights and that businesses that hire African Americans that are run by African Americans, that's where you lead yourself out of these circumstances with that. And look, he supported Donald Trump. You know, he was a complex man. He and we'll hear this coming up in the 10 o'clock hour. He opposed many of the views that Martin Luther King had, though he was looking for equality. He wanted it in a different way. This Tim Layton interviewed by Peter King back in 2015 after this story had appeared in Sports Illustrated about Brown and him walking away at the top of his game. He was 29 years old coming off a year in which he rushed for 1500 yards and was named MVP of the league. In a 12 game season, right? 14 at the time. Yeah, but still a big season and he rushed for 700 more yards than anybody else in the league. And he retired at age 29. And really the legend has been that he retired because he was done with it and he was physically in his prime could have played easily three to five more years and probably been dominant for a couple of them. It actually comes to you find out as you research this that there were a few things at work. Number one, he had had enough and he was beginning to act in movies and he was going to really, really blaze a whole new trail of that as an African American leading man. But also he had a contract hold out with the Browns while he was on the set of a movie in England. And dirty desert. Correct. Yeah. And Art Modell, the owner of the of the Browns at the time, decided to find him $100 a day for every day that he wasn't in training camp and that was the end of it because you were taking a guy with immense pride and saying, I'm going to take money away from you and Jim Brown said to me, I looked at art and I said, Art, you can't find me if I don't show up. I'm done. It's over. And that was it. Wasn't it amazing at the time? You know, I thought what was so cool in your story is the players of his era, the players who played with him against him, how stunned they were that he left the game. Oh yeah, I mean, Paul Wigan, who was playing with him for the Browns, said, I played one more year than Jim. Jim could have played 10 more years than I could have. Dick LeBeau, longtime defensive coordinator now with the Titans, just said he was way too young and way too good to hang it up. But we were happy to see him go at the same time. And that was the across the league because this was, you know, 1966 in the summer. There was no, there was no information super highway. He was in England and we were over here and nobody knew that this might happen. They just woke up one morning and it had happened. Then the best player in the league, Aaron Rodgers today, gone overnight. Why does Jim Brown matter? Why should Jim Brown matter to fans and players today? Well, start with the numbers, 104.3 yards a game. He averaged 104 yards a game for his entire career. 118 games without ever missing a game. And nobody else has been over 100 for their career. For Adrian Peterson to catch him this year and get above that 100, he'd have to rush for almost 2,600 yards this year or average almost 2,000 for four more years to catch him playing 16 games every year. That number is almost considered unreachable. Never missed a game. Average 5.4 yards every time he touched the ball. And really was a two generations ahead of his time, really. As he says to me, 232 pounds, 6 foot 2. And with the feet of a much smaller man, there's this legend that he just ran over people. But he also, Dick Lebou said to me, his first option was always to make you miss. And if you didn't miss, well then you were really in trouble. I thought the rare combination that he had of being able to make people miss, not in an OJ Simpson or Barry Sanders way, but in a way that surprises you. I always thought about Jerome Bettis watching Jerome Bettis. He's totally different back from Jim Brown. But everybody would look at Jerome Bettis and say, hey, the only way this guy is great is if he steam rolls you. That isn't true. Jerome Bettis was fast and he could make some people miss. He could make linebackers miss. And I thought Jim Brown, the power back and also the ability to get outside on anybody. Yeah, and the thing that comes up, and Bellicic was good talking about this in the story, is that Jim didn't just, he wasn't like a gale Cairus type with that flashy cut back and leaving tacklers grabbing at air. He would move sort of at three quarter speed and what people said is he would set you up. He would establish the leverage point that you would have to try and tackle him at. And then he would go somewhere else. And Bellicic said that years later working with the young Brown's running backs when Bellicic was coaching Cleveland, he also had a great ability and still does to communicate that. It's not just your feet, it's not just your shoulders, it's your eyes and your mind. What are you seeing down the field? What is the guy who wants to tackle you seeing? So in those ways, people that want to say that Brown wouldn't be as effective now. Well, the people that really know the game say that the intellectual part of his game translates across all generations. That's Tim Layden of then Sports Illustrated talking to Peter King about the profile that he did of Jim Brown in 2015, passed away late Friday afternoon at the age of 87. And as part of the obit that saw on the post over the weekend, there's a photo that's one of the most iconic in the history of sports. And it was a summit that was organized by Jim Brown in Cleveland. This was I guess the summer after he retired June 4, 1967. And he had some of the greatest black athletes in America at this summit. And there's a photo with Brown sitting next to Muhammad Ali, which is what this was all about. This was Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, refusing induction into the army as a conscientious objector. And it's been thought, you know, by some who saw these pictures over the years. Oh, yeah, these are these are black athletes firmly standing behind Cassius Clay on this stance. No, no, that's not what that was. These were men like Brown who had served in ROTC, like Bobby Mitchell, who Hall of Fame player finished his career with the Redskins after playing several years with Jim Brown in Cleveland. John Mackie, Hall of Fame tight end with the Baltimore Colts. Little Russell is sitting there and a very young Lou Alcindor who was then at UCLA. He was the only college player among them. And sadly, we look at this photo. I think I'm not mistaken. Lou Alcindor now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar might be the only survivor from this picture. And the role that all of them played in this complex period of time, the 1960s, as the world was changing dramatically, just absolutely remarkable when you look at the people that are in that picture. And one of the things that Brown said to Tim Layton in this profile in 2015, he said, I came up at the crossroads of segregation and that defined his life. And he had an unusual life in that he was born in Georgia and was raised by his grandmother, but she passed away when he was eight years old. And by that time, his mother who had left his father was working as a, what they call a domestic in Long Island for a wealthy family. And he joined her and then went to Manhassen High School where he was an incredible star there. Every school in the country wanted him, but he went to Syracuse. And when he went to Syracuse in 1953, he had to sleep in a separate dorm. He wasn't allowed to be, he was the only African American player on the freshman team and couldn't be in the dorm with all the white players. So he faced that right away. And then he stepped onto the football field as a varsity player. And those days, freshmen were ineligible to play and the rest is history, graduating in 1957 from Syracuse with 10 varsity letters in four sports, even with all that, he was not taken until the sixth pick of the draft by the Cleveland Browns. And they had been, they've been out in front in getting African American players, not long after Jackie Robinson broke the color line. They had black players like Bill Willis and Marion Motley. So they were an organization that was kind of ahead of the time and Jim Brown joined them. And as you heard, Layden say, you know, Brown was really ahead of his time. He was physically a great, great player, but he also put in the work mentally. He understood where the holes were going to be. He understood the flow of the game. He understood those things. And that's what helped to make him the great football player that he was. And then walk you away at the top to become a movie actor, to be involved in the civil rights movement and also flaws in his life, including, and I remember hearing about this when I was a kid, he was arrested at least seven times for assault, including a 1968 incident in which he was accused of throwing a girlfriend off a second store balcony. And in these cases, the women would not press charges, and so Brown would be able to be acquitted and move on with his life. I don't think that would happen now. But he did express regret late in his life for doing those kind of things. And at that time, there was a different attitude towards women. We'll get to that. He talks about what it was like to hang out at the Playboy Mansion when he was at the top of his game too. So there was a different kind of mindset, not correct. There was a different kind of mindset at that time. But as a human being, as an athlete, as a complex person, there have been few ever like Jim Brown, and we'll get to more thoughts on him coming up. The Andy Poland Show. We've got to go after this with everything we got. They're going to come with everything they got. I'll start off by saying I'm bored, I'm broke, and I'm back. The Andy Poland Show on ESPN 630 starts right now. All right, we've got Tony coming out bad 11 o'clock today. I think he's back on his normal schedule. He took the last three Fridays off, at least last two. And I believe he's doing Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of this week. We're due to talk to Max Kellerman tomorrow, as we do most Tuesdays as well. The NBA conference finals. Hey, yay. What a dud. What an absolute dud. And just a handful of the six games that have been played so far have been really contests. Last night, 26 point win from Miami. Wasn't that close? Boston barely showed up in this game. Just incredible. And if you're looking for the all-time record, it's 149 and 0. Teams that have taken 3-0 series lead have won those best of seven game series 149 times, and we're about to make it 151. And I don't think the finals are due to start until late next week. So it's been a long time once these conference finals wrap up, unless something crazy happens. And it happened once in baseball. Okay, the Red Sox did it to the Yankees. And it's happened, I think, a couple of times in hockey. But it just doesn't happen in the NBA. And I don't see it happening now. Look, Miami's just too much depth there. That's the big difference. Is that they have they have Jimmy Butler who can get away with scoring only 16 points and still have his team win by 26. I mean, the two stars for Boston last night were nothing. Tatum and Brown, Tatum 6 of 18, Brown 6 of 17, they combined for 26 points. That ain't going to get it done. That is just not happening. Marcus Smart with eight points. I mean, come on, even Malcolm Brogden, who's given them some big minutes off the bench. He was six man of the year. Complete dud last night, played 18 minutes. Oh, for six, no points. He had the same amount of points that I had last night. So Boston looks dead in the water. Joe Missoula, the coach of the team has taken all the blame for it. I don't know whether he should or shouldn't, but they look absolutely terrible. And then, you know, Denver has been dominant over the Lakers. LeBron has coffee for closers. He hasn't been a closer at all. And the word from the nuggets tonight is, let's finish them. Jeff Green, veteran from Georgetown, says, let's do it tonight. We don't want to give LeBron any life. He's done some amazing things over 20 years. We have to end it. It's like you can't continue to give him life the more life you give him the more confidence he gains, the more confidence he instills in his teammates. So get it done. Bruce Brown, who's also a guard of the team, he says, we want to give them no hope, no confidence. So look for a close out tonight. If that happens, be a long, long haul till we get to the finals. And it'd be interesting to see if there's any life left in either the Lakers or the Celtics, the two most iconic franchises in the history of the NBA going out. It looks like very, very weekly in the conference finals. I'm more on Jim Brown, and I pulled some of it in an interview that he did seven years ago with Graham Bensinger. And I'll say this for Graham Bensinger. He does his research. He talks to a lot of people and he gets a lot of good information. And it's a syndicated show. You probably see it as filler like on Masson, NBC Sports Washington may run it from time to time. And he does a really good job of getting big names. You know, he'll get you, you know, Jack Nicholson. He'll, Jack Nicholas, excuse me. Maybe he'll get Jack Nicholson too. I don't know. He'll get Shaq. He's done the biggest names in sports. And so he got Jim Brown and Graham Bensinger. He's probably in his 30s, maybe early 40s. He has absolutely no concept of Jim Brown as a player. And really I don't either other than the stories that have been handed down and people I've been lucky to know over the years like Bobby Mitchell, who played with Jim Brown. And really, even though they were sort of competing, in those days you had two back backs in the backfield. So Jim Brown was actually a full back. The full back position doesn't really even exist anymore. But in those days you'd line up in a T formation and there'd be two backs behind the quarterback and you'd have the half back, which Bobby Mitchell was. And he was also called a flanker when he became more of a receiver, especially in his career here in Washington after being traded here in 1962 and becoming the first African American player for the then Redskins. And he talked with reverence about Jim Brown. He admired his courage. But he also understood the star system in Cleveland and Bobby Mitchell loved Paul Brown. He thought Paul Brown was the most important coach in NFL history, more so than Vince Lombardi, who he didn't actually play for. He went to training camp with Washington in 1969 and decided to retire and then spent the rest of his career in Washington's front office. But Bobby said when it came to the greatest coaches of all time, he would have put Paul Brown number one, but he said what Brown would do to handle the star in Jim Brown, you couldn't if you got if you got mad at him, he just fold up and he wouldn't he wouldn't give you the time of day. So he would say to Bobby Mitchell, hey, you need to get Jim Brown down here for the bus, you know, at 10 o'clock. And if he showed up at 10.01, the ball Brown would chew out Bobby Mitchell. Yeah. And he was trying to talk to Jim Brown, even though you know, Mitchell was frantically trying to get Jim Brown ready to go. And you know, Jim Brown went at his own pace. He did his, did his own thing. This is part of, of, of understanding who he was. And that was a big part of his game. And he, this was a great profile that was done maybe 20 years ago by Steve Sable, who genius in NFL films. And he did a sit down with Jim Brown and, and, and he talked about how Brown would intimidate the opponents before the start of the game. One of the things he would do is he would go over to the other sideline during warmups and start doing pushups, you know, just, hey, look at me, look at me. And, and that was all by design. So when he talked to Graham Bensinger seven years ago, he talked to him about how he would try to intimidate the other team before the game even got underway. Let them see me knowing that they've been told about me all week and how they have to watch out for me and how they have to plan to stop me and gang tackle me. Then I challenged them by saying, this is the guy, man. Take a look at me. Here it is right now, 232 pounds, 62 inches. I can beat you in the 40 and I got attitude. The attitude that you're going to hit me and I'm going to hit you. The ball is a challenge of men. It's the next thing to watch. Not close to war, but it's the next civilized thing to walk. And you touch yourself all the time because if you're not strong enough, you'll give it up. That's Jim Brown in his 80s, about 80, maybe late 70s. And he was an intimidating presence even when he was in his 70s. He'd walk around with a sleeveless shirt and still had the bulging muscles. You know, he was a guy who had put fear in you when he was an elderly man. So you can imagine Jim Brown in his prime. And I remember talking to Brigoens about this, the late Brigoens who played safety for Washington. His first year in the NFL, he played for Dallas. He was with the Cowboys. I forget whether he was traded or caught, but he finished up his career here, had a wonderful career. Oh, great man. Got involved in the NFL Players Association and other things later in life and was very, very well respected, but he talked about what he was playing for the Cowboys and they would play the Cleveland Browns. And Tom Landry would say to the secondary, look, Jim Brown, if he gets loose, don't try to tackle him one on one. You're going to get hurt. Just try and slow him down and wait for help. That's how good he was. And I always remembered that that. And he talked about, you know, I would say that Brigoens, certainly the best player he played against and maybe would have said, I think he passed away a year or two ago, but he would have said that he was the best of all time. Also a big part of the Jim Brown legacy is what he did in the Civil Rights Movement and that he was known as someone who stood up for African Americans, who understood racism, who when he was traveling with his teammates, even in his early days with the Cleveland Browns, when he was Rookie of the Year in 1957, he couldn't stay in the same hotel. So he understood that. But what he did, he went a different route than some others in the Civil Rights Movement. He was more interested in the economic growth of African Americans and also did a lot of work with the gangs and trying to limit the violence he lived after he left football. He lived the rest of his life in Los Angeles. And so he was involved in that. And this was surprising from the Ben Singer interview that he was asked about his relationship with Martin Luther King. And this is what Brown said. The Civil Rights Movement had a lot of leaders. Martin was just probably the number one leader. And his philosophy was passive resistance. And I am totally against passive resistance. Nonviolence. Nonviolence is something that's applicable to all human beings. All of us should not be violent. But that's not a movement. A movement is proactive. And so I admired his courage and his sincerity. But I didn't think that nonviolence was a solution to the problem of inequality in America. I thought that nonviolence meant that you would march and sing. And you would try to appeal to the consciousness of the same people that were discriminating against you. So my concept was how can you get to the consciousness of a person that has no consciousness and who is relegating you to a second class citizenship because of your color? So I thought economic development and a sense of cultural power would be a better way to fight because capitalism in America was riding high. And you need resources. And as I looked at the Jewish community, they applied it fantastically. As I looked around at the community, I mean the Korean communities, they seem to be applying it. And it seemed that people that took care of themselves and dealt with economic development and had high family values and didn't try to integrate would do a better job of integrating. But integration can't be your goal. And I give an example. If I want to live in a white neighborhood and they jack the prices up, but I want to integrate it for the sake of integrating it, I pay twice as much for the house. That's like paying twice as much to live with white folks. I never thought that was very valuable. Just living with white folks, I thought, to have my rights under the Constitution. And I'd always say to Martin's people, you know, I'm an African descent. I'm an American citizen. I pay my damn taxes. And I want my rights. Underline that and you can't challenge it. Okay? I'm a citizen. You're a citizen. You pay your taxes. I pay my taxes. You get your rights. I get my rights. No, you could agree with that or disagree, but that's how he lived. He looked at the economics and he supported Donald Trump. He saw Donald Trump as a businessman and as someone who was very successful and he put his support behind him. I'm sure a lot of African Americans blanched at that. We're not happy about his support. But again, he marched to the beat of his own drum, including of course, you know, leaving football at the top of his game at the age of 29. They were shooting the movie, their dirty dozen. The movie was running over in terms of time. He thought he could make it back to training camp for the Browns in 1966. But the shooting schedule went into training camp and Art Modell, the owner of the Browns, said, well, he's just like any other player. So we're going to have to find him. And Jim Brown said, Nope, nope. I don't do finds. So the only control I have is whether to play or not. And I'm not going to play. Now, nowadays that wouldn't happen. And the players actually probably would have had a mutiny now. They would have said, Hey, if you're not going to wave the fines for Jim Brown, we're not going to play because we're going into the season thinking we have a chance to win. They won the championship two years before 1964. And you've now taken away any possibility that we're going to win because you're not bringing back the best player in the game. He was the MVP of the league the last year he played. But that's not how things worked in 1966 and Jim Brown. He actually was able to make more money doing movies. So it made perfect sense for him to stay in the movies. He done all he could do. He won a championship. And when he left the game, nobody would dispute that he was the best player to have ever played. So there really wasn't anything left to prove. But the fact of the matter is, is that he did things the way he wanted to do them. And he didn't care what you thought. That was also part of his legacy. A couple of cool other items in the story of Jim Brown. One is in the late 60s. I forget the year, but they were working on a fight that was going to take place between Will Chamberlain and Muhammad Ali. You may have seen some pictures of them kind of jazzed it up kind of promoting it on like one of those shows Dick Cabbard or Merv Griffin or one of them. You see Chamberlain just towering over Ali. The fight was never going to happen. And if he did, Ali said, how's it going to be? That's how it was going to go. He said one word, timber. But they were, they wanted to get Jim Brown involved. It was promotion. He was supposedly going to be Chamberlain's manager, but that never got off the ground. That didn't happen. However, and this is really something I'd never heard before. And it's, it's really unbelievable when you think of these two men and how iconic they were as athletes in the 1960s. Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown used to walk through the ghetto together. Now there were no cell phones in those days to take video of this. Nowadays, if it happened, you'd see it all over the place, all over social media. Those days they could do it and do it somewhat privately. So this is, this is Jim Brown talking about his relationship with Ali and what they used to like to do together. I thought he had a quick man, he had a witty man, a great physical champion, great physique, fitness, boxing skills. He loved people, you know, he helped people. And before he was stripped of his crown, he was a great warrior for our society. He used to always want to go on walks through the neighborhoods. What do you recall from those walks? Well, when he would always say, hey, let's go take a walk. I'd say walk where? I was done and not as sensitive as he was at the time. And he said, look, let's just go talk to the people. I said, okay, so we walked through the ghettos and going to barbershops and grocery stores. He just talked to the people, you know. Here's a champ, you know, this is Jim Brown. He's a football player. And we just say hello, you know. It was great that people loved it. He was a people champion because he truly took time with people and cared about them. And he wasn't racial. He didn't ignore white people or white kids. He just loved people. You imagine that? You're sitting in the barber chair and here comes Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali walking through the door. You're in the grocery store. There's Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali. Just really incredible. One other thing, and this, I don't know if this really ties into the domestic violence, but it addresses attitude. And as I mentioned, he was arrested. Brown was arrested at least seven times for assault, including usually against women. There was a famous incident in 1968 where he was accused of throwing a girlfriend off a second store balcony. That was part of who he was. A flawed man. He was not perfect. He had his faults and that was one of them. But the attitude of towards women, especially in the 1960s was a lot different and not better, but different than the way it is now. And so this was Brown talking to Graham Bensinger about his relationship with Hugh Hefner and his access to the Playboy Mansion. Hef was such a gracious person. Misunderstood because of the sexuality and belief in free sex and the Playboy magazine. But he was a great humanitarian. You know, a lot of charities and very real about sex and sexuality. So you know, I was up to mansion all the time along with Barry Gordy and Smothers Brothers and everybody else. Jimmy Connors. It was a ball. You drive up to the rock at the gate and hit the button. The rock says, good evening, Mr. Brown. Come on in and the gate swing open. You go in, park your car. Girls everywhere. Might see Hef over there. I walk by Hef. I hear you. I'm going in my way. He's going in his way. And you had 24 hour access and there were new girls coming in from all over the country. And anything was okay between consenting partners. So those were the days of Hollywood. Anything is okay between consenting partners. Okay. So again, Jim Brown, one of a kind. And I think you could still make the argument, the greatest player who ever played as Bill Belichick said in 2015. Greatest ever, no doubt. Jim Brown passing away at the age of 87. All right. That wraps it for me today. We're supposed to have Max Kellerman tomorrow as we do most Tuesdays. And we'll see what happens tonight. I don't think the Lakers have much of a shot, but you know, it's very difficult to win four straight against a team that has LeBron James. Is LeBron going to bring the Lakers back from a 3-0 deficit? It's never been done before. 149 times teams have been down 03, 149 times they've lost. But maybe this could be the start of something big for the Lakers tonight or just a fizzle out. LeBron's been swept twice during his career once when he was very young with the Cleveland Cavaliers. And then his last year in Cleveland, excuse me, after he came back to them won a championship and was swept up by them. But we'll see. And we'll talk about it tomorrow. Tony is coming up next. And I will see you tomorrow right back here at 9 AM.