Join host Bill Donohue for an engaging conversation on Sports Talk New York as he welcomes a lineup of remarkable guests, including actor and author Mark Metcalf, who discusses his poignant new book, Tim, Tim, Timmy, an exploration of his late brother's life and struggles with mental health. Metcalf reflects on his diverse career, from iconic roles in films like "Animal House" to his work with Twisted Sister and his role as "The Maestro" on Seinfeld, revealing the personal stories behind his creative journey. Bill also welcomes John Hollinger, who co-authored The Basketball 100, a comprehensive guide to the greatest players in NBA history, where he delves into the criteria used for ranking players and the complexities of comparing athletes across different eras. The episode takes a deeper look at the impact of mental health awareness, both in sports and personal lives, highlighting the importance of understanding and supporting those who struggle. As the holiday season approaches, listeners are encouraged to consider meaningful gifts for their loved ones, including the inspiring works of our guests.

Show Details:

In a thought-provoking episode of Sports Talk New York, host Bill Donohue engages with a trio of distinguished guests who share their insights into the worlds of sports, literature, and personal reflection. The show opens with Donohue's signature warmth, inviting listeners into an exploration of themes ranging from mental health awareness to the complexities of sports analytics. The first guest, Mark Metcalf, renowned for his acting career, discusses his new book, a moving tribute to his brother Tim, who battled depression and dyslexia. Metcalf's candid recounting of his brother's struggles serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of understanding mental health, particularly in sports where pressures often go unspoken. His narrative intertwines personal anecdotes with broader societal issues, encouraging listeners to foster empathy and awareness for those in similar situations.

Transitioning seamlessly, the conversation shifts to the realm of basketball as author John Hollinger joins the discussion to delve into his latest work, The Basketball 100. Hollinger presents a fresh perspective on the age-old debate of ranking basketball's greatest players, emphasizing the need to balance statistical analysis with historical context. He introduces his innovative GOAT Points system, which assigns values based on player accomplishments, sparking a lively discussion about the merits of championships versus individual performance. Through Hollinger's lens, listeners gain insight into how the game has evolved and the challenges of assessing players across different eras, from legends like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to modern-day stars such as Nikola Jokic.

As the episode progresses, the blend of personal storytelling and analytical discourse creates a rich tapestry that resonates with a wide audience. Metcalf's heartfelt reflections on family and loss complement Hollinger's data-driven insights, fostering a dialogue that transcends traditional sports talk. The episode concludes with a teaser for the upcoming segment featuring former major league pitcher George Culver, maintaining the audience's engagement and anticipation. This installment of Sports Talk New York encapsulates the essence of sports as not just a game, but a narrative filled with emotion, struggle, and triumph, inviting listeners to reflect on their connections to the athletes and stories that shape the sporting world.

Takeaways:

• Mark Metcalf discusses his new book about his late brother, reflecting on family and loss.
• The conversation highlights the importance of acknowledging mental health issues in loved ones.
• John Hollinger explains the process behind creating the Basketball 100, including statistical evaluations.
• The impact of the 24-second shot clock on the evolution of basketball is emphasized.
• Metcalf shares personal anecdotes about his experiences in Hollywood, including roles in iconic shows.
• Both guests emphasize the significance of recognizing and supporting neurodiversity in today's society.

The views expressed in the following program do not necessarily represent those of the staff, management or owners of wgbb. Live from the WGB studios in Merritt, New York, this is Sports Talk New York. Good evening and hello again everybody.

Our engineer Brian Graves with us as usual, hanging with us behind the glass. We have kind of a blockbuster show for you tonight, really. One of our Author Author show is up first.

Well, welcome back to the show the great actor Mark Metcalf, who as you know, Douglas C. Niedermeier in Animal House, the maestro on Seinfeld and the dad in the Twisted Sister vids.

He has a great new book out about his late brother that we will discuss with him.

Next up, we'll welcome in author John Hollinger in his latest book he's co written entitled the Basketball 100 about the greatest players in hoops history. At 9 o'clock we'll speak to former big league pitcher and the author, if you will, of his own no hitter George Culver.

He'll speak to us about his new book.

And last but certainly not least, we'll speak with Joe Unitas, the son of Johnny, and we'll discuss his latest book, unitus to Unit us about lessons passed down from father to son.

Well, some fine books for you guys to check into, perhaps some last minute holiday gifts for the reader in your life and you'll hear about them and straight from the authors tonight. So sit back, relax, get yourself a drink and a snack.

Get comfy, enjoy the ride tonight as always, before we begin, I invite you to follow me on Facebook. It's called the Talk of New York Sports. So much information there. Stop by, give it a look. You can also follow me at bdonohue wgbb.

And if you miss a show, don't worry because they're all cataloged out on the website at www.sportstalknewyork.com. catch up anytime you want. Well, our first guest, a fine actor and he now adds fine writer to his resume.

He's turned up in some of my favorite shows and movies through the years. As I said, Douglas C. Niedermeier in Animal House. He's the maestro in Seinfeld and the father in the Twisted Sister videos.

And as we know, Twisted Sister, of course, hails from Long Island. He has a new book out titled Tim. Tim. Timmy. Which Griffin Dunn describes as an achingly honest ode to his brother. We will talk further about that.

I'm glad to welcome back to the show Mark Metcalf. Mark, good evening.

Good evening. Thank you very much. I thank you. Good to be here. Good to see. Good to talk to you again.

Good to have you with us, Mark. Now, as we spoke during the week, you're a St.

Louis Cardinal fan, but you found yourself rooting for the Dodgers in the Series because of Tommy Edmond. Right.

Tommy Edmond was my favorite Cardinal. I used to say when I show people the Cardinals playing baseball, I'd say, that's my boyfriend, Tommy Edmund. I love to watch him play second base.

When they moved him to outfield, he was a great center fielder. I think he's a Hall of Fame second baseman.

If the game was different now and they let people play one position and all their whole career, I think he'd be hall of Fame. And he may still be. And he was hurt and didn't play for the Cardinals. And then they traded him, which I had a fear. I was afraid they would.

They traded him to the Dodgers. And that made it really hard because ever since Steve Garvey, I've hated the Dodger uniform.

Yeah, I know.

Because I think Steve Garvey or his clone gave me a couple of speeding tickets when I was going too fast. All right. But, you know. Yeah, we need speed.

Exactly.

And so when they traded Tommy Edmond, I decided to watch the World Series rather than boycott it. And, you know, they're a great bunch of ballplayers. Freddy Freeman.

Yeah.

In any uniform would be great. Tommy Edmond is just a great baseball player. Good old school baseball player. And who he bets is the greatest.

Yes, I hear you. I used to think Freddy Freeman was just a met killer. But Freddy Freeman kills everybody, Mark.

He does, even when he can. Weren't you reminded that there were a couple of moments in that World Series where he reminded me of.

What was it, the 88 World Series when Kirk Gibson. Gibson came off the bench, could barely walk and hit that home run.

Inspirational. Inspirational, Mark. That is for sure.

Now, I want a couple of questions about Animal House, the ROTC scene you had with Stephen first, who, of course, we know is Flounder. It looks like you had some experience with horses.

Yeah, well, when I auditioned for the. For the film, I. I went up to beat John Landis for the role of Otter, the part that Tim Matheson played.

And as soon as I walked through the door, John Landis said, I may have told you this story. John Landis said, do you know how to ride? And I'd read the script, so I knew what he was talking about and I knew that was a good part.

And I said, of course I know how to ride. I was practically born on a horse. My mother's water broke when she was out on a trail ride on a ranch in Montana.

My father slid off the horse and delivered me in the shade of the horse and he delivered calves, why not deliver me? Sure. And we got back on the horse and went.

And John Landis looked at me through this whole story, and I made it longer than I did just then and said, yeah, right. And I told him five more lies about how I knew how to ride. And he called me the next day and said, I want you to do this part.

I said, okay, great, John, do you think you can get Universal to give you some money so I can learn how to ride? And I studied at Claremont Stables, which is there just on the edge of Central Park.

I studied in New York and rode around Central park with this little blond headed German woman who had a riding crop in her hand all the time, which I thought was for the horse, but it turned out it was for me. And. And I learned how to ride well enough to ride in that. In that. In that movie.

And then after I did the movie, a wonderful woman named Stevie Myers wrangled that horse. She. And she.

Her father, whose name I don't remember, and Chill Wills started the Myers and Wills ranch out in the west part of the valley, over in the east part of the valley over Tonga Wash. And they, they wrangled horses for movies back when there were a lot of westerns being made.

Chill Wills, if you don't remember the name, he was an actor in a lot of western movies. And Stevie said, listen, if you come down to la, ever, if you want to ride, just give me a call and you can come out and you can exercise my horses.

Because she had 250 head of horses. And I went out there about two, two, three times a week. I would go out there when I first got to LA and would exercise the horses.

I would take them out on trail rides, I'd work them in the ring. So I got a good schooling from her and from her horses. In fact, I got to ride Pie, which was Jimmy Stewart's horse.

Wow.

And Jimmy, Jimmy Stewart had been a long time hero of mine, and so it was great to ride his horse. And the horse I rode in the movie Animal House actually was the same horse that the Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore I think his name was right.

Used to ride.

He was no longer making the Lone Ranger television series, but he had a horse because he was invited to open supermarkets every once in a while in malls and ride in on his. On high Ho. Silver. And he. Junior. The horse I rode was the horse that he rode when he would open a supermarket.

Outstanding. What a story that is, Mark. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, A lot of good history there.

Now, the climactic parade scene, I often wondered, how long did that take to film, that final scene?

Five days. We were down. That was shot in Cottage Grove. And it's such a big piece with such a lot of extras.

In fact, I was just talking to a fellow at the dog park with my dog who I think he said his nephew went to. Lived in Cottage Grove, grew up in Cottage Grove and was an extra.

And he loves to watch the movie because he gets to see his whole high school class in the background as extras. We hired extras for 20 bucks a day, 25 bucks a day, and gave them a peanut butter sandwich, probably.

And they came back for five days and endured the shenanigans that we put on down there.

Yeah.

I don't think Cottage. I don't think the mayor of Cottage Grove was as happy afterwards as he was beforehand.

Cottage Grove had a history with movies, but the only history goes as far back as Buster Keaton's movie the General. Yeah, yeah.

Great film.

Brilliant movie. Yeah, Great, great film. Yeah. But they had. That was a long time. That was 60, 70 years before.

Yeah, yeah.

They'd forgotten that. They've forgotten what havoc movies can wreak upon a village. A small time.

Yeah. Now, another iconic role I mentioned before was the maestro on Seinfeld.

And what I found interesting about that, Mark, is they brought you back for a second go around. They very rarely did that with Elaine's boyfriend. I mean, there was putty and guys like that.

But you were in two episodes, the Tuscany episode and of course, the classic pool room episode with Jerry Stiller, Michael Richards. And of course, I can't think of the woman's name, but Estelle.

Oh, yeah.

Estelle.

Yeah.

In our boxer shorts. Or I'm playing in my boxer shorts.

Right, yeah. Because you didn't want to lose the crease in your pants. Of course.

Exactly. If I'm going to perform, I want my pants to be perfectly pressed, so I put them on a hanger and play go everywhere in my boxer shorts.

And of course, you learn my tux.

Jacket on, oddly enough.

Yeah.

And of course, you learn that. You learn that from the Maestro. Leonard Bernstein.

That's right. That's right. Maestro is good enough name for him. It's good enough for me.

Exactly. We're speaking with the great Mark Metcalf tonight on Sports Talk New York.

Now, the Twisted Sister videos, as you know, they're a local band here from Long Island. How did the idea come about for those videos? Who came up with that idea?

It was their idea. They had loved the movie and loved my character, and Dee used to use lines of mine from the movie in their.

In their act when they were playing bars basically all over Long island and up and down the Hudson river in Jersey.

Right.

And so when Atlantic Records, I think it was Atlantic Records, gave them money to make a video because MTV was relatively new in the way you promoted a movie. An album, then was a video, right. They said, let's get Niedermeyer. And I don't know how they found me, but they called me at home in New York.

I was living in the Lower east side in St Mark's Place, and I didn't even have a television. No idea what MTV was. In fact, after Beethoven died, I stopped listening to popular music and.

But they called me and they said, we want you to do this music video. And I said, okay, whatever that is. And they said, we're going to shoot it in la. And I said, well, I'm doing a play and I can't.

I can leave after the matinee on Sunday, but I have to back to do the evening show on Wednesday.

So if you can get me out there on the red eye on Sunday night, shoot it on Monday or Tuesday and get me back here so I can do my evening show, that's fine. And they said, we'll do that. And I got on a plane and flew to LA and slept on Marty Collier's couch. He was the director.

He directed a bunch of HBO specials, and he directed that and the other one, too. And his son actually plays my son in the first video when I'm screaming at my kid who's not downstairs eating his carrots.

Right. Yeah. Now, these iconic characters, as I call them, which are you most recognized for out of these characters, Mark?

I suspect it's probably Animal House. I think more people saw Animal House and they associate that with. With the Twisted Sister.

I think probably more people saw the Twisted Sister videos than saw Animals, because it played, like, every five minutes on MTV for a while there and even played in the. In the Senate when Tipper Gore did her hearings on sex and violence and rock and roll.

Dee snider went in to talk and Frank Zappa went in to talk and they showed the entirety of that video, first video in the Senate. My father was very proud that my work was in the Senate record book.

Right.

He wasn't. He wasn't proud of the work, but he was proud that it was in the Senate record book.

Yeah, Tipper must have stroked out when she saw that one, I guess. But I don't know.

I don't know what it has to do with sex or what it has to do with violence, but somehow he made it in there. And Dee was very eloquent. He went in and testified in front of the committee, I think, and was very eloquent about what fools these mortals be.

He did. He did a great job there in front of the Senate. Now let's get to the book, the new book. Tim. Tim, Timmy, lay the groundwork out for the folks.

Tell us what the basis for the book is.

My brother's name, my youngest brother's name was Tim.

And he, when he was 46 years old, committed suicide in our father's backyard down in North Carolinas where they, my mother and my father had retired and he'd been living there for about seven years, suffering from depression. But he suffered from some undiagnosed learning disability. Dyslexia was. Was very.

Not common, but a lot of people had dyslexia, but it went unnoticed or undiagnosed. Teachers in grade school just thought the student was slow or dumb and didn't just let them drift to the side.

It was never diagnosed in Tim, but I suspect because he was very, very smart. Brain, really brain that worked really well, especially as he got older, but he always had trouble reading and writing.

And he may well have been diagnosed on the autism spectrum if people had been doing that in the middle of the country in the middle of the last century, but they didn't have the people didn't have the language. It wasn't. It wasn't. It just wasn't part of the culture.

The world was in the 50s and 60s in the United States, especially in the middle of the country. The world was perfect. Everything was just the way it's supposed to be. There was nothing wrong.

So somebody who had trouble with their peers in grade school or somebody had trouble learning to read or write, as my father said and my mother said also, it's just a phase. He'll get over it.

My father said that right up until the day my brother went out in the backyard with a gun and stuck it next to his back, right behind his right ear and what? A bullet in his head.

Received no help. Then, Mark. He received no help.

Say that again.

He received no help at all, Tim.

He received no help at all, no notice, no help. The last seven years. He did because he had a suicide attempt when he was living in New York near me that I. That I detail in the book.

And he spent 60 days in Bellevue, which is in the mental ward at Bellevue Hospital in New York, which is what you do if you threaten a police officer. He went into Fifth Piece Precinct, which is, I think, the one they use for Hill Street. Not Hill Street Blues, but NYPD Blue.

Okay. Yeah.

And he said, somebody beat me up. Stop me because I'm going to hurt someone or else hurt myself. And if you do that, then you have to spend 14 days.

But he was so angry and upset that they wouldn't let him out for 60 days until my parents took him out into their custody.

But not knowing what they were dealing with, he lived at home with them, medicated with Thorazine, which really just sort of calms you down for six, seven years until he find lady. My mother died and he was left alone with my father.

And he thought of himself as a bit of a burden to my father as my father tried to figure out how to mourn and grieve his wife of 54 years. And he finally. My brother just finally went on the back. The book's called Tim, Tim, Tim, Timmy, because my son was diagnosed at a young age as being.

Now they call it neurodiverse.

It was called on the Spectrum for a while, but it was when he was diagnosed, it was called Asperger's syndrome, which manifests as difficulty, high anxiety, difficulty in social situations, not being able to read what another person intuitively read, understand what another person is feeling or thinking or saying, what they mean by that. But my son got a lot of attention for it. He also was diagnosed with dyslexia. And he went on a pro.

We got him on a program called Orton Gillingham, which teaches. It was a brilliant program which teaches anybody who has trouble reading how to read. Because everybody's brain functions a little bit differently.

We now know this. Some people know this.

We now understand that there are differences in the way people's body chemistries work so that they understand the world in a different way. And we're beginning to make more accommodations for them. Understand that differences are actually a positive thing.

In fact, there's some science that says that people on the spectrum are actually a step forward, a leap forward in evolution. Much the way CRO Magnon was over Neanderthal in that the brain is just working faster, working better.

But anyway, my son received a lot of attention and a lot of help, pharmaceutical help and talk therapy help and understanding and special aids, special. What do they call it?

Special education classes in grade school and through high school, and even had accommodations because of the dyslexia, which slows everything down, reading and writing, while. Even through college.

But now he's got a bachelor of Science degree in wildlife biology from the University of Montana, a master's degree in environment and Natural Resources from the Ohio State University, and a law degree from the Lewis and Clark Law School. And he's working. Been working for the last year as a lawyer for the state of Hawaii in Honolulu.

That is amazing. Yeah, that's wonderful.

So he's thrived.

And the purpose of the book, really, besides being, for me, a way of mourning or grieving my brother, who I was unable to help because I didn't know, and even when I was able to help, I didn't know enough.

Is.

To parallel that with my son and to be a rallying cry for people to pay attention to your children, listen to them. Don't let them be shuttled off into a corner if they're slow to learn, because there are.

There are aids, there are help, there's science out there that can make life easier. If you're ADHD people, you're ocd. If you're a neurodiverse, finally, awareness. Anyways. Yeah, that's my soapbox. Yeah.

Yeah.

Trying to make people. It's my.

My way of telling my brother's story as it's entwined with my life story, because as he was going down the rabbit hole, I was living in New York, but I was getting more success as an actor. And he ended up when he was in New York, living in New York near me down on Fifth Street. He was working in the theater, too.

Not as a professional actor, but he built a theater company around he and a couple of friends who had come down from Martha's Vineyard, and they actually built a theater for themselves, a bricks and mortar theater for themselves, and called the People's Playhouse on Fourth Street, East Fourth Street.

And I got to know him better then I got to be closer to him in those last years there, as well as the last seven years when he was down with my mom and dad.

Now, that's something to be thankful for. Mark Metcalf with us tonight on Sports Talk New York. Now, suicide, Mark, that. That's one of the hardest of all losses to grieve. Do you agree?

Oh, yeah. There's no way that I've found to understand the absolute necessity for it.

And there's no way to take yourself, the survivor, out of the equation and not say in some way, what could I have done? What did I miss? What did I not hear? How did. It's very. I find it impossible to do that. I think it probably is for most people who've suffered. Yeah.

No, it's a loss.

And we know a lot about how the human mind works, and as I said before, we're knowing more and more about how the body's chemistry affects the mind, the electrical circuits in the brain, how they work and don't work sometimes. We know a lot more about the brain, but we don't know everything, and we can't save everybody, and we can't.

We don't understand necessarily how people make connections and when they don't, what it costs them. And a lot of suicides are really unnecessary. And I think my brother's was. I think he could have. He was.

He was so smart when he really tried to finally figure out what it is he loved. And he loved Shakespeare. He was really, really smart about Shakespeare and about Shakespeare in the theater.

He was, you know, a good actor, a good director, and just a good scholar of Shakespeare in his. In his years when he was working in New York and running this and trying. Helping run this theater.

The Bard is not easy to understand, Mark, either.

No, I've done a lot of Shakespeare, and it isn't easy to understand. It's surprising, though, if you find where the music is in the language, where just the sounds of it.

I knew Raoul Julia pretty well, who you may remember, he was Mr. Adams in the Adams Family, but he was a really brilliant Shakespearean actor in the park in New York and on Broadway, and he was Puerto Rican.

And I said, so how do you learn Shakespeare? How is it from. Since your native language is Spanish, excuse me, how is it for you? And he said, I don't really understand what I'm saying.

I just try to make the sounds, and I feel for the music of it. And I think he was pulling my leg a little bit. I think he did know more than he maybe was willing to admit.

It made a good story that he didn't know what he was saying.

But if you find the music in it, and there's a whole school of teaching Shakespeare where you just find the music, find the sounds and say it, and people get it. I mean, I've done the Tempest, which is not a children's play. A wonderful play with some great comedy in it.

Some of it is physical comedy, but a lot of it is verbal, textual comedy.

I've done it in front of kids who laugh their heads off because if you do it right, they understand the emotion and that's really where the laughter comes from.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Mark, how can people get a copy of Tim Tim Timmy, a very important book, a rallying cry for anyone may have a family member or a loved one that's struggling. Amazon.

Amazon, yes, it's on Amazon. They do it as. What do they call it? They print on demand. So if you order it, you'll get it in, I think two.

Well, right now I think because of Christmas, you'll get it after Christmas, but ordinarily you get it in two to three days on Amazon. It's also on Barnes and Noble website. It's not stocked in stock at Barnes and Noble yet.

It will be, I'm told, if once there's a little bit more demand. And if you go to your own local bookstore and ask them for it, it's now there's an IMBD number. I said, what's it called? I'm not.

I am bns, whatever that number is.

Right.

And Tim Timmy, it's, it's, it's copyrighted, it's registered. So your local book store can order it for you if you want to.

Outstanding.

And I recommend that. And if I bump into you ever on the street somewhere else and you have a copy, I'll be happy to sign it.

I will look for you, Mark. That is for sure. Now, it's been a pleasure having you with us. I thank you for taking time.

Thanks a lot for giving me the platform about my book and for having good questions about my career.

We wish you the best of luck with this poignant book. Tim Tim Timmy, folks. Available right now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Thanks again, Mark. We wish you all the best.

Oh, and also it'll be available as an e book in about three weeks, I think. Sorry. On lots of different platforms, wherever there are ebooks.

Outstanding. Well, Mark, thanks again and we'll talk to you soon. That's Mark Metcalf, ladies and gentlemen.

Up next on Sports Talk New York, we welcome in author John Hollinger. He's co written a book on the 100 Greatest Basketball Players of all time. Stay with us, folks. You are listening to Sports Talk New York.

Tune in every Sunday night at 8pm.

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And now back to the show. We are back with Sports Talk New York on WGB AM FM radio live from beautiful downtown Merrick, Long Island, New York.

But we're deep into the holiday season, folks, and I get to see all the lights on the way to the station and always calm, always bright, always happy this time of year to see all the lights and what they represent. It is eight days until Festivus for those who celebrate. And I hope you guys had a great Sunday and that you're enjoying the show tonight.

And we're going to continue our next guest, he is a senior writer for the Athletic. For the past two decades he has been at the forefront of basketball statistical revolution, inventing several advanced metrics, including PER.

His latest work is what we're going to discuss and it's titled the Basketball 100 the Story of the Greatest Players in NBA History. I welcome to Sports Talk New York tonight, John Hollinger. John, good evening.

Good evening. Thank you for having me on the show.

No problem. It's great to have you with us. Now, the Basketball 100, of course, edited by David Aldridge and yourself.

It really answers the toughest, most important questions that we have. Should we weight championship rings versus statistical profiles versus the eye test? Talk a little bit about that for us?

John well, we talked about that a lot internally and you'll be shocked to know that not everyone agrees.

So yeah, we had a pretty good process for building this whole List of 100 and obviously me and David Aldridge were at the kind of forefront or whatever, but we had our whole staff involved and we kind of did a whole ballot and everything for ranking the players. And then I also created a statistical method that's in the book called Goat Points.

That was just one way to look at the debate where it gave point values for various accomplishments and really only the only counted really the most impressive accomplishments, you know, MVPs or finishing the top five in MVP making all NBA. Those are the things that really move the needle on that.

So I thought that was a way to frame things and look at things and make sure that we were not memorializing kind of second tier players that we had seen play in person and had grown fond of, you know, and it was a way to achieve some fairness between eras, I thought, by doing it that way. So hopefully I succeeded in that goal.

And you'll see, I mean, you can see in the book the top 100 in go points doesn't match the top 100 that we came up with for the book, which is totally fine. I mean, there's a non statistical component to this too.

Obviously what I did, like about what I did in GO Points is that because it relied fairly heavily on award voting, that contemporary opinions mattered.

But I designed it as a starting point, not as an ending point.

Right.

And so that's where we got into the nitty gritty of discussing all these players versus each other.

And then I think if you, you know, if you flip through and read, I think we read, we created some pretty powerful kind of pictures of what these guys were like as players and as men and where they stood in kind of the zeitgeist of the whole conversation about basketball.

Now I remember that great coffee table book, the NBA at 50. And obviously we've moved onward and upward from that. But that was a great book. But of course that was about 30 years ago.

A lot of water under the bridge. A lot of players passed through the portals of the National Basketball Association.

You talk a little bit about the factors that were taken into consideration when compiling these 100 guys. Give us a little rundown there of the factors that you used, John.

Well, it came down to a lot of things. I mean, playing well in big games and big moments, I mean, that definitely mattered, right? That was a big thing.

I mean, you look at some of These guys who were, who were kind of big players in important games, even though they didn't have the overall career accomplishments of some other players, they still ended up in the top hundred. When you look at guys, you know, James Worthy, Robert Parrish, I'll use as two examples, I'll use a Laker and a Celtic.

So I'm not accused of favoring or hating one or the other. Right.

Yeah.

Since they're arch rivals. But I think there's some similarities there. And you know, they're both ended up in the same sort of strata.

And I tell you what, though, I think the hardest, the two hardest things to do in the book were one, compare short careers to long careers. Like Bill Walton was a perfect example. Where do you rank him? Because at his peak he was awesome. Right. But it's still brief.

And then the other thing was how to deal with players who are still active and still compiling their, their resumes. And, and what, you know, what do you say about where Luca Doncic should rank when you don't know how the movie ends yet?

And so the way I thought we had a pretty fair way of treating the active, where we basically said, look, let's just act like somebody shut a light switch off and their career just ended for whatever reason, right. At this point, let's not assume anything about what's about to happen and just take their body of work as it is.

If they decided to retire tomorrow or whatever, and where would that rank? And I think we ended up in a pretty fair spot with those guys because of that.

I mean, some people are going to say we had Nikola Jokic too low, for instance, especially if he ends up winning a fourth MVP this season, which it seems like he might.

But on the other hand, I think if you took his accomplishments to date when we published that book at the end of last season, that it was tougher to get him much higher than that. And so that's, you know, and that's because of where he is in his career.

Like he doesn't have as many high level seasons as these other guys in the top 30 yet. Because he's. Because of his age. Right. So inevitably he's going to keep moving up.

We are speaking with, excuse me, folks, John Hollinger and the basketball 100. Tonight on Sports Talk New York. The top five players that you have on the list, John, Michael Jordan, LeBron, Kareem, Bill Russell and Magic.

They could be an all time starting five.

Yeah, we got to figure out how to keep the floor space for Kareem. We Got to figure out Bill Russell's role in that. But I guess we're just going to fast break so much that it won't matter. Right.

Because we got Magic running the show. So we'll figure it out. Right?

Yeah. Use the baseball pass.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah. We'll get to just Russell rebounds outlets it. And we're off.

Yeah.

Now, the difficulty in assessing players from an earlier era, which the statistical record isn't nearly as complete as we have today, and whether great players like Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell would they have been transcended in any era.

Yeah, I mean, I personally think they would have, but I mean, that's my opinion. I mean, the game has definitely grown and improved in countless ways.

On the other hand, today's players have access to resources that these guys just didn't in terms of training and health and not having to fly commercial or take trains or whatever. So it cuts both ways. But, yeah, I think they absolutely would have still been transcendent players today.

And again, I think that's one of the things where. Where.

Because they kind of have all the numbers to build kind of a model of what things look like. And we don't. It's just very incomplete.

Yeah, I agree with that. Now, underrated guys who are basketball's most underrated guys, and we can consider maybe Steph Curry.

He's not given enough credit when it comes to compiling the list.

I don't know. I thought. I thought we gave Steph a decent amount of credit. I mean, some people might disagree. I mean, he's.

He's an immensely popular player right now, but I think. I think we have him pegged about right as far as his player in his place in history. Underrated players. I mean, you can argue that.

You can argue again that we still didn't have Nikola Jokic high enough players from the past. I wrote the section on Paul Arizona, and as I was doing it, I kind of realized that he'd been a little bit lost to history and.

Yeah.

And it was actually a pretty darn good player. So that was an interesting one. For me personally to write why Drexler, I would argue, was another one.

Just because he was so overshadowed in that moment by Michael Jordan that I think, I think it got a little bit lost how good he was. I think, I think Hakeem Olajuwon is a little bit like that too, who is just a legitimately, just an absolutely awesome player.

And I think that that Jordan shadow was so large that it doesn't quite get seen that way.

Another guy that falls a little bit under, under the spotlight is Patrick Ewing, I thought. Right.

Yeah. I mean, honestly, anyone who played for the Knicks or Lakers or Celtics, probably not.

It's all the guys who played other places that really get a little more pushed aside in the historical record.

Okay, maybe I'm a little prejudiced then, John.

Now, the decision making process that you guys went through for leaving certain guys off the list who came closest to making the cut, but did not at the end.

So at the end we were talking about a couple of. We were talking about, we were talking about Jimmy Butler's place, which is a really hard one.

He was a, he was one of the hardest players to slot because he, at his peak moments have been so good.

I mean, he's been the best player on two different NBA Finals teams, which very few people in the history of the league can say, including many who made the top hundred. On the other hand, not a super long career. A lot of like 60 game seasons where he didn't play the whole thing.

Not a ton of awards or all star teams or accolades like that, but his peak value just gave him a little bit of a leg up. And then the two guys who really got debated pretty hard at the end that didn't make it were Clay Thompson and Tim Hardaway, senior.

Sorry, warriors fans.

Yeah, I understand that. That is for sure. Now, the 24 second shot clock in the book, it's called the greatest innovation in the game's history.

David writes that without the shot clock, the NBA may not have survived. Talk a little bit more about that, John.

Well, I think it's really true.

And it was really uninteresting to watch, even though it was the correct strategy to salt away a victory. And so it was. And you can see at every level it's begun to be innovated I'm sorry, added.

When you look at college basketball, ended up adding it for the same reason high schools have started adding it as they, you know, been able to have the technology in house to actually have a, have a real shot clock operating and make it function. And so yeah, it was an incredible invention. And the, you know, there's this story of how they came up with 24.

It was like a mathematical guess basically at what would be a good timing. And it just stuck, it just worked. And so yeah, I think it's an incredible innovation that you could see.

I mean, I think once the NBA added it, college basketball inevitably realized that at some point they needed to add it or they were going to be the ones who not went out of business, but definitely were going to lose business. Right. So it's been a fantastic thing for the sport.

Yes, I agree with that. And certainly the facts of the 24 second clock are brought to light in the book now.

We're speaking with John Hollinger tonight, the co author of the basketball 100, which is the story of the greatest players in NBA history. You go into some players that I'm going to speak about, John, interesting folks may want to know.

There are 82 retired players on the list and 18 active players included. I don't know what the median age of the guys at the Athletic are that compiled the list and any old timers like me.

I, we have, we have a pretty healthy mix. Okay.

I, you know, without getting into too many specifics and I think, you know, especially toward the end of the process, just say the older guys probably had a little more juice in that just because they'd seen everybody, not everybody, but more of these guys play.

Right. The one that I was looking for on the list was Willis Reed and he made it, which I was glad about.

And some of the guys that I was thinking of, Gary Payton, now known for his defense. Right. He talked as much trash to his own guys as he did to his opponent. Go into Gary a little bit.

Yeah, great defender, but he was also, I mean, the main offensive player on a, you know, on a 64 win Seattle team that took Jordan's Bulls to six games in the finals and had the best record in the league another season, ended up winning a championship in Miami.

Although he was a secondary player by then, probably one of the best defensive guards in NBA history in terms of players 6, 4 or shorter who could really still impact the game with their, with their defense, you know, so a lead on that end, but then also still still a really Good offensive player. And that's a lot of, a lot of the best offensive guards have been somewhere between average to not even average on the defensive end, let's say.

So he's, he's a little bit of a historical anomaly that he was such a tough two way player.

That's what I was going to say. An anomaly certainly for Gary Payton. Now here's an interesting case folks. The worm, Dennis Rodman.

Now he didn't start playing basketball until he was age 20.

Now in a few short years he was working as a janitor at the airport to becoming one of the, actually one of the strangest super superstars that basketball's ever known.

He was an extremely difficult player. Yeah, to, to rate and value because on the one hand, like there were teams in years where he had a divisive effect, right.

Like he really hurt San Antonio's run that year. They were playing Houston in the conference finals. And so he was a negative.

He went from a negative there to being such a positive on the championship teams in Detroit and especially in Chicago where he embraced this very limited role of being a guy who would literally never shoot it, but is just going to get every rebound and defend Karl Malone in the Finals and just do that at such an elite level that it really impacted winning.

And I think that that was the thing that ultimately made it easier to include him despite his being a very secondary offensive player was just that he had such an impact on high games at the highest level and you know, having a serious impact on NBA Finals games, conference finals games, but those big stages and, and that's what got him in.

Interesting. Okay, now Allen Iverson, here's a guy known for his style and swagger really on and off the court. And Iverson was another interesting pick.

He was, you know, he was, he was an mvp. He was the best player in NBA Finals team. He, he definitely ended on a little bit of a down note, let's say like in Memphis.

But I mean his, his, his impact in Philadelphia, I think his impact on kind of the game and, and how it was played, it was pretty, it was pretty easy. Like if you look at his career accomplishments and everything, pretty easy.

To include him in the top 100 is more a case of plotting him against some of these other players and where he, and where he belonged in that hierarchy.

Right?

Now one guy I was glad to see that was rated very highly probably in my heyday, he was this before Michael Jordan came along, probably the greatest in history. You get a lot of argument from Wilt Chamberlain fans But Kareem Abdul Jabbar, so dominant in the painting that rules had to be changed.

Yeah.

And I mean a six time MVP who led a second year expansion team to a championship that pretty easy, pretty easy case to put him in with the all time brace. And to me, he has a very easy case. Almost as the third best player of all time behind Michael Jordan and LeBron James.

Really, when you look at both his staggering career length and then his accomplishments at his peak level, he was just so dominant in different ways. I mean, he could beat with the sky hook, yes, but he also could really handle the ball. Was more skilled than people give him credit for.

I think it wasn't a big part of the game then for big men to be skilled and handle the ball and take a rebound and go coast to coast themselves, but he had that stuff in his game. And then at his size, you know, could be a dominant shop blocker, rim protector and all that as well. So yeah, I don't know what else to add.

Like, yeah, he was, he was amazing. Yeah. So him at number three I thought was a pretty, pretty easy call.

Yup, Kareem. Folks, you younger kids, look him up. Kareem Abdul Jabbar, number 33. Certainly a dominant force.

Now what I meant to ask you earlier, John, John Hollinger is with us from the Athletic talking about his book the Basketball 100, which chronicles the 100 greatest players in NBA history. Per. Do you call it per or how do you refer to that?

I've always, I've always called it per, short for player efficiency rating.

Okay, can you go into that a little bit, how that's compiled for old timers who may not be familiar with it?

Yeah, it's basically a formula I created about 25 years ago now to rate basketball players, how efficient they were on the court, how basically how productive they were per minute.

And the core of it, it's a complex formula, but the basic idea at its core is it adds stuff for doing positive things and subtracts stuff for doing negative things. Right. So you know, you make it, you make it, you get an assist or you get a rebound or whatever, that's a plus. You miss a shot, that's a minus.

You commit a turnover, that's a big or minus. That's basically like the, the core idea, the math behind it is a little more complex than that.

You know, how much of these things actually were and how to make it all kind of add up and make sense when you aggregate it across the league. That's where the Devil is in the details a little bit. And I won't get into all that because it took me like five pages of a book to explain it all.

But the kernel of it, the core idea is it adds for the good stuff, subtraction, the bag stuff. It's minutes weighted. So it doesn't matter how much or how little you play. Basically it's just how effective you were in your playing time.

And it's set so that the league average is 15. Typically an MVP will end up around 30 and a kind of replacement level or bench player will end up below 10.

Okay, so there you go folks. Per learn it, love it, like it. Now, Steph Curry, casual fans may have seen him in the Olympic Games and been fascinated by the ballplayer.

He is so dominant outside the paint that he really seems to expand the boundaries of the court with his shooting. Talk a little bit about Steph Curry.

The thing that makes him hard to rate is that he has such an impact on the rest of the offense even when he doesn't have the ball.

Because teams are so terrified of him shooting a 3 that they will basically abandon their assignments to run out to him at the three point line and let somebody else have a layup.

And so it's like he generates all these free points for everybody even if he's standing 40ft from the hoop because he makes offense so much easier for everyone else.

And you can see that in a lot of his, in a lot of the warriors stats when he's on the court versus off the court or in their overall offensive production. So, you know, two time mvp, four time champion, I mean that's, you know, obviously as a case is one of the greatest players of all time.

Again, it's just where the, where it got really tricky was where do you, where do you slot him in among once you get into these elite of the elite, into the top 20 players.

Okay, is he, you know, where does he rank against Kevin Garnett or against Dirk or against, you know, some of these other all time great players that we're talking about.

Right, Yep, understood there. Well, John Hollinger, it's been a pleasure. I thank you for taking time out of your Sunday night to spend some with us here at Sports Talk New York.

I wish you guys the best of luck with the basketball one from the Athletic, of course, written with David Aldridge, the forward folks, by Sir Charles Barclay. It's available on Amazon. I thank you again, John. All the best with the book.

Thanks so much for having me on that.

Is John Hollinger ladies and gentlemen. Well, up next on Sports Talk New York, we welcome in author and former major league pitcher George Culver.

He's written his own book and his Life in and out of Baseball all stick around folks. The views expressed in the previous program did not necessarily represent those of the staff, management or owners of WGBB.

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