1. Earlier this week, JJ Redick and Kendrick Perkins generated headlines for a very heated spat on First Take regarding MVP voting.
Perkins accused Nuggets star, Nikola Jokić of stat-padding and incorrectly claimed that 80% of MVP voters are white.
“What do those guys have in common? I’ll let it sit there and marinate. You think about it,” Perkins said on a previous show. “So that’s my whole thing. Why do we move the goalposts for certain people, but for others we don’t?”
Redick then went after Perkins and First Take.
“Stephen A. [Smith], I mean no offense to you. I mean no offense to First Take. Because I think this show is extremely valuable. It is an honor to be on this desk every day. It really is, but what we’ve just witnessed is the problem with this show,” Redick started. “Where we create narratives that do not exist in reality.
“The implication, what you are implying, that the white voters that vote on NBA [awards] are racist. That they favor white people,” Redick continued as Perkins began to interject. “You just said that. Yes, you did.”
Cut to Thursday’s Inside the NBA and Shaquille O’Neal proclaiming that he thinks Giannis Antetokounmpo is the MVP. That was the opening Charles Barkley needed to mock the First Take dust-up and play off the “white voters vote for white players” theme.
“You’re only voting for him because he’s black,” Barkley told Shaq.
It’s not the line that made this funny. It’s the reaction to Barkley going there. Nobody on the panel knew what to say so there was just uncomfortable laughter for several seconds. Barkley not only cracked himself up, but Shaq, Ernie Johnson and Jamal Crawford, filling in for Kenny Smith, lost it and Barkley was just so proud of himself for the line.
Barkley then took one more shot at Perkins saying, “I saw it on the internet. It’s gotta be true. Everything you see on the internet is true, America.”
Johnson then summed up the scene perfectly, telling Barkley, “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”
2. I've written a couple of times over the years that CBS and ESPN should find a way to let Dick Vitale call a couple of NCAA tournament games since he had never done that for a national audience in his career.
Vitale told me Thursday that CBS reached out and asked him to work one or two games this year, but he declined the offer out of loyalty to ESPN.
3. Raptors guard Fred VanVleet ended up getting fined $30,000 for his expletive-filled critique of NBA officiating that we told you about in Thursday’s Traina Thoughts.
It seems that VanVleet had done a favor for other NBA players because now they don’t have to bash the refs themselves. They can just give VanVleet a shout-out like the Celtics’ Marcus Smart did last night.
4. Jets players Sauce Gardner and Breece Hall pleaded with Aaron Rodgers to come to New York with a five-minute YouTube video (that should’ve been one minute) in which Gardner burned the cheesehead he wore around Lambeau Field after the Jets beat the Packers last season.
Meanwhile, it appears that Rodgers has big summer plans.
5. The best quarterback in the NFL is also one hell of a beer pong player.
6. This week's SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast is an all–”Traina Thoughts” edition with our weekly contributor, Sal Licata, from WFAN radio and SNY TV in New York.
On this episode, we discuss the rumors that have started already about Tom Brady returning to the NFL and argue about whether Brady would actually unretire for a second time and come back to play. We also talk about the backlash that was heaped upon Stephen A. Smith and Molly Qerim after the duo dismissed hockey talk on an episode of First Take, Ja Morant going on Instagram Live with a gun while at a strip club and the Chris Rock Netflix special.
Sal also pulls back the curtain and gives the inside scoop on going viral recently for a clip of his losing it on a caller who blamed Sal for the Mets’ losing the NL East last year to the Braves.
You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Google.
You can also watch the SI Media Podcast on YouTube.
