Some of you don’t have NBA TV. And for that, I’m truly sorry.
Because Tuesday Fan Night has now become the best series on television, as Gary Payton and Chris Webber (and even to my complete shock and awe, Ahmad Rashad at times) have crafted the most entertaining show these eyes have seen for some time (since Always Sunny in Philadelphia concluded its latest season probably for those of you not into unspecified generalizations).
Last night, I flipped over there just mainly to confirm the Hornets/Lakers tip-off time, but five minutes later it had become evident that none of the horrible games that were on could possibly be better than The Glove and CWebb show. Mostly, GP spends his time yelling out relative non sequiturs in a high-pitched voice and repeating them incessantly for the next five seconds and Webber enjoys pointing and mocking Ahmad while spending exactly none of his time looking near the camera.
That probably sounds horrible. But it’s actually the exact opposite.
Let’s go to the tape.
Borrowing a strategy from Payton’s player of the week selection, the best segment last night was a 1A and 1B tie between the Joe Johnson “in the grocery store people don’t know who I am” bit and the Top 10 Plays of the Week viewing, during which they unleash the fantastic “Hueh HUEH hueh” (that’s my spelling of their horrible French stereotype impersonation of Tony Parker) about a half dozen times and a reaction to the amazing Pau Gasol-led fastbreak that can only be described as soul-pleasing.
In addition to the high comedy, both guys clearly know what they’re talking about when it comes to hoops so they do also provide a poor man’s version of the astute, unique analysis that you get from Kenny and Chuck on Inside the NBA as well. This isn’t the best representation of that, but here is their interview with CP3 last night where even GP gets into serious mode and you can see Webber ask one of his signature, conversationally insightful questions (though he does even like to repeat himself on those quite a bit). Another example is GP’s throwaway line last night about how he thinks Andre Miller is the best PG in the East — something to which I was like “Really??” at first, then was like “Yeah, probably could be if you don’t fall for the young’n hype of Devin, Rondo, etc.”
(Although entirely unrelated to this Tuesday Fan Night discussion, Kevin Pelton of Basketball Prospectus had a notably fantastic breakdown of his “Best Point Guards of the East” yesterday, in which he lists Rondo, Devin and Jameer. Better still is that this is only his “Part I” so we’re likely to get even more in-depth stat stuff from him on these guys shortly. I’ll keep ya posted.)
In short, you need to be watching these guys. And if you don’t have NBA TV, just remember to check the Tuesday Fan Night videos on NBA.com every Wednesday morning. (And if you still haven’t already had enough of yesterday’s links for some reason, here’s their discussion on LeBron’s crab dribble, an interview with Ewing Senior and Junior and GP picking “his team” the Hornets to win last night)
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