Plunging into the mind of Mr. Good Things

November 26th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanE

Like everyone else around the blogowebs, we have a bit of thing for Gus Johnson. He’s got the one thing all sports fans demand, the one common denominator that cancels out most every broadcasting deficiency: enthusiasm, and lots of it.

That was never really in doubt, but never was it more on focus than in Bill Simmons’ latest podcast. Simmons interviews Johnson, whose interview is alternately entertaining, confusing, profound and, you guessed it, enthusiastic. Fortunately, Stop Vitale has a few highlights:

On the Knicks: “They have no chemistry. Like I don’t know if they like each other, they don’t hang out with each other, they don’t drink beers with each other, they don’t go chase girls with each other, they don’t go to clubs with each other. They don’t have one sun to orbit around, it’s a bunch of different planets in their own rotation instead of having one planet, one personality, one light, that one leader, they don’t have leadership man. They don’t have that one guy that everyone orbits around. A guy that keeps everything nice and cool and warm.”

“They need to talk to each other, it’s all about communication. We as guys sometimes, because we have these big egos, this macho crap, sometimes we need to take a page from the girls and sit down and have a conversation and talk about what’s going on and how we can improve our interpersonal relationships– you have a good day too sir– I’m getting out of a New York City cab.”

On whether he would want to play w/Marbury: “Yeah I would. He’s a dope basketball player… If I played with Stephon Marbury I’d be his big cheerleader, but at the same time I’d be hard on him. I’d be like, hey man, me and you need to go in the back and fight because you’re not playing right. We need to back in there and just knuckle up because you are way too talented.” (Simmons laughs… Gus does not).

On David Lee: “My favorite player on the Knicks is David Lee. When he’s on the floor, my nickname for him is Mr. Good Things, because good things happen when he is on the floor. He’s unselfish, he knows how to pass the ball… When he’s on the floor they play better, which is ironic because they got all these brothas on the team and David Lee is the only white guy on the team. I see him by himself a lot. It’s a hard fit. He told me one time, ‘Listen man, I kinda understand what it’s like to be the only black guy in a white office.’”

Unsurprisingly, my nickname for Gus Johnson has always been Mr. Good Things. Great minds, right?