Last Dance with the Bulls, first grope with Ryan Dempster
The best of media...the worst of media
One of the things we were least looking forward to with the launch of Crane’s vanity project known as the Marquee Sports Network was the inevitable omnipresence of Ryan Dempster on the network.
For some reason the Cubs management just loves his cloying, cringe-worthy attempts at humor, and giving him a huge role on the network was, for them, a no-brainer, in that if you have no brains, it’s a great idea.
Late last week the TV version of his awful Cubs Convention Friday night fake talk show debuted. Like most things with Marquee, I watched it so you don’t have to.
As you would expect, Dempster is doing the show from his house, and just like you’d expect he doesn’t know enough to prop his computer up, so we’re getting a really clear shot of his nostrils.
The weird light wood paneling behind him looks an awful lot like he’s doing this from his sauna. Man, is David Kaplan gonna be pissed that he’s stealing his broadcasting from the bathroom schtick.
Is that a propellor blade haphazardly slapped up on Dempster’s wall? What the hell is going on? Who did the set design, Babe Winkelman?
Why is Dempster wearing a smedium t-shirt? For fuck’s sake at least put on a collared shirt. Or at least a shirt they sell in the men’s section.
He says his talk show is socially distanced. “When I was a player I was usually 60’6” from my closest teammate, who was where? At home.” How profound. He’s like Charles Kuralt without the secret second family living in an RV.
But I also remember Dempster’s start in game one of the 2008 NLDS when most of his pitches missed the catcher by a good six feet. That was some anti-social distancing.
This “monologue” of his has an actual laugh track. Seriously. I had low expectations for this show and it’s already fallen far below them.
In his rambling opening spiel he says we miss things like E-ramis Ramirez’s 2008 walk-off against the Brewers and Coco Cordero (and yes, we do), and what he misses is that after the game, Lou Piniella celebrated it by “crushing a plate of crispy shrimp in his tighty whiteys.” Gee, thanks for the image, Demp.
But, what Dempster says he personally misses most are the days of sitting around the hotel room with the guys and a couple of guitars. Shoot me. Can you imagine how awful that would have been? The worst things in sports are athletes who aren’t funny but think they are and any athlete who thinks he’s a musician. Dempster’s both? This should not be surprising.
He says he hopes we can get back to the park soon, because after a tough day at the office people love to go the ballpark to have a beer and boo the shit out of mediocre pitchers. OK, he didn’t say the last part, but come on, it was implied.
After the first break he does a thank you to his sponsor, Sloan and emphasizes the importance of washing your hands. When I think of Sloan I think of toilets, and I am not washing my hands in there.
His first guest is the best player in baseball…no, sorry, not David Bote, the other one. Mike Trout. How did he get Trout? Why did he get Trout? We’re going to find out.
Dempster is really good at not actually asking questions and just saying something, then stopping and waiting for his guest to start talking. He has almost as much TV presence as Bill Simmons. Think about that.
Trout says he has a rehabbing Angels teammate living with him and his wife. But it’s OK, they told Mr. Roper that she’s gay.
Dempster then launches into a story he thinks is hilarious. He and Trout have the same agent (oh, so that’s how this happened), and when Ryan was pitching for the Red Sox he gave up a 700 foot homer to Trout in Anaheim. Their agent was sitting right behind home plate and as Dempster got a new ball from the catcher he saw his agent high fiving people. Uh, yeah. His important client just hit a homer. The guy working on a tight 15 minutes to try out at the Chuckle Hut, who is on the mound doesn’t really matter.
Dempster says he’s super impressed that Trout was so good so soon, and he asks him what it was like to have a superstar like Albert Pujols to lean on when Mike made his debut at 19 years old. That was 2011. Pujols was playing for the Cardinals. Nice research.
The segment mercifully ends, but not before a wacky skit right out of Jimmy Fallon’s rejection bin. (If such a thing exists.)
Trout’s wife is pregnant and Dempster has four kids so he’s decided to give Trout a diaper changing tutorial. Dempster says knowing how to change a diaper will make your wife love you. I have a Jake Peavy joke around here somewhere. I can’t find it. Let’s move on.
Dempster has a creepy baby doll to demonstrate on, where Trout has a stuffed bunny. Not surprisingly, Trout does a much better job.
Dempster’s second guest is Anthony Rizzo. This is a no-risk situation. Rizzo is everything you need to be on a talk show. He’s friendly, he’s game and well, he’s just about the most likeable guy around.
It gets off to a weird start when Rizzo says the thing he’s looking forward to about baseball eventually returning is “hugging a lot of guys.” OK, maybe he’s too game.
Dempster asks what Rizzo’s up to. (The great questions never end.) Rizzo’s answer is very relatable. He says he’s doing a lot of chores. “Yesterday I cleaned our second garage.” OK, maybe not that relatable.
No shock, Rizzo and Dempster both really loved Tiger King. Dempster says, “We have to talk about it.” They do not talk about it.
Rizzo says he’s been rewatching The Sopranos and just ordered a new robe and slippers. Uh, sure.
When asked what teammate he misses the most, he gives the only correct answer. Jon Lester. We all miss Jon Lester.
And the best part is that Rizzo says he’s been calling and texting Jon and he’s getting ghosted.
Rizzo points out the balls on the bookcase behind him, and says a lot are from when he broke the hit by pitch record. He then proves it.
Apparently every show (it’s be great if this were the only episode) is going to end with a fake celebrity voicemail left for Dempster. And I must admit, this is great. Not good. It’s great.
The voicemail is from Harry Caray telling Dempster to stop doing his awful impression of him. Whoever is doing voicemail Harry is perfect. He has the real, not cartoonishly exaggerated, voice down. Here’s part of what “Harry” said to Dempster.
“They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But not in this case, of course. Please cease and desist the imitation because it’s not very good, and people don’t really enjoy it as much as you think they do. Anyway, just let it go Ryan. Don’t do it any more please.”
Ryan says he’ll take it to heart “and work hard on that.” That son of a bitch isn’t going to stop is he?
Next week’s guests (oh, crap this thing is weekly?) are my beloved Greggie Maddux and Derrek Lee. Dempster says that between their time in Florida and the Cubs, he and Lee were teammates for 12 seasons. Hasn’t Derrek suffered enough?
Unless you were living under a rock, you know that ESPN debuted The Last Dance last night. We saw the first two episodes of the 10 episode documentary on the 1997-98 Bulls. It was, as touted, incredible. And, I have thoughts.
Every episode is going to focus, roughly, on a month from that season, but they’ll flash back to previous years when needed. So last night the first episode was in theory about the preseason, and the second episode was the first month of the season.
Right away we see that there’s going to be way too much Michael Wilbon in this thing. As in, any Wilbon would be too much.
They show Michael Jordan’s emphatic answer to Mark Schwartz’s question right after the fifth championship about whether or not the Bulls would bring everybody back. “Rebuilding? No one’s going to guarantee that rebuilding is gonna be three, four, five years. The Cubs have been rebuilding for 42 years.” Man, remember when digs like that actually hurt?
It’s early, but guys, I don’t think this documentary going to reflect that well on Jerry Krause.
Jerry Reinsdorf (who looks like he’s wearing kabuki makeup—what is with the rouge dots on his cheeks?) is asked why he hired Jerry Krause to be the GM when he “bought” the Bulls. First off, Reinsdorf didn’t “buy” the Bulls. He bought into the team. He was the chairman, but for a long time he wasn’t the majority owner. In fact, Lamar Hunt (of the Kansas City Chiefs Hunts) owned a greater percentage of the team than Reinsdorf for many years. Anyway, how’s this for a ringing endorsement of Krause? Reinsdorf said, “Everybody I talked to said don’t touch the guy.”
To be fair, they might not have been saying to not hire Krause, just to literally not touch him.
Then we get into Krause’s immortal, “players don’t win championships, organizations do” quote. Forever we’ve been hearing that Krause was misquoted. So is this going to devolve into 10 hours of how Bernie Lincicome broke up the dynasty?
Reinsdorf says he still likes Phil Jackson, but then says something that makes you think that just might be total bullshit. “Jerry [Krause] brought him to Chicago to be an assistant coach. If he hadn’t done that, you’d have never heard of Phil Jackson.”
Ouch, babe.
Did you remember the Bulls played in that stupid NBA International “tournament” before the season? I didn’t. But they did. They went to Paris, maybe for the tournament, but more likely so Toni Kukoc could smoke.
Footage shows MJ wearing a beret in Paris and David Stern making fun of it.
Now we flash back to the pre-Jordan Bulls? I’m just old enough to remember the Bulls pre-MJ. But only because Orlando Woolridge played for them and I thought he was cool. Oh, and I thought Jawaan Oldham had the weirdest name. I was 10, what did I know?
Did I remember Bob Costas doing games on WGN? Nope.
Rod Thorn says the pre-MJ Bulls weren’t very good. Then, I wrote this in my notes:
”But man could they do coke.” They could and we’re going to get to a line that MJ found really, really funny.
But before that, we flash back to MJ at North Carolina. His mom, Deloris (who still looks like she’s 50 years old) reads a letter home to her from Michael, buttering her up and then asking for money and stamps.
James Worthy said that Jordan served notice early on at UNC. “I was better than he was,” Worthy said. “For about two weeks.”
Oh good, Billy Packer’s in this. #thingsnobodysays
Roy Williams: “Michael Jordan’s the only player who could turn it on and off. And he never frickin’ turned it off.” I was watching the unedited version on ESPN, did they bleep out “frickin’” on ESPN2? Roy, there are kids watching!
Cue the obligatory shot from the 1984 Draft. David Stern mustache alert!
Did Chad Ford have the Blazers drafting Jordan over Sam Bowie? Of course he wouldn’t have. He probably would have advocated for the Bulls drafting Mel Turpin and Jordan going ninth to the Kansas City Kings.
Thorn says the Bulls were lucky that the draft was before the Summer Olympics that year.
“Michael became the most popular amateur player in the world because of the Olympics.” Well, sure because of the boycott. Otherwise I’m sure it would have been the USSR’s Alexander Volkov.
By the way, did you know Jordan wasn’t the only 1984 Olympic gold medalist the Bulls took in that draft? They also took Carl Lewis in the 10th round. Seriously, that Carl Lewis. Now you know why the draft is only two rounds now
OK, now to the line that made MJ legitimately laugh hard. Off camera the interviewer said that the 1984 team was referred to as “the Bulls traveling cocaine circus.”
I’m not above quote Tweeting myself:
Now for some old takes exposed, featuring Walt “Clyde” Frazier saying, “Michael’s got to realize he’s not seven foot, so he’s not going to carry a team.”
Heh, heh. Whatever.
A couple of then Lakers looked back in awe.
Pat Riley: “As a rookie, he was not a rookie.”
Magic Johnson: “The dude was just mmm-mmm-mmm.”
Now we go back to the Bulls in Paris and shots of young Jeffrey Jordan trying to dribble. That brings back flashbacks for Illini fans.
MJ got the MVP trophy for that Paris tournament. Did that thing even make it past the locker room trash can? Sacre bleu! No. Of course it didn’t.
Great clip of Scott Burrell sitting on the bench at the end of the “championship” game in Paris and Ron Harper giving him shit about finally winning something. Harper and him hug, jokingly, and then Burrell asks MJ if he’s going to hug him. As we’re going to see a lot of in this, MJ is never in a mood to humor Scott Burrell.
Krause and Phil Jackson’s relationship was so bad that Reinsdorf had to fly out to Montana and negotiate Phil’s 1997-98 contract himself. It was for just one year and Krause was pissed because he was ready to start the terrible Tim Floyd experiment, and told Phil that even if he went 82-0 this was his last season with the Bulls. Then Reinsdorf is asked about Krause inviting everybody on the team to his stepson’s wedding, but not Phil (he even invited Floyd). Reinsdorf says what we’re all thinking. “I always say, if you don’t invite me to a wedding you’re doing me a favor.”
Bill Wennington said that when Phil handed out the team handbook for that final season, the laminated cover had “The Last Dance” printed on it. Hey, at least he didn’t make the guys read “Sacred Hoops.”
The second episode focuses a lot on our boy, Scottie Maurice Pippen. Obviously, I was in awe of Jordan, but man, I love Scottie Pippen.
He grew up in a tiny town of about 3,500 people, and said this of his parents.
“My mom and my dad were very strong people,” Scottie said. “They were about survival. Obviously they that’s what they were about, they had 12 kids.”
Uhh, Scottie, it sounds like they may have been about something else. Wink, wink.
We see highlights of Scottie just abusing dudes in whatever half-assed conference Central Arkansas played in. I know Krause liked to think he discovered Pippen, but he was a star in NAIA and then lit up the pre-draft camps. Even if Krause were first on him, everybody knew by the time it mattered. But hey, Krause suckered the Sonics into trading Olden Polynice for him. So there’s that.
Now we get to the Scottie awful contract saga. In 1991 he signed a seven year deal for $18 million. Total. Yikes.
Reinsdorf said he told Scottie not to sign it. He says he told him it was a bad deal. Gee, that’s nice. You know what Reinsdorf didn’t do? He didn’t offer Scottie a better fucking contract.
Scottie missed the first two months of the 97-98 season because he had foot surgery. He could have had it right after the ‘97 playoffs, but didn’t. Why? Let Scottie explain.
“I’m not going to fuck my summer up rehabbing for a season.”
OK, then.
Phil is asked if he blames Scottie for doing it. Phil says no and that in his mind it was Scottie’s way of matching his salary to his games played that year. Yes, Phil’s a weirdo, but you can see why his best players have always liked him.
So, the Bulls are going through preseason and the early season without the second best player in team history. Things are not going well. And MJ is not having it. We see him in practice yelling at Harper and Kukoc, and Burrell. Oh, so much yelling at Scott Burrell. This is going to be 10 hours of him just berating Scott Burrell isn’t it? Fine by me.
Now, we flashback to MJ’s second season, and in game three he lands funny and breaks his foot. He had never missed a game in his life. Not in high school, not in college and not in his first year with the Bulls. He didn’t know what to do with himself. So, he talked the Bulls into letting him go back to college. Hey, just like Marcus Stroman!
It really made no sense for the Bulls to play MJ in 85-86. They should have just tanked. Had they not made the playoffs, they’d have been guaranteed a top seven pick. Just look at what might have been.
First seven selections, 1986 NBA draft:
Brad Daugherty (Cleveland) - Would rather have been a stock car driver.
Len Bias (Boston) - Died two days later.
Chris Washburn (Golden State) - Noted stereo stealer.
Chuck Person (Indiana) - He was literally a person who chucked.
Kenny “Sky” Walker (New York) - Won a dunk contest, which was also the extent of his shooting range.
William Bedford (Detroit) - Was in and out of Betty Ford more often than Gerald.
Roy Tarpley (Dallas) - Was really good when sober. All nine games.
The Bulls didn’t want to let MJ come back, but while he was “studying” at UNC he was really just playing basketball. He knew he was ready and demanded to play at the end of the season. The team told him he had a 10 percent chance of reinjury and that could have been potentially career ending. Michael said, “theres’ a ninety percent chance I won’t get hurt.”
Reinsdorf tried to analogize that, “if you had a really bad headache and I gave you a bottle with ten pills. Nine would cure you, but one would kill you. Would you take it?”
MJ said, “How bad’s the fucking headache?”
The real answer is why not just take hydroxychloroquine? Many people are saying good things, very good things from many people that, that shit cures everything!
This section is great, but honestly, there are not enough shots of Stan Albeck’s perm.
The Bulls let Jordan play, but on a strict time limit that they pulled right out of Krause’s ass. Seven minutes per half.
“Stan got berated,” MJ said. “If you play [me] for one second beyond 14 minutes you are fired on the spot.” Or, as Vinny Del Negro can tell you, John Paxson will pull your tie.
The Bulls had a huge game late in the season at Indiana. A win and they would make the playoffs. Jordan hit his time limit with :31 seconds left. Albeck had to take him out. Jordan was livid. He was sure the Bulls were tanking (they were.) Ironically, Pax made a shot against the Pacers to help get them in the playoffs. Cost them a top seven draft pick. Got them Brad Sellers and a first round playoff matchup with the infamous ’86 Celtics instead. And you know damned well if they’d missed the playoffs that Krause would have gone full sleuth mode and taken Sellers anyway.
If the time restriction was so serious, why did they take it off for the playoffs? Makes no sense. But they did. So yeah, they were tanking.
Jordan, rested and ready, lit up the Celtics for 49 points in game one, but the Bulls lost. The best part of that game? Skip Caray was on the call for TBS!
MJ went golfing with Danny Ainge and two writers the next day. I can’t imagine spending four hours with Danny Ainge on purpose, but whatever. After they dropped Ainge off, Jordan told Mark Vancil (one of the writers), “Tell your boy DJ [Dennis Johnson], I got something for him tomorrow.” Michael had something, all right. A playoff record 63 somethings. This part is worth it just for the shots of Bill Walton trying to guard MJ, alone. Brutal.
Now, back to 1997, the Bulls are in Seattke and Scottie is with them but not yet playing. You have to read Kelly Dwyer’s post on this (and five other things) to get the full picture of just how awful the scene was of a drunk Scottie berating Krause on the bus.
Scottie, reflecting on that time says simply, “Time to go shopping.”
He would demand a trade and told the media he’d never play for the Bulls again. The Bulls were 0-4 on the road, needed double OT to beat a dog shit Clippers team to get their first road win, and things were no bueno.
Would they ever get better? I guess we’ll find out next Sunday at 8 p.m.!
We’ll save the Benkowski Sports Spectacular for the next newsletter. Instead we part today with this gem. It’s an inside joke, but many of you would get it anyway. If you don’t, just know that Chuck liked Corey about as much as I liked Chris Coghlan and FYC did not really mean Forget Your Critics: