Jerry Colangelo

Tom Brennaman had already been hired as the Arizona Diamondbacks lead play-by-play guy.

He- Jerry Colangelo hired him two years prior from the Chicago White Sox.

Basically, he was a free agent.

Brennaman came on, he was there for two years.

She said, "You've done everything else in the game.

Why not try it?" And, uh, I tried it.

I did some fall league games, and Jerry Colangelo was listening, the president was listening, and I got that job eventually, um, because Tom Brennaman thought I was good enough to do it, [smacks lips] and I've been doing it now for 25 years.

So very, very, very fortunate.

Uh, and then, and then you go catch up with John Calipari, who I knew from the days in, in, in New Jersey with the Nets years ago, when I first started working with the Nets and Cal was the head coach.

Um, And then you walk around and you have a brief interaction with Jerry Colangelo.

And then you may see Adam Silver.

And you walk through and there's Kevin Garnett.

And a lot of fun at Suns swag.

And you should also be able to meet a couple of the players.

And that's happening tonight at Mortgage Matchup Center.

Suns Media Day is Monday, September 28th.

I mean, I hear you.

I get it.

I like the idea of a big man parking it in the paint and banging like Moses Malone, one of my favorite and most underrated players of all time.

But I also love Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's finesse game in the skyhook on the perimeter.

When you and I burnt up on Friday morning, I didn't realize it could get that hot.

But the Jerry Colangelo Golf Classic was in Phoenix over the weekend, and it was really cool to be able to walk around, and two steps to your right is Paul Pierce, and three steps behind you is Julius Irving, and then you see Sean Marion, and you're talking to him about the weather and breakfast burritos, and then you look to your right and you see Charles Barkley driving a golf cart, and It just like, it's like a basketball, not to mention Cheryl Swoops and Cynthia Cooper and Diana Taurasi.

Like I could go on forever.

Like we would go past the hour if I talked about all the names that we saw and how cool it was to see those names.

But what was even cooler was to see that over the weekend, Devin Booker, Jerry Colangelo and Charles Barkley shared a stage together.

You talk about eras of Suns legacy and greatness and a rich history.

And I know some people, when we saw some people on social media be like, oh, but they never won a championship.

Just thinking about, you think about the history of Phoenix Suns basketball, and you think about the names most synonymous with the franchise itself.

But I think it was a great experience for them and for me, obviously.

It's to go with that class and just, you know, Jerry Colangelo does a first-class thing, whatever he does.

It was pretty heavy stuff.

When you look back at your time, the seven seconds or less, let's talk about that, because that kind of revolutionized what the NBA was doing.

One time when after 9-11, a lot of the baseball teams came back to their home stadiums and honored their first responders and civil servants.

I was friends at the time with the owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks named Jerry Colangelo, and Jerry invited me to come and sing this song during the game when they honored those people I mentioned.

I also sang it after the shootings at Columbine in a large gathering there.

And at the end of the song, it was a chilling moment when everyone in the audience stood to their feet and joined hands.

But yeah, he's doing real stuff, obviously, with the Tigers, and has also been in the NHL, right? I- it, with, with the Blackhawks.

Like, in your conversations with, with NHL executives, and maybe sports ex- executives in general, do you think at, like, how, how easy a transition, how many of these guys have working knowledges of multiple sports and, and how much do you need to have been ingrained in the sport for years and years and years and know everybody as opposed to working with the team and getting advice and just being a smart decision-maker? Like, c- could we see somebody have success in multiple sports as an executive? I, I know we've seen it as, like, a higher-up and, and Jerry Colangelo was, like, but he wasn't making actual roster decisions.

Could we see this one day?

Uh, I mean, I think Jeff Greenberg was a totally legit candidate that I would've seen make a ton of sense just based on, on knowing him.