Podcast Listening Challenge Week 5: All The Smoke Podcast
This week I decided to switch to a sports based podcast just to add more variety to my listening experience. I also broke my rule because this podcast did not yet have 20 episodes and it is still fairly new but fuck it, Matt Barnes is a cool dude so I plugged in. I picked the All The Smoke Podcast because I occasionally see Matt Barnes giving good opinions on First Take and the name of the pod is sensational.
Matt Barnes hosts this pod with Stephen Jackson and since they are both former NBA players they clearly know their shit both on and off the court. I looked at the list of episodes and there were a plethora of celebrity guests so you could tell that the pod was in the early days whereby it needs big names to create the necessary buzz. It’s backed by Showtime so I’m sure the show will do well going forward. I picked the episode starring Stephen A Smith coz I mean who doesn’t love SAS, he’s big time tv. In hindsight this was a gift and a curse because Ive heard him speak multiple times and he tends to take over spaces because of his boisterous nature. On this podcast he did not fail to live up to expectations.
The hosts started asking SAS a few questions and after that he was in his zone and he started dropping gems and knowledge all throughout the podcast. The hosts gave SAS the room to flex his verbal skills which is generally great but you tend to forget about them because this is SAS’s world that they have just entered. It makes for an entertaining pod but you always like to hear more from the hosts especially as a first time listener. One memorable thing they did say was when they called SAS “The Jay-Z of Sports”, that’s a huge compliment that the man deserves because SAS brings it everyday on ESPN. That’s why he is one of the highest paid guys on the network.
SAS speaks about how anybody can be like him if you just work hard and get support from those above you and that every individual needs someone big in their corner. He reiterates that he made it through hard work and to be like a Jay-Z or Lebron James you need that God given talent that they were born with. Basically not everyone is special but if you grind hard you can be successful and that will make up for you not being special. SAS also discusses the recent Kapernick issue whereby he had a tryout with NFL teams and his involvement in brokering the whole deal. I was against how the NFL went about it but at the same time he made some valid points that both sides were not negotiating from a place of trust. This is probably why it all went pear shaped.
The one topic that got SAS extremely worked up was when they asked him about people questioning his blackness. This stems from the Kapernick issue and social media was saying his co-host Max Kellerman was blacker than him because of his position on the issue. I would be equally pissed off if someone revoked my black card. Clearly SAS wasn’t feeling it and he had to address it on this podcast. Below is the exchange in question.
SAS also goes into detail about the relationships that he has with players and how transparent he is with them and his close relationship with Allen Iverson. SAS drops gems all podcast and this is certainly a good listen. SAS delivers and the hosts let him lead, i will need to listen to another episode in the future to get the full vibe of the hosts and the podcast with Hurricane SAS.
Till next week’s Podcast, you can read about last week’s podcast here: Week Four (Sadza in the Morning Podcast)
