The NBA hangs its hat on being the player empowerment league. One can argue that this reputation was most prominently displayed back in 2014, when the solidarity shown by Los Angeles Clippers players and numerous others within the NBA brotherhood played a role in longtime owner Donald Sterling’s lifetime ban following a series of racist comments captured and released by TMZ.

It was a monstrous event, one that transcended basketball and garnered attention worldwide. Now, the saga is at the center of Blackballed, Quibi’s new docuseries that examines the reaction from the locker room and society at large, along with the way this particular incident sat at the intersection of sports and culture in America. The first three episodes were released on Monday, May 18, with new episodes dropping every day.

Dime caught up with Matt Barnes, the retired hooper and co-host of the All the Smoke podcast with Stephen Jackson. Barnes, a member of that Clippers squad who appears in Blackballed, spoke about being at the center of this firestorm, his reaction to the doc, the role this saga played in the player empowerment era in the NBA, and much more.

How are you doing and how have you been keeping busy over the last couple of months?

I’m good. With the pandemic, it gives me time to actually sit down and spend more time with my kids. I’m a single father of three, so for me, I’m traveling for ESPN or Showtime or Complex. So I’ve been able to just sit home and do online school with my older twins that are 11, and then I have a 16 month old who runs the house, so just chasing him all around the neighborhood. So, we’ve been blessed, considering the circumstances.

When did you get approached to be involved in this documentary and how eager were you to get involved when it got floated to you?

Chris Paul’s a good friend of mine and I don’t remember exactly when he approached me, but he just said, “Hey, we’re doing something on the Sterling stuff,” and I’m just like, “Sh*t, count me in.” Because like I said, I’m someone who has dealt with racism from childhood into my 40’s. So, I just thought it would be important as players, for us to tell our side, because during that time we were trying our best to focus on the task at hand, which was the Golden State Warriors and the NBA playoffs. Doc did a great job of kind of shielding us from the media and allowing us to kind of have some sort of normalcy, and so we never really got a chance to speak on it. So, I thought it was just good to hear guys’ thoughts a few years removed and then finally the project coming to life six years later.

I’m guessing you’ve gotten a chance to watch it. Can I get some thoughts on the finished product?

I thought it was good. I thought it was really good. I thought it was, to reiterate, I just thought it was important for us to be able to tell our side. For Chris to be able to do what he did, being the president of the Player’s Association and how much responsibility he had, and he had his hands full in the process as well, along with leading our team in the playoffs. And then seeing what DeAndre thought, and J.J. thought, I wish we could’ve got Blake to talk, and Jamal Crawford, too, because those guys were integral parts of the situation, but I was really happy with the way it turned out, and Doc’s part in everything. So, I was just really proud that we kind of got to say our piece, and we’re in a time now where content is needed. I think it was very quality content that, from my understanding, everyone has been enjoying.

Could you take me through the period of time between learning that TMZ had something and then learning specifically what TMZ had? Because in the doc, it kind of comes off like everyone expected it to be a headache, but nothing to the extent that it ended up being.

Yeah, we didn’t really have a clue, and me being in L.A. since ’98, going to UCLA, I know how TMZ does stuff. They will over-hype it, or do stuff, but to me, I think they almost kind of undersold it, because we had no idea of the extent of what was on the recording. For us to find out late, maybe an evening and a half before the actual game, instantly, we’re all on our team group chat, talking in disbelief, kind of figuring out what the heck is going on. The next morning we have team breakfast and we discuss it as an organization. Like I said, Doc did a great job of kind of shielding us and taking the lead in it.

But one thing he stressed to us players was he didn’t really want us talking to the media about it, he wanted us focused on basketball, but he said whatever statement we made, he was going to support 100 percent, whether it be not playing or whatever we came up with. But he said, whatever we do, let’s make sure we do it together. So, we went through everything from not playing, to actually doing the idea that I thought of, which was taking our jerseys off at half court and then having the undershirt flipped inside out. So we bounced ideas off the wall and off each other and kind of came up with that.

Kind of along those lines, once you found out what it was, was it immediately obvious that this was going to be something much bigger than basketball? Or did it take a little — I think Adam Silver had that line in the doc, when he saw CNN was involved, Fox News is involved, all these non-basketball outlets, that’s when it really clicked for him.

Right.

Did you ever have a moment like that?

Definitely, because I think … I was speaking in a previous interview, this was not necessarily pre-social media, but before players were using really using their social media as platforms to speak and let the world know how we feel, you know what I mean? So although we knew it was a black eye, obviously, on the league and on our team, we had no idea the route it was going to take. And like you said, for the national media to pick it up instantly, once the media really gets a hold of it, I mean, sports media is one thing, but then when you talk about national media, worldwide coverage, we knew it was going to be a monster.

And it couldn’t have come at a worse time considering we felt like we had a championship contender, we’re playing a young up and coming Warriors team that people remember. We were the one team that was consistently beating the Warriors, and that was the last year, we beat them in seven games before they started their dynasty run. We had a tough young team to deal with and we knew that, and it just couldn’t have came at a worst time.

How does it feel to look back on it? Because on one hand, it’s this messy saga and there’s everything that you just said about feeling like you were a championship contender, but on the other, I think you can make the argument it was this major moment for the player empowerment era in the NBA.

Absolutely. Whenever I talk about this, I like to give LeBron James credit, because I think he, as a superstar, opened his platform up to speak on things, which allowed it to be easier for people such as myself, who aren’t superstars but people who are very concerned and woke in current events — not only in sports, but around the world. So, it was definitely an empowering moment. We made our statement, the Miami Heat made their statement, the Golden State Warriors, talking to them after the fact, were ready to do whatever we did. So if we weren’t going to play, they were right there with us.

So, I think it was a very important turning moment as far as player empowerment goes, and it’s only continued to rise since then. I definitely think it was a stepping stool, and like I said, in the documentary, it was the worst time in Clippers history, but then again, the best time in Clippers history, because after 30-plus years of ownership, and they’ve been trying to get him out since he bought the team, the league was finally able to get him out.

Chris had this really good line about how you didn’t play for Donald Sterling, you guys played for one another. Was there something about that locker room that made it uniquely able to come together and make this really powerful statement, and also focus on some of the biggest basketball games in franchise history?

Yeah. I mean, it was known, kind of, Donald’s antics up to that point, and his history of discrimination, and quote-unquote being a slumlord, and everything that kind of came with the Clippers organization. To me, winning starts at the top, and when you have a bum owner, you’re going to have a bum product. When we have finally turned the corner as an organization and they got superstars in Chris and Blake, and DJ was up and coming, and myself, and J.J., Jamal, the whole cast, we really felt like we had something special. So when this hit, it kind of just reiterated what we already had known, because we saw V, his mistress, prancing around the Staples Center like she owned it. No one liked her, everyone despised her, no one could stand her. We knew this is our owner, but at the same time, it’s not even about him. It’s always been about our locker room, our team, our coaching staff, our family, and our fans. So, I just think that was just the icing on the cake of what we already knew.

I think that kind of answers my next question, which is, was it ever tough to focus on basketball with all of this craziness going on? Or was the mindset we’re professionals, we know what to do and basketball gives us a way to get away from all of this?

It’s tough because I don’t think the average fan understands all the stuff we have to deal with off the court. This and family and turmoil, there’s just so much that goes into a player’s mental focus and mental health and being able to block all that out. I think fans think because we’re paid a lot of money that nothing bothers us, but we’re as normal humans as everyone else, and we deal with tragedy and we deal with loss, we deal with ups and downs like everyone else. But when those lights come on, we have to go out there and do a job. So it was tough for us. It was just added pressure. Like I said, we felt like we had a good team. We felt like, hey, we could be the first team to possibly change the narrative of this franchise. So, there was a lot of stuff on our mind.

And like I said, the timing of this, coming into playoffs when we’re battling a young team, fortunate to get by them. And then it rears its head again in the second round when we’re battling another young team in Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook and the Oklahoma City Thunder. So it was just added nonsense that didn’t need to be there. And like Chris, I don’t blame our losing in the second round because of it. It just added to the stress and the ability for us to try to have to focus even more, because we thought we’d put it to bed in the first round when we put the Warriors to sleep, and then come second round, we’re in a heated battle, outplaying Oklahoma City and then it comes that he’s not leaving the team, and so all the media starts swarming back around us again, asking our thoughts and our feelings. It was just like, “Man, we want to play basketball. We don’t care what this guy does. We want to get rid of him.”

But like I said, you kind of have to deal with stuff as it comes. As players, we deal with so much that fans will never know, but that was more added nonsense that didn’t help.

I do want to talk about this through the lens of player empowerment. How strong was the sense of we as players have power here and we need to use it to do something?

It was very important. It was very important. Like I said, we were very close. There were talks about that game and the Warriors were on the same page with us. We just didn’t know because we were in unmarked territory. It had never been a situation like this, and so we didn’t know, okay, do we sit out? That’s going to be a loss on our record, are they going to replay the game? Do we sit out until he’s gone? There was just so much uncertainty to us as players, especially considering we felt like we had a championship-quality team.

So we knew whatever we did, it was going to go down in history. In hindsight, looking back, if we would have known we were gonna get our butts kicked by 30 points, we probably should’ve sat the game out, anyway [laughs]. But, we decided to play. We decided to make the little statement we made, we decided to stay to unified, we stay together, and we went about trying to let people know that this is our dream. This is, as a kid, what you grow up and dreaming about, is playing NBA playoff basketball. And that’s what we want to be able to focus on.

Did the thought of sparking that level of change, that you would be able to get someone who was this longtime black eye on the league out, ever cross your mind?

No. I had no idea, because when you think about it, Adam Silver works for the owner, so we never thought a new commissioner … obviously we know David Stern was mafia, but we didn’t know much about Adam Silver. So we have a new commissioner on the job, not really knowing who he is or what he’s about, and his actual power. Him being kicked out of the league and barred, you would hear people say like, “We can’t have this in our league. We need him out.” But we never knew that him being removed that quickly would ever be a possibility. So again, hats off to Adam Silver and everyone who made that happen.

You have your podcast now. And one thing that you and Stephen do, is you give players a platform to talk about stuff in a setting where they could feel comfortable and relate to the host. I know Doc said no media, but if he hadn’t said that, looking back, is that something you wish you could have been on the other side of during all of this?

No, because I think we all had very strong feelings in the moment, wrapped up in emotion, and it would have took us even more out of the focus of our actual job. Because me, I’ve always been off the cuff. I would have said some stuff that I probably would’ve got fined for. So guys were very hurt. There were guys that were visibly shaken off what had happened. And I think the best thing that could have happened was that Doc was just the shield for us players because in an emotional, vulnerable situation, considering 95 percent of our team was Black — and we counted J.J. as being Black, too — who knows what would have been said or done that could have possibly caused more of a distraction for our chance to move forward in the playoffs.

How have these two things, the Sterling saga and everything that happened there, and having this podcast that is such a refuge for players to be themselves, reinforced the importance of players having and using platforms to speak out away from basketball for you?

I think it’s very important, no matter if we’re speaking on the Sterling issue or other issues, because like it or not, players voices are heard. And I think when people like LeBron James, and Steph Curry, and Chris Paul, the cornerstones — Kobe Bryant, rest in peace — the cornerstones of our league speak up on cultural issues, they get attention to it. So you could even take it to be the Ahmaud Arbery situation that just happened, that played out in the media. It was because of athletes using our platforms, and artists and actors using their platforms, to really draw attention to issues that are not right that most of the time gets swept under the rug.

But when you start getting these bigger names, using their voices and their platforms that you have millions upon millions of fans, when you count us all together, I think it’s huge. And I love it. Like I said, I really credit LeBron James for opening that door, because he’s made it easier for guys like myself to do it. But I think it’s huge. I love that it’s continuing to grow and it’s a step in the right direction because there are a lot of wrongs that gets swept under the rug still and in the past. But now with so many eyeballs and attention on, we’re almost forcing the hands of people who are in charge to almost try to do the right thing over time.

When people watch the series, what’s the main thing that you want them to take away regarding that Clippers team?

That we did it for each other and we did it for our family, our friends, our fans, the guys in the locker room. That racism is as prevalent as it’s ever been, especially today in 2020, and the only way to abolish it is to come together with love and unity and trying to obviously out the people who are racist. So, like I said, I wish it could have been a little longer and we could of got into more detail, but I think obviously we covered the most important parts of what happened. But when you really talk about the bigger picture, it’s a racial issue, and it’s not just a sports racial issue, it’s a world racial issue. So, just continuing to shine light on the negativity to hopefully deter some people to realize that there’s no room in this world for hate, and hopefully together we can change that.

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Hello my dear podsiglieries. The season finale of Pod Yourself A Gun season 2 is here, which means Matt and Vince watched the season finale of Sopranos season 2. Curious how that works, isn’t it? This week, Matt and Vince welcome activist and Working Families Party organizer Nelini Stamp to the virtual Bada Bing (aka a Zoom call) to discuss the end of Big Pussy, who gave Tony food poisoning, what’s up with that Rolling Stones tune, and much, much more. We hope you enjoy and we’ll see you in season 3! GABAGOOL!

Here’s a trailer for this week’s show:

Please don’t forget to give us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, and remember “our true enemy has yet to reveal himself.”

EPISODE NOTES

S2E13, “Funhouse.”

Premiered April 9, 2000.

SYNOPSIS: In the Season Two finale, Tony has a series of ‘fever dreams’ that help to shed light on some of his problems–particularly his troubles over Big Pussy.

BADA B STORIES

-Pussy sleeps with the fishes

-Tony sick from two dishes

-Artie Defends his delicious

-Jersey sells phony minutes

-Carm wears mink from the riches

-Livia flies with her sises

-FBI creep ’cause they’re vicious

-Meadow graduates high school

BADA C STORIES (AKA THE LAST 14 GODDAMN MINUTES)

-Livia gets caught

-Tony gets arrested

-Tony gets out

-Melfi gets real w Tony

-Meadow gets a degree

-Chris gets his button

-Scatino says bye

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Lady Gaga decided to delay her Chromatica album amid the pandemic. But now, her anticipated record arrives in one week. Ahead of its arrival, Gaga opened up about writing her record, saying some of the songs were emotionally difficult for her to create.

Speaking to Zane Lowe in a recent interview on Apple Music, Gaga discussed her songwriting process. The singer said she had considered going sober after writing a track called ‘911,’ which centers around her experiences on an antipsychotic medication:

“I don’t take any pain medication, because it’s not healthy for me. But I’ve flirted with the idea of sobriety. I’m not there yet, but I flirted with it throughout the album. It’s something that came up as a result of me trying to work through the pain that I was feeling. But part of my healing process was going, ‘Well, I can either lash the hell out of myself every day for continuing to drink, or I can just be happy that I’m still alive and keep going,’ and feel good enough. I am good enough. It’s not perfect, but wabi-sabi. I’m perfectly imperfect.”

Though she didn’t stop drinking alcohol, Gaga said she managed to quit cigarettes during the Chromatica recording process: “I quit smoking. I smoked the whole way through making this record. And when we were done, I stopped. It was the most bizarre, beautiful thing that could have happened, that this music actually healed me.”

Gaga has been routinely open about her personal struggles with mental health. Elsewhere in the interview, Gaga addressed her past challenges with self-harm: “I think I forgive myself. I forgive myself for all the ways I’ve punished myself in private. I’ve been open about the fact that I used to cut. And I’ve open about the fact that I have had masochistic tendencies that are not healthy. And they’re ways of expressing shame. They’re ways of expressing feeling not good enough, but actually they’re not effective. They just make you feel worse.”

Following the interview, Gaga released the single “Rain On Me” with Ariana Grande. The track arrives as only the second single off her record.

Chromatica is out 5/29 via Interscope. Pre-order it here.

Dave Grohl has shifted into storyteller mode lately. He started writing short stories during the pandemic, and he has regaled his followers with tales about run-ins with David Bowie and Prince. Now he is back with the story behind a defining moment of his career: The time he and the rest of Foo Fighters performed with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones at Wembley Stadium in 2008.

Grohl told EW about how he got the pair to join his band for the night, and spoke about the surreal feeling he had when he finally got on stage with them: “When they showed up I couldn’t believe that finally the moment I had been waiting for — to sit on a drum stool, look to my left and see Jimmy Page, look to my right and see John Paul Jones — was actually happening. Just being eight feet away from Jimmy Page as he played this classic song and shredded these classic leads is just so hard to explain. It’s almost as if I had fallen into a Led Zeppelin movie or something. It didn’t even feel real.”

He then expanded on Led Zeppelin’s importance to him and how grateful he us to have performed with Page and Jones:

“Their importance to me is hard to explain because I didn’t take lessons, I don’t understand conventional theory, I can’t read music. But listening to those albums taught me so much. It kind of taught me how to learn, so in a way I almost saw them as more than human — which of course they’re not. They’re wonderful generous people that walk the earth as we do, but to me they just meant so much more that I almost didn’t want to impose any sort of personal relationship on them. Although years later I ended up playing in a band with John Paul Jones and Josh Homme for a while called Them Crooked Vultures, which was amazing because then I did become close friends with John.

But every once in a while I’ll see a clip of that Wembley show, and I’ll remember how I felt running up to that stage. Having 60 or 70,000 people singing ‘Everlong,’ it was magical. I’m looking out at my mother, my wife, my daughter, my whole family, just thinking, ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen, this band was never supposed to do this. And I’m so grateful for all the other things in my life, but I’d hate to feel like this was just another show.’ It wasn’t, and it never will be for me. There are some things in life that stay with you forever, and yeah, that was one.”

Read the full story and watch the performance of “Rock And Roll” from that show below.

“It all started at the Live Earth benefit that we played in, I think, 2006 or 2007. It was in multiple cities around the world, but we were invited to play at the London gig, which was at Wembley Stadium, and the list of performers was bananas. It was Madonna and the Beastie Boys and Genesis and Metallica and the Pussycat Dolls; there were so many artists. And we just assumed that we would be at the bottom of the bill because I imagined like at most festivals that the lineup was based on popularity. But when we arrived and saw the schedule it had us going on after everyone and just before Madonna.

It turned out that a lot of those bands had other festivals they had to get to that night — the summer festival season in Europe is crazy, so every weekend is a different country and every country has a different festival. But anyway, I was terrified. And I remember before going on, my manager John Silva pulled me aside and said, ‘I just need for you to do one thing for me. I just need for you to be better than Metallica.’ [Laughs] I said, ‘That’s not going to happen.’

But we decided since we only had 20 minutes onstage that we would do what Queen did at Live Aid, which was basically play five of our most recognizable songs that everyone could sing along to, and as we walked onstage the sun was just going down so the lights had just started coming up and we basically did an abbreviated version of a greatest-hits set — so it was ‘My Hero,’ and it was ‘Everlong,’ and it was, oh f*ck I don’t know, ‘Learn To Fly’? Just the big singles.

And in the middle of the set I jokingly announced to the audience that we would be back to play Wembley multiple nights. I was kidding! Because at that point we had never even headlined a stadium. So about a year later when my manager asked if we wanted to [do it], of course we had to pull out all the stops. So we designed this stage in the round — I mean literally drew a picture of the stage on a f*ckin’ napkin, it’s so Spinal Tap but it’s true, it was just a crude drawing that ended up becoming the blueprint of that show.

And then someone asked us if we wanted to have some special guests. So being a Led Zeppelin freak — you know, I’ve got Led Zeppelin tattoos — I thought ‘Well, we’ve gotta call John Paul Jones.’ We had wound up performing ‘The Pretender’ with him that year at the Grammys and we made friends, so I figured, this is the most momentous occasion of my entire life, why not call the band that changed it all for me?

So I got on the phone with Jimmy Page and he basically said, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ And I was terrified to answer. I felt like I was in a waking dream. but I had to say something, so I said ‘How about ‘Rock And Roll’?’ So he said, ‘Yeah, what else?’ I said, ‘How about ‘Ramble On’?’ he said, ‘Great, see you at rehearsals.’ I mean, it was that easy, I couldn’t believe it.

You know, it’s kind of a blur to be honest, I know it’s on f*ckin’ Palladia or whatever, but I remember the rehearsals the day before when we were soundchecking at the stadium. I was so nervous, and hungover, actually [laughs], and when they showed up, I couldn’t believe that finally the moment I had been waiting for — to sit on a drum stool, look to my left and see Jimmy Page, look to my right and see John Paul Jones — was actually happening. Just being eight feet away from Jimmy Page as he played this classic song and shredded these classic leads is just so hard to explain. It’s almost as if I had fallen into a Led Zeppelin movie or something. It didn’t even feel real.

Their importance to me is hard to explain because I didn’t take lessons, I don’t understand conventional theory, I can’t read music. But listening to those albums taught me so much. It kind of taught me how to learn, so in a way I almost saw them as more than human — which of course they’re not. They’re wonderful generous people that walk the earth as we do, but to me they just meant so much more that I almost didn’t want to impose any sort of personal relationship on them. Although years later I ended up playing in a band with John Paul Jones and Josh Homme for a while called Them Crooked Vultures, which was amazing because then I did become close friends with John.

But every once in a while I’ll see a clip of that Wembley show, and I’ll remember how I felt running up to that stage. Having 60 or 70,000 people singing ‘Everlong,’ it was magical. I’m looking out at my mother, my wife, my daughter, my whole family, just thinking ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen, this band was never supposed to do this. And I’m so grateful for all the other things in my life, but I’d hate to feel like this was just another show.’ It wasn’t, and it never will be for me. There are some things in life that stay with you forever, and yeah, that was one.”

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Prior to this year, it had been a while since Kamaiyah had dropped a new album, with her last one being 2017’s Before I Wake. Earlier this year, after her departure from Interscope, she announced Got It Made at the start of February and dropped the project later that month. She’s only a few months removed from the release now, but she’s already back to work: Today, she dropped a new song, “Go Crazy.” On the bouncy tune, Kamaiyah gets braggadocios, summing up her feelings with the line, “I’m proud of me / you ain’t gotta be proud, b*tch.” That “go cuckoo, go crazy” hook is also infectious.

“Go Crazy” is the second installment in a series of new songs that Kamaiyah plans to drop every Friday. When sharing “Project Baby” last week, she declared, “New Music coming every Friday until my new project is done.”

Meanwhile, she recently had some beef with Kehlani, accusing her of colorism after Kamaiyah’s verse was cut out of “All Me.” Kamaiyah said, “I feel like it never should have came out. I never wanted ‘All Me’ to come out and she wanted ‘All Me’ to come out… It was our song, we did a project together… if anything I was genuine. My problem came from the disrespect. It was out of hand. It was on some, ‘Oh you’re Black, you’re ghetto, you’re not tasteful.’”

Watch the “Go Crazy” video above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Jerry Sloan, the Hall of Fame head coach who took the Utah Jazz to back-to-back NBA Finals appearances in the 1990s, died on Friday morning following a lengthy battle with Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia. He was 78 years old.

The Jazz released a statement on Friday morning announcing Sloan’s passing:

“Jerry Sloan will always be synonymous with the Utah Jazz. He will forever be a part of the Utah Jazz organization and we join his family, friends and fans in mourning his loss. We are so thankful for what he accomplished here in Utah and the decades of dedication, loyalty and tenacity he brought to our franchise.

“Our Hall of Fame coach for 23 years, Jerry had a tremendous impact on the Jazz franchise as expressed by his banner hanging in the arena rafters. His 1,223 Jazz coaching wins, 20 trips to the NBA Playoffs and two NBA Finals appearances are remarkable achievements. His hard-nosed approach only made him more beloved. Even after his retirement, his presence at Jazz games always brought a roaring response from the crowd.

“Like Stockton and Malone as players, Jerry Sloan epitomized the organization. He will be greatly missed. We extend our heartfelt condolences to his wife, Tammy, the entire Sloan family and all who knew and loved him.”

Sloan entered the league in 1965. He was the No. 4 overall pick in the NBA Draft following a decorated career at Evansville, and over 11 seasons — one with the Washington Bullets and 10 with the Chicago Bulls — he established himself as one of the league’s premier defenders, earning four first-team All-Defense selections, a pair of second-team All-Defense nods, and a pair of distinctions as an All-Star. In 1978, two years after he retired as a player, his jersey became the first that the Bulls ever retired.

Sloan transitioned quickly into coaching, serving as an assistant in Chicago before taking over full-time ahead of the 1979 campaign. While his time in the Windy City didn’t last, he eventually made his way to Utah, first serving as scout and an assistant before becoming the greatest coach in franchise history 1988. He led the team up until 2011, and in that time, Utah reached unprecedented highs. He won the division seven times, made the playoffs a remarkable 20 times in 23 years, and won the Western Conference in 1997 and 1998.

The Sloan era in Utah ended prematurely in 2011, as he resigned midseason, but he eventually returned to the organization in an advisory role in 2013. At the time of his retirement from coaching, Sloan’s 1,223 wins were the third-most in NBA history, a mark that now sits fourth behind Don Nelson, Lenny Wilkens, and Gregg Popovich. In 2009, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame alongside longtime point guard John Stockton, and in 2014, the Jazz raised a “1,223” banner into the rafters in his honor.

Haim have figured out how to put on a good late-night TV performance during quarantine, as they demonstrated on The Late Show last month. Now they have brought their video chat act back to network TV with a performance of “Don’t Wanna” on The Late Late Show last night. The sisters played the song from their individual spaces and put on their own light shows towards the end of the groovy song.

Before performing, the group took a few minutes to chat with Corden, and Alana spoke about the live ambitions the group had for their new album, saying, “I miss [playing live] so much. Funny enough, when we were making this record, we honestly envisioned it being played live. We were like, ‘This is our most live-sounding album, we’re gonna play this album so much, we’re going to go on tour for years.’ And now we can’t do that. But when it’s safe, we will do that.

Este also revealed that of the Haim sisters, she is handling quarantining the worst. She said, “I’m really bad at being alone. First of all, I spend like every waking hour with Danielle and Alana normally, and then during quar’, I spent a month not seeing them. At first, it was me talking to myself, which is totally normal. But then I started answering myself, and then that is when I said, to myself, ‘Este, you have a problem.’”

Watch Haim’s Late Late Show appearance above.

I recently wrote about Road House, the greatest and only piece of culture my hometown ever produced. It was fun, writing a love letter to a favorite movie and small towns in general, but there were a lot of great stories from my interview with Road House director Rowdy Herrington that didn’t fit into my story. And how could I rob you of those?

Herrington, who got his nickname not because he was particularly Rowdy but because it was a garbled take on his actual real name, Howard, had gotten some buzz on the strength of his first film, Jack’s Back, a riff on Jack the Ripper starring James Spader. That got him the meeting with Joel Silver for Road House, and the rest, as they say, is history. He made seven movies between 1988 and 2004, including the not-Ridley Scott version of Gladiator (his was a boxing movie co-starring Cuba Gooding Jr.).

He taught in the film department at USC for a time and these days lives mostly in Montana, where he still writes for various creative endeavors (when we spoke he was working on an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure style feature). But of course he’ll probably always be best known for Road House, a movie that began its life as a five-Razzie-nominated punchline and eventually morphed into one of the most celebrated cult classics of all time. Herrington told me all about it, from Patrick Swayze’s bum knee to Ben Gazzara’s titanic appetite for eggs benedict to his later work with the notoriously difficult Bruce Willis (“I didn’t enjoy it at all, and that’s putting it nicely.”).

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So tell me how Road House first came about.

I got a call from Joel Silver, the producer. I had directed one film and I was signed with the agency that represented Patrick Swayze. Because Patrick was already attached to the script, they submitted my name. They watched my film (Jack’s Back, with James Spader) and decided they would like to work with me. When I first read the script, I wasn’t very happy. I thought it was too broad. Joel actually called me because I was going to pass and said, “Would you come down and meet me? Even if you don’t do this, I think you’re talented. I have other things going on.” So I said, okay.

He set up a meeting at midnight. They were shooting Die Hard on a lot at Fox. I met the whole bunch of guys, Bruce Willis and everybody and McTiernan. Anyway, Joel and I talked about it and he said he understood my concerns about the material and that’s why he wanted me to do it. I told him what I would do to it and he said, let’s go.

What did you tell them you would do differently?

It was too broad and that I felt like Patrick coming off of Dirty Dancing was going to have a large female audience. And as it turned out in the end, Joel put a lot of the stuff back in that I cut out. As he told me, “I make movies for 13-year-old boys.” That was the mentality. We had a disagreement about that. But otherwise, he’s a really smart producer and he made it easy for me.

We needed somebody to play Wade and we wanted Sam Elliott and Sam looked at the material and said no. I had learned from Joel. So I called up his agent and I said, “Listen, I’m a big fan of Sam’s and he may not want to do this, but I’d like to meet him because I have other things going on.” He agreed to meet me and so we sat down in the commissary at Sony and we got to know each other a little bit and he saw I wasn’t crazy. At the end of this meeting I told him, “Look, I’m working on the script and I’m going to make it a little smarter.” And I said, “Sam, if you don’t do this movie, I’m fucked.” And I told him to ask for more money.
And he got it?

He ended up doing it and then we got Kelly [Lynch], she already had a deal in place with United Artists because she was supposed to go do a Sam Kinison film. We got lucky there. And we got Jimmy Iovine as our music supervisor. Jimmy read the script and said, “Oh my God,” he said, “I know who this blind guitar player is.” It turns out the original writer of the script had seen Jeff Healey in a bar and wrote him into the script.

That would have been a hell of a coincidence otherwise, that you just found this guy.

Right. Anyway, we got Jeff and I cast a whole bunch of guys that were martial artists and so that the fighting would be really great. And fortunately, we got Benny The Jet Urquidez to work with our stunt coordinator, Charlie Picerni. My production designer, I asked him to do a lot of stuff in with primary colors because I felt like it was kind of a cartoon.

You said you initially cut some stuff out that Joel Silver put back in.

Well, there’s some stuff I cut out that never made it back in. There was a castration in the script. Pat takes one of his men who’s skimming, out into the woods and they chop it off. I refused to shoot it. And Joel did some second unit stuff, but we didn’t put it in and I think he understood that it went too far. And well, I’ll give you one example. There’s a scene at the bar where Julie Michaels comes up to Patrick and she says, “Why don’t we go to my house and f*ck.” And then Jimmy jerks her arm around and walks her out of there. The way I cut it was, she says, “Why don’t we go to my house and–” and that’s when Jimmy jerks her around. But, of course, Joel put it back in.

I read the original cut was three hours long. Is that true?

Yeah. I mean, the script was long. It was like 140 pages or something. And my first meeting with United Artists, I went in with Joel and Tony Thomopoulos is sitting at one end of this long conference table. We’re at the other, and he’s got his people on each side of him. And I was totally unprepared for this because Joel didn’t give me a clue what was going to happen in this meeting. We go in and sit down and he said, “Tell him what you’re going to do.” I was like, oh fuck.

Anyway, I did a couple of minutes on what I was going to do with the script and the stuff that I thought was really going to be hit scenes, why this picture should get made. And Tony Thomopoulos just said “The script’s too long.” And of course I agree. And I told Joel, I wanted to cut scenes and he said, “No, just shoot everything. You don’t know what’s going to work and what’s not going to work until the end, just shoot it all.” And anyway, Tony said, the script’s too long and Joel slid it all the way across this long table that Tony had, and he said, “Take anything out you want, but when it’s a bomb, it’s your fault.” Joel said, “What do you want, a hit or a bomb? Choose now.” Well, we didn’t cut anything out of the script.

It sounds like that negotiating tactic worked.

Yeah. And we had, I don’t know, I think over nine major fights, we cut an entire sequence out with Keith David, who plays the black bartender. There was a whole sequence where he comes in to hear the music with his wife and some rednecks get after him and then Patrick joins in a fight with him and it was a big brawl and Patrick ends up hiring him as a bartender. That just went in the dump. I think the one scene Keith is in, he’s just seen behind the bar, he’s there…

Yeah. He just sort of shows up.

Yeah. We realized as we were cutting that that whole sequence could be lifted and it didn’t change anything. And then we just tightened things. Frank Urioste was the editor and he’s a genius. We had another guy, I don’t remember the other, there were two Franks. I don’t remember what the other Frank’s name is. I have to think about it. But I had Frank Urioste recut everything. He was just really smart. And we whittled it down and whittled it down and that was the final picture.

Part of the reason I wanted to write about it was, I grew up in Reedley, California where part of it is shot. And I was just wondering if you remembered anything about the location and why you chose it and if you had any memories of that.

Which location?

Reedley, where like the Kings River is, between the…

Oh yeah. Well, we went around looking for a river because it was in the script and we went out to Austin and scouted there and then we went up to Northern California and we found that house, it’s on the Kings Ranch and they built the barn and loft and the facade for Emma’s place on the other side of the river because there was plenty of open space there. That worked out really well. And I think, trying to remember, I guess we did the exterior drive up there with the clock, the shot where we crane off the clock.

Right. That’s the main street, G Street, in downtown Reedley.

Yeah. We had Patrick’s motor home, which was parked on the street and I was waiting for him to come out with Tim Moore, who was an executive producer. And when Patrick came up, this mob of girls came and they were trying to rip his clothes off. I mean it was like Elvis. we really had to shove them away, it was like a physical deal. He was a little freaked out. He was like, this fame, this is crazy. He’s married to a beautiful woman, Lisa, and it’s crazy.

You brought up Julie Michaels. I was going to ask you about her. I know she became a stunt woman. Was she a stunt person at that time? Where did she come from?

No, she came in and auditioned and she did a very clever thing dealing with Joel Silver. She lifted up her dress and on her thigh was written “Property of Joel Silver.”

That sounds like it would work.

Yeah. That sealed the deal.

No one else tried anything crazy like that?

Not that I know of. I mean we had some Playboy bunnies and a lot of really pretty girls in the Double Deuce. As Joel said early on, “See a girl? See a pretty girl.” He had a lot of really great one-liners. (Editor’s note: The character of Les Grossman played by Tom Cruise in ‘Tropic Thunder’ is a parody of Joel Silver.)

Was there a boob quota?

Not per se, just “see a girl, see a pretty girl.”

Did you think of it as a martial arts movie when you were making it?

I only thought of the fact that there were so many fights in it that they needed to be really realistic. That’s why I wanted to make sure that the guys that were playing the henchman could [do the stunts]. I mean, even the guy who played Tinker [John William Young, who was portly and bearded], he could move. It was just about making it as realistic as possible.

Is it a Western?

Oh yeah. It’s a modern version of a Western. When you think about it, there’s a bad guy running the town and the new sheriff comes in. Or like Shane, just this gunslinger, that’s tougher than the rest. Structurally it’s totally a Western, there’s just no horses.

And then the idea that there are these bouncers that are one-name famous, I like that idea. What were you going for there?

Well, that was in the script. I mean, the name Dalton, everybody knew it. First of all, it’s an unusual name. It was in the script that his reputation preceded him and Sam [Elliot’s character] was his mentor. At some point they had come up together and Sam, Wade Garrett, was famous, I mean, all the guys knew who he was.

Is the idea that Dalton is kind of like a monk?

Well, he sort of is for sure. We had him doing Tai Chi. My wife is a Tai Chi teacher and of course Patrick is a dancer. He did it beautifully, we gave him that beat, but he is sort of this Zen bouncer, I mean, kind of a Buddhist. Supposedly had a degree in philosophy. I mean, it was all pretty broad.

I’m trying to remember if we ever see him eat. I know in the beginning he turns his nose up at breakfast and I don’t remember if he ever eats in the rest movie.

Yeah. No, he turns down eggs benedict with Ben Gazzara. We went through about five plates of that.

Wow, so he was just eating?

He’s a consummate actor. He is unfortunately no longer with us. That’s another story. Joel said, “We’ve got to get somebody to play our villain.” And so he said, “We’re going to go see James Garner.” And we went to James Garner’s house in Beverly Hills and set up by the pool. And Joel did, I don’t know, five minutes on all the success he’d had, and was like, “$100 million on this picture, did $200 million in that picture. I got $100 million in this picture…” And finally James Garner just looked at him and said, “Success don’t interest me.”

He said, “If I was going to play a villain it wouldn’t be this guy.” And at the time I was 35, I probably looked 30, and we had a writer with us and he was younger than me. And James looked over and he said, “Who’s directing this?” And I said, “I am,” and he’s just staring at me. At the end of the meeting I just said, Mr. Garner, I just want to tell you The Americanization of Emily is one of my favorite films. And he gave me a nod and said “Me too.”

Well, you got something out of it, I guess.

Yeah, no, it was a nice meeting. And Red West, Red did a great job. Red was Elvis Presley’s bodyguard. We were sitting out on the curb just before we’re going to blow up the auto parts store and our guys were rigging the explosives and all that, and we were pretty well into the movie at that point. And I hadn’t asked him anything about Elvis, but finally we were just sitting there and I said, “Red, what was it like?” And he knew exactly what I was asking. He said, “Rowdy, you wouldn’t have believed it.” He said, “We walked into this theater, we came on stage in Atlanta.” He said, “The whole building shook.” He said, “Don’t let anybody ever tell you he wasn’t a wonderful man. Most generous man I ever knew,” he said.

How was Patrick at doing all the martial arts stuff? Was that sort of new for him?

Not at all. No, he’s a martial artist. I mean, he was absolutely brilliant at it. The toughest thing for Patrick was that he quit ballet dancing because he had blown out his knee. He blew it up playing football and then he continued to dance. And I mean, literally every few days he had to have his knee drained. Marshall Teague who played Jimmy, Marshall, of course, wasn’t in every scene like Patrick was. Benny The Jet worked with Marshall on the choreography for the big fight at the river. And then Benny and Marshall had to teach it to Patrick. Well, the things that they were in together, they both were sort of method actors. There just were some hard stares at each other. At lunch, they would not talk, they would walk past each other and they just kept that whole thing going the whole time.

And then Marshall had to teach Patrick a lot of the choreography and it was fits and starts when we’d get Patrick away to learn this stuff because this is a huge fight. And periodically, Patrick would make a mistake and whack him because Marshall knew to duck here but Patrick threw the punch there and that kind of stuff. And anyway, they worked their asses off and we shot over the course of two nights to finish that fight. At the end, they were brothers and they were best friends until Patrick died.

When it came out, what was the reception like and what was your reaction as that was going down?

Well the reception was, we open number one. But I think it was not as big an opening is Joel was hoping for. It was nothing like Die Hard or anything. And of course the reviews for the most part, I would say probably universally they panned it. And I know that, what was his name? The CBS guy with the big hair…

Gene Shalit?

Yeah. Gene Shalit called it “Out House.”

(Laughs). I mean, funny at least.

[Not laughing] I was kind of mortified, to be honest. Because it’s like my worst nightmare about some of the things that I thought at the very beginning. It was very difficult to turn down a studio movie when your whole goal is to get into that system, and with the agency telling you, “Look, this is really big payday and after this, you’re on the A-list directing movie stars.” But that does not mean that it doesn’t hurt when the chickens come home to roost. The real surprise about Road House is its longevity. That people actually appreciate it for what it is, which is broad as hell. I was very surprised by it after our opening and having the literati essentially say, “don’t waste your time.” It’s just ultimately entertaining. And we’ve broken the record for the number of screenings on television. It’s number one of all time of any movie, which is remarkable. [Ed note: I can’t find a source for this claim, but I do see a Wall Street Journal report that says Road House aired 65 times between 1994-2002, which it uses as an example of a movie that airs a lot on cable].

When you say broad, to me, it somehow feels like it takes place in an alternate universe. But then it’s also really familiar in some ways. It’s like I’m completely in a different world where bouncers are one name famous and… I don’t know, I like that idea. It’s fun.

Well, it’s not like we didn’t know what we were doing. We had our tongue planted firmly in our cheeks. I knew what the script was, and like I said, I wanted it to be in primary colors, and it was a bit cartoony in some ways, but we played it straight. And it is remarkable the life that it’s had. I never would have thought that, especially after it came out. I mean, while we were making it, we just had a lot of fun. It was a great set and at lunchtime Jeff Healey would rock the house. John Doe was on the cast and I was a fan of X, so it was great just to hang out with him. Patrick is a gentlemen and so talented, he wanted to do every stunt.

The only stunt I wouldn’t let him do was what they call a bulldog, where he tackles Jimmy off the motorcycle right before the big fight in the river. That was the stunt man that tackled him. I said, “No, I can’t afford to have you hurt. You got this big fight coming up, forget it.” He was mad at me.

In the aftermath of Road House, do you think it helped or hurt future projects that you were trying to get made?

Well, first of all, I got the nickname Rowdy. My name is Howard and I’m named after my uncle. And so when I was a boy, because Howard was the one who already existed, I was Howdy. And I made the wrestling team in ninth grade, the varsity, and they bust me up to the high school and the captain of the wrestling team said, “What’s your name?” And I said, Howdy. And he said, “No, your name is Rowdy.” People thought I was a stunt man or I came out of that world. I came up in a really weird way. I started in television, I got into the director’s guild just as associate director at NBC in Washington. And when I came out to Los Angeles, I couldn’t work as an AD because, when they allowed television people into the director’s guild, the rule was the associate directors couldn’t become ADs until they had lived there six years.

They were afraid that you’re going to come out there and take all the AD’s jobs. I started out at WQED in Pittsburgh, working on the crew. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and all that. We did lighting and I do some lighting. I got on as an electrician and eventually became a gaffer. And I wrote my first script that sold, Jack’s Back, that’s the James Spader film. But after Road House, I got offered lots and lots of action stuff. Most of which I didn’t think was very good. I decided I was going to write my own script and I wrote a script called Three Rivers, which we sold to Columbia Pictures, and that ended up being called Striking Distance. We got Bruce Willis attached. First it was Robert De Niro and I worked for three months on the script with him, but he didn’t want to do any of the jokes. And the action. He told me Midnight Run would have been a great film if they had cut all that action out of it.

So anyway, I mean I was dealing with Robert Fucking De Niro, man. I did what he asked me to do and I cut a bunch of this stuff out and the studio hated the script. It became a drama about a family of alcoholic cops and one of them became a killer. And they said, no no, this not the script we bought. So Bob passed and he said, get Mel (Gibson). And Mel was busy. We ended up making an offer to Michael Douglas and Michael Douglas passed. He said, “No, I just did this guy, in Black Rain.” So, my agent also represented Bruce Willis and Bruce got the script and the rest is history.

Later on, there were stories about Bruce Willis being difficult. Did you find that at all?

Yeah, he’s very difficult. I didn’t enjoy it at all. And that’s putting it nicely. Well, he got the De Niro script and that’s the script he wanted to do. He kept bringing scenes that I had written for De Niro in to plug into this picture. And at the same time, Frank Price, who had bought the screenplay, got fired and Mark Canton came in. And Mark Canton, this was his first studio head job. He was scared to death. He saw me coming down the hall in the Thalberg building and he ducked back in his office like he’s afraid of me. I was like, “You’re the head of the studio, what the fuck are you afraid of?”

Anyway, he was very upset because Bruce was calling him and complaining about what I was doing, and I was doing what the studio asked me to do, which was just try to make an action picture with humor. And Bruce had done it and he was over it, so he was miserable. He shouldn’t have taken the job. But it was $13 million. I tried being nice and it was the biggest lesson I ever learned in the business. You have to win the first one. Because otherwise they start walking on you. I was trying to be nice, and make it work. And about halfway through I just said fuck it. I just put my foot down. “No, I’m not doing that. Fuck you.” And then that studio came in and we had the meeting and anyway, it was just kind of fucked up and it’s my least favorite film actually, I think we ended up with a feathered fish. You know, it was neither fish nor fowl.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more retrospectives here.