 Hey everyone, welcome to another edition of Yes, We're Here, I'm Jack Curry and this is a treat for me because I get to speak to a guy who's been a friend of mine for more than a quarter of a century. We've got some career parallels which we're going to get to but Frank Isola joins me and Frank I'm going to give the resume. We know you're at the Daily News for more than 20 years, you're now at the athletic, you work for ESPN, you've got your own radio show on SiriusXM and you also work for us at the ESPN, did I leave anything out? No but I will say this and it's good to see you again Jack, they let me use your office when I'm doing the net games. I get so nervous when I leave there, I pick up every last piece of garbage, I don't want to hear that Jack Curry has upset, who was the diva that was in my office making a mess so I make sure I'm very clean when I leave there. How barren is my office, I have two pictures of myself and Pamela, I get one picture of me running and maybe something with me and David Cohn, I'm there to work Frank, I'm there to work. Well you have the full and you've got the two TVs which is important but you know what, I don't watch the games from there, I go to the big conference room because I got the bigger TV, that's where I watch the net games and then obviously go upstairs for half time and post game. I wasn't going to start here but since you brought this up I'm going to start here. You and I are two newspaper guys, we started in this business, both of us in the 90s, I was covering the Yankees, you were covering the Knicks. We now do a lot of TV. What was the most difficult part of that transition for you? You know I did do the Mets though for a year and a half which was great and you know covering baseball, people always said it, you'll get better at your job in terms of writing if you cover baseball because that's like real work. The NBA is tough but it's half the games, it's half the work as baseball and a lot of us have made this transition. You have, Buster only has, you know, Stephen A. Smith, Adam Shepter, Agent War-Janowski, so many people that go from- They're just the Gen-Rosenthal. Exactly, they're all over the MLB network, all those guys there and I think it's good to kind of have that reporting background so we were getting interviewed, people were looking at us, well you're the expert so to speak and I think that was kind of the easier transition. It's a lot of fun, you have to worry more I guess about your appearance than you do but you know this Jack, the grunt work is reporting and beat writing. I love doing it. There is no question about it but the lifestyle with TV is just stressful but a little bit easier. I'm glad you said that about the reporting part of this because when you hired me, John Filippelli, my boss said take what you did for the New York Times and bring it over to the S network. Instead of an eight or 900 word article, we need five or six bullet points. And what I always say to anyone, if they're nice enough to pay me a compliment, I say if you like anything I did on TV, it's because I built up this newspaper background where nothing that ever happened in a clubhouse is going to surprise me. We've been there, we've seen that. You're absolutely right and that's why I love doing the post game more than anything else because you've seen the game, you know what the story is. Sometimes I get a little frustrated at the questions being asked because they're kind of straying away from what the story should be but that's the part that I like about it because we're used to reporting, telling stories. The pregame is fine, we come on at halftime. I know there's a certain part of the game where you guys will come on for a second but I love the post game because that's when you're trying to bring everything that happened during the game together and you're using the comments from the players themselves. So there's still a newspaper feel to it, you're just doing it in a much quicker sound by it. It's interesting you say that, I love doing our pregames as well but the post game is where you sort of make your money. I always say the pregame is the trailer to the movie. The post game is the movie. Here it is. Here's your chance to talk about what happened. Getting back to where we began. I started at the New York Times and covering the Yankees in 91. A few years later you're covering the next for the Daily News. For me, fear was a good thing back then Frank. I was so nervous that I was going to get beat on stories. It was Michael Kay, John Hayman, Joe Sherman, Moss Klein who people forget was a tremendous reporter from the Star Ledger. Did fear guide you in those days when you were on the beat? 100% and even up until doing the beat a few years ago it was still a part of it. And you know this Jack, at the time I was living in Brooklyn, every morning I would get up to go to the store to get coffee and I would buy all the papers and you would be nervous about flipping over the back page to see that was on there because before the internet, if you got beat on a story, you got beat for 24 hours. The world we live in now, if somebody breaks a story, you can play catch up in a second. There was no worse feeling than knowing you got beat on a story. And you got to live with that for 24 hours because the paper the next day is not coming out until another day and that's what made it hard. You're 100% right. Fear definitely drives you and motivates you. You almost have to have that to be good at your job I think. You just described my world by the way. I would go a half a mile to pick up the newspapers in the morning. I had this queasy feeling in my stomach until I knew that, okay, I at least broke even. But what I do like about those days are that helped me and I tell this to college journalist all the time. When you get punched in the face a few times, you figure out a way to punch back and that's what happened to me. John Heyman, Sherman, Michael K. Those guys were all ahead of me when I got on the Yankee beat. Yep. Well, you get tired of not having the stories that they have. So you figure out a way to cultivate your own sources. Maybe there's an avenue on the beat that other people haven't been attacking so you attack that avenue. Did you find that as well that after a while it was okay, someone else may have had this story, but I'm going to punch back with this story. I took over the Knicks on, it was the night before Thanksgiving in 1995. Anyway, you walk into that locker in this Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley. It was like a year later when I heard somebody saying my name, I turned around, it was Patrick Ewing. I didn't even think he knew who I was. So when you start out on a beat, you're starting from the bottom and the only way to do it is to try to build up a relationship and you can't do it in one day. You have to build up a level of trust which helps and being around all the time certainly helps. You mentioned a couple of guys, Joel and John. I'm sure at the time you were thinking, these guys are pretty good at what they do. Now think back to it. They were really good at what they did. So you're getting thrown into the fire. You're either going to survive by fighting through it or you're not going to make it by kind of giving up. And I think you went about it the right way. I covered the Nets for one year. It was Derek Coleman's rookie year and you touched upon the difference between the basketball and the baseball beat. I loved baseball, so I was so much more comfortable covering baseball. I actually think people who cover baseball are martyrs. Because what I liked about baseball, and it's changed now, but was all of that clubhouse time and all of that opportunity to cultivate relationships. For me, in my one year in the NBA, I found that more difficult to do. How did you figure out a way to manage with less time to get to know some of these guys and get to some of those stories? I remember this too, Jack. So you're going to more practices when you cover the NBA. But the access is kind of limited there. So as opposed to baseball, where what do you guys get about two to three hours in a locker room, we're getting 45 minutes before a game. And you know this. It's one thing to be in the home locker room when the team is home. When you start to stand out is when you travel to the road game, because there's less people there. And that's when the players start to identify you. And that's how you build up those relationships. That's how you build up sources. That's how you get better at your job. So two guys that were my favorite to interview. One of them I did a book with, right, right over my shoulder here, David Cohn. I just always felt like he helped your stories. He understood what direction you were going in. The other one for me is Mariana Rivera, because I felt like it was never an interview. It was a conversation. If I asked you a couple of standouts during your career, people, you look forward to interviewing, who would be on that list? Well, Derek Harper, obviously, that was one of the first guys that I had when I was covering. And one of the guys from the late 90s, Nix, Larry Johnson, was great, because he was a former number one overall pick. And by the time he came to the Nix, because of injuries, he'd become a different kind of player. But I had never been around a player that had the respect of every single guy in the locker room, whether it was the older guys like Patrick Ewing, the younger guys like Lyttrell Spreewell. Everyone respected Larry Johnson. It was almost like he sat on a throne at his locker. And he and I hit it off. And to hit it off with Larry, that meant you were good with everybody in the locker room. So he's always been one of the top guys for me. I know the career has been long and very productive. Do you have a story that stands out for you? Is there something you reported on that resonates the most with you? There has been a lot. And you're covering the Nix throughout really the last 25 years. It was a lot of dysfunctional things. And we didn't even get into how they would ban you and wouldn't allow people to talk to you. But that's another conversation. And that was all fine. That actually made me. So speaking about being a martyr, that was perfect for me. I'll never forget the one time I had a story where the Nix were flying out to Phoenix for a game and they were to start a road trip. And Isaiah Thomas and Stefan Marbe got into it on the plane, where they almost got into a fight. I found out about it as soon as they landed. I got that in the paper the next day. And they even had sent Stefan Marbury home. So when everyone showed up for the shoot around the next day in Phoenix, there were tons of television stations there and things like that. I knew I had this story. But you know this, Jack, there's always a play that's sinking. Man, if something got screwed up here. And sure enough, Isaiah Thomas basically copped everything. He said, yes, this happened. There was a disagreement. We sent him home. So, you know, every once in a while, you put like a little feather in your cap and you have a story that's really good that nobody else has. I'm going to close this out with something fun. And I need you to help me fill in the gaps here, though. OK. There was a time, Cleveland, post-season. The Knicks had a game at the same time in that city. And we had a game. We had a three-on-three hoops game. I want to say it was you, Wise, and Popper were the basketball guys. Yeah. And I think me, maybe Joel Sherman, Dave Lennon. I think Anil Connor might have come over to the baseball side. Do you remember these games? Because I actually remember them being competitive. And I'm going to be honest, I think we played three games. And the hoops guys won. Does this resonate with you? Do you remember? Yeah. Well, you and Ian were very good. Joel hustled. Joel hustled a little bit. But Mike played college basketball. And he was bigger. And you know this. When you're playing against a guy that's like six foot three, he might as well be seven feet tall. It makes that big of a difference. But we played a lot. Did we used to play during the playoffs in Atlanta back in the early 90s? Do you remember those games at the Street Athletics Center? Those were good games. But for some reason, this three on three stood out. But this is what's terrible, Frank. I texted Joel. I texted Popper. I texted Ian. And now I'm asking you. And all of our details are a little funny. Next time a player doesn't know an answer, you and I can't say. I can't believe it. You're right. I don't know his career. That's a good point. That's a good point. Frank, this was a lot of fun. And you're welcome to use my office. Thank you. If you even want to bring in a picture of your family, please, please. I need some picture help. I have to bring one of me running to put it up against you. We're playing soccer, either or. Yeah, there you go. Thanks, Frank. Thanks.