 There's a lot to digest, but we start off today with a national story that has some local implications. And that's what happened last night with Magic Johnson resigning as the president of the LA Lakers. And it took everybody by surprise. It took everybody by shock. And, you know, the narrative around this is why did he do it? What does it mean? But I think that everybody is absolutely petrified to say anything negative about Magic Johnson. But I'm going to go there. This was a gutless move by him. This was gutless. He quit. He's a quitter. He quit on the Lakers. He set the course and then he bailed on the car. He tucked and ran and boom, out. He's leaving the car without a driver now. That's despicable what he did. And then to do it in the way that he did it in front of a press conference without telling Jeannie Buss because he was afraid that she'd talk him out of it. How does that cover in glory? That's not covered in glory. If anybody else did it, he'd be a quitter. Imagine if Phil Jackson did it. Is someone, are people covering it in glory? No, but people are not saying what it really is. The guy was gutless. That's a loser thing to do. Did you read Plashke today in The Times? No. Did not. Did he kill him? Well, if you're looking for that sentiment, read Plashke in The LA Times today who basically just said that it was the perfect way for Magic Johnson to end his tenure with Los Angeles Lakers because he is a guy who has constantly sought out the cameras, sought out drama and that's exactly what this was, was him being a big drama king. And also said he was never built for this job and this was in some ways the perfect ending for a guy who was never built for this job in the first place. And then we find out, Peter, that throughout this whole year when he's president of the Lakers, he's not even there. And then he says, you know, I just want to enjoy my life. Well, you didn't think that as an executive on the NBA team that's really trying to reinvent himself and bring himself to glory, that it would be a 24-hour day job. Look at the executives that work in New York. Phil Jackson was a failure because it was a vacation for him. He didn't work hard, but the guys that do well. You don't think Lou Lamarillo of the Islanders lives and breathes every second with the Islanders? Magic's got other business interests. He should have known this and the fact that he bailed on the Lakers makes them more of a dumpster fire, in my opinion, than the New York Knicks right now. What makes him any different than Phil Jackson, right? Here is a guy that had never done this before, right? It's thrown into this just because he's Mr. Laker, but we had no evidence that he was able to do this job. And when you look at a lot of the failings, whether it's his talk show, his movie theaters, go through all of the walks of life outside of him as one of the great basketball players of all time. And some of the movie theaters lived, where exactly has he succeeded, not as a coach? He succeeded in business. But because his name is Magic Johnson. Because his name is Magic Johnson, he's able to use that cachet to be able to find some businesses. But there's other things that he's done, whether it's a coach, as a talk show host, as an executive. You know what, just being Magic Johnson is going to get you some money. It's going to get some attention. It's going to get some people to invest in you. But does it make you great at what you're trying to do? And Phil Jackson found that out, just because you're a great coach doesn't make you a great executive. Well, most honestly. And just because you're a great player, well, you got to do the work. But let's just see, that's the thing. You've got to do the work. And did Magic do the work? No. And also, Michael, I mean, there are only a few select people who have really been able to move around different parts of the game of basketball and be successful. Jerry West is one of them. Jerry West could do it. Larry Bird could do it. Kevin McHale has done it to an extent. Pat Riley did it. Pat Riley, of course, being the best example of it. But for the most part, Magic failed. Jordan remains to be seen whether he can get something going in Charlotte. But for the most part, that transition is not easy. And if you've ever met, you've met Magic before, right, Michael? Yeah, absolutely. He's an incredibly charming, likable person who you can see why people would invest in. But that doesn't necessarily make you a success in the kind of role that he had. And for him to balance, say, you know, I just want to enjoy my life, then you shouldn't have taken the job. Because I think that when you take these jobs, you can't get by on that big smile. You can't get by on the charm. It's a lot of hard work. And he didn't want to work hard. And then when he realized that, I mean, it was an ill-advised team that he put together. He hired Rob Palinke as a GM. The guy was an agent. He was an agent. Now, Brody Van Wagon, up to this point, looks like a successful hire by the Mets. But the players that he put around LeBron, if you look at all the successful teams LeBron was on, the Cavaliers and the Heat, they had outside shooters. They didn't do that with the Lakers. They went the complete opposite. It was a very poorly constructed team. And Magic was at the forefront. But then we find out that he wasn't even trying that hard. So, yeah, everybody, ESPN loves him because he's worked for us and all that. But this is an abject failure on his part. And it's quitting. And it's gutless, too. You know, you can be both. You can be a fan of Magic Johnson. I think he's a great guy. I think he's a great player. But call it what it is. He quit on this. Now, if you want to walk away from the job, then do it right. Go talk to your boss. Tell Jeannie you don't want to do it anymore. Hold a press conference after the game is over, after the season is over. On baggy day, when all the media comes in and the players are going to exit, have your press conference and say, I'm going to step down. Can you imagine... Don't do it the way that he did it last night. That's not right. If one of the three of us, right, decide that we're going to leave this show, and we announce it on the air, we don't go to Tim McCarthy first and say, listen, this is what's going on. I'm not going to be able to do that. Imagine how Red Hot Managing would be. Now, Jeannie Buss, you know, they supposedly have a brother and sister relationship. They essentially grew up together. That's not good enough. So she let him off the hook. Imagine, he actually sat in on meetings before he did this, and they talked about the future of the team, and he never told her. He said he was with Jeannie for three hours. That's amazing to me. Now, what Jeannie let him off the hook, what did she say? She said, well, we love Magic. He'll always be a member of the family. I didn't say that was a terrible thing to do. It was a terrible thing to do. He blindsided her. Listen, it's hard in that community, and this is something Magic uses to his advantage. It's not going to help Jeannie Buss to kill Magic Johnson. You can't kill Magic Johnson as a member of the Lakers. You can't kill Magic Johnson as a member of the media in Los Angeles. It's hard to do. He's an icon. You know, so I can understand Jeannie's got to tread lightly here because the fans are always going to support Magic. But deep down inside, she's got to be sick. And if you really want to be honest with yourself, is that the right thing to do? You can be the biggest Magic fan going. Is that the right thing to do? And the excuse was, I couldn't tell her to her face because she would have taught me out of it. Then you're gutless in every sense of the word. LeBron's probably thinking, what did I get myself into here? And then to make matters worse, when Johnson's out the door, they ask him, is Rob Plink, well, you know, that's up to Jeannie. Rather than giving the guy a vote of confidence, he's the one, you hired him. You hired him to do this. And then he said, you know, one of the reasons he stepped down, he didn't want to change lives and he didn't want to fire Luke Walton. He has no stomach for this whatsoever. No. So he quit after 16 games as a coach. He quit after the talk show went down the tubes and he quits now and leaves a lot of people hanging in the lurch. It's an awful thing that he did. He should not be led up on this. But you always have to put in the work, Michael. I don't care. It's still a job that's going to be a 20-hour-a-day job. I don't care who you are. And you also realize this, too, and we're finding this out in our walk of life as we go north of 50, Michael. Magic Johnson's name still resonates with a younger generation, but not the way it does with his current generation. So when he's dealing with general managers that are younger than him, they don't care that he's Magic Johnson. They want to get a job done. They want to make a trade. They want to make their teams better. They're not going to go Google for Magic Johnson because he happens to call him up on the phone or show up into a meeting. They got a job to do. Let me redo the highlight, if you don't mind, from the Plash ski article. For those that don't know, Plash ski is a big-time columnist in L.A. Why would a renowned business builder walk away from a project so terribly unfinished? Why would a camera-loving drama king turn his back on arguably one of the most famous sports jobs in the country? After recording him for a year, why would he walk out on the king? Johnson quit because he wanted to fire Luke Walton and owner Jeanne Bust disagree. He quit because he didn't like the politics of the dysfunctional front office expressly in regards to the actions of GM Rob Polinka, whom Johnson may have also wanted fired against Bust's wishes. He quit because he didn't like the rules restraints placed upon him by the league. He quit because he realized he couldn't give his full attention to basketball and his numerous businesses. And also, what a baby, too. He mentioned, you know, I'm not able to tweet. Everything is a collusion. I can't give my expertise to people. I'll listen, you're not that important, Magic. You're not that important. That's an awful thing that he did. It's just awful. He might have set the franchise back a long time. Or maybe he helps them. Maybe they're bringing a real basketball guy now. Maybe it does help. I mean, it looks embarrassing now, but maybe it does help. But if he had that kind of problem with Jeanne, right, where he wanted to do things and she wouldn't let him do it. All the more reason to say, well, listen, I can't stay at this job then. I love you. But if you're not going to let me do the things I want to do, I got to quit. People would have understood that. They would have gotten a Jeanne, I think, would have understood that. You know what has to be giddy right now? Jeanne Bust's brother, Jim, who she fired and Mitch Kupchak, who she fired to bring in this genius dream team of Magic Johnson and Rob Polinka. The only thing they did was bring in LeBron James and then surround him with players that don't max his talent. They don't. Once they signed Lance Stevenson, game over. Now you can say if he didn't get hurt. There was dysfunction there from the very beginning. Magic Johnson put this team together the way he thought it should be put together and then he makes comments in the middle of it and says, you know, we don't want Magic. We don't want LeBron handling the ball all the time because we certainly don't want what happened in Cleveland having here, which LeBron said, we went to the finals four straight years in Cleveland. And they got rid of D'Angelo Russell. And Julius Randall. So like they just the decisions were very odd. They bring in Rajon Rondo, a guard who cannot hit a jump shot from seven feet. It was they did not build a team that made sense for LeBron James. So maybe maybe now they are able to make sense of it. But what a bizarre. I mean, Magic's had some very some fascinating moments over the years. This was fascinating. I'm going to throw this out at you. All right. I really truly believe if this is all that there is and everything that was seen right now then he's a quitter and a loser. Oh my God. I was an executive. But I don't think he is. I think there's a story yet to come out. There's got to be a backstory of this. You don't just quit like this. A guy who's been a winner his whole life his business acumen has been praised. He's done great stuff for the inner city in my gut, not a loser. So I think there's more to come out. There has to be some other part of this story that we're not hearing because if it's just what we're seeing right now it's just on the surface then he's gutless and a loser and a quitter. But he would not think he is. He wouldn't be the first athlete. That's why athletes usually don't make great coaches or executives because they're so used to things coming easy for them because they were just so good at baseball, basketball, football, whatever that now it's hard. And he probably realized that just being Magic Johnson wasn't going to be enough that this job was going to be very, very difficult. A lot harder than maybe he anticipated it and he wasn't getting his way. I mean how often do people say no to Magic Johnson? Probably never. So now he's so much... Maybe Jeannie Busch had no to him in that three hour meeting. Right. That's probably what happened. So here's a guy that's struggling to do the job. He wants to be able to make some decisions. He's not allowed to make them. So I get all that. So do it in a more professional fashion. Tell Jeannie I'm done. Hold a press conference after the season is over saying I'm done. I can live with that but to do it that way I just think is wrong. And if he would have said there are philosophical differences. I can't run the team the way I want. I'm leaving. I wouldn't have said a word but to say I want to enjoy my life. Well you knew that when you took the job. You knew that when you took the job. So when you take a job like the president of the United States right now. Probably one of the great lives that you could have. You could do whatever you want. You could go wherever you want it. Nobody ever. There wasn't half the country that didn't like him. He decided to take this job. And he ruined the life that he had. So Magic Johnson to a lesser extent had a great life could do whatever he want. Go where everyone he decided from ego to take this job to save the Lakers. And now he finally realizes oh right. It's not what it's all cut out to be. Maybe he felt like if he held the bill it was honest and said they won't let me do what I want to do is like it's killing the team that he still loves. I still believe he loves the Lakers. And he probably still wants them to be great because that's still part of his legacy. Maybe he felt that if he went after the team and was critical and that's the reason he walked away maybe he felt like that would do damage to the Lakers and he wasn't trying to do that. And I'm not excusing it but maybe that was his motivation. Hey listen if you quit and told Jeannie Buss first you know what you can almost understand but to do it not even tell your boss that's disgraceful. By the way the Lakers the way they were constructed they were 29th and 3-point shooting this year. 29th and 3-point shooting percentage. In LeBron's final four years in Cleveland Cavaliers never ranked lower than 7th and 3-point percentage. You know why? Because that's how you surround the player like Magic, LeBron James. You open things up for him. Nobody could hit the 3 on this team. Really put together poorly. And that was Magic's game plan.