Think of the Flyers as an explorer who landed on a deserted island. On this island, deep within miles of thick jungle, is treasure. The explorer knows the treasure is there somewhere, and he aims to find it.
Leo Carlsson would have been a new machete: sharp, strong, capable of cutting through all those vines and branches and trunks to make the Flyers’ journey to those riches easier and faster. Now the explorer won’t have that tool. Now that the Anaheim Ducks have matched the five-year, $90-million offer sheet that Carlsson signed with the Flyers last week, the Flyers won’t have the steel blade that Carlsson represented as a 6-foot-3, 21-year-old, clear-cut first-line center just entering his prime.
So where does that leave them? It means that their trek to that treasure, to their first Stanley Cup since 1974-75, will likely be slower and less certain. They may get to it eventually, but it’s going to take more time and be more costly.
Had the Ducks declined to match the Flyers’ audacious offer — and make no mistake, this gambit by Danny Brière was bold and creative, as close to a Now youse can’t leave move as an NHL general manager can make — Anaheim would have received four first-round picks from the Flyers. That price would have been steep. But the Flyers would have added Carlsson, who averaged nearly a point a game last season, is an excellent player now, and has shown every sign that he will get even better.
They need a No. 1 center, not merely for the talent and scoring touch such a player would provide, but also so they can slot their other centers — Trevor Zegras, Christian Dvorak, and Sean Couturier — more appropriately. With Carlsson (or any center of similar caliber, for that matter), Zegras would have become the second-line guy. Dvorak would have become a terrific third-line guy. And Couturier would have remained in the role he played so well in last season’s playoffs, as an outstanding fourth-line checker, faceoff-taker, and leader.
What’s more, the Flyers have a roster and a farm system with plenty of promising young players, and if this move had come to fruition, they wouldn’t have had to sacrifice any of them to fill one of their biggest holes. That’s perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this result for them: That luxury of gaining an emerging superstar without having to give up valuable players and/or prospects already within the organization likely is no longer available to them.
With the Carlsson episode behind him, Flyers general manager Danny Brière must be practical about the team’s range of needs.
They’re interested in the Detroit Red Wings’ Dylan Larkin, for instance; though Larkin is 7½ years older than Carlsson, he still would fit the Flyers like a well-tailored suit. But assuming Larkin, who has a full no-movement clause, is even willing to join the Flyers, the trade package necessary to acquire him would probably have to include a player or two on their current roster. Would Larkin be worth the departure of, say, Owen Tippett and/or Denver Barkey?
Just because Brière made such a huge play for Carlsson doesn’t mean he has to answer that question, immediately or ever. The smartest thing he and the Flyers’ leadership team have done in the three years since he took over as GM has been to give themselves flexibility in improving the team. They didn’t have to shock the NHL by presenting that offer sheet to Carlsson — a proposal for a contract that has now made him the league’s highest-paid player. But they did. After years of running in place, after qualifying for the postseason for the first time since 2020, they declared that they were ready to spend again, but they made that declaration on their terms.
They have several choices for how they can proceed. They need not just a No. 1 center, but a top-pair defenseman, or at least one capable of quarterbacking a power play. They can act quickly to acquire one or both of those players, to find short-term and/or long-term answers to those lingering questions, or they can wait.
Remember: Even if they had won their duel with the Ducks for Carlsson, the Flyers wouldn’t have been considered a true contender this season for the Stanley Cup. Porter Martone, Matvei Michkov, Tyson Foerster, Jamie Drysdale, Alex Bump, Zegras: All of them have growth and development ahead of them. Yes, the Flyers’ hunt will take longer now that Leo Carlsson, that oh-so useful tool, will remain on the West Coast, but they can still find that chest of gold. They just have to take care not to get lost along the way.
Rothman Orthopaedics plans to open three new surgery centers over the next year and keep adding doctors in its Philadelphia-area market, as the large physician-owned group refocuses growth efforts on its original territory.
“Our biggest priority in the near term is strengthening our core business here, in Southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey,” Rothman CEO Christian Ellison said. “We’re not gonna ignore opportunities. We’ll be opportunistic around things that make strategic sense.”
Rothman has seen more success after following the lure of fast population growth to Florida, where it opened offices in the Orlando area in 2020 in partnership with AdventHealth.
“Florida has been a big success, because we’ve had the partnership down there with Advent Health that’s been kind of mutually beneficial,” said Ellison, who became Rothman’s CEO last fall.
The Philadelphia draw
The practice headquartered in Center City already has 24 locations in the Greater Philadelphia market. That number includes facilities that Rothman operates in partnership with Jefferson Health, Main Line Health, AtlantiCare, and RWJ Barnabas.
Rothman located itsnewest office in West Chester, an area where Rothman had little market share, according to Ellison. He also sees opportunity in other parts of the Philadelphia region and contiguous markets.
To make that growth possible, Rothman is partway through an effort to hire 41 physicians by the end of this year. That represents a 20% increase and will bring Rothman’s total to 214 physicians, the company said.
The need for ambulatory surgery centers
Rothman is a partner in nine surgery centers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and two surgical hospitals (Rothman Orthopaedic Specialty Hospital in Benslam and Physicians Care Surgical Hospital in Limerick).
Those outpatient facilities account for nearly two-thirds of Rothman’s surgeries. Even the surgical hospitals function primarily as ambulatory centers, Ellison said. The remaining third of surgeries takes place in acute-care hospitals.
“We are challenged for operating room capacity right now, both in the acute care hospitals, as well as in our ASCs, and so we feel like we need to bring more operating rooms online,” Ellison said.
What’s more, Medicare and private insurers want more procedures done in lower-cost surgery centers. In the future, insurers will pay the same price for an outpatient knee replacement whether its done in a hospital of freestanding surgery center, Ellison predicted.
Rothman hasn’t finalized locations for the new surgery centers, but Ellison said he expects two to be in Southeastern Pennsylvania and one in New Jersey. The centers will likely be in areas where Rothman has an established patient base.
The physician group prefers to open the new centers independently, as opposed to going through partnerships like it has historically. “We think we’re uniquely positioned to manage that patient experience in the surgical environment,” Ellison said.
When Eastern Regional’s track and field coach Mike Tangeman is asked about star senior runner Natalie Dumas, he will not call attention to the more than 20 program records she’s broken. Instead, he will mention that she does not own any of the program’s freshman records.
Before becoming one of the most accomplished runners in New Jersey history, Dumas first got involved with the sport as a freshman to bond with her sister, Kadence, who was then a senior.
As a junior, at the NJSIAA Meet of Champions, Natalie became the first girl in state history to place first in three events — the 400 meters, 400-meter hurdles, and 800 meters. A few weeks later, she placed first in the same three events at the New Balance Nationals held at Penn’s Franklin Field. Her accomplishment at both meets made Dumas a prominent name in national track circles and won the attention of the University of Arkansas, where she will be running next year.
This past year was no different. At June’s Meet of Champions in Pennsauken, Dumas placed first again in three events to cap her outdoor scholastic season. She clocked in at 57.04 seconds in the 400-meter hurdles, 52.14 in the 400 meter, and 2 minutes, 03.46 seconds in the 800 meter.
“With track, you have to trust the process because you work up into becoming better time wise,” Dumas said. “Obviously, you’re really out of shape at the beginning, and then you get better and better.
“At the end of the day I’m not afraid to lose.”
A ‘minor celebrity’
Last month, Dumas flew to Eugene, Ore., to compete in the USATF U20s and the Nike Nationals. To combat potential jetlag and the difference in climate, she arrived on the West Coast a few days before she was slated to race at University of Oregon’s Hayward Field.
In the U20s, she won a spot on the U.S. World team after a first-place finish in the 400-meter hurdles, running a season-best 56.13. The next day, she returned to the same track to compete in the 400-meter dash at the Nike Nationals and placed first at 52.21 to claim her eighth national title.
“It was a lot of races,” Dumas said. “But honestly, I didn’t even mind racing that much.”
Dumas’ participation in the Nike Nationals was possible because of the event’s intentional geography and calendar proximity to the U20s. It was also a sign of the ever-evolving nature of high school sports. Dumas is one of 20 female high school track and field athletes signed to Nike Elite. The program, which includes a coveted name, image, and likeness deal with the world’s largest supplier of athletic attire, has increased Dumas’ national appeal. It has also improved her performance on the track.
Natalie Dumas started running track as a freshman at Eastern Regional.
The partnership offers support from Nike’s team of trainers. Since signing with the company, Dumas has revamped her strength training regimen in line with Nike’s guidance and learned more about injury management. Through the program, she also connected with other Nike athletes and Nike Elite’s personal training staff.
“It’s just great overall,” Dumas said. “I feel like high school athletes tend to be more on the lazy side than everyone else, because they kind of don’t have anyone like kicking their butt into gear.”
“Sometimes being called out is embarrassing. [The Nike trainers] will say something like, ‘Hey, you didn’t finish this last set, go do it.’ But they definitely stay on top of you. … They all help us push to be our greatest.”
NIL is not the only change in Dumas’ life. After coming onto the national scene last year, Dumas’ popularity in the track world skyrocketed. The 17-year old currently has nearly 14,000 followers on Instagram.
“Coming into this year, she was a minor celebrity,” Tangeman said. “Dealing with all the attention and everyone knowing her. Other athletes from other schools saying hi to her, wanting to take pictures at meets and just all that other stuff. It was definitely a lot different.”
Dumas had to get used to the constant noise around her — which she admits has been “hard to handle” at times.
“At the end of the day, you shouldn’t worry about making sure everyone’s responded to and everyone’s answered to,” Dumas said. “If they’re closest to you and if they know you, they’ll kind of understand. [They will] be like, ‘Well, I know Natalie. I know the type of person she is, and she wouldn’t do that to me.’ It’s kind of just hard to keep up with it.”
‘Shape me into a better runner’
As one of the top talents in the country, Dumas had her pick of the upper-echelon of college programs, which was a blessing and a curse.
“It’s kind of like when you go to a restaurant and there’s a huge menu,” said Tangeman, laughing.
Dumas spent most of this past year scheduling and taking recruitment visits. In order to woo her, she said several programs pulled out all the stops. One treated her to an outing at Topgolf. Another pitched their school to her on a boat. Ultimately, it was the last school she visited that won her over.
Natalie Dumas runs the 400 meters, 800 meters, and 400-meter hurdles.
“[Arkansas] just set my goals in front of me,” Dumas recalled. “They said, ‘These are your goals, this is what you want to do. If that’s what you want to do, we will make an attempt to reach them.’
Arkansas has won three NCAA women’s outdoor track and field team titles since 2015, and another five in indoor track over that span.
“There’s not too much to be said about Arkansas. You look at the program, you look at the athletes that they have produced, and you see what they have done. I put my trust in them. I’m not afraid to run the workouts that they’re running, lift the workouts that they’re lifting. I’m not afraid to go out there and try something new, and I’m definitely excited for them to kind of just shape me into a better runner.”
While Dumas is looking forward to running at one of the best collegiate programs in the country, she is also mourning the end of her high school career. She graduated last month, cutting her Nike Nationals appearance a day early to make the ceremony. In the weeks since, she has found it “weird” to have a summer away from the track where she first learned to run.
“She brought a lot of positive attention our way,” Tangeman said. “Going forward, the kids coming up throughout our school system will say, ‘Hey, you know this Natalie Dumas? She ran track and field at Eastern, maybe that’s something I want to do too.’”
Biblical references seem to find a home with the Philadelphia 76ers.
Moses Malone arrived in 1982 and immediately led the team to the promised land.
Allen Iverson arrived in 1996 and, five years later, took the Sixers to the NBA Finals. For fans of gospel music, his nickname, “The Answer,” recalled a 1970s hit by Andraé Crouch and the Disciples: “Jesus is the Answer.”
And, now, LeBron, who was nicknamed “King James” while still a princeling high school star in Akron, Ohio. His namesake, England’s James I, commissioned a translation of the Bible in the early 17th century, the one with all the “Thee’s” and “Ye’s” and my personal favorite, “believeth.”
But if, by some miracle, he does agree to a tiny free-agent contract this summer, LeBron surely would make the Sixers a favorite to win their first Larry O’Brien Trophy since Larry O’Brien actually was the NBA commissioner.
This has not been the case largely because the sole benefit of “The Process,” the disastrous, failed rebuilding strategy that began in 2013, is Joel Embiid. He has MVP talent, and he won the award just three years ago, but his rank unprofessionalism — a refusal to commit to fitness, too much energy focused on extracurriculars, an obsession with personal milestones — has kept Embiid and the Sixers from reaching their potential.
And, while King James might not save Embiid’s mortal soul, with his special brand of tough love, LeBron very well could save Embiid’s mortally afflicted career.
Come on, man
Before this goes any further, I don’t believe LeBron is interested in playing basketball for the Philadelphia 76ers. Yes, the Sixers somehow traded Paul George and picks for Jaylen Brown — Celtics president Brad Stevens must’ve lost either a bet or his mind — which instantly turned the Sixers into a viable Eastern Conference contender. Nevertheless, I think it’s likely that LeBron’s representatives are using this (feigned) interest as leverage to land the King elsewhere.
I don’t think he wants to be in Philadelphia, which is a much tougher city than anywhere else he’s played. I don’t think he wants to deal with an organization with an absentee owner and a first-time top executive. I don’t think he wants to be associated or represent one of the most dysfunctional organizations in major league sports over the past 14 years, and with the NFL’s Jets, Raiders, and Browns in that mix, that’s quite an accomplishment. I don’t think he wants to play for the NBA veteran minimum, which is all he’d get at this point.
Would LeBron James be willing to play for the veteran minimum?
There is a chance, though, that his desire to be worshipped will override his desire to give himself the best chance to win a fifth title, because nowhere would worship him the way Philadelphia fans would worship him, just as they worship Moses for leading them out of the wilderness.
LeBron already did that in Cleveland and Miami. And, as my colleague David Murphy pointed out on Monday, his agent, Rich Paul, said the Knicks disqualified themselves from the LeBron sweepstakes when they won a championship. Murphy’s logic: He could not end their drought, and therefore could not be seen as their savior, so why bother?
Now that Jalen Brunson did what Patrick Ewing failed to do, LeBron can’t do it. But he damn sure could help Embiid do what Embiid will be paid an average of $62.6 million a year to do over the next three seasons.
Winning a title, even with James on board, requires getting the most of whatever’s left out of Embiid, who has bad knees and a bad attitude. Getting the most out of Embiid is something that championship-winning coaches Doc Rivers and Nick Nurse abjectly failed to do, and they had three years apiece.
This is different.
LeBron, who is 41 with the body of a 32-year-old, is entering his 24th season. He has gotten the best out of his teammates everywhere he’s gone, whether it’s fellow Hall of Fame-caliber players like Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and Kyrie Irving or lesser lights such as Kevin Love and Mo Williams. He has won four championships because of it. You think Austin Reaves — an undrafted tweener guard who averaged 10.8 points in four years of college — would have been offered $185 million by the Lakers for the next four years if LeBron hadn’t been his teammate for the past five years?
Injury issues have plagued Joel Embiid throughout his career.
Embiid, who is 32 with the body of a 42-year-old, is entering his 11th season since being drafted, though he missed the first two seasons with injuries. On the day the Sixers season ended in a playoff sweep (at the hands of those Knicks) he announced that the 2025-26 season had been a success for him. That’s because his left knee no longer impeded him to the degree it had him impeded him for the past several years.
Embiid then swore that, at the end of this summer, when training camp begins, since his body feels better, he will be better prepared than in recent years to finally get the Sixers … past the second round of the playoffs?
Talk about aiming low.
At any rate, no Sixers since Moses himself is better equipped to make sure Embiid follows through on his latest promises. It worked on “big-boned” Charles Barkley.
“If it wasn’t for Moses Malone, I’d be working at McDonald’s.”
Charles Barkley on how the late, great Moses got him to lose 50 pounds and changed the course of his NBA career. pic.twitter.com/eovRoU1E9w
— Podcast P with Paul George (@PodcastPShow) August 8, 2024
Filling a void
Since trading cornerstone All-Stars Andre Iguodala in 2012 and Jrue Holiday in 2013, the closest the thing the Sixers have had to a real leader was Jimmy Butler, whose headstrong attitude and routine insubordination were less an example of leadership than a display of self-aggrandizement. Embiid was in his third year of actually playing NBA basketball during the Season of Jimmy, and he certainly got that message.
Who’s the leader now?
Embiid blew his chance years ago when it became clear that he was less interested in chasing championships than he was in seeking MVP trophies, Olympic gold medals, milkshakes, and Shirley Temples.
I went to Chick-fil-A with Landry Shamet and (get ready for the sports radio style tease!) you WON'T BELIEVE the amount of Chick-fil-A calories Joel Embiid consumes during team flights https://t.co/yRGIMKFE6C
Tyrese Maxey is an ebullient, well-spoken workaholic, but he lacks the gravitas to lead a championship-caliber team, especially when the roster includes more accomplished players like Embiid and Brown.
As for Brown — well, he might find it hard to lead a bunch of dummies; last week, he called most pro athletes morons when compared to him after unnamed sources accused him of thinking he was the smartest person in the room: “Let’s keep it a buck [100] … The bar is f— low.”
James might not be a budding chess master like Brown, but he’s smart enough to know how to win a title and how to run a team. After all, the bar is low.
Do you think LeBron is going to let Joel make his teammates wait for 2½ hours to leave for the plane after road games? Do you think LeBron is going to sit around and wait for Embiid to come to meetings and shootarounds? No. The answer is, simply, no. If you’re James’s teammate, you will be professionalized or you will be marginalized.
If LeBron James comes to Philly, you will see a fitter, tougher, more committed Joel Embiid.
James’s habits aren’t contagious, they’re compulsory. It’s a trait he shares with Kobe Bryant. James is kinder than Kobe, and he’s more deferential, but compared to the typical laissez-faire NBA star, he’s neither kind nor deferential.
He is desperate to win, and if you can’t help him do that, then he doesn’t have time for you.
Again, I don’t think it’s a realistic outcome. But King James in Philly would be the best medicine for Embiid’s ailing legacy.
It wasn’t the first time Brad Stevens had heard the question. His story piques a natural curiosity. A man widely regarded as one of the world’s finest basketball coaches walked away from one of the world’s finest basketball coaching jobs at 44 years old. He did so to become a suit. Over the last five years, plenty of people have wondered aloud to the Celtics’ president of basketball operations.
So, do you miss coaching?
“I did this week,” Stevens said on Monday, recounting a conversation he had with an interrogator last week. “This is not for the faint of heart.”
Stevens’ news conference alongside Celtics majority owner Bill Chisholm earlier this week offered the world its first chance to inform its opinion on a trade that stunned the NBA like few before it. While the Sixers have yet to announce when they will field questions about their blockbuster acquisition of Boston superstar Jaylen Brown, the guys on the other side of the deal didn’t have the same luxury.
Rarely does an NBA team encounter such a universal and vociferous disagreement with a trade as the Celtics did to their decision to trade Brown to the Sixers for Paul George and a couple of first- and second- round picks. Here in Philly, the jubilation surrounding such a no-brainer decision was further enhanced by the opportunity to watch Bostonians engage in a collective public meltdown unlike any it has staged since at least the Revolutionary War. One local radio host called it the worst trade in Celtics history. Another said he felt physically ill. Bill Simmons said he woke up from a colonoscopy and assumed he’d died.
“I’m with you,” Stevens said. “That is a hard thing to trade a guy that you, first of all, care so much about and secondly have so much respect and admiration for, to a team that just beat you in the playoffs and that you’re literally going to play six times before the playoffs next year, with our two preseason games. But I do think that ultimately when you do a deal you need to think about you first and the optionality it creates for you. If I’m being honest, if that exact deal came from a team out west and you were comparing the two, then you’d probably take the team out west. But that’s not the way it was working.”
Whatever the immediate local reaction to Stevens’ defense of the decision, he and Chisholm offered a master class in how to handle blowback. You do it directly, immediately, and humbly. It helps when you believe in your decision-making process, which the Celtics clearly did. And, look, they were right to feel that way. Because, chances are, this ends up being a good decision for them.
That’s not the same as saying that the Sixers will regret their decision to trade for Brown. Nor is it the same as saying that the Celtics “won” the deal. None of those things are exclusive from one another. There is a scenario where the Celtics and Sixers both did what was best for them, and that the price was perfectly fair. Granted, things rarely align on all three of those fronts. But this is one of those deals where both sides made the most rational decision and where the market dictated the terms. A lot of the criticism currently being aimed at the Celtics would be better targeted at the 28 general managers who either couldn’t or wouldn’t beat the Sixers’ offer for Brown. If anything, the market was the irrational actor.
Jaylen Brown spent 10 seasons in Boston after getting selected third overall by the organization in 2016.
From the Sixers’ perspective, the argument remains largely as it did in the immediate wake of the deal. More than practically any other player in the NBA, Brown at least renders believable the idea that the Sixers can contend for a championship over the next two years, given both their smallish backcourt of Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe and their preexisting financial condition. Brown’s size, athleticism, explosiveness and shotmaking are a much better fit at about $60 million over three years than George was for essentially the same AAV over two years. That, at the very least, means the Sixers will be doing something other than treading water and praying for a miracle for the duration of Joel Embiid’s contract, which is as immovable — and limiting — as any in the NBA.
The Celtics were not bound by those constraints. Their desire to remain that way sits at the heart of the decision to trade Brown. Keeping his contract on their books could easily have led them to a fiscal and competitive cliff. A lot of the criticism of the Celtics seems to underestimate this reality.
The criticism doesn’t account for the idea that Payton Pritchard is worth the entire amount of the four-year, $100 million extension he is eligible to sign. Over the last two seasons, seven guards in the NBA have a .600-plus true shooting percentage while attempting at least 20 shots per 100 possessions. Those seven are Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Austin Reaves, Jamal Murray, Anthony Edwards, Luka Dončić, Desmond Bane, and … Pritchard.
The criticism doesn’t account for the contract that former second-round pick Jordan Walsh could command as a free agent next summer. It doesn’t account for Hugo González potentially hitting his option year at the same time Pritchard’s current deal is expiring. The Celtics could have made it work for the next couple of years, sure. But they wouldn’t be able to do it the two years after that. The teams that lose sight of those years are the ones who end up where the Sixers were.
The criticism of the Celtics also seems to under-assess the Celtics’ return. The 2028 draft pick they acquired is hugely valuable given the probability that it ends up as a maximum-odds lottery pick and the time-value aspect of its relative immediacy. The 2031 unprotected pick will be perfectly timed on a number of levels.
I don’t have room to show you all of the work. But you should at least be able to accept that a basketball mind as astute as Stevens’ and an organization as accomplished as the Celtics have done the work. In a weird way, all of the factors that have generated such outrage are also evidence of how strongly the Celtics believed in their decision.
Few teams have the stones to trade a player at the peak of his value. The Celtics’ skids were greased by Brown’s eligibility for a contract extension. More often than not, the word “No” is a first domino.
“They convinced me this was the best way for us to win, and I got there, I did, but it was hard,” Chisholm said. “It was really hard. And I recognize this is a big, big move.”
It is unquestionably a move that works in the Sixers’ favor. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work out for the Celtics, too.
If you didn’t believe it before, you need to understand it now: Donald Trump never should have picked up that phone, never should have put in that call to one of his toadies, FIFA president Gianni Infantino, and never should have tried to exert his icky influence in a sport rife with corruption.
The 4-1 loss by the U.S. men’s national team to Belgium on Monday night at Lumen Field in Seattle was a fitting result. It was an embarrassing end to the World Cup for the home country. It was cosmic payback for a club that hoped to benefit from a president who wanted to strongarm Team USA into the quarterfinals and found out that sports can resist even an autocrat’s attempts to stack the deck.
Sometimes, once you show you’re willing to wallow in the mud, you can never wash the stain away. The justifications for the Trump administration’s overtures to FIFA to wipe out the one-game suspension for Folarin Balogun — and for FIFA’s acquiescence — were oh-so easy and obvious: This is FIFA.
U.S. forward Folarin Balogun (20) was the center of attention against Belgium in the World Cup’s round of 16 on Monday.
This is an organization with a history of scandal and corruption so long and detailed that Robert Caro could only begin to chronicle it. This kind of back-scratching and deal-making is nothing new at soccer’s highest level. This is how things work, and everyone knows it and holds their nose against the stench, and all the complaints from Belgium and the other countries left in the World Cup were nothing but rank hypocrisy.
If another national team were in the same situation that the USMNT found itself after Balogun was hit with that questionable (at best) red card last Wednesday against Bosnia and Herzegovina, its president or prime minister would have done the same thing Trump did, right? Any means necessary in an every-country-for-itself system, right?
Wrong. The corrective to dishonor and dishonesty isn’t to do more dishonorable things. Yet that was the remedy that Trump sought and put Team USA in the position of accepting. No, Balogun never deserved a red card and the subsequent suspension. Yes, it was a terrible call. But terrible calls happen at all levels of sports, because sports — at least until the gamblers and robots take them over completely — are officiated and overseen by human beings, and errors and mistakes are part of the game.
Stuff happens, and you deal with it as best as you can, and no one gets a do-over days later just because Donald Trump says so. His actions wouldn’t have been appropriate in youth soccer — imagine a parent of a punished player pressuring a league’s commissioner to lift a suspension and the commissioner giving in — let alone in the biggest sporting event on the globe.
What’s more, Trump and those who supported or tolerated his interference in The Balogun Affair apparently never stopped to consider that he might be damaging his own national team’s chances. In that 2-0 victory over Bosnia, Balogun’s teammates not only survived the final 26-plus minutes of the match without him but also scored shorthanded to extend their lead.
They had become underdogs. They had acquired the momentum that comes with being a team that had to fight adversity and had given a strong indication that it could overcome it.
But once FIFA reversed its decision, that entire narrative — that sense that the USMNT might use Balogun’s suspension as inspiration and triumph in the face of an unjust call — disappeared. Now, the USMNT wasn’t the tough, resilient bunch that could withstand the absence of its best player. Now it was so out of its depth without Balogun that it needed the shady political boss to cut a deal in the smoke-filled room to bail it out.
Belgium players react after their team scored one of four goals against the United States in Monday’s round-of-16 World Cup match.
Well, the Americans fit that pathetic profile Monday night. They allowed Belgium to take an early lead, then gave up the winning goal just 61 seconds after Malik Tillman tied the game at 1, then conspired to commit a crushing gaffe when goalkeeper Matt Freese played the ball outside the box, burped it up, and watched Hans Vanaken roll a shot past him for a two-goal Belgium edge.
They were outplayed, outmatched, and outclassed, their performance all the more humiliating for the strings that their president had pulled for them, for the message that he had sent about their chances.
Donald Trump told the world that these athletes needed a man willing to act like a mob boss to make things easier for them, that the USMNT wasn’t strong enough to take home victory on its own and without his help. It turned out he was right. He treated them like losers, and on Monday night, they met his expectations.
In a world full of blowhard self-promoters who lack expertise in anything outside hat-backward bro-chat, it’s refreshing to hear smart guys talk about interesting stuff in plain words.
That’s what you’ll get when you find Episode 12 of the Negotiation Warriors podcast on YouTube. On the podcast, former Chicago Bears executive Cliff Stein spends 75 minutes discussing the evolution of NFL front-office practices with a certain former Eagles and Cleveland Browns executive.
The episode is titled “The Salary Cap Godfather with Joe Banner.”
This is not hyperbole.
Banner entered the NFL in 1994 as the salary cap and free agency became the league’s most important drivers of roster construction. Banner was, simply, smarter and braver than almost everybody else making those decisions. It was he who designed the template for salary-cap management, free-agent pursuit, and, to a degree, the maximization of early- and late-round draft pick evaluation.
Banner (with an assist from his then-administrative assistant, Lee Ann Hartley, who gets name-dropped in the episode), also invented Howie Roseman, who since has led the Eagles to three Super Bowls, two championships, and today generally is considered the NFL’s top executive.
But everybody has a godfather.
Banner served a similar role to Stein, a North Philly kid who played receiver for Ron Cohen at George Washington High School and rose from fringe-player agent to the role of senior vice president for 22 years with the Bears, until regime change in 2023 ended his tenure.
Stein, 59, then became a consultant for college programs dealing with NIL challenges, helped develop software called Front Office 360 to help schools manage their salary caps, and, of course, started the pod. He’s already hosted super-agents Drew Rosenhaus and Peter Schaffer, and he has about 30 more in the bank. None, he said, was as rewarding as the Banner pod.
“He’s not known as a very tall man, but he is a giant when it comes to negotiations,” Stein says, introducing Banner in anatomically and metaphorically appropriate terms.
Why Banner? Why now?
Because the business of the NFL was uncharted territory in the mid-’90s. Banner was Magellan. Now semiretired and semiforgotten by a generation that uses his methods but has no appreciation of their origins, it is important to Stein to shine light on Banner’s massive contribution, from negotiating stadium deals to navigating the cap to assigning values to players on the front and back ends of their careers.
“My biggest takeaway was the value of a negotiator in the role of a GM, and to show that’s what he was doing,” Stein said.
Banner’s one of the most respected sports executives, one of the most brilliant minds and canniest negotiators the NFL has ever seen. Some would even call him the Godfather.
From North Philly to the South Side
Stein got his business and law degrees at Temple, then began work as a union lawyer in 1994 when he also got his NFL agent’s license. Three years later he partnered with Jerrold Colton, continued his law practice, and acted as agent for a few low-level players such as former Eagles offensive lineman Jerry Crafts and kick returner Michael “Beer Man” Lewis, the 29-year-old Arena Football League speedster who delivered Budweiser but did not play college football. The Eagles cut Lewis in 2000, but he eventually reached the Pro Bowl with the Saints.
In 2002, the Bears solicited Stein’s application to be their contract negotiator. He spent much of the next 22 years in that role and several others as senior vice president and general counsel, a vital adviser for Bears executives and ownership, until Kevin Warren was hired as president in 2023 and dismissed him.
Banner was instrumental in nurturing Stein’s development.
The podcast is 75 minutes of two of the deepest sorts of sports insiders discussing not only the inner workings of the NFL’s well-cloaked business models and practices but also the origins of those practices in the salary-cap, free-agency world, the very creation of which they played a crucial role.
Detail-oriented pod
That’s the word that keeps popping up: detail. Banner’s philosophy in preparing to negotiate: be detailed. The key trait in every hire Banner makes or recommends: obsession with detail.
Stein learned from Banner, and the stories in the podcast episode are clinically detailed.
They discuss how, under Banner, the Eagles used principals of analytics years before the Moneyball revolution coalesced in the later 2000s.
The most poignant anecdote involves Roseman’s biggest hit. In 2004, as a low-level assistant — director of football administration — Roseman, in his fifth year with the organization, was eager to add a kid named Jason Peters. At that time, Peters not only was a rookie tight end, but he was on the Buffalo Bills’ practice squad. It would have cost the Eagles nothing to acquire him except a minimum salary. Coach Andy Reid didn’t want to use the roster spot for Peters.
Four years later, again at the insistence of Roseman, who now was vice president of player personnel, Banner traded three picks for Peters, gave him a six-year, $60 million contract, and watched him go to seven of the next eight Pro Bowls.
Joe Banner (center) and Jeffrey Lurie (left) came to the Eagles in 1994.
Banner had more stories Sunday afternoon, stories that didn’t make the pod. Such as:
Lurie bought the Birds in 1994, the same year Stein got into the agent game. As newcomers, Banner thought it would be wise to introduce himself and Lurie by entertaining the adversaries.
In October 1994, at the owners’ meetings in Chicago, Banner and Lurie hosted a cocktail hour for the Eagles’ agents at the time. This was tantamount to Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, inviting Jefferson Davis and his generals to Thanksgiving dinner. The other owners and league office were furious.
Banner claimed ignorance.
“We were flagrantly breaking the ‘rules,’” Banner said, “But we honestly didn’t realize how bad a line we were crossing.”
When Stein was with the Bears, they regularly crossed that line.
Later in the podcast, in addressing the number of front-office executives who began their careers under Banner, Stein recalled his introduction to Roseman.
For months, Hartley had received and rebuffed Roseman’s daily letters pleading to join the Eagles — a plea he sent to virtually every other team, too — in any capacity. Roseman’s persistence impressed her, which, Stein said, was key: “I knew that if someone like Lee Ann likes you, you’re going to get the respect of Joe Banner and Jeffrey Lurie.”
In 2000, after Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum met and vetted Roseman — a Fordham Law graduate, just like Stein — Banner finally relented and gave Howie an interview.
“I think I saw a little of me in him,” Banner said.
Banner then fired his current numbers guy and hired Roseman, who took up residency on the corner of Hartley’s desk outside of Banner’s office on the fourth floor of Veterans Stadium. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Fast forward
Stein says he’s content to continue his life in Chicago to be near his two grown children, unless some team comes at him with an offer he can’t refuse. For now, he’s eager to plumb the podcast depths. He says he’s gotten a commitment from an executive who said he’d never do a podcast but changed his mind after seeing the Rosenhaus pod.
Until then, Stein is positively giddy at the chance that the Eagles might make Hartley available for an episode. She now is the vice president and senior adviser to Lurie; essentially, the job she used to do for the president she now does for the owner.
Imagine the stories she could tell.
“I’m going to do a behind-the-scenes on someone who knows everything about the business, part of the NFL population that never gets credit,” Stein said. “To have her as a potential guest? I mean, she’s half the reason Howie got hired!”
As for Banner, he left the Eagles in 2012 to become Cleveland’s CEO, but he was out by 2014. He’s been an adjunct professor at Villanova, a role in which Stein, still in Illinois, now serves at Northwestern. Banner has acted as a consultant on dozens of NFL coach and executive searches; cofounded the 33rd Team group of football consultants with Tannenbaum; acted as an adviser during the 2021 NFL CBA negotiations; and has sat on the board of Patricof Co, a venture capital firm that caters to pro athletes.
In his dotage, Banner, like so many, splits time between Maine and Florida, enjoys his grandchildren, and hopes to stay relevant and appreciated.
The pod, and maybe this column, will serve that end.
“I gotta say, I feel like that 45-year-old golfer who’s leading the Masters after the first round,” Banner said with a chuckle.
Well, Jack Nicklaus won it at the age of 46. Banner might not be the Nicklaus of the NFL, but he’s at least the Fred Couples of the boardrooms.
Auston Trusty plays centerback for the U.S. men’s national team, a position that doesn’t lend itself to scoring. But when he fired a goal against Turkey in the group stage finale of the World Cup, William Hall wasn’t surprised.
The University of Richmond junior was well-acquainted with Trusty’s shot. He’d seen it dozens, if not hundreds, of times, standing in the net at Chester Park in Wallingford, Pa.
It was the spring of2020. Hall was 14 years old, an incoming freshman at Strath Haven High School, and Trusty was 21, a starting defender on the Colorado Rapids. COVID-19 had, pushed back the MLS season, and Trusty was at home in his native Media, Pa.
He still needed to train, but there were few options available. So, the professional athlete decided to return to where it all began: Chester Park, home of youth soccer club Nether United, now 1776 United FC.
Trusty had played under coach John Waraksa for six seasons, two years above his age group, before going to the Philadelphia Union Academy in 2013. Hall was on Nether United’s U-15 team when the pandemic hit.
The teenager would often train with his teammates at Chester Park, and one day in late April or early May, Trusty showed up. They ran through warm-ups, then L-shape passing drills, then finishing drills, then shooting drills.
Hall was the only goaltender present, which put him in the unenviable spot of having to defend against a world-class athlete. It didn’t go well for the teenager.
Unlike players Hall’s his age, Trusty moved with a quicker pace and a harder strike. The ball would curl into the corner rather than launching straight ahead.
Auston Trusty (center) made his return to the Philly area in November as part of the U.S. men’s national team group that faced Paraguay at Subaru Park.
“He would just pound them into the net, over and over,” Hall said. “I would say if he shot 20 shots, he’d probably make 18. Maybe hit the post on one of them. And I could scrape a hand on the last one.”
Trusty continued coming back to Chester Park, training with Hall and a group of local players five or six times that spring. It was a thrill for the teenager then, but now, those moments mean even more.
The “Delco-head,” as national team goalie and Wayne, Pa. native Matt Freese calls him, has made an imprint on the sport’s biggest stage. His goal against Turkey on June 25, which came in the third minute, was the second fastest in U.S. World Cup history.
It was not only Trusty’s first international goal, but the first men’s World Cup goal scored by a player born in the Philadelphia region.
“The group chats were going crazy,” said Hall. “But I think my first thought was, ‘I played with a player who just scored in the World Cup. That is insane. I saved his shot as a young kid.’”
Others throughout the Delaware Valley soccer community felt similarly. Paul Norris, who coached Trusty as a freshman at Penncrest High School, said he became emotional just hearing his name and hometown during the roster reveal.
As was the case with Nether United, Trusty was playing far above his weight at Penncrest. Even as a 14-year-old, he was starting alongside players who were much older and bigger than he was.
Auston Trusty (center) celebrates scoring his first-ever U.S. goal in the final match of Group D for the Americans against Turkey.
“What people laugh at now is he plays professionally as a defender,” Norris said. “But at the time, he had obviously a lot of skill, and we had him as a striker. And he was our second leading goal scorer that year.”
For the last 25 years, Norris has worked both at Penncrest and at Springton Lake Middle School, where he taught Trusty physical education. He still sees that lanky kid when he’s roaming the defensive line for Team USA (even though that kid now stands at 6-foot-3, 172 pounds).
So does Waraksa. The 1776 United coach has known Trusty since he was 8 and was at his World Cup debut in Seattle against Australia on June 19. He was down the shore, in Ocean City, N.J., watching with friends and family when the Media native scored his first goal.
U.S. men’s soccer defender and Media native Auston Trusty (left), poses for an image with his former youth soccer coaches and his former club head coach John Waraksa (center).
It brought Waraksa back to 2013, when Trusty scored in Nether United’s state cup final against Lehigh Valley.
“Lehigh had won the last five state championships at our age group,” the coach said, “so he stepped up, even two years young, in a state cup final. I mean, who does that?”
Trusty found himself in some challenging situations with Nether United. Waraksa put him on a high back line, but even from an early age, he took to it. Once the centerback realized he could compete amid a more advanced style of play, his confidence only grew.
And as he continues to represent his country, that confidence is as high as ever. Norris is still coaching varsity soccer at Penncrest, and for the past few years, he’s shown his players clips of Trusty back when he was playing for the Philadelphia Union.
In addition to his time with Nether United, Trusty was also groomed in the Philadelphia Union’s academy and played for its first team.
A lot has happened since then. In 2022, Trusty signed with Arsenal. He returned to Europe in 2023, signing with Sheffield United, and in 2024, he penned a five-year-deal with Celtic.
But Norris now has the best Auston Trusty highlight reel of all, one that is “slightly updated” from his Union days. And with Penncrest’s preseason rapidly approaching, the coach can’t wait to show it off.
“We try to remind the kids that this was somebody who was local,” Norris said. “This was not that many years ago. These are things that somebody who was in this school, and in the seat that you may be sitting in, has done.
“You’re all capable of it. It’s just a matter of, do you want to put the work in for it?”
Rich Paul said something the other day that is worth a little bit of reflection for anybody who rolls their eyes at the idea of LeBron James joining the Sixers.
Paul, the NBA superagent who was essentially created by James and who also hosts a podcast alongside former ESPN personality Max Kellerman, claimed that the Knicks would have been James’ clear first choice had they not won an NBA title this season.
“If the Knicks hadn’t have won, this wouldn’t even — there would be no board. He’d be going to the Knicks,” Paul said to Kellerman as he was breaking down James’ potential landing spots.
Rich Paul on LeBron James to the Knicks 😳
“If the Knicks hadn’t won, there would be no board. He’d be going to the Knicks…. Jalen Brunson would literally have to pick up the phone and say ‘hey man, there’s no issue with me.’ They (Knicks) have checked in.”
The comment was both surprising in its bluntness and unsurprising in its conclusion. To anybody who had followed James’ career and psychologically profiled him from afar, it would have made perfect sense if he decided to go where he would be the biggest fish in the biggest pond and also have a chance to write a story that ended up near the top of the local history books.
That probably sounds discouraging to anybody who had been holding out of picking Philadelphia from the list of 10-14 potential destinations Paul broke down for Kellerman. And let’s be clear, that’s probably the correct interpretation. Hey, we all love Philly. But it’s generally not a place for people who dream of places like New York, Los Angeles, and Miami.
Except, there’s another way to interpret Paul’s comments, at least as it pertains to James’ psyche heading into his 24th season in the NBA. While it is impossible to overlook his clear affinity for the bright lights and big city, James also clearly cares deeply about his legacy and his place in the historical record. Neither the Clippers nor the Nets are on his list, after all. His desire for the Knicks would have been as much about the story as the setting. Not only would he have had a chance to become the first player to win four NBA titles with four different teams, he would have won each of them in a place where they meant something.
Such motivation is perfectly reasonable. Inevitable, even. When a competitor spends two decades as the undisputed greatest player in his sport, he needs to find something else to compete against. For many of them, that something is history. James has accomplished more than almost all of the greatest of the greats, and thus needs to keep coming up with new historical challenges to overcome. Leading the Knicks to their first title in 50-plus years would have been the ultimate bucket list item. But Jalen Brunson did it first.
The Sixers aren’t to Philly what the Knicks are to New York. As far as I know, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce didn’t tour Xfinity Mobile Arena as a potential wedding venue. That being said, the Sixers do offer James a chance to do something novel. You can’t say that about many of his potential landing spots.
What could James accomplish in Denver, Golden State or Boston? All have won championships within the last decade led by stars who’ve spent their entire careers with the organizations. Each has a significant edge over Philly if James’ goal is basketball nirvana. Playing alongside Steph Curry or Nikola Jokic or Jayson Tatum would be a hell of a lot of fun, and any of the three could arguably offer James a better chance at winning a title. But none of them offer him a chance to prove something one last time.
In Miami and Cleveland, James has been there and done that. Miami would offer him a unique narrative symmetry along with a chance to play alongside Giannis Antetokounmpo. He went back to Cleveland and won a title with a totally different team from his first stint. Now, he can do the same in Miami. That’s almost as compelling as the prodigal son returning home to close out his career where his heart has always remained. The problem with both situations is the fit.
Look, James would fit pretty much anywhere, even at 42 years old, which he’ll turn Dec. 30. He averaged 20.9 points, 7.2 assists, and 6.1 rebounds last season. His efficiency remains elite. He led his team to a first-round upset of the Rockets before getting swept by the Thunder. The question is whether he would enjoy playing basketball with James Harden in Cleveland.
LeBron James averaged 20.9 points during the 2025-26 season.
In Miami, the trio of LeBron, Giannis and Bam Adebayo might be too clunky to get it done given the Heat’s deficiencies in the backcourt and in overall depth. One can argue the Sixers with LeBron have a chance to be a much more enjoyable experience, and potentially much better team than Cleveland and Miami. Going home again comes with the risk of undoing some of the good feelings you carried with your initial departure. Does LeBron really want to risk ending his career in either city with disappointment?
I’ll believe James is seriously considering joining the Sixers as soon as I see him shaking Mike Gansey’s hand in front of the cameras and fielding questions from reporters at the team’s practice facility in Camden. In the event he does not hold an introductory news conference this summer, I will believe he is joining the Sixers the moment I see him at training camp in a Sixers jersey. Even then, I might want to at least poke him with a finger to make sure my eyes do not deceive me.
We’ve done this dance before, haven’t we? Once upon a time Ben Simmons was the Klutch Sports mentee and Joel Embiid was the rising superstar. It was only eight years ago that Josh Harris and Brett Brown climbed aboard the Starchaser Enterprise and flew out to California with the hope that they could sway James to sign with the Sixers. Somehow, they managed to express these hopes with a straight face. The result was little more than a needlessly expanded carbon footprint. The Sixers didn’t even get face time with James himself, and the four-time MVP wound up signing with the Lakers, as everybody had long expected.
LeBron James and Tyrese Maxey are both members of Klutch Sports.
At this point, there is little reason to assume that things will play out any differently. The one commonality between all three of James’ free agencies is that they’ve all involved a level of protracted drama that, in hindsight, seemed at least partially contrived. In all three instances, James wound up in a place that looked like the most obvious option, at least in hindsight. The first time he left Cleveland, and went to a place where he could build his own superteam in America’s premier locale for the young, rich and famous. His return to Cleveland both rebuilt and burnished his standing as a hometown legend. The Lakers are the Lakers.
No offense to James, and no offense to Gansey or Bob Myers or Tyrese Maxey or whoever else thinks their personal connection to the King is strong enough to convince him to spend what could be the last season or seasons of his career in a city that offers a tiny fraction of the prestige or narrative value of several of the other potential destinations he is allegedly considering after opting out of his Lakers contract.
I’m not suggesting that anybody on the Sixers side is deluding themselves, and I’m not suggesting that James or Paul is feeding those delusions in bad faith. I’m sure Paul would be thrilled to see James team up with Maxey, another one of his clients at Klutch Sports. I’m sure James loves Maxey, who is impossible not to love, and it’s more than possible that he feels a genuine connection to Gansey, a fellow former Ohio schoolboy star who began climbing up the ranks of the Cavaliers front office around the same time James returned to Cleveland after his four seasons with the Heat. I’m far from sure that any of that will matter in the end.
The Heat and Cavaliers make the most sense from an end-of-career narrative standpoint. The Warriors and Nuggets make the most sense from a pure basketball bliss standpoint. For James to choose the Sixers, he’d need sentiment, basketball bliss, a setting to take a backseat to his desire to put his singular imprint on a new city and a new organization, and to potentially leave both of those entities better off after he is gone than they were before he arrived.
As long as the Sixers can offer him that, you can’t rule him out.
The Phillies game wasn’t over yet last month but it was over as Nick Piccone kept the TV on mute like a distraction in the background. The Phils trailed the Nationals by two runs and were down to their last strike with the bases empty in the ninth on June 23. It was over.
But Piccone — just like lots of diehards who accepted a loss but refused to stop watching — didn’t turn it off.
“Just in case,” he said.
And then it happened. The Phillies scored eight runs with two outs, delivering the most unlikely win of the season. It was time for Piccone to work. He’s built a following in recent seasons for being the guy who clips the radio calls of Philly sports highlights and posts them to social media.
First, he had to listen to how Scott Franzke — the Phils’ radio voice on 94.1 WIP — described the action.
“I got goose bumps when I listened to it,” said Piccone, who lives in Delaware County. “And I just knew Phillies fans are going to love this.”
He posted a montage of Franzke’s pitch-perfect calls that night and then watched them go viral. Philadelphia loves its teams but the city has always had a deep relationship with the voices, putting Piccone at the intersection of fandom and the way we enjoy it.
Brandon Marsh’s homer was thrilling, but how much better did Franzke’s narration make it feel?
“You could tell that the fan kind of came out,” Piccone said. “Like, he didn’t think that was going to happen. He had the same reaction that we did, and he’s calling it. He reaches that second level for a regular season game when I’m sure he probably thought this was going to be a loss. You could hear the surprise in his voice.
“If you’re listening live on the radio, you feel that instantly. And even if you’re watching the video, you’re like, ‘Oh my God.’ Having him feel what we feel and hear his voice match what we’re feeling inside, makes it so much better. It makes those moments so much better.”
Phillies radio play-by-play announcer Scott Franzke (left) with TV analyst John Kruk.
Piccone does not get paid to post his videos, but he commits himself every game — “I watch every pitch,” he said — to tracking the calls of the big plays and sharing them on social media. He does the same thing for other teams. It’s how he enjoys the game.
It takes about 10 minutes for Piccone to edit the clip on his computer and post it on social media.
“People would message me from Europe or Asia and say, ‘I’m stationed here’ or ‘I moved here for work, and your videos make me feel like I’m home,’” Piccone said. “When I started doing it, I wasn’t even thinking about that stuff. So when people say that I was able to provide that, I was like, ‘Wow.’ That’s a huge reason why I continue to do it.”
His hustle gives a radio broadcast a new life, allowing Franzke’s words to be heard again and again. Some people want to relive a moment they already enjoyed. Others want to feel closer to home.
“It’s flattering, honestly,” Franzke said. “It’s humbling to know that it resonates enough with someone to know that they’re willing to go through that sort of trouble and effort to spread the word.”
Brandon Marsh watches the ball after hitting a two-run home run against the Washington Nationals on June 23.
From Dolly to Franzke
Franzke was told when he first got into the business to have someone in mind to whom you are broadcasting.
“For me, the general Delaware Valley listener is stuck in traffic on the Schuylkill,” Franzke said.
His voice is the soundtrack of traffic jams, days at the beach, and backyard barbecues. Kids tune their radio to the Phils while they’re putting on their PJs, just like their grandparents used to sneak transistor radios under their pillows. They listen to Franzke on their porch at night and power walk around the neighborhood with his voice in their earbuds.
Radio broadcasters Larry Andersen (left) and Scott Franzke (right) call a Phillies game in 2011.
The Phillies broadcast their first game on the radio in 1936 with a former umpire named Dolly Stark calling the action. He was regarded as the National League’s top ump but quit after the 1935 season when the league balked at his request for a raise from his $9,000 salary.
“A new sports thrill,” said the advertisement for the games that were broadcast on WIP 610. “Seeing the game through the umpire’s eyes! Hearing what he thinks about every play, while that play is being made! And it’s a thrill that will last all summer.”
Stark called games for just one season before he returned to calling balls and strikes. But the game became the perfect radio sport. The pace is slow enough for the broadcaster to share a story and make you comfortable. Yet the action becomes exciting enough for them to build drama and make you feel something.
The umpire was followed by greats who became voices of summer like By Saam, Bill Campbell, Harry Kalas, and Franzke. Richie Ashburn ordered pizzas, Chris Wheeler taught you something, and Larry Andersen admires the umpire. There’s just something about baseball on the radio. It works.
“I think one of the reasons that baseball on the radio still works is because people can consume it passively,” Franzke said. “They’re driving, falling asleep in their beach chair, or doing yard work. They can do other things and be a part of it. A lot of people like the audio wallpaper, if you will. It’s there. It’s around them. They enjoy it passively and do other things in their life. We’re just along for the ride, I guess.”
Piccone’s clips show that Franzke is more than just enjoying the ride. He’s driving the car. It wasn’t a silent clip of Marsh’s homer that went viral last week. It was the clip of Marsh’s homer with the announcer sounding just as stunned as you were that it happened.
Franzke said it’s the moment that “generates the goose bumps,” since he’s just a guy. And it was the guy calling that moment last week that gave Piccone chills.
“It doesn’t matter when it is during the season, September or April, the story of the game takes over,” Piccone said. “I think he tells that story perfectly in his calls. Offense, a great defensive play, a strikeout. That emotion comes through and you know it’s a big moment.”
Nick Piccone says he’s “kind of jealous” of people who grew up listening to baseball games on the radio. “I didn’t even think of consuming sports in that way when I was younger. I’m glad I’m able to do it now.”
Being that guy
Piccone grew up on the 1993 Phillies and started watching the other teams in 1999 as a freshman at Kingsway High School. He soon was a diehard: devastated when they lost and elated when they won.
“I just consume it,” Piccone said last month. “Like, I’m mad the Phillies lost today.”
But the guy who chops up the audio of every radio broadcast didn’t grow up listening to the radio. He just watched it on TV.
“People who say they were brought up listening to sports on the radio, I’m kind of jealous of them,” Piccone, 40, said. “Because I didn’t even think of consuming sports in that way when I was younger. I’m glad I’m able to do it now.”
“We just have amazing play-by-play guys. You think of the Phillies, you think of Franzke. You think of the Flyers, you think of Tim Saunders. You think of the Sixers, you think of Tom McGinnis. Eagles, Merrill Reese and Mike Quick. They’re synonymous with the teams.”
Piccone planned to do what he does now — clip the radio call and match it to the TV feed — when the Eagles played the Patriots in Super Bowl LII. But his buddy’s Wi-Fi dropped that night, so Piccone closed his laptop and watched the game like a normal fan. And then the Eagles won, and he wished he had the clips.
He made sure to have a stronger connection in 2022 when the Phillies went to the World Series. He clipped every call that October, and his social media following soared.
He sends out Franzke’s call along with the team’s Spanish broadcasters and the opponent’s call. Piccone noticed that the TV calls are the ones usually shared by the teams or networks. The radio guys, he thought, weren’t getting their due.
People soon started messaging him for specific calls or pointing out things he may have missed. He suddenly felt like he had a responsibility. He became that guy.
“It’s fun being known for that,” said Piccone, who writes for Crossing Broad. “I like being that guy.”
The Phillies season likely will end in October again, giving Piccone plenty of moments to share. The goose bumps, he said, usually are felt in the fall when the stakes are higher. But sometimes the broadcaster makes you feel it on a weeknight in June. And that’s why you leave the game on.
“People will say, ‘I heard your call,’” said Franzke, who is not on X, formerly known as Twitter. “And there’s two places they heard it: WIP playing it back or on social media. It’s cool that Nick invests that kind of time. At the end of day, this promotes what we’re doing.”
