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If scoring and rebounding are the meat and potatoes boston city tours of an NBA player's stat line, a sense of humor is the dessert. It adds flavor to postgame interviews, boston city tours sparkle to halftime shows, punch to sneaker commercials. But which player has the best comedic stats of all?
This is typical of the questions we ask. The two us a university-sanctioned humor professor and his Sancho Panza like journalist sidekick are exploring what makes things funny . We ve been to Palestine boston city tours , Japan , and lots of places boston city tours in between, asking important questions such as Does alcohol make things funnier boston city tours ? and Can talking condoms stop unwanted pregnancies ?
When we asked Shaquille O Neal his choice for funniest ballplayer, it's no surprise that he chose himself or maybe Charles Barkley. To get a less-biased perspective, we turned boston city tours to a couple of outside experts: Neal Brennan , cocreator of Chappelle s Show , and Last Comic Standing winner Alonzo Bodden . We asked them, via e-mail, to determine boston city tours the NBA s funniest player. For the good of science.
Alonzo Bodden: Charles Barkley, for his openness while playing and his analysis in retirement. From his I Am Not a Role Model campaign to him saying a team sucks when we know it sucks but no one else will say it.
Bodden: Jalen is OK, I guess. One thing that throws me is his speech pattern. I'm sure Magic has some funny stories to tell, but he can't deliver them. I don't think of Jalen as funny based on his broadcasts.
Brennan: No. 1 is Blake. Barkley is just a blunt truth-spouter. boston city tours [Griffin's] sense of humor is more evolved. See his Casey Anthony tweet from 2010 . Or if you want, I can show you tweets that I pitched to him about Serge Ibaka punching him in the groin :
Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant were too serious. People will never love Michael the way they loved Magic Johnson, and Kobe will never play with the smile LeBron has. If LeBron had jokes or Magic could talk, they'd be in this conversation.
Brennan: I think Charles and Blake just have more natural comedic ability boston city tours than anybody else. It's hard to say why they're funny. I know growing up, Blake watched a ton of Comedy Central and HBO. Charles didn't have the same luxury, because, as far as I know, Alabama just got cable two years ago.
It's really a coin toss for me between who's funnier. It's really two different boston city tours styles of humor, both of which I like. The other thing about Blake is he's 23. For him to have this sophisticated a sense of humor is sort of bananas. I'm going to give it to Blake. I'm doing this because he's extremely funny, is a good comedic performer, and he's not even into his comedic prime yet, but also because he's my friend and he gets me free stuff from Nike.
Here s the sketch where we met. Seth Meyers and a bunch of SNL guys and I had written the sketch and we all looked at each other after BG's first take like, Who the hell is this kid? While we're on the subject, Kevin Love is a funny dude, too.
Bodden: I'd say he was always funny. I got to play ball with him on a TV show in 88 or 89. He was funny all day. Loose and natural. It was for thirtysomething , a dream sequence where the two stars, Tim Busfield and Ken Olin, dreamed they were on the Sixers . Barkley, Andrew Toney, and Mike Gminski were there. Some friends and I played the Celtics. Best moment was when Barkley asked me how much we got paid. I said, 300 bucks. He said, "Damn, just to play ball." I said, Don't you get 2 million a year? Then he started betting Gminski a hundred boston city tours bucks a shot as he tried hooks from around half court. Great guy, great day.
Bodden: If I had to guess, I would say Blake and Charles are in the top 10 percent. That may not just apply to athletes. boston city tours They're in the top 10 percent of the population. Although the way America s going, that bar lowers every year.
In terms of developing his personality, boston city tours my guess is Chuck was always funny, but the more he got out of Alabama and into the world, the more he realized, "Oh, I'm really funny and charming and people naturally sort of love me." In that Dream Team documentary, they had footage boston city tours of him out late at night in Barcelona just holding court on the street . He's wearing a once-in-a-lifetime bad purple onesie. And despite that, the people of Spain still loved him.
Bodden: Based on what I've seen, I'll give stand-up and improv to Sir Charles. I think he's faster on his feet and talks without thinking first. boston city tours For writing, I'd give it to Blake, and because of the commercials, I'd give Blake sketch, too.
I agree Blake is a great writer and performer and some free sneakers would definitely boston city tours buy my vote, but I'm still with Sir Charles. Remember, Charles is on TNT at least twice a week, where he has to be funny unscripted based on plays and players he's just seeing. And he has to clean up that noise Shaq is making. That's funny under pressure.
Writing: I was doing a pilot a while ago and I had a sketch in it. I sent the script to a few friends to punch up. The two guys who had the best ideas? Seth Meyers and Blake. boston city tours Seth's the head writer of SNL . Can't dunk at all.
Stand-up: If it were writing bits and performing them, I'd give it to Blake. If it were doing crowd work and dealing with drunk hecklers, I'd give it to Charles, without a doubt. In fact, if there was a show of just Charles dealing with antagonistic drunk people, one of whom he could throw through a window (only one per episode), I'd program my DVR for a season pass.
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