Shaun Scott and I love to talk art, movies and sports. Things get particularly spirited when we talk sports because children’s games played by adults in physical prime are something we’ve loved ever since we were kids on the east coast. So, here is one in our continued series, Sports Talk. This time, focused around an old picture of Michael Jordan that Shaun dug up.

JU: So, the question is, what does this picture, taken in 1992, make me think of? Good, bad and the ugly?

Well, first, I don’t know how you keep finding gems like this… I mean, a seemingly drunk Michael Jordan who looks like he’s about to go play baseball in a Malcolm X hat… his smile looks Bill Cosby-ish, no? Like he just said puddin’ pop? But he’s also still very handsome, glowing. In the back of his mind, I imagine he is thinking about all the money piling up in his bank account. But where is he? Did he just get dressed after getting out of a sauna? And what is he being interviewed for, his favorite malt whiskey?

I love Michael Jordan, I respect Michael Jordan, and you may tell me this picture is right before he donated $100,000 to charity or he’s about to talk to ex-cons about rehabilitation. But, damn, on face value, dude looks bent up and cocky and on top of the world.

SS: What do I even do with that response? For starters, the answer is that sometime in this period he just got done donating an undisclosed sum of money to Spike Lee’s production of “Malcolm X”, which had fallen on hard times. Spike tells a great story about how, after calling on celebrity friends of his to help get the film made, his last two phone numbers were Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. The two of them–who had recently played against one another in 1991 The Finals–still had a contentious but friendly relationship. So Spike plays them against each other: milk Magic for a million or two, then call Michael and tell him the Laker gave even more than he did, knowing that Jordan’s competitive nature would drive him to outspend Magic. Spike got the money, Michael got the hat, Magic got a discount, and we got a great film.

Anyway, the NBA season is underway– were you aware that the Cleveland Cavaliers have a head coach and that his name isn’t LeBron James? I had no idea. Looking at the Cavaliers’ bench, does anyone in the world have a greater stake in cloning than LeBron James? If you’re him, don’t you divert at least half of that Beats by Dre money to some pharma-firm to get the science of human duplication figured out by May the latest? Because unless they have at least 2 or 3 other James’ on the roster, it’s touch to see them beating deeper teams in the playoffs come Spring.

JU: That Magic/MJ story is priceless. Competitive nature leading to self-bilking. If it wasn’t for a great film like Malcolm X, it would be so much funnier. If Spike had called the MJ’s and said, “Hey look, I have this fleet of cars I kinda want, can you help?” and Magic gave him $10mil toward it, so Michael ponied up $15mil then I’d still believe it. That’s why in the grand scheme of things, I prefer artists to athletes, there’s a greater breadth of creativity.

I like your cloning idea, except it takes more than the 9-month span of an NBA series to grow a human. Unless they could speed up the process, which, however, might in fact be shorter than it would take to get Kevin Love and Irving to understand team/winning basketball, then LeBron is outta LeLuck. But things take time, and he’s willing to spend time, as evidence from the recent Houston game where he looked like the game was 10 outta 10 on his list of priorities behind embarrassing his teammates and getting a sammich after the 4th quarter.

I’m suspect of their coach, too, and, though it’s early, I’m beginning to agree with LeBron that this may be a lost season, so to speak. Could Los Spurs win again? The Clippers aren’t really there, neither are the Thunder. You know who I really like this season? The Rockets. Harden is playing out of his mind. I think, along with cloning, LeBron should be investing in time travel machines and bring back Malcolm X-hat wearing Jordan and tell him Magic is on line 2.

Allow me the simple: thoughts?

SS: I respect the hell out of Bill Simmons as a basketball mind and a journalist and a historian of a sport I love, and I couldn’t care less about this story. He laid it out on the line a month ago about corporate maleficence and the NFL, but that original controversy is hollowed of all significance by internal squabbles like these. Wake me up when it’s over.

JU: I agree that they story is drawing on and on and his quibbles with espn the company and personalities is getting, in a way, tiresome. BUT he’s the only one poking the espn bear. And as someone who runs a web site, I am fascinated by what his next move will be.

Admit it, if he was wearing a 90’s movie hat and surrounded by white dudes with mustaches you’d be intrigued!!

Also Mike Golic is a fraud.

I have a question for you: I was talking with our friend Caleb in a bar and I said the NFL was a fraud. The way it purports team work and striving for a goal but really how it’s a bunch of gangsters. Thoughts?

SS: Well, I mean, gangsters work in teams and strive for goals, too. The problem is that they’re parasitic forces that thrive on conditions of depression, and that they actually depend on the communities they victimize, using hard times that other people struggle through as an excuse to get away with murder. In a similar way, I think we give vectors of entertainment a moral carte blanche. So I agree with you, there are definitely some parallels to be drawn.