FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, January 27th, 2015
TRANSCRIPT – NBC SPORTS GROUP SUPER BOWL XLIX CONFERENCE CALL WITH MARK LAZARUS, FRED GAUDELLI, DREW ESOCOFF, AL MICHAELS, CRIS COLLINSWORTH AND MICHELE TAFOYA
JAN. 27, 2015
2:30 P.M. ET
DAN MASONSON: Good afternoon everybody, and welcome to today’s call. We’re joined on the call by NBC Sports Group Chairman, Mark Lazarus; our Coordinating Producer, Fred Gaudelli; our Director, Drew Esocoff, who are producing their 5th Super Bowl together; our on‑air team of Al Michaels, who is handling play‑by‑play for his 9th Super Bowl; analyst Cris Collinsworth his third Super Bowl in the booth; and sideline reporter, Michele Tafoya, also working her third Super Bowl.
With that I’ll turn it over to our NBC Sports Group Chairman, Mark Lazarus.
MARK LAZARUS: Thank you, and good afternoon. Our Football Night in America and our game coverage teams have been preparing for years, months, weeks, and down to the minute this week. We are now in full Super Bowl XLIX mode. The Seahawks and the Patriots, stars that are on both teams, the match‑ups, the legacies that are on the line, are all part of this story we are telling.
Of course there is the league’s ongoing investigation into the Patriots and we will continue to cover that all week on Pro Football Talk on NBCSN, and we are prepared to address it on Sunday with all the facts that are known at that time. This is still a developing and fluid story. Information is changing daily, and on Sunday we will address it with what is known at that time.
Super Bowl XLIX will be the biggest day for ad revenue in television history. Our advertising sales have been vibrant. The business of football, and the business of the Super Bowl is very good.
The experience that is sitting here with me today, and our Football Night in America crew are the best in the business, documented by many of you over time and by their peers over time.
The interesting note, and as Dan was talking about, how many Super Bowls they’ve been involved in. When you tally up all they’ve been involved with over the years and in various capacities there’s more than 30 Super Bowls that this team has been part of in one form or another, a phenomenal collection of skill and expertise that I’m very proud to be a part of.
With that, we will take questions.
I’m curious if all of the DeflateGate stuff, for all the build up to this second week of preparation for the Super Bowl, if this is a case of all publicity being good publicity? Certainly you see it on the nightly news, everybody is talking about the great match‑up. It seems like it’s a different level. Does it raise awareness?
MARK LAZARUS: And I think certainly we want to talk to people about the Super Bowl, but we’d prefer that everyone is talking about the football, the match‑ups, the players, the legacy, and the stars, these teams are full of stars. There is no doubt that there is always going to be tremendous awareness that Super Bowl is coming this Sunday. I think more people are talking about it now for unfortunate reasons. And we’d much rather be talking football than talking about the inflation and psi of a football.
This is for Fred. Fred, can you take me through your role in a replay? The replay challenge?
FRED GAUDELLI: I’m kind of watching the game probably in the same way you are, with a few more monitors than you have in front of you. But when you see a play that, does he have two feet inbounds, did he cross the goal line, did the ball hit over the pylon, was he on the back line, any play that anybody at home is going to look at and say, hmm, I wonder if that’s what they say it is.
I mean it just sets off an alarm in me, at least, to say, okay, we have to present some looks now to support the call on the field or give the coach an opportunity to challenge the call or if it’s a scoring play, have the booth review it.
So immediately as opposed to documenting the play itself, I’m going right to the end of the play, the point of contention, and trying to get up as many angles as the offense will allow me to give the coach the best information he can have, in the replay booth, the best information they can have to challenge the play.
Two things for Mark, why no sit down with Goodell during the pregame? Was there any thought of having Costas speak to the Commissioner?
For Al and Cris. Al, you’ve both seen pundits, Mark Brunell and others, accuse Brady of lying. Is it not your place for the game broadcasters to give an opinion on this topic. And how tough is it when you have to meet with these people, unlike the Brunells and other people in studios, to give candid opinions? Both of you guys are honest, obviously, and candid, but does this make it more difficult?
MARK LAZARUS: I’ll take the first part. We have a request into Roger. Trying to see if it would work with his schedule. And there’s no definitive answer as of yet. So we’re still hopeful there is potential that we’ll have him on Sunday.
AL MICHAELS: I’ll start on the other question. Again, this is evolving. It’s been going on since a week from yesterday. The story is changing every day. Everybody’s weighed in and a ton of people have had their opinions. We’ve seen and heard most of them. We have our own, as well. But we’re still five days out. And we, by the time we get to Sunday, I think the narrative may be a little different than it is right now. Certainly if it’s something brand new we’ll get to it and we’ll express how we feel about it and what the facts are. But we’re not here to rehash everything that’s taken place over the last two weeks.
Is it tough to give opinions on this sort of thing, when you have to meet with these people, unlike some of the people in studio that do it?
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: Of course. It was uncomfortable from the studio, too. I couldn’t have been anymore knee-deep in the Spygate thing than I was. We had Robert Kraft on. And right after him I gave my opinion, which was hard on the Patriots and hard on Roger Goodell. And sitting outside in the Green Room was Roger Goodell who came in immediately afterwards. And yet I had to face him, as well.
Yeah, nobody likes to challenge and take on people, especially when it comes to something as personal as this. We’re talking about accusing somebody of lying, accusing someone of cheating. You know, from my own personal standpoint, I want to know that. I want to fully ‑‑ I want to see the facts. I want to see the full due process. I want to see the whole thing before I’m ever going anywhere close to that.
So, yeah, but we’re going to ask the questions, believe me, when we’re in there with Belichick and Brady, we’ll be asking the questions like we always do.
For Al and Cris, you guys received a fair amount of criticism each about Goodell during the Ravens/Patriots game. One, did you think that was fair or unfair, and was that how you handle topics like DeflateGate and the Ray Rice situation going forward from this?
AL MICHAELS: I think each situation is separate. Under those circumstances when we did that game in New England, we have to keep in mind a few things that were in play. No. 1, the Mueller Report had come out 48 hours prior. There had been no football game played until our game. So we come out. We are first.
In our game in the Baltimore Ravens, central obviously to the investigation, coming to the game was Roger Goodell. I would say we would have been ‑‑ if we had been criticized for not dealing with it, I think that would have been justified.
Under this particular circumstance, remember, we’re not a pregame show or another show where you can sit there and mull something over for 10 or 15 minutes or open‑ended. We had about 25 seconds to say, ‘Hey, look, the report came out. Here are some of the facts.’ We couldn’t get into all of them. Goodell is at the game. We had to acknowledge that. If we had more time we could have delved into it even further.
I understand there are a lot of people who have a lot of animus towards Roger, and no matter what that report said they still didn’t want to believe Goodell. And they didn’t want to like Goodell. But at some point, I can’t sit there and say this is what the Mueller Report said, so maybe Mueller is a liar. I can’t do that.
So this is just a case of here are the facts. Here is what we know. Roger is sitting in the stands. And we got criticisized for it. But if we didn’t do it, we should have been criticized to a degree 10 times greater.
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: I think one of the frustrations, when it’s front page news when a guy gets accused of something, and on page 47, when basically the former head of the FBI comes out and says that, no, he didn’t lie. The whole thing was did Roger Goodell lie about seeing him in the elevator video or not. And because we had ‑‑ going all the way back it to the Hall of Fame game, conversations we had with them about that matter two or three days after he passed judgment and had the two-game suspension. We had a lot of history on that.
I never thought he’d lied about seeing that video. The Mueller Report backed it up. Al gave the report. I said I never had any reason to question his integrity. And to be honest with you, I would have felt worse if we had not done it because I think that it’s very easy to accuse somebody of something like that. Did I think he handled it perfectly? No. And I said that, too. Do I think that he lied? I never did. And the Mueller Report backed it up and that’s what I said.
MARK LAZARUS: That was part of the story line of what was going on in football that day, given the circumstances that Al pointed out that Roger was there, the Ravens were involved, the report just came out and we were the first game to be on television. It was our editorial responsibility, but it was also our responsibility not to impede on the game, which is when it was put ‑‑ when it aired, it did not impede on the action, it was done in a way that was an elegant timing solution, so that we were able to take care of what we needed to do, but not impede on the action on the field.
Al and Cris, you guys have done enough games with New England and Seattle to be able to have a good answer on this. What do you get out of your pregame meetings? What’s the difference between what you get from Bill and from both coaches? What is the difference? Is Bill not forthcoming or is he more forthcoming than people think. And how does Pete handle himself?
AL MICHAELS: They’re two disparate guys, as you know. Cris and I have both been in I don’t know how many meetings with Bill Belichick, it’s over 50, going back to when he was a defensive coordinator. What you do is you learn to hear and between the lines.
I think some viewers think they go in there and they give us the first 15 plays. They don’t, no coach does that. But we can ask about certain situations, about certain players, about their philosophy about certain things. And sometimes Bill is more expansive than he is at other times.
Pete of course is different, he’s loquacious, but he’s basically saying the same thing, he’s giving us about the same information that Belichick is giving us.
So we know these guys. We understand them and it’s like when you’re familiar with people and they’re telling you things you can see where the shading is. You can see where they’re telling you something coyly that they’re not necessarily blurting out directly, so it’s a little bit of a cat and mouse game. They’re not there to try to fool us. But they’re there to say just enough so that we can take it from there and figure out what it is that we need to support.
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: I’ll say that the last Super Bowl that we did in Indianapolis, I’ve never had a situation where a coach was more cooperative with me personally than Bill Belichick was. And you probably know a little bit of there have been a few ups and downs in that relationship over the years.
But if you’re talking football with him, like in the last production we did, he got up and did a thing about blocking with me, asked me to stand up. I asked him about how he uses his hands and fighting off (defenders). And he did 15 minutes of the most brilliant football stuff that you ever want to hear. And he said now you put your hands in the air. Now see how I can control you. Now put your hands outside. Now you can do whatever. He’s doing this whole demonstration, which was unbelievable.
So if you’re going to ask him what his game plan is, you’re not going to get a lot. You’re going to ask him something about the game of football and how to coach it and how guys play it, you’re going to get magic. I mean at the end of it, I said you could write I book on it. He said I can write a book on every position. You take what you get.
Michele, I assume for the guys in the booth and in the truck the goal is to try to make this game as normal as possible. I assume being on the sideline for the Super Bowl is very admirable given the chaotic situation and the extra people. What is it like being there relative to other games?
MICHELE TAFOYA: Well, once the game starts and the fans who are kind of ‑‑ who are given that pregame access and the media who has extra pregame access to the field, once they all sort of dissipate, it does become like a normal game. And from the experience I’ve had, the environment is more electric. And that applies to everyone and everything going on in that building. So there is a different, palpable sense down on the sideline of what is at stake, and how important each and every single moment is.
But as far as the game, itself, and the work that I do down there, it’s pretty much the same. And we bring in a couple of extra weapons, I’m not going to say what those are, but some extra eyes, so that we make sure that we don’t miss a thing. And that’s our goal, is to not miss a thing down there. So in that regard it’s not a whole lot different once that kickoff happens.
Michele,any particular memories from the last time? Anything special is that happened during the game, the last one you did three years ago.
MICHELE TAFOYA: The last one I did in Indy is Rob Gronkowski and his health. And just being able to run over and get to Bill Belichick literally minutes before kickoff, find out what the plan was for Gronk. And to be able to report something like that. Live television is exhilarating. Delivering news is exhilarating, it’s why we do this. So those moments are kind of the ones that you live for.
I would say that honestly the biggest challenge is halftime is a lot longer and getting to both coaches and making sure you have ample time to get what you need. It seems funny, because it’s longer, but logistically it presents some different issues.
But I just think that moment with Bill ahead of time, I hadn’t planned it and it just sort of happened. And it was enough of a good bit of information that we were able to present and I think hopefully everything that we do on the sidelines adds and doesn’t get in the way.
We’re digging out here back East. I do want to check in on that front. Since your last Super Bowl you’ve moved into the new studio headquarters. In terms of production standpoint, I guess to quote Mark in the days and weeks and months leading up to this event what’s gone on here, and what’s the breakdown as far as production goes in terms of what happens in Glendale versus back East on the day itself? Maybe kind of give me the advance in terms of the type of work that went into it here and how it all breaks down, once the day arrives there.
FRED GAUDELLI: We’ve been working on this really for a couple of years in a tangential sense, coming south to Arizona a number of times, looking at the stadium, walking the stadium, figuring out where cameras are going to go, sets, all those things.
Over the summer we had a two‑day seminar where we really studied the Super Bowls that we had done, that others had done. And started to formulate a plan, absent two teams, obviously, of things we wanted to try to get done and try to accomplish as far as the game production is concerned.
A lot of us got out here over the weekend, and just been doing a variety of things. Going out to the mobile units, getting familiar with a much larger technical presence than we’re used to on a Sunday.
And now we start to really hit the football aspect of it. Tomorrow we’ll spend the day with the Patriots. On Thursday we’ll spend the day with the Seahawks. On Friday we’ll have a mini rehearsal in the stadium with the high school team, as well as rehearse the National Anthem, America the Beautiful, and things of that nature.
On Saturday each team has a walkthrough where we kind of split up, they generally happen at the same time. But we’ll check in with each head coach and quarterback one last time just to make sure all the I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed.
We have our final meeting Saturday night where Al, Cris, Michele, Drew, myself and our entire team, Mark, will really just kind of chew through the story lines and really decide how we’re going to cover things. And then Sunday morning get up early and we’re ready to roll.
MARK LAZARUS: Leading up to all that, certainly the Football Night of America being in Stamford in our new studio there this year, all season long, have a lot of the pieces, interviews that were done in preparation for this week, have been brought back to Stamford and edited and put together. And certainly over the last two years, while we’ve been in Stamford, all the planning sessions and meetings.
So home base is home base. The show is on the road right now and in its fullness. But we’re happy to be out here where it’s 70, and sorry you’re digging out.
I want to go back to the DeflateGate. One of the interesting things about it is the NFL, after the refs test the football, then give them back to the teams. Does that create an opportunity for tampering, to get the balls back to teams before the game even starts? Should that be changed?
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: I think we’re going to have a lot of examinations of the procedure as it relates to football going forward and the funny thing about it is, I don’t know that any of us have ever really considered that you could cheat with a football. And maybe we all should have and you say where were we? Could the Super Bowl really be brought to its knees based on a couple of pounds per square inch in a football?
But it’s exactly what’s been happening. And so we’re going to deal with this like everybody else is. And I think it’s going to ‑‑ I know it’s an investigation that’s ongoing, that is very detailed, that is working its way up the ladder and we’re going to see where it’s going to happen.
But I don’t think it’s going to happen in any way, shape or form before this Super Bowl. So no matter what we end up doing on it to some extent we’re going to be, you know, playing a guessing game, like everybody else is, what’s going to happen afterwards. Is it possible that there could be suspensions, fines, salary cap hits, you know, all this kind of stuff.
But I can honestly say, I played for eight years and been broadcasting for 25, I never considered the possibility that there could be a controversy over the football, itself. I just haven’t. So I think the League is going to obviously make a few changes on a lot of things.
FRED GAUDELLI: I know Art Rooney was quoted earlier in the week saying they might want to take a look going to just one set of balls and not letting teams prepare their own balls, just having a set of balls for the game. The quarterbacks wouldn’t really be happy about that. But Mr. Rooney did put that out there on Monday.
Twitter has been going nuts the last couple of minutes over Marshawn Lynch at Media Day. He kept repeating the same thing over and over. I’m just here so I don’t get fined and then he walked away after about two and a half minutes. What do you think how Lynch handled Media Day?
MICHELE TAFOYA: I’m actually here in the building and I saw Marshawn come in and he spent a few minutes chatting with Deion Sanders back in the area where most of the media doesn’t see anything.
But, yeah, I’ve seen that, as well. I did not go out on the floor, but I’m seeing the same exact thing that you saw, which is he came out there, basically saying he didn’t want to get fined. And he did in fact leave early, that’s been pretty well documented. But that’s about all I can tell you.
Michele, at the end of the game, whether it’s a blowout or a tight game, what’s more important to you in the star you’re interviewing afterwards? How they feel in the emotional moment or do you have two or three particular specific questions to ask about a certain play, a certain turning point? What’s in your notebook as you get to that point?
MICHELE TAFOYA: I’m going to sound a little bit like Bill Belichick here, but every game is different and every situation is different. Certainly if there’s a blowout situation you’ve had time to really think and you kind of know what the outcome is, so you’re prepared to really think about what’s relevant in that moment.
And if it’s a last second thing, boy, your interview takes a different tone and direction. You really try to capture the immediacy of that moment and that’s when moments are very, very important. And they’re at their most raw. It really depends on the circumstances.
But I think you have it generally correct in that with a lot of time and a blowout ‑‑ everything feels different at the end of that game.
When you have a really close game and this is the ultimate game, there’s no next week. There’s nothing else except this one. And I think in this particular moment, unless there’s some kind of play that was really enormous and mattered to the outcome of the game you really ‑‑ you want that player to reveal as much of himself and his emotions as you can.
Couldn’t it be both things going on at once, Russell Wilson had a game ending touchdown pass. And would you have asked ‑‑ tell me about that last play, first, or would you have asked, what are you feeling in the moment, even though you can clearly see what he’s seeing at the moment.
MICHELE TAFOYA: I think in that case, when he’s in tears, you have to address the emotions first. And then you can go back to the play that mattered.
So, yeah, when you’ve got ‑‑ and I think in a Super Bowl situation you’re going to have ‑‑ those emotions are going to really take over the end of that game. And so that’s where you want to start. You want to start with the big picture. And what that all means.
And for each player it’s different. We’ve got a guy who has potential to win back‑to‑back Super Bowls here. And we have a guy who has already won three. Two guys that are in different parts of their lives, and their careers, and their circumstances. So you’re going to tailor the question to each of those individuals, as well.
But absolutely you hope you have enough time to cover the really important stuff and time really does become a factor, as well. What kind of time are you limited to based on what else has to happen in that postgame.
Fred, what time do you allot for or are you told to allot by the NFL for postgame interview?
FRED GAUDELLI: On a regular Sunday night or this game?
Give me both.
FRED GAUDELLI: On a regular Sunday night the only thing they care about is get the players at the final gun, which is what we do. In general you don’t want to keep them there more than five minutes. And there’s not a ton of stuff to be going over there.
So we just try to get to the salient points as Michele just described and get out. Super Bowl Sunday it’s a little bit different because you do have an opportunity to do something as soon as the game ends, and of course you’re going to be doing the away team on the podium, the MVP, the quarterback, the head coach, a few minutes after that. It’s a little bit different on Super Bowl Sunday, but we’re prepared to do both or do one.
Mark, given the popularity of the NFL and the Super Bowl, why haven’t we seen that 50 rating yet, do you think with everything going on between the top two teams in the League and DeflateGate that we might see a 50 rating?
MARK LAZARUS: Boy, I hope so. It would be nice. I just think in this era of media fragmentation, people are doing a variety of things.
I actually really believe, if you think that Nielsen reports, and essentially 115, 120 million people watch the Super Bowl. There’s a little over 300 million people in the country. That does not account for bars, parties, other things. I believe that the number is under reported somewhat substantially. And there are a lot more people watching the Super Bowl in group gatherings, whether it’s at universities, clubs, other places. Would that get us all the way to a 50? It might. But we’re not going to get credit for that.
But I hope your prognostication here is correct, and we’ll all be celebrating the first 50 in Super Bowl history. I don’t know what the methodology is, but it just dawned on me, there are a lot of Super Bowl parties around the country and say 200 people are there, I don’t know how that gets factored into a rating, but let’s say they don’t have that party, and they have 50 families watching separately on 50 television sets, maybe that would take you to about a 60 rating.
If you take 120 million or so and add all the parties, there’s no doubt in my mind that one in every two Americans is watching the game. That’s pretty phenomenon al power.
Do you have a goal in mind viewer‑wise, what you want to have for this game?
MARK LAZARUS: To be the biggest thing every viewed, over 125 million would be a nice number.
Al, what are the specific challenges of calling a Super Bowl versus any other game? And for Cris, you played in a Super Bowl and called a couple on television. What is the excitement level for you for both, as a player and an announcer?
AL MICHAELS: I think on Sunday Night Football, our whole crew treats every game as a mini-Super Bowl. And the difference in the real Super Bowl is that you have so many more fans watching. And not only do you have the people who love football all the time and would watch most Sunday night games as a good part of your audience, but a lot of people who maybe only watch one game a year or only watch a couple of games a year, and are not very well versed in certain stories.
So the trick is to not insult the intelligence of the avid fan, but to bring into, as we like to say in the big tent that we like to make Sunday Night Football: come one, come all, to bring those people in, and make them enjoy the game to an extent that we can help them and understand something a little better or have something humorous or do a human interest story about a player, a coach, an owner, or what have you.
So often what we’ll do, without necessarily saying the exact words, is kind of lay it out there along the lines of, hey, we know if you follow the sport you know this, but some of you may not. But this is fun, this is interesting, this is relevant. So we want to bring you in there. And that would be about the major difference in terms of doing a regular season game and a Super Bowl game.
CRIS COLLINSWORTH: As far as the emotions, I think they’re pretty similar for me, really. There comes a moment during the game where you forget you’re doing the Super Bowl and you start doing the game or playing the game or whatever. And I always think that you can almost tell which team it happens to first when you’re watching in the game. Somebody is settling in. Somebody is locked in. And it starts to look like their offense.
Because anybody that tells you that they go into a Super Bowl game or a broadcast or anything else and it’s just another game, I don’t know that I fully believe in that. Because this is unique. This is different. You’d love to have your best day, but you also realize that you could drop the win Super Bowl touchdown pass, that you could say something that you’d like to forget the rest of your life and half the world is watching it. So there’s really no way to take away what it is. But I think we all live in our lives for great moments, for those moments that you’ll remember for a lifetime. And we’re all thrilled to be here and be have a chance to be part of this.
Al, do all the bells and whistles get in the way?
AL MICHAELS: They can. But we don’t allow it. I said to my guys here, and across the table, we’ve been together for a long time with Fred and with Drew, and it’s almost as if there’s a lot of stuff between us that goes unspoken. We just know what the other guy is thinking, where he wants to go. And Fred is terrific at the technology, it’s so much greater than it’s been, but you don’t want the technology to overwhelm the game. I mean you want it to enhance the game. We have so many things available to us, and I know years ago in doing a bunch of Super Bowls from the 10, 15, 18 years ago, one of the first questions that the writers would ask in a press conference, a conference call like this is how many cameras do you have. I think networks feel compelled to, one network did it with 25, then you’re supposed to say 25 or 28 or whatever.
It would get to the point that you could do the game with 500 cameras, but you don’t need that many. Our guys have them set up that they’re not going to miss anything. You don’t let technology ‑‑ let it take you beyond where you should. You don’t let the game overwhelm you, either. We know it’s the Super Bowl. We stay calm. Cris says you know it’s not another game, but in a way you kind of want to have that attitude of you don’t want to do something that you don’t do.
Tom Brady is not going to come into the Super Bowl and all of a sudden become a roll out guy who wants to run 18 times. No, what got him to the Super Bowl is what’s going to maybe make him win another Super Bowl, by doing what he does. And that’s what we try to do. We don’t try to do anything over‑the‑top. We’ve been there, we’ve done that and it’s just kind of rolling with the punches.
I want to know about the use of 4K video technology in the camera work on the Super Bowl. I understand very few people can see 4K, what is that going to bring to the table?
DREW ESOCOFF: I’ll answer the question on 4K. We’ve added several 4K cameras to the show. Al sort of hinted at it. Those cameras are there to provide a defining view of a critical play. If we had another Mario Manningham, a Santonio Holmes play, does James Harrison step out‑of‑bounds on the 100-yard interception return in a previous Super Bowl, that’s what those cameras are there for.
For the most part they don’t make the live cut of the show, although they could in a pinch. But they are really placed and added to add a defining view of a play where the winner or the loser of the Super Bowl may be determined.
FRED GAUDELLI: In regards to social media, we have a big social media presence out here. I’m sure you’ll see it online all week long. Sam can probably talk to you tomorrow about what plans he has to introduce some of that into the pregame show. And the game, we don’t have plans, but I will tell you this, we monitor it all game long. And when Odell Beckham made that phenomenal catch on Sunday Night Football against the Cowboys in November, immediately LeBron James tweeted out I think I just watched the greatest catch I’ve ever seen. And we saw it. We put it on the screen, because someone like LeBron, if you’re capturing his attention, and he’s really giving praise, it’s worth telling America about.
We’re always prepared for situations like that, but there really isn’t any direct plan to use social media during the game on Sunday.
How about the tweets at the bottom of the screen?
FRED GAUDELLI: No, unless LeBron wants to say something.
