#220: Russ Bengtson

A Waste Of Time with ItsTheReal

ItsTheReal

Music

4.8 • 817 Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2018

⏱️ 113 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on A Waste of Time with ItsTheReal we welcome NBA/sneaker/hip-hop writer, editor, commentator and confidant Russ Bengtson to the Upper West Side! Russ talks growing up in Long Island, his early interest in journalism, being a Chicago Bulls fan in New York, attending the University of Delaware, his classmate and fellow journalist Jeff Pearlman, and his first job out of college working for a tiny newspaper in rural Pennsylvania where he was hands-on in every aspect of the publication. We discuss how SLAM Magazine reached out to him, what exactly "Senior Editor" meant, his early dealings with Clyde Drexler, Scottie Pippin and Charles Barkley, JR Rider being cut from the Hawks before an interview, Kobe Bryant's respecting SLAM over other publications, Allen Iverson's magnetism, Stephon Marbury's unbelievable heart and talent, connecting Kevin Garnett and Jonathan Mannion for a legendary photo shoot, and the good and bad realities of choosing a magazine cover months ahead of time. Russ gets into his time as Editor in Chief of SLAM, his great partner in crime Lang Whitaker, in what ways Shaq and Nigel Sylvester are similar, Patrick Ewing not acknowledging him for two years, SLAM's reputation according to beat writers as opposed to enthusiasts, and why his time at the publication came to an end. We cover his freelance days, his introduction to Complex, the early days of Twitter, how page views and traffic changed the way writing worked, where Quickstrike - his sneaker show with Clark Kent - succeeded and where it missed opportunities, and his new documentary with Complex, Sole Origins. All that, plus stories about Pig Miller, Rasheed Wallace, Mobb Deep, Gregg Popovich, getting robbed on his apartment's front steps, University of Delaware's short time in the NCAA tourney, his Twitter block list, his love of heavy metal and much more! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Jeff. Hey, Eric. How are you? I'm pretty good. How are you? Doing well, thank you. We had a
0:04.7	wonderful Thanksgiving this week. Hopefully all of you out there had equally as wonderful, a holiday as we did.
0:12.2	And you want to know what next year, come on over to dance. No, do not make promises you cannot keep, Jeff.
0:17.7	It's not my house. Everybody is invited to Dan's Place. His address.
0:21.0	You know what? We had a great Thanksgiving at Dan's Place this year. It was a little unexpected. We
0:26.1	usually go to our cousin's place. And before that, we would have everyone over to our parents' place years back.
0:31.4	But this year, we had to do a little audible. Our mom was involved in a car accident. Well, I mean, involved is an interesting
0:39.7	word. I would say, well, she was hit by a car. Yeah, that is the involvement that she had in that.
0:46.4	She was crossing the street here in New York City. A car came around did not stop. She spent
0:50.8	10 days in the hospital. And she is is back at home recovering really nicely and remarkably.
0:58.0	Yeah, she's on like week five of six or whatever.
1:00.0	Like she's, she is able to walk with crutches.
1:04.0	She's able to sometimes walk with no crutches.
1:06.0	Like she is.
1:07.0	She's going to physical therapy.
1:08.0	Yeah.
1:09.0	She has been, honestly, she's been so warmed by all of the amazing messages that we've gotten from friends and family and strangers alike.
1:17.3	So anybody who has reached out to us, believe me, we have passed along your good words and your good energy to her.
1:23.1	And there's no doubt that it played a great part in her attitude and her recovery to this point today and onward. So thank you for that. Yeah, even Bun B. Why do you say it like that? It's like Bunn usually wouldn't do that? No, Bun B definitely would reach out. But we passed it along, Bun, don't worry. I know that Bun's probably listening because this is the Russ Bankston podcast. So we are very, very grateful and thankful for the fact that we were all together this year.
1:49.8	Certainly that things were not any worse than they were.
1:55.0	And we were just happy to all be together.
1:58.3	And as these things go, you know, me and you and Dan, together, we have this chemistry,
	...

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