Hey everyone, welcome into another edition of the WogePod.

I want to spend this show remembering and honoring the legacy of the great Bob Lanier who passed away Tuesday at 73 years of age, a Naismith Hall of Fame center with both the Pistons, with whom he was the number

one overall pick in the 1970 draft, and then later in his career with the Milwaukee Bucks,

where he was on some very, very good teams with Marcus Johnson, who we'll talk to later

in the podcast, Junior Bridgman, Sidney Moncrief, but a Bucks group that got to a couple

Eastern Conference finals couldn't get past Boston and Philadelphia with their great

championship teams of the era.

But Bob Lanier was a lot more.

He was a president of the Players Association really played a part in advancing the cause for players in the union

in collective bargaining and then for 30 plus years, worked side by side with David Stern

and then later Adam Silver in the league office with those two commissioners as special assistant

to the commissioner was his title, but really,

he was literally the ambassador of the NBA. He traveled the corners of not just the NBA,

but of the world, selling the game of basketball, the NBA game, and really leading

in the area of education, the read- Read to Achieve program the NBA had years ago

and stay in school. Bob Lanier was the voice of so much of that and a remarkable life.

And we're going to talk with Marcus Johnson and the commissioner, Adam Silver, both about their

relationships and memories of Bob Lanier.

I just want to talk for a minute about what my connection with Bob Lanier is, and it's that we share in alma mater,

St. Bonaventure University in upstate New York, and Bob Lanier is the most famous alum of St. Bonaventure, the most beloved, decorated.

Don't want to say he put to school on the map, but for a lot of people, they knew of St. Bonaventure

because of Bob Lanier, there were some great teams and players before him, but he was an

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