First grade I had a teacher who asked us is anybody know anything about race and I raised my hand up

Yeah, you got the hundred yard dash. You got the 50 yard dash. I know all about race

And she's like no, no, there's there's another type of race that I want to explain it to you

Now she came to me and said here's the color people here's the Negro race

This is the lowest of the lowest these are the lazyest these are the most shifless these are the most dishonest

You can't trust them. You've got to really watch them because they will steal you

She that's how she talked about me in front of that class

I'm John Hyalman and this is Helen Highwater a podcast from the recount

This week for the very first episode of Helen Highwater. I am talking to Marcus Johnson the legendary NBA star and now a color commentator for the team

He played for the Milwaukee Bucks

We talk about race and sports protests and police and then at the end in our parting shot

Marcus's all-time on court starting five

In the 1970s and 1980s from Crenshaw high school in Los Angeles through UCLA and then in the NBA with the Milwaukee Bucks

Marcus Johnson was one of the most exciting basketball players in the country a five-time all-star who sort of invented

the position of point forward

Today MJ is one of the voices of the Milwaukee Bucks

It's a broadcast analyst talking about the team for Fox Sports net and

All of that has given him in the last couple of weeks a front row court side seat for really the most explosive story that is playing out in

America right now the story that kind of was kicked off with the police shooting of Jacob Blake

Seven times in the back in Kanocha not very far from Milwaukee where the Bucks play the protests that followed in Kanocha in

Milwaukee throughout the country and then

First led by the Bucks the team and then by the whole of the NBA the decision to boycott a couple of days of playoffs in the middle of the

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