Up Close With PSR:
John Salley

John Salley, former NBA player and co-host of Fox Sports Net's "Best Damn Sports Show, Period!" is the only player in NBA history to win championships with three different teams. Salley won with the Detroit Pistons in 1989 and 1990, the Chicago Bulls in 1996 and the Los Angeles Lakers in 2000. As a player, Salley won the "Best Interview in the NBA" award from the Associated Press three times. He has appeared in "Bad Boys" and "Bad Boys II" among other films, and is currently in business with former Pens' owner Howard Baldwin to produce black independent films. Recently, PSR editor Tony DeFazio caught up with Salley before a taping of the "Best Damn Sports Show, Period!"

PSR: When did you start to have an idea of what you wanted to do after basketball?

John Salley: I've always wanted to be a businessman. I've always known that basketball was my way of becoming popular enough - when you're popular you usually get more things. You get to meet with presidents and check writers. It gives you a head start.

PSR: What's the difference between sports and entertainment?

JS: Sports is entertainment. That's all it is. Everybody else is delusional; all the guys who think that it's about winning and losing are idiots.

Sports is nothing but Broadway. That's why we play on hard wood, the same way they perform on Broadway. It's the same show. they even call them players. It's entertainment. The movie stars get entertained by watching us; we go to the movies to get entertained by watching them. Our job is to put on a show. That's it. I've always known that. I wanted to be in the entertainment business forever, but I didn't want to be in the sports entertainment business forever and I always knew that. I loved movies, I loved television and I got to be in both of them .

PSR: A lot of people might disagree with that - they'll argue that there is at the very least a discernable line between sports and entertainment.

JS: Let me tell you how I'm right. They advertise that the game is coming on. They have critics - people who get paid to tell you what they thought about the game. It comes on during prime-time. As a matter of fact, they pre-empt regular shows. To get more entertainment than that, you have to have cable to watch it.

PSR: Is that good for all players?

JS: Well it's always been like that, but players just started realizing it. That's why they weren't making the money they are now. Think about this: Jack Nicholson has made $110 million so far on "Batman." Alone.

So players have realized that if actors are getting paid that kind of money to work for three months, then I should get paid a nice amount of money - maybe $18 million - to work for nine months. Same exact thing - I just wish my parents were younger and had me later.

PSR: But how is that good for fans?

JS: Well. it's always a good thing for fans when they get a better product. By 2007, you're going to be able to watch basketball in high-definition. That's better than being there. The best thing about the NBA is it's about to be worldwide.

PSR: If the games are about putting on a show, hasn't that changed the way the game is played on the court?

JS: No. You're still going to have great athletes. You're still going to have bad referees. It doesn't make a difference. And you got more eyeball - more people watching.

PSR: What makes one guy more marketable than another guy with the same set of skills?

JS: If you have an edge that people are going to enjoy. think about this: Allen Iverson can walk into a club and he's the same size as the average American. But to see him step on the court and become Speed Racer is something so phenomenal.

Shaquille (O'Neal) is a great player; he's the most dominant player in the game. But people expect him to dominate. But when you see Allen Iverson do the things he does, it becomes more phenomenal.

PSR: How involved in the entertainment business were you while you were still playing?

JS: I had a record label in Detroit and I had a studio called Hoops Sound Studio. My first artist was Tony Rich who won the Best R&B Album Grammy in 1996. I got out of the music production business, though, and got into the music publishing business. So now I have Black Folk Music, which, along with North Star Media, supplies R&B and hip-hop music throughout the world.

PSR: How did you get hooked up with both the liquor business and also Cigary, your Chicago cigar-bar?

JS: My friend Gary Footlik got me started on the cigars...I decided to open up my own cigar store in the suburbs of Chicago, not too far from where I was living at the time. And then I started a cigar bar down in Miami 'cause I got traded from Chicago to the Heat.

Right now, I'm writing for Wine Spectator, and if you open up Cigar Aficionado this month, I was at this big party at Francis Ford Coppola's house. So as I got older I got into the finer things in life, cigars and wine.

I got into the liquor business because as I traveled around the world I found that one thing we all have in common is people like to drink spirits - so I got into the spirits business.

PSR: What's your role on "The Best Damn Sports Show, Period!" beyond what we see as viewers?

JS: The black guy. (Laughs). That's my role, to be the black guy.

PSR: How about the others?

JS: Chris Rose is the sports geek, who, from watching, feels he has education and say-so - which is not true. But he feels he does. Being around it for so long, those kinds of guys are considered experts. My job is to convince those experts they know nothing about sports. They call me an apologist - I'm not. I give the reason why (expletive) happens the way it does.

A lot of people want athletes to be one way - they want them to sit their ass down when the game is over and be done. They want them to be

gladiators. Perform and get back in your cage.

PSR: You're starting to get into independent black films - in what respect?

JS: I decided I was going to find a niche that needed to be filled. This is the problem: I can walk into a studio and tell them I have a movie and they like it. So I tell them I need $10 million. But then I tell them it's got an all black cast and they tell me they can only give me $5 million. Guaranteed.

They'll tell you that black films don't do well in Europe. That's an outright lie. Black music does well in Europe - black movies will too. The entire culture has changed. There are kids in foreign countries who can speak English because of hip-hop records. Hip-hop - which started out solely as a black medium - has translated beyond our shores. If hip-hop can do that, there is no way our culture and our lifestyle can't.

I decided I am going to make films under $10 million and I am going to focus on an urban environment. Meaning 60 percent white. Focus between the ages 13-35. That's a black film. With black actors and black titles. I guess the best way to put it is that I am exploiting our culture - but not in a bad way. Black exploitation done in the best way possible.

I'm not going to mess with $60 million movies. As a black guy, I want to see myself on the screen in a Bentley or a Benz, as a doctor or a lawyer, or a songwriter or a gangster, or as a mother or a father. There are 65 million black people in this country and I want to focus on them.

"Soul Food" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" are the same exact movie.