Did Rich Just Take Credit for the NBA Scheduling Knicks vs Sixers on Opening Night???

Rich would like the record to reflect that he does not just complain. He suggests. There is a difference, and there is now evidence.

When LeBron James signed with the Sixers on July 30, the league office had been all but tapping its foot waiting on a decision so it could build a national television schedule around him. That same day on the show, Rich made a suggestion. Put LeBron in Madison Square Garden on opening night.

The NBA did exactly that.

"Thank you," Rich said. "You're welcome, NBA. You're very, very welcome."

He also noted that if the league had been listening more closely, it would have known where James was going weeks earlier. This is the operating philosophy of what the show has branded RES Consulting, whose motto is that the best thing about it is that it is about us. The same department previously proposed fixing the automated ball-strike system by giving hitters more than one second to challenge, and by stripping a player of all remaining challenges when a challenge is wildly wrong.

Chris was not applauding. He had this queued as an overreaction topic and never got to use it, so he used it here.

"I think this is a terrible idea," he said. "This should have been a Christmas Day game."

His argument has real teeth. Let the season breathe first, see what the teams actually are, and give opening night in New York to New York. The Knicks won a title. A city waited more than 50 years for it. Banner, rings, all of it. Bring LeBron into that building and the entire evening becomes about LeBron, because he will make it about him and the television partners will make it about him too.

Rich conceded the premise and then dismantled the timing.

"As much as I want a celebration of New York, I must admit the celebration of New York has been going on quite a long time," he said. The Knicks were all over the ESPYs. They were all over late night and morning television. They still are. Rich mentioned seeing a clip of Jalen Brunson with his mother recently, and the point is that the parade has been rolling for months.

"This is the culmination," Chris said. Rich agreed with that part. Ring night is the last chapter of the celebration, not the first, and once the jewelry is handed out the job changes to defending.

Then comes the fun part. LeBron James in a Sixers uniform at Madison Square Garden.

The logistics favor the Knicks too, which Rich flagged as a courtesy nobody is acknowledging. Philadelphia is not a long trip. James is effectively at home for the opener, and the league did him a favor by arranging it that way.

Chris had one last swing. The Sixers should have opened against Cleveland or the Lakers, where an actual storyline lives.

Rich's rebuttal was simpler than that. LeBron is in the building. We get to see him. Everything else is preference.

He also had a theory about the real source of the objection, and it has less to do with scheduling philosophy than with the Celtics.