Episode Transcript
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Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to The Faith Driven Athlete. We’ve got a special edition today. We’re getting started a little late this morning because I’m running around trying to find my microphone. We are in shelter in place. I’ve got three boys at home. One of them had taken my microphone for use for the school project. And as I was running out trying to find the microphone, I said, I’m about to be late for a podcast interview with Ernie Johnson. And they looked at me just momentarily because they didn’t grow up in Atlanta and they don’t watch TNT. But then all of a sudden the middle child said, oh, my goodness, that’s the guy on 2K. And all sudden everybody just snap to attention. Found the microphone. And this has been something that’s. I know, of course, I’m older and I understand how important Ernie Johnson is to the world of baseball and basketball, but really neat to see that a bunch of young kids have seen Ernie be relevant as well. And so as we get a chance to spend time today with Ernie in hearing about his story and his faith journey, it’s really cool to know that that’s going to be relevant, not just for those of us who grew up around Braves baseball and with NBA basketball, but with a younger generation to see. Ernie, thank you for being on the program today.
Ernie Johnson: No, it’s my pleasure. And I’m glad you found the mike. That’s the first hurdle. Any time you’re going to do any kind of a broadcast. So I’m so glad that everything’s straight. We’re ready to go.
Henry Kaestner: Me too. And I’ll tell you. You know, we are not a video podcast. Maybe someday soon we will be. But I’m looking behind you. And I see a Cal Ripken jersey up there. And I gotta tell you that I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. I graduated from high school in 1987. So Ripken came in in the early 80s. Just at a point in time when you’re in middle school or in professional sports is everything and you’re looking for that hero. And here’s Cal Ripken coming out. And he became that. And he did it for so long. And I got to be careful here. But I think that maybe one of the last times I remember crying was Cal Ripken on his twenty one thirty one game, running around slowly around Camden Yards and just overcome by the emotion of what that meant. You do a lot of work with Cal.. I’m going to take some of the questions. I want to ask a little bit out of order. But, you know, since his jerseys staring at me right now, what’s it like working with Cal Ripken?
Ernie Johnson: It was a great time for me because, look, I don’t care who what sport we’re doing up. I’m doing basketball up. I’m doing baseball. If I’m doing golf, I get to work with some of the greatest people. And these are guys who have competed at the highest level and excelled. And so the years that I had a chance to work with Cal, I told people, this is the classiest athlete you will ever meet. I said he’s just legit and he’s genuine. And, you know, he was never bothered by, like, a request. You know, I’d say, hey, look, Cal, I got a high school coach in my neighborhood who’s, you know, trying to do a fund raiser and sure would be nice if they had a Cal Ripken baseball at their banquet. And he was like, this is important to you? And I said, Yeah. He said then it’s important to me. And he was always and he is even to this day, he is flattered. Anytime anybody asks him for an autograph and for a guy who’s done as much as he’s done in the history of baseball. Very humble dude. Just a good man.
Henry Kaestner: Well, that’s the impression. I love hearing that. And thank you for sharing. So I want to start at the beginning with you. I want to understand a bit about your background, your personal journey. Walk us through the beginning and how you got into business, but then also weave in your personal story about how faith became important to you as well.
Ernie Johnson: Yeah, I mean, Reader’s Digest version, I guess, is, you know, born in Milwaukee, youngest of three kids, born in 56. You know, my dad was a pitcher for the Milwaukee Braves back in the 50s. He became their public relations director and then their broadcaster when the Braves moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta. So baseball was always really big for me. And, you know, the back of my mind, I was always like, I want to. What my dad did, I want to be a Major League Baseball player. And I took that up through my freshman year in college. I went to the University of Georgia. I walked on as a freshman on the baseball team and was told to walk off as a sophomore. So there you go. I had that one season of wearing the red and black for the Georgia Bulldogs as a backup first baseman. Didn’t have a lot of success. We did win the division, but I couldn’t hit my weight. And I always had a good glove, but man, I couldn’t hit. And so in the fall practice, the next year, I got cut. And then it’s, you know, one of those things that, you know, a lot of college students get into. You know, it’s like, OK, now what? Where am I going? What am I going to do? Now, I really do have to study. And so I was an English major and kind of told myself, I’ll be an English teacher and a baseball coach.
And I tagged along with my dad my entire life. I’m going to the ballpark. I mean, it’s never like he said, hey, you should do what I’m doing. You should be a sportscaster. That really wasn’t what I was thinking about until I gave it a try. You know, I worked at the campus radio station, got to get into the games for free. I got some experience on the air and then it just kind of gets its hooks in you. And it’s like, this is what I want to do. And then you go from the University of Georgia looking for a TV job. And I was the local news anchor in Macon, Georgia. I was a general assignment reporter in Spartanburg, South Carolina. They hired me in Atlanta at WSB as a general assignment reporter and then switched me into sports after about two years and anchored the weekend sports for like six or seven years. And then the folks at Turner called in nineteen eighty nine. And I’ve been there ever since. So that’s the big picture story of that. And then really it was just, you know, it’s one of those childhoods that’s, you know, it’s a dream childhood. It’s you know, you’re hanging out at the batting cage and Hank Aaron’s asking you how your Little League team is doing. That’s like not everybody gets to do this. And so, yeah, it was that kind of an upbringing and it was very cool. I always wish that the baseball thing had come around, but I think it all turned out for the best.
Henry Kaestner: So you talk about growing up along your father’s career as an athlete and then as a broadcaster. And fast forward a bit because you got a chance to work with your dad doing what he did really well as a broadcaster. He was a co-host with you for a while, right?
Ernie Johnson: Well, yeah, we did braves games together. I was at that point like five or six years deep into my years at Turner. And I was known as the, you know, the studio host for the NBA. But they had started up Sports South, a regional cable down here in Atlanta that would broadcast a Braves game when PBS wasn’t. And so my dad had retired from full time broadcasting and they asked him to come back and they said, hey, would you do a game a week? Because, you know, Braves fans just love my dad. And he was legendary. And they came to me and they said, look, when your schedule allows, if you’re not doing this or this or this for PBS or TNT, would you like to do, you know, word games with your dad, you know, and do a couple innings to play by play while he does the other innings?
And, you know, you guys are just the broadcast team on those sports south nights. And, man, I was scared. And I said, yes, but it was like it was intimidating because my dad was awesome at this, you know, and I hadn’t done that much play by play. But then, you know, we just kind of worked off of each other and it was a father and a son watching baseball. And that in itself is ageless. You know who, you know, fathers and sons watching baseball or listening to baseball on the front porch with a transistor radio, even though a lot of younger listeners here are going to say what the heck is a transistor radio? But but that’s kind of way it was. So, you know, we would talk the game, but we’d talk about everything, you know, talk about how’s everything at home. Hey, how’s Eric doing? How’s Maggie doing? Oh, good. You know. So.
Henry Kaestner: On air?
Yeah. Oh, yeah. But it was great. And you know, I for parts of three or four years, I got a chance to do those games occasionally with him. And no matter what else happens in my life, that’ll be the highlight. No matter who I work with, no matter what events we cover, sitting shoulder to shoulder with my dad in the booth, it doesn’t get any better.
Henry Kaestner: Are there things that you find yourself saying on air that you feel is kind of channeling your dad some stylistic something?
Ernie Johnson: Sure. I mean, I think the thing he always used to say and he always did it facetiously, is if a game was really moving slowly and he’d get to like the sixth inning, you said, well, it’s the top of the sixth, and we are zipping right along. So I say it every time I do a game on TBS. You know, when I worked with Cal, when I worked with Ron Darling, when I worked with Jeff Francouer or whoever it is, when we get to the top of the sixth, I always say that, you know, here we are, Fenway Park scoreless through five and we are zipping right along. And and Ron always looks at me because Ron knows where it’s coming from, Ron Darling goes and so does our main statistician for years has been Hal Galema, a guy who knows more baseball than anybody in the world. And he used to work with my dad years ago. And he knew also that anytime you say that it was guaranteed to slow the game down, even if you actually were moving pretty good in the game.
If you said, hey, we’re zipping right along, Hal would Hal would just fire darts through me every time he’d hear that because he’d be thinking, we’re right on pace to have a pretty quick game. We’ll all make our flights tonight out of this place. But every time I’d say it, he just give me that look. But, yeah, that’s one of the things that I do that I always remember when I kind of nod to him when I do that. And I also when I do those games, I have his old baseball card in front of me. So I try to keep that kind of a link.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, that’s super cool. I want to talk a little bit about your faith journey. You were married for 15 years before you and your wife went to church. Like me, you’re an adult convert born again. Faith became really serious to you as an adult will say. Yeah. What changed in your marriage, your family, your life? And just walk us through that.
Ernie Johnson: You know, we got married in eighty two and, you know, going back before that and when I grew up in a Catholic household, I was an altar boy and I’d served midnight mass and I did all that stuff, you know, at St. Jude School and, you know, up through going into my teenage years. And I kind of got away from it when I went away to school at Georgia. I found Sunday mornings were much more suitable to sleeping in than they were going to church.
And so I really kind of got away from it. And once we got married and we had a couple of kids, in all honesty, I take a look at my life and I say, look, I got this wonderful wife. I got a great job. I got a boy and a girl, and God hasn’t had a thing to do with it. I haven’t given him one thought and he has, you know, so I think we’re kind of good saying, OK, God, you do your thing and I’ll do mine. And then it was, you know, we adopted a little boy from Romania in 91, we adopted a little girl from Paraguay in 93. And then around 97 know my wife and I were just having these conversations about the kids who’d come home, American Maggie would come home and they’re like, how come we don’t go to church? You know, they said, Billy down the street and Sally down the street. They go to church and they go, like to church on Sunday and they do something on Wednesday. And it’s like I said, I. Yeah, I know. And then it was like Sheryl and I were like, you know what? We ought to try to give them some kind of a spiritual foundation. And so we said, okay, let’s find a place. Okay. I’m not going to go back to the Catholic Church. I’m not you know, I’m not into the stand up. Sit down, kneel down.
You know, it was there was nothing in those services that I found to be encouraging or enlightening or anything. I had gotten to the point where I was just it was doing nothing for me. And I was like, well, let’s look around for a place maybe we can find like a non-denominational place, you know? So we had gone by this place called Crossroads and it was about three or four miles from our house. So I went in there on a Sunday afternoon and there was nobody in there and the door was open and there were, you know, some pamphlets and stuff about the church. And I was like, okay, I’ll pick these up Cherone. I’ll take a look at it. And we decided as we looked at Izabel, let’s give this place a try. But one of our concerns was, look, one of our children is handicapped. Michael’s handicapped. He’s got muscular dystrophy, you know, and he needs somebody who can take care of a special needs child while we’re in the service. And one of the people that my wife had met recently just happened to be in charge of that at Crossroads. So it was like, okay, we’re gonna try it and drop the kids off and we’ll go in. And it was just it was a nondenominational church. And Pastor was this guy about my age who had kids like I did.
And, you know, it was kind of strange, you know, as a guy growing up in the Catholic Church with organ music and choirs and that kind of thing, to see guitars and drums and everything else and people clap. And I was like, well, OK, this might take a little while to get used to. But what I did find from the first day was that the message I heard, the sermon that was delivered, the teaching that Kevin Myers brought was unlike anything I’ve ever heard. And it just made sense. And it was just like relevant. And it was like, this is more than I’ve gotten out of a Sunday sermon in my life. And so after a couple of months, I’d tracked down Kevin after one of the services. And I was like, man, you and I need to go have lunch. I said, God’s messing with me. And he’s like, OK, we can do that. Let’s go sit down. Let’s talk about what’s going on your life. And we went down to a place called Oh, Charly’s, which is a restaurant. We’re in Seville. And I had that southern fried chicken salad with the honey mustard on the side and some sweet tea. And before that lunch was over, we had joined hands and we had prayed and I had accepted Jesus Christ as lord and savior. And it was just one of these things where I’d gotten to a point in my life, I think where I was just saying, is this it? Okay, I got a great job, okay. I’ve got kids and. Is this it? Am I living my life to the full? And it really wasn’t until I listened to that first message. And I still remember Kevin saying, look, I got two questions for you folks. Who’s the provider in your life and what are you pursuing, happiness or wholeness? And I was like, well, I’m the provider and I’m trying to be hit on happiness. And I was like, that’s two strikes. You know, it’s not about your happiness. It’s about wholeness. And there is a provider and it’s not you. And so those were just valuable lessons at that point in my life that were just perfectly timed. And it was like, okay, maybe I needed 40 years of wandering in the desert. You know, before the light went on for me. And so, yeah, you know, it’s 97. I’m 41 years old at the time. Yeah. Know, I just turned it over and just said this is the end to the me centered life and this is the beginning of the Christ centered.
Henry Kaestner: So that’s very interesting to me. For lots of different reasons. One of them is that, as I’ve come to understand the Ernie Johnson story a bit over time, I have erroneously, potentially thought that here’s a guy who’s really serious about his faith and because he’s serious about his faith, he’s gone out and he’s adopted these kids, some of them with special needs. And he’s loved on them. And he’s done that because his Christian faith. And yet, of course, there are lots of great people do lots of great things for other people that are not yet motivated by their faith. My question to you is, as you come into this newfound faith that you lean into as an adult, how did that change the perspective of how you and your wife were parenting these kids? What did that look like?
Ernie Johnson: Well, I think the first part of your point is like when Kevin Myers, the pastor, he and Cheryl and I would sit down at our living room and we just kind of talking about next steps. And he was actually walking us through the Bible. You know, I was like I had to dust mine off. We’d gotten one as a wedding present. You know, it was up in the attic at about 15 pounds of dust on it out. And suddenly this was becoming relevant. But I think what we learned there was that God had his eye on us all the time. Look, Michael, the first kid we adopted is his child. You know, none of our kids are ours. They’re all his. We’re entrusted with taking care of them, bringing them up.
But it was just kind of the knowledge that there is a reason. There had to be a reason that Cheryl was driven to that orphanage that day to see that boy, you know, and it’s not a coincidence and it’s not just happenstance. And so I knew then I said, look, God had his eye on us long before we had our thoughts on him. And as far as like what we were doing, Kevin Myers told us, he said, look, you guys may not call yourself Christians right now, but you’ve been living a Christian life for ages. He said, let’s not get worried about titles. Let’s not get worried about somebody calling you this or calling you that. He said this is you know, you’re looking about for the least of these. And so you’re living a Christian life. You just haven’t really identified that way. And so there was never a big push to say, OK, put the label on here and put this guy in a box. He’s a Christian. She’s a Christian. It was just like, you guys are living your lives that way. You are living Christian lives without knowing it. And I think that was one of the things that was important, that was that it was like we were being led, even though we didn’t exactly know how we were being led for all those years,.
Henry Kaestner: That must have been something really powerful that as you discovered, like, oh, my goodness, this is why we’re parenting these children and we now know why they give you that much more of a deep sense of purpose maybe in calling.
Ernie Johnson: Sure. I think that it were a combination of things. I think the more that I drove into scripture, the more that I invested myself in Bible studies with other men. Couple of those were at Crossroads, which later became 12 stone, which is this huge church outside Lawrenceville with a main campus and seven satellites. And then there was another Bible study group that I was in at the same time with some athletes on it. It was led by a guy who had been doing baseball chapel, was a minor league pitcher and had our problems and never made it to the bigs. Tim Cash and Tim Cash invited me to that barbecue joint on Thursday mornings back in the early 2000s. And I’d be in there with John Smoltz and Terry Pendleton and Jeff Foxworthy and a few businessmen. And this is the eclectic group. And nobody walked into that room like, OK, this is my identity. My identity is a million dollar comedian. My identity as a National League MVP or a Cy Young winner, or my identity as a TV host, everybody’s identity.
And there was just look, we’re just children of God and looking for where God wants to take us and how can we become more mature in the faith? How can we grow up and how can we serve others? And I think that whole combination is what once you make that decision and you say, look, this is. I want to live my life, and this is the road I want to go down. Then you have moments like that where you’re taught and you wake up in the morning saying, who am I going to serve, Not who’s going to serve me? I mean, I think it changes your life entirely.
Justin Forman: Ernie, that’s powerful stuff. Thank you for sharing that perspective when you talk about an eclectic group. My 12 year old might refer to whether it be NBA 2k or what he sees on TV as an eclectic group. There with Shaq and Chuck, and Kenny is filming that show really as fun as it looks. What’s it like working with those guys?
Ernie Johnson: No, it’s more fun. There’s nothing put on about it. I mean, we realized from early on with the first 10 or 11 years of that show, I was doing it. It was me. Sometimes there would be an analyst, maybe a Cheryl Miller or Reggie Theus. Dick Vorays. And there were nights I did it by myself. And it wasn’t nearly the show it is now. But when Kenny joined it, he retired and he becomes part of the show and then Charles joins in just after 2000. So, you know, I’ve been there for 30 years. Kenny’s been there 20. Chuck’s been there 19. The very first show we did, I mean, Charles came up and asked Kenny what he was gonna say about a certain topic, and Kenny said, you’ll find out. And that was kind of set the tone for the way the show was always gonna go, that we’re not going to rehearse. You know, they’re not going to sit there 15 minutes before a show and say, you know, let’s get this thing down. So it runs exactly six and a half minutes. It’s like we’re just going to wing it. Okay? I’m not going to tell these guys what I’m going to ask. I want to see if, you know, how much they’ve been paying attention and want to see if they’ve got something they want to get off their chest. And that’s what we do. And oftentimes the results are hilarious. Sometimes the results are pretty profound NBA insights, but it’s what it is, is unpredictable. And so folks sitting at home saying, oh, look at these clowns. I have no idea what’s going to happen next. And I would like join the club. Me that. Why? And that’s the way we like it. And it is fun, man. It’s like we’re four guys getting paid to watch who, you know, and then it’s like we’re sitting in our living room. Nobody’s asking for permission to talk. Everybody’s just kind of whoever’s loudest kind of gets heard. It’s my job to kind of get us from point A to point B to point C in the midst of all the chaos.
Justin Forman: Is there a point where you stumbled into it? You realize this isn’t just by accident, that we’re into this style, but this it this is what people are claiming for. Is there a point where the producers and people came around the show and said, guys, this is less about sports. This is more about the conversation you guys are having?
Ernie Johnson: Well, I mean, I don’t know if it was ever put exactly in those terms, but it was put in terms of, look, I know we’re doing a basketball show, but don’t be afraid to wander, you know, because I think we saw how that worked. Look, the major reason that that workers are because of Charles it all, when Charles Barkley was a player, he was the most quotable guy in the league. And to his credit, when he became part of the media part of our show, he didn’t change. A lot of people do change a lot of people. You’ll look at him and say, boy, but that I’d be great on TV, but when the light goes on, they freeze up, not Chuck. And he was the same person, you know, willing to talk about any topic whatsoever. And there were nights when the game was bad and Chuck was like, I don’t know, we won’t talk about that. Let’s talk about this. And so we did. And I think, you know, the producer at first, him Kiley, and he’s still there. But Jeremy Levin does a lot of producing. What they do so well is they’re not married to the stopwatch. They’re not saying, OK, you got to stop talking because we’re running a little over. If they realize we’re having a good conversation, they just let it go and they say we’ll make that time up somewhere else, because a lot of the conversations really are good. Sometimes they’re funny. Sometimes they’re just good conversation. And so to their credit, they’ve kind of let us know they’ve taken their hands off the reins a little bit and said, you guys know what you do now, do it. And all I’ll get my here is we got to go to break, you know, or producer will say this has run its course. Let’s move on. You know, and that’s fine, because sometimes they have a better idea, you know, listening in the control room by saying, you know, this is getting old or they’re repeating what they said now. So let’s move on. But, yeah, it’s unpredictable. It’s freewheeling. And I think that’s what folks like, you know, they can see right through those shows that are overly rehearsed that you can almost tell that this guy was going to say this and this guy’s going to laugh and then this guy’s gonna say this and then they go to go to break. And you can tell that they probably run through that five times before going on the air. That never happens with us.
Justin Forman: So you talk about things that your dad taught you or phrases that you brought into your broadcasting. What is it you’ve learned from Chuck and Kenny and Shaq have changed the way that you ask questions or something you brought in your style?
Ernie Johnson: No, I think what I’ve always wanted to do and when you have a group that’s together that long and that’s pretty rare in TV, that, you know, you’ve got three of us who have been together basically for 19 or 20 years. Shaq’s been there the last eight. That you kind of know what buttons to push, and I think you start knowing each other so well that, you know, people have called me the traffic cop on the show and it’s like I’m really a rogue traffic cop because a good traffic cop doesn’t want any collisions at his intersection. He wants everything to run smoothly. But I know Kenny well enough that if I’d say to Shaq this, that Kenny is going to broadside him in the intersection or if I say this to Charles, I push that button. Shaq’s going to jump on that. So I think you kind of learn the way their brains operate. And I can always like I’ll be voicing a tease for a game. You know, the minute promo that runs after the signatures is this is TNT Sports. And here’s a one minute sizzle, real teaser to try to get you to watch the game that’s coming on. You know, if somebody else has written it. I’m voicing it. And the writer and I will have a conversation. I said, look, when you call this a matchup for the ages. I said, that’s a little heavy. I say, because I know exactly. I said, if I go with that and I call this a matchup for the ages before I even say good evening. I’m Ernie Johnson. Charles, I’ve got to say, how do you call this a match up for the ages, man? And so you kind of know how they’re going to react. But I think we’ve all grown together, as you might expect, when you’re around that much to love and respect each other.
I mean, that’s kind of what I’ve learned about them. What I’ve learned, too, is they can take a joke. They don’t take themselves too seriously. And the show wouldn’t work if anybody did. It’s no place to be if you got thin skin and if you said, hey, you can’t do that, don’t you know who I am? And there are people in media who are like that, you know, former players. You can’t make fun of. Charles, when he started, we used to weigh him. We used to put him on a scale. I mean, there are guys who would never allow that, you know, who would say, no, that’s making fun of me. But Charles was fine. You know, he was really heavy when he first started with us. And then he vowed to get down to his playing weight. We said, well, the only way to check that out is to put the guy on a scale every couple of weeks and he would do it. And that’s what makes the show fun. You know, it’s I grew up with two older sisters. This is as close as I’ll ever come to having brothers, man. And I enjoy every second.
Henry Kaestner: You must really miss them during this time.
You know what’s good? As Chuck and I have a podcast called The Steam Room, which is available wherever you get your podcasts. And I look forward to those Thursdays because we do spend like an hour and 15 minutes, hour and a half doing that. And it’s a way to reconnect. You know, we text me and Kenny and Shaq will text and we’ll get on Zoom’s and that kind of thing. But, yeah, it’s we’re missing the time that we would be together the most, you know, during the NBA playoffs when you’re working basically every night. And now we’re not.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. So who sponsors this new podcast with you and Charles?
Ernie Johnson: I don’t know who sponsors it. I don’t think any I think.
Henry Kaestner: Unsullied by sponsorship since nineteen eighty nine.
Ernie Johnson: But, you know, the producers keep telling us and I think there are a couple of sponsors because one of the segments is with our coordinating producer, Tim Kyly, and he does read some promos every now and then. So somebody is doing it but I don’t know. I don’t know who’s doing it. So yes, we do. We do call it the second most popular podcast in the history of media.
Henry Kaestner: After Faith Driven athlete?
Ernie Johnson: We don’t know what it’s after. We just say, as long as long as you as long as you say it with conviction, you know, people are going. Well, I heard that’s the second most popular podcast in the history of media.
Justin Forman: Ernie, take us a little bit. He came to the faith later in life and.
Ernie Johnson: December 10th, nineteen ninety seven.
Justin Forman: And like when I loved hearing about you talk about that earlier, is it felt like no lines were already blurred. As your pastor said, you’re already living some of those principles. It was already kind of ingrained, it was already integrated. You’ve had conversations on air where you’re not afraid to talk about the difficult things. I mean, I remember during election season, you talk about how your faith compelled you to vote a certain way. I mean, recent examples with Kobe. What is that like? Take us through that journey of some of those deeper conversations and maybe what happens on camera and what happens off camera.
Ernie Johnson: Yeah, I mean, I think that it’s a funny position to be in a little bit. I mean, like late 90s, I would actually have conversations with Cheryl and and I was like, am I in the right place right now? Given the fact that I’ve had this reawakening of my faith as it is this where I need to be? Where should I be working for Christian Broadcasting or should I know? And I was thinking about this stuff and she was like, I think you’re right where you need to be. And the reason, I think, is because being the studio host of the NBA on TNT and having done a million other sports at Turner, there were opportunities to M.C. Brett. Fists speak at certain functions because of where I was. Because oh, yeah. This is the guy from TNT and I’m able at the Peach Bowl breakfast. You know, every December for years and years to M.C. that thing and present the gospel at the end and kind of give my testimony. And I’m saying this is the reason that I have this platform is that I have opportunities like this. And look, nobody’s tuning into our show for Bible study. It’s like, yes, I’m a Christian, but don’t expect that I’m going to get on the air and say, hey, tonight we got the bucks and the Clippers. But first turn to Romans because we’re going to dove in. You know, it’s out of right field. But when Kevin McHale is coaching the Houston Rockets and loses his daughter. Then how are you going to react to that? I’m not going to just give a thoughts and prayers. I know I told him, I said on the air. I said that I’m just praying. That that family will enjoy a peace that surpasses understanding. And so that’s me. You know, that’s how I feel, I’m not going to water that down. You know, it’s like everything else sounds hollow to me. And so I needed to be like, I’m going to get biblical on this thing with you. It’s not like I’m saying you can find this here or here, but I’m going to quote scripture when I say that. And so that’s just who I am. And I don’t think it’s forced. I just think that it was a matter of there are opportunities that come in the course of your broadcast’s life where it calls on you to tell people who you are.
That’s the thing about the election that year. You know, it’s two nights after Donald Trump is elected. And I knew basically because you know how our show operates, that we would talk about basketball and everything else. And we’ve talked about social issues nonstop. So we knew we’re going to be talking about the election and we knew we’d each have like two minutes in that pregame show. And my question was, what am I going to do in my two minutes? Am I going to say, well, this is a surprise. Let’s hope it works. Or am I going to tell folks how I really did process that election? And that’s like, look, I look at this just like I look at everything else in my life through the lens of my faith. You know, I don’t know who’s going to be in the Oval Office, but I know who’s on the throne. So it was basically it wasn’t a statement of my politics as much as it was a statement of my faith. So I have have people say, oh, man, I can’t believe you did that. I can’t believe you voted that way or I can’t, you know. But the overwhelming sentiment was just people thanking me for saying kind of what was on their minds. But I wasn’t trying to do that and I wasn’t trying to break the Internet. You know, two days later my wife’s on, you know, worth the kitchen table, looking at pictures of the grandkids on her computer and on Facebook. And she says, man, that thing you’d said about the election has 15 million views. And I was like, no, it wasn’t what I was trying to do. But I think that kind of pointed out that maybe it was something that people wanted to hear, needed to hear. So indeed, that was me. Yeah, well, it was you know, it’s I had to be true to who I was. You know, I wasn’t just going to mamby pamby and, you know, my. What a surprise. Fingers crossed. We’ll be back. You know, it’s I was gonna kind of go deep. And I know when I look anytime you say Hillary Clinton, Jesus Christ and Donald Trump in the same sentence, you’re probably going to get some people talking.
Henry Kaestner: Yes. Yes, you did. So along the way, you write a book. And one of the things that’s really compelling about the book is the way that you process getting sick. Tell us about that battle. Tell us about how that impacted your faith, your work, your ministry. Just riff on that for a bit.
Ernie Johnson: Yeah, I mean, it was back in 03 and that’s when I got diagnosed with non Hodgkin’s lymphoma. And, you know, that’s if you have an audience if you had everybody who’s listening to this, you could say, hey, everybody, raise your hand if you have a cancer story. Most of the hands would go up because either they did or if a family member did or a close friend did. And so I was you know, I’m kind of in this soon. Okay. What’s this going to mean?
And that’s one of the things the uncertainty really eats at you because you’re waiting to get test results back and you don’t know what it is and how you’re going to treat it. And part of me, too, was like I asked God why, you know, it’s like, hey, and I’ve got these four kids and we got Michael with special needs and we’re trying to get from one day to the next. And now I got this. And so, God, why? And really, a Kevin Myers, my pastor, has been such a huge part of my life. You know, we sat down at a Starbucks and I still have the napkins that he scribbled these notes down on. And he would take out this penny, take out these napkins, and he’d be writing and he’d say, hey, you know, six years ago you gave your life. To Jesus, he said you trusted him with your life. So what’s the trust looking like right now? I said it’s not looking real good. And he said, well, you said so when you trust. Is it all trust karma? I’ll trust if. I’ll trust when or is it a trust God period. And that just resonated with me. And I was like, you know what? I’m not one of these guys who is you know, you win an Emmy for a studio host. And it’s not like I went back to my hotel room and said, why? Why could you do that? You know, why me? It was like, OK. You never question that. But you question the bad stuff. So I’m not going to question that. They’re not going to say, why did this happen? I said, if I’m going to take the mountaintop moments, I’m going to take these valley moments, too. And so trust God period became my mantra. And, you know, I’ve told that to patients who are going through cancer now. And I was like, it’s not a I’ll trust God if this next test comes back the way I want it to or I’ll trust God if he gets me through this. It’s just I’m going to trust God. Period. See where he’s taking me on this. See what’s going to happen in the course of my treatment and everything else that has to be just like a God ordered thing, like the people I will meet through this. The people I’ll be able to help through this. And I remember I was reading John Nine written about Jesus and the disciples and the blind man on the side of the road. And the disciples are all saying, in essence, you know, why is this guy blind? Who sin? Was it him or was it his parents? Jesus was like, look, you’re asking the wrong question. Don’t ask why. Ask how my father in heaven is going to use it. And that’s really the way I looked at cancer. And I was like, I was God going to use this. And he’d continue to mold me into the man I need to be. And that’s how that came to be. So in 2006, I had the chemo for that because I didn’t really need to take care of it up until then. So then you go through chemo and come out the other side and, you know, you don’t wish that on anybody. But when it comes right down to it, the places that I went because of that have made me a stronger man,.
Justin Forman: Ernie, I know that we’ve seen you in a lot of awards ceremonies, a lot of famous events over the years, but none might be bigger than that bright, obnoxious jacket that seems to be every colored but green. Can you talk to us what it’s like bridging kind of what you just went through and what your experience was there? And then Craig Sager, how he encouraged you. You encouraged him through some of those seasons of his journey.
Ernie Johnson: Yeah, I mean, Segs was one of a kind he was a fun loving guy and a colleague of mine for years and years, and when he got sick and this is years after I’d had chemo and everything else, I just know what hit him really hard. He was a tough shape, but I would go and see him. And his attitude was always so upbeat that you always walked out of there, fired up. I was like, man, he’s the guy going through cancer. And I went in there to kind of encourage him and he encouraged me right back. But yeah, I think that that relationship, you know, here’s the thing. We didn’t see a whole lot of each other in the course of a season until the playoffs because he was always on the road and I was always in the studio. But we would talk and talk about being dads, talk about being husbands.
And I do remember one time during the playoffs and may have been two thousand four or something like that. And Minnesota was in it and Craig was missing the graduation of one of his kids. I don’t know if it was high school or some kind of a graduation. And Craig wasn’t going to go back to Atlanta for the graduation because we had a gay telecast on TNT that night. And I remember talking to him and I’m saying, man. Because this is the time. Look, I’ve already been diagnosed. I know that I’m at some point I’m going to have to have treatment, but nobody knew that. But Craig was like, oh, they’re going to be a lot of graduations. There always be time to do that, Will. And I was like I sat down with them one night. I said, man, you don’t know. You just don’t know how many you’re going to have. And I just I got to the arena that night, and Randy Wittman was one of the coaches from Minnesota. He came up, you said, Ernie, tell this guy to go home and go to graduation. I said, we’ve had to talk math. But, you know, it’s it’s one of those things, too, where, I mean, you thought Craig would be around forever. Then he gets sick and then but he inspired a lot of folks. And it’s just it’s hard to talk about it. But it’s it’s such a cautionary tale. And you just don’t know. You don’t know. You don’t know. We got five minutes from now, man. You. No. I don’t know why I got 30 seconds from now. And I never want to get to the point where I think that I’ve taken that for granted.
Justin Forman: So when you look at that and the experiences that you’ve come through, you look at the generation of faith driven athletes, coaches, broadcasters that are out there. I think one of the things that I’ve had such a deep appreciation for is the way the TV. You just live in this and you’re living out this integration. You’re wrestling with this identity question. What would be some advice if you were sitting down with a guy just saying, hey, you’re a feature of an athlete? And I would encourage you to do this. What’s missing? What’s needed? What can promote this conversation more?
Ernie Johnson: I think my advice would be it should don’t force it. Look, I think God’s capable of a lot of things. And probably some of the easiest things for him is to put you in a situation where your faith is going to show and where your faith is the only solution to the problem. And so I would say be patient and be wise and don’t force the issue. Don’t feel like you have to at every turn be on, you know. And I’m saying that because I’ve been on the receiving end before. Guys, you know, in times before December 10th, 1997, if somebody got in my face about faith, it was the quickest turnoff for me. It was the quickest turnoff. You know, if in the middle of a day somebody just walked up to me who has no investment in my life and says, hey, do you know where you’re going if you die now? It’s like, get out of my face. I think you have to be patient, you have to be wise and you have to be invested in someone’s life. You have to know where they’ve been like. This is not a get a notch on your belt for recruiting another Christian kind of a mentality. This is hey, this is a coworker remine. And I kind of know where he’s been and I kind of know what he’s gone through. And I think he is open for us to discuss the matters of faith. And when that happens, then you step up. But I think if you’re only concerned with, you know, put another notch on the board, that’s. And look, sometimes to me. That can be kind of difficult when somebody is saying, hey, I want you to speak at our group. Last year we we had 400 people, you know? And it’s like, look, I’m not in this for the numbers. I’m not in this for saying, oh, I’ve got to speak at this event. And if I don’t get one hundred and fifty people to commit to Jesus Christ and I failed. Now, if when I’m speaking and I get through to one person. And one person says, you know, I really need to take a look at the spiritual things in this world more. That’s a victory. You know, there may be somebody who’s this far away endorses me, I heard what you said about Jesus dying for your sins and I mean, that’s great. But I am not going to get caught up in numbers, and I really think there has to be a sensitivity to how you broach the subject and how you share your faith with somebody else.
Justin Forman: Do you find that more of those conversations happen on set over the years or offset?
Ernie Johnson: Off set. I mean, it’s like Charles and I’ve had a couple of conversations. I mean, it’s like. And he’ll say this. He said, Ernie, I like you. And I like Bobby Jones. My old teammate in Philadelphia says, because I know you’re both Christians, but you don’t hit me over the head with it. But Chuck asked me, so I got a question for you. He said, you’re trying to tell me that I can do whatever I want to do forever. I could lead whatever kind of life I want to lead. And at the very last minute, I can say, OK, God, I’m in. So you can tell me I can do that. I said, Well, Charles, in Scripture, you will read about the crucifixion and you’ll read about the guys on either side on their crosses. And you will learn that one of them’s like. I want in. I said, what you got to remember is that he knows your motives and he knows your heart. So he knows if you’re just saying, look, I’m going to tear it up for 71 years, and then when I get the inkling that my time is up, I’m going to say, OK, God, I’m in. I said, he knows your motives and he knows your heart. And I said, So that’s what you need to know. And, you know, for everybody, there have been conversations like that. And that’s one of the things I love. I love having conversations like that. I love having you know, back in our Bible study, Ravi Zacharias was a friend of Tim Cash. Ravi would come in every now and then not to really teach, but just to have breakfast and have a cup of coffee and hang out with the guys. And I remember Craig Iron Head Hayward, you know, running back, who after Bible study said, OK, I got one for you. I’m going to stump you with this one. He said, why do bad things happen where somebody is leading a good life? And Ravi just kind of looked at him and he said, Iron Head. I appreciate your question, he said. But when there’s an accident on the side of the road, do we blame the manufacturer? And Iron Head went, All right. I know it’s like I love those moments. I love those moments of discussion, but those moments when you can talk about the things that maybe that we don’t know and the things that really matter. So we don’t talk about that on the set very much back there in the green room where all the world’s problems are solved yet. Those of those questions and answers have bounced off the wall.
Justin Forman: Ernie, we’ve been just incredibly blessed by this time together. We like to finish each episode. Just having you take us to a place in scripture where God has you can be something you read this morning. This week, something is coming fresh and alive. Can you share that with us?
Ernie Johnson: Yes. And in fact, see, anytime I sign an autograph, I write Philippians two, three through five. And it’s you know, I do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility. Consider others better than yourselves. And your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. But look, I’m one of these guys. I love reading the message, too. I loved reading what Eugene Peterson puts out. And part of that. If you just go Philippians two one through four says if you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the spirit means anything to you. If you have a heart, if you care to do me a favor, agree with each other, love each other, be deep spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front. Don’t sweet. Talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. I just. You know what? That’s all we’re trying to do.
That’s you know, my wife has probably sewn six hundred masks for the local hospital here in Brazelton. We’ve wake up in the morning trying to say, what can we do? How can we make somebodies day better? And I think if you wake up in the morning and it’s about somebody else and it’s not about you, be amazed at how well those two days go and how you don’t find yourself disappointed because you’re not dwelling on you know, Bob Goff has written a couple of great books, you know, Love Does and everybody everywhere. And it’s like. Just love on, folks. All right, just be available. Just be the one who says that’s wrong. I’m going to make it right. And so that’s kind of where I am. And when I read those verses out of the message, it’s like, don’t be so concerned with you getting to the top as helping somebody else just stay afloat.
Henry Kaestner: That is beautiful. That is awesome. It’s a great place we need to end. I wish we could do this a lot more. There are other questions, you know, free you up Very, very grateful for the time that you spent. This has been an awesome time.
Ernie Johnson: I’ve been guys, my. It’s been my pleasure. Guys, thank you very much. And I’m like all I can be as honest as I can be with you. Just speak from experience. And I’m grateful that I’ve got a testimony.
God gives us capacity because we are not large enough today to fight tomorrow’s battles.