Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Last Wednesday, the sports world witnessed something that's more rare than a buzzer beater or a successful hail mary. Charles Barkley went silent on national television. While commenting on the retirement of longtime inside the NBA colleague Ernie Johnson, the typically jovial and opinionated Hall of Famer just couldn't speak as he fought back tears of gratitude and respect.
If there were a Mount Rushmore of sports announcers, there's no question that Johnson would be on it. If the NBA had its own currency, he'd be on the hundred dollar bill. Back in twenty sixteen, my then breakpoint colleague Eric Mataxis called Ernie Johnson, and I quote, "One of the most inspiring and just downright likable people in American sports," and I'd add, he's also among the most talented. Mataxis told Johnson's story this way. Between 1993 and 1996, Johnson, alongside his father Ernie Johnson Sr., was the TV announcer for the Atlanta Braves.
In addition to his play-by-play work for the Braves, Johnson has also announced Major League Playoff games, college and professional football, and PGA golf events, among many other things. But he's best known for his work in covering the NBA. He's the host of TNT's Inside the NBA, which has won nine Emmy awards. Johnson and the show's regulars. Kilo Neal, Kenny Smith, and Charles Barkley trade good-natured insults and basketball insights.
But what makes the show really work is Johnson. His gentle management of hugely outsized personalities keeps the show from descending into chaos while keeping the fun quotient high. But it's more than astute people skills that makes Johnson so special. As Charles Barkley said in a 2015 ESPN profile of Johnson, he has uncommon courage and a pure heart.
Well, this past Wednesday, Barkley added what many others have attested to: that Johnson shows the same kindness. Others and the same love of his work off camera as he does on camera. As a big basketball fan myself, I've long enjoyed the on-air chemistry, humor, and in-depth analysis of inside the NBA. To say that it's difficult to imagine who could fill his shoes is quite an understatement. Back in 2015, the ESPN documentary series E60 revealed that Johnson is even more impressive as a father than he is in studio.
Johnson and his wife Cheryl adopted four children: Michael, born in Romania; Carmen, born in Paraguay; and Ashley and Allison, whom they adopted out of foster care years ago. In an inspiring speech to the University of Alabama football team, Johnson described how when Michael was put into the Arms of his wife for the very first time at the orphanage. They were told, and I quote, "He's no good." Johnson then went on to tell the team why that just absolutely was not the case. For Michael to move any part of his body, Johnson said, takes maximal effort. That led the basketball coach at Michael's high school to include him as part of the team to teach the team maximal effort.
But he also wanted Michael to teach his team what it meant to have a heart for others, and that worked. In fact, as Johnson said, by the time Michael was a senior, the entire high school was saying "I love you" in sign language, and then by wiggling a finger, saying back "Love you too." When five years ago Johnson announced on an episode of Inside the NBA that his son Michael had passed away at age thirty-three, Shaquille O'Neal, Charles Barkley, and Kenny Smith all spoke through tears about the honor of knowing and working with Ernie Johnson, as well as knowing his son Michael. Back in two thousand and six, Johnson announced on air that he was battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. After thanking his doctors, he then described how he would get through it. My family continues as we always have, in both good times and bad, to place our faith in Jesus Christ and to trust God.
Period.
Now, look—it's certainly rare to get the opportunity to do the kind of work that Ernie Johnson has been blessed to do. What he has called a "get-to" job, not a "have-to" job. It's even more rare when someone recognizes it as a blessing, a gift of God, rather than something they're entitled to, and then to respond to that gift with the kind of joy and the gratitude and excellence that Ernie Johnson has consistently shown throughout his career. You see, excellence is his own testimony, and it's even more compelling when it extends to all the parts of life that no one sees. Abraham Kuyper said that Jesus Christ is Lord over every square inch of reality.
That has to include both the public and the private, the exciting and the mundane. And so I say, congrats to Ernie Johnson, and thank you for the great example that you've set of work done for the Lord in an excellent way in front of a watching world. I, for one, am certainly grateful that we at least have one more season to watch and to laugh. And to appreciate your work for the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. If you appreciate these daily commentaries of Christian worldview, please leave us a review wherever you download your podcast.
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