Mike Lupica’s Terrible Take on Novak Djokovic

MIKE LUPICA: You know what you know really happened to an entitled international sports star? Somebody is saying “no,” at least for the time being, and at least until he finds another judge. He found one, but now (sputters) it’s really sketchy that he might get this worked out before he is supposed to play his first round match. I — I — I tweeted out last night, if this guy had any respect for a tournament he’s won nine times — and he had any grace — he would go to the airport and go home, because he’s making a mockery of his favorite major tennis tournament.

BUCK: That’s a really bad sports analysis, some guy I’ve never heard of named Mike Lupica. We’ll get some good sports analysis here from my buddy Clay in a second. Welcome back to the Clay and Buck show. That’s over Novak Djokovic. I know a lot more about tennis than I do about pretty much any other sport, and Djokovic is one of the greatest players of all time. He’s obviously in some hot water with the Australian authorities right now because of some issues with his visa ’cause he’s unvaxxed and all the rest of it. First of all, Clay, that guy I never heard of him before. Lupica? Lupica?

CLAY: Lupica. Yeah.

BUCK: Was he giving that little rant through three masks to make sure that he was taking the virus seriously?

CLAY: (laughing) Sometimes when you hear the other people who made livings writing about sports, it doesn’t seem so impressive that I made a lot of money writing and talking about sports, because I’m not necessarily competing with the absolute apex predators of competition out there, right. But this is such a bad take, right? Australia has a monster Omicron issue —

BUCK: A million cases —

CLAY: — as most of the world does.

BUCK: A million cases a day right now is I think where they are.

CLAY: Through the roof. They tried to play the covid zero game. They’ve done the vaccine gambit, and it has not panned out for them, and so I believe what’s really happened is Novak Djokovic has become a convenient foil, a way to distract the rest of Australia from the fact that the vaccines are not stopping the spread.

BUCK: I’m sorry, a million Omicron overall — 147,000 new cases Australia. I just want to get the numbers right.

CLAY: Which, if you extrapolate what the population of Australia is like 30 million?

BUCK: That’s right. It would be like a million a day here.

CLAY: Yes. So what they’re trying to do clearly with Djokovic, as you just mentioned, as they’re dealing with a monster surge of Omicron there — and remember, this is a place that locked itself down and basically said, “We’re not going to allow covid to exist here,” what we are recognizing is that is never going to be a viable position. So right now, I believe, politicians are trying to distract from the larger issue by going after Djokovic.

This could also be… We don’t know. He got another appeal in to see whether or not he’s gonna be able to play. I think the tournament starts in like two or three days. It could also be an issue for the United States, because there are requirements when you’re coming in from a foreign country that you have certain paperwork that you filled out as it pertains to covid, and that could be a factor for some of our tournaments as well. This is crazy. He’s already there. He’s already in the country. He’s already been training in the country, Buck. What are you actually losing by allowing him to participate at this point when he’s already there?