Anything can happen on live TV, and we got that on Tuesday’s episode of Keyshawn, JWill, and Max.
A rather bizarre confrontation occurred when TNT analyst Isiah Thomas took offense to the pic chosen for his interview. To Thomas, the serious-looking pic that was chosen made him look somewhat mean and bitter, which Thomas noted was a departure from other pics in the show that had people smiling.
Initially, it felt like Keyshawn Johnson and Max Kellerman thought this was all a joke and tried to play along. To his credit, Thomas laughed and played along while airing his grievance, but he hung up and called back seconds later because of the perceived disrespect.
A producer replaced the pic during the interview and showed one of Thomas on the foul line. That wasn’t much better, as Thomas still wasn’t smiling.
Later in the show, Johnson and Kellerman had a serious conversation about what took place. It might not seem like a big deal, but it can be easy to capture a pic of someone in a split second acting one way when that might be an inaccurate view of who they are. It wasn’t exactly something Johnson initially noticed, but he did once Thomas pointed it out.
And then there’s the racial component, which the two hosts discussed. As Johnson pointed out, he’s mainly a happy person, but there are a lot of pics out there where he’s stone-faced when that’s not really who he is. Again, it might not seem like a big deal, but that might convey an inaccurate image of a person or even their race and ethnicity. In fairness, it’s difficult to capture a smiling athlete in an action shot during a game, but Johnson and Thomas have been retired for years.
Johnson and Kellerman didn’t blame anyone. It’s more than likely someone behind the scenes searched “Isiah Thomas” in an image search engine and picked the first pic that popped up. A production staff for a live daily show is typically busy, and they honestly don’t have time to parse through lots of pictures to try to capture the personality of their guest. That would be ideal, but that’s not happening.
Having said that, it’s important to reasonably cater to a guest, and if it was important to that person to be portrayed in a certain way, that might be worth accommodating them. The staff at Keyshawn, JWill, and Max now know for the next time Isiah Thomas is on their show.