Chris "Mad Dog" Russo Almost Cries About Charles, Carmelo Anthony, Barry Bonds...and Mike?

To say that Chris Russo, affectionately known as Mad Dog, was distraught over Charles’s impending retirement would be putting it lightly. “Geez, that’s going to be sad!” Russo said, then wondered if he could swing by one morning soon to bid Charles adieu in person.
 
“No,” Imus said, then shared that Charles’s last day, May 6, is actually the final day of this year’s Radiothon, and that Charles will play the piano throughout the morning.
 
“At the conclusion of that show,” Imus added, “He will simply GET OUT.”
 
Then, because Russo asked, Imus regaled the audience with the story of how he and Charles first met, nearly 40 years ago.
 
Back in the early 1970s, when Imus was at WNBC, various people would read the news, among them Charles McCord. Throughout each day’s broadcast, the news writers and editors would bring items into the studio for Imus to read, and one fateful day Charles handed him a peculiar report.
 
“The traffic story was that pranksters had jammed great big corks, like wine bottle corks, into the Manhattan side of the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, and that city officials and crews were on their way with giant corkscrews to try to get them out,” Imus said. “It may not be that amusing now, but it was amusing then, particularly because I wasn’t paying any attention and I just read it straight.”
 
After establishing that this incident was what turned Imus on to Charles, Russo, the host of Mad Dog Unleashed on Sirius XM’s Mad Dog Radio, turned to the only subject he really knows anything about: sports.
 
“Would you like to talk about the Knicks, who blew a terrible game two nights ago?” Russo asked Imus, who sort of did. “I have two takes: number one, Carmelo Anthony came up incredibly small, like everybody else.”
 
Russo expounded on this theory by pointing out that Anthony did not play defense against the Boston Celtics, and that he shot just 1-for-11 in the second half. Russo also blamed Knicks Head Coach Mike D’Antoni for his team’s loss, because the Celtics scored on an alley-oop pass with 37.5 seconds left in the game, which, according to Russo, required the Knicks to score in the next possession. “Bad call,” he said.
 
Though Russo initially thought the Knicks would be competitive in this series, now he’s not so sure. But all Imus took away from this extended breakdown of the game was an opportunity to knock his buddy Mad Dog.
 
“I know satellite and Sirius XM are doing much better,” he said. “But the reason it’s not doing a lot better is because of that over-analysis. I mean, come on!”
 
But Russo quickly launched into another diatribe, this one about the waste of time and money the government spent prosecuting Barry Bonds for lying to a grand jury seven years ago about whether he used steroids. “What a joke!” Russo said, then criticized “the juries in America” for doing a bad job. 
 
He declined to comment on Imus’s observation that his former radio partner Mike Francesa looks unhappy on the YES Network these days, and accused Imus of trying to get him in trouble. “Why would you say that?” Russo moaned.
 
Broadcasting sidekicks come and go, Doggie, but Imus causing trouble is forever.
 
-Julie Kanfer