You have three degrees in economics, which I assume is not common among your colleagues at ESPN. Do you still consider yourself an economist? Yes. Being an economist is much more about a thought process than it is anything specific about your job. It’s thinking about how to maximize utility and the allocation of scarce resources — that’s what I’m doing every day now.

Do you still do research? No. One thing I learned in the course of doing more research in economics is that I had more of a master’s-degree level of curiosity than a Ph.D. level of curiosity.

The Clippers were knocked out of the playoffs already. Last year around this time, you were arguing that the Donald Sterling controversy was a nonissue, that people reacted in a way that missed the point. Why? The topics of race that we’ve discussed in the last year, as they relate to sports, are still as flimsy and inconsequential as ever. Donald Sterling was one of the great perpetrators of housing discrimination that we have seen in this country in modern times, and we ignored that. Instead, we’re still trying to catch people saying the wrong thing. We didn’t learn a thing from the Donald Sterling story. Not one single thing.

You also raised some eyebrows a while back when you said that Stevie Wonder might not really be blind. Your evidence was mainly that Stevie was interested in being on “Dancing With the Stars” and that you know a guy who sold him three plasma-screen TVs. O.K. It’s a somewhat inappropriate joke that has taken on a life of its own. A buddy of mine and I used to joke about this when I was in college. Now I joke about it a little bit on ESPN. Then next thing you know, it became a thing — a huge thing. It’s probably what I’m most recognized for.