On Thursday night, Larry David, maybe the funniest living person, visited “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Ostensibly to promote “Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness,” his sketch-comedy series honoring America’s 250th birthday by skewering events from its history, and premiering June 26 on HBO, the legendary comedian also happened to make his appearance the same day that around two million New York Knicks fans celebrated the team winning its first NBA title in 53 years at a euphoric ticker-tape parade in Manhattan. David, for his part, was courtside during the team’s miraculous Game 4 win against the Spurs, where the Knicks battled from 29 points down to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat on a tip-in from OG Anunoby with 1.2 seconds to go, capping the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history. (Fortunately, David didn’t manage to trip any Knicks players that night like he did Shaq.)
When Kimmel asked David about being so enthusiastic at that fateful Knicks game, he launched in a long-winded explanation, as only he can.
“It’s funny: at a game like that, that’s the only time I can really feel like a human being because I’m doing what other people are doing. And usually, I’m outside of what other people are doing because I can’t stand doing what people do,” he explained, adding, “But I have to tell you something… so stressful. So stressful. That game took years off my life. The whole Playoffs took years off my life.”
“Do you trash-talk the players from the other team?” asked Kimmel.
Cue David, who launched into how he tried to psych out Spurs star Victor Wembanyama: “What I do is: I try to make eye contact. I was right on the bench — I was right by the Spurs’ bench — so I look at the players and I’m trying to make eye contact, hoping that they’ll maybe recognize me from TV, and I’ll go, ‘Hey, Wemby’s looking at me,’ and Wemby goes, ‘Hey, Larry David! I really like your show!’ That’s it — I’m rooting for the Spurs. That’s it. That’s all it takes! One Spur recognizes me and I’m switching over immediately.”
Later on in the program, Kimmel welcomed Henry Louis Gates Jr. onto the show. If you recall, David was one of the more memorable guests on Gates’ show “Finding Your Roots.” When he found out that his great-great-grandfather owned slaves, David exclaimed, “Oh, you did it! You did it! I knew it! I knew it! Unbelievable! Boy. Boy oh boy.”
When Kimmel asked Gates (with David seated next to him) if anyone had “ever been that excited and enthusiastic about finding out that their great-great-grandfather was a slaveowner,” Gates replied, “He thought he was safe, you see, because he was descended from a Jewish immigrant… There was a movement in the 1850s of Jews from Bavaria who went to the South, and his great-great-grandfather, whose name was Henry Bernstein, migrated from Bavaria to Mobile, Alabama, he joined the Confederacy, and he owned two slaves.”
Gates added that Kimmel also had relatives from Germany, to which Kimmel offered, “But, just for the record: My family never had any slaves, whereas Larry’s family were slaveowners.”
To that, a smiling David shot back, “Oh, I guess that makes you better than me, right?”
