Michael Ray Wilbon (/ˈwɪlbɒn/; born November 19, 1958) is a former sportswriter and columnist for the Washington Post and current ESPN commentator. He serves as an analyst for ESPN and co-hosts Pardon the Interruption on ESPN with former Post writer Tony Kornheiser, and has been doing so since 2001.

Wilbon began working for The Washington Post in 1980 after summer internships at the newspaper in 1979 and 1980. He covered college sports, Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Basketball Association before being promoted to full-time columnist in February 1990. His column in the Post, which dealt as much with the culture of sports as the action on the court or field, appeared up to four times a week until he left to work full-time for ESPN on December 7, 2010.

In his career, Wilbon has covered ten Summer and Winter Olympic Games for The Washington Post, every Super Bowl since 1987, nearly every Final Four since 1982 and each year's NBA Finals since 1987.

After contributing to ESPN's The Sports Reporters and other shows on the cable network, he began co-hosting ESPN's daily Pardon the Interruption (PTI) with Tony Kornheiser on October 22, 2001. He is also a member of ABC's NBA Countdown (which he hosts with Jon Barry, Chris Broussard and Magic Johnson) which is the pre-game show for the network's NBA telecasts.

Kobe Bean Bryant (born August 23, 1978) is an American professional basketball player who plays shooting guard for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Bryant enjoyed a successful high school basketball career at Lower Merion High School, where he was recognized as the top high school basketball player in the country. He decided to declare his eligibility for the NBA Draft upon graduation, and was selected with the 13th overall pick in the 1996 NBA Draft by the Charlotte Hornets, then traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. As a rookie, Bryant earned himself a reputation as a high-flyer and a fan favorite by winning the 1997 Slam Dunk Contest.

Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal led the Lakers to three consecutive NBA championships from 2000 to 2002. A heated feud between the duo and a loss in the 2004 NBA Finals was followed by O'Neal's trade from the Lakers after the 2003–04 season. Following O'Neal's departure Bryant became the cornerstone of the Los Angeles Lakers franchise. He led the NBA in scoring during the 2005–06 and 2006–07 seasons, setting numerous scoring records in the process. In 2006, Bryant scored a career-high 81 points against the Toronto Raptors, the second most points scored in a single game in NBA history, second only to Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game in 1962. He was awarded the regular season's Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) in 2008. After losing in the 2008 NBA Finals, Bryant led the Lakers to two consecutive championships in 2009 and 2010, earning the NBA Finals MVP Award on both occasions.

LeBron Raymone James (/ləˈbrɒn/; born December 30, 1984) is an American professional basketball player for the Miami Heat of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nicknamed "King James", he was a three-time "Mr. Basketball" of Ohio in high school, and was highly promoted in the national media as a future NBA superstar while a sophomore at St. Vincent – St. Mary High School. He was selected with the number one pick in the 2003 NBA Draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers. Listed as a small forward, James has set numerous youngest player records since joining the league. He was named the NBA Rookie of the Year in 2003–04, was named the NBA Most Valuable Player in 2009, 2010, and 2012 and has been both an All-NBA selection and an All-Star every season since 2005. In 2010, a much-publicized free agency process ended with James signing with the Miami Heat.

James led the Cleveland Cavaliers to consecutive playoff appearances from 2006 through 2010. In 2007, the Cavaliers advanced to the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history, but lost to the San Antonio Spurs. In 2011, James and the Miami Heat advanced to the NBA Finals but lost to the Dallas Mavericks. James has been a member of the USA national team, winning a bronze medal at the 2004 Olympics and gold at the 2008 Olympics.

Rush Hudson Limbaugh III ( /ˈlɪmbɔː/; born January 12, 1951) is an American radio talk show host and political commentator. Since he was 16 Limbaugh has worked a series of disc jockey jobs. His talk show began in 1984 at Sacramento radio station KFBK, featuring his ongoing format of political commentary and listener calls. In 1988 Limbaugh began broadcasting his show nationally from radio station WABC in New York, New York. He currently lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, from where he broadcasts the The Rush Limbaugh Show, the highest-rated talk-radio program in the United States.

In the 1990s Limbaugh's books The Way Things Ought to Be (1992) and See, I Told You So (1993) made The New York Times Best Seller list. Limbaugh frequently criticizes, in his books and on his show, what he regards as liberal policies and politicians, as well as what he perceives as a pervasive liberal bias in major U.S. media.

Rush Hudson Limbaugh III was born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, the son of Mildred Carolyn "Millie" (née Armstrong) and Rush Hudson Limbaugh, Jr. His father was a lawyer and a U.S. fighter pilot who served in the China Burma India Theater of World War II. His mother was a native of Searcy, Arkansas. The name "Rush" was originally chosen for his grandfather to honor the maiden name of family member Edna Rush.

The term black people is used in some socially-based systems of racial classification for humans of a dark-skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups represented in a particular social context. Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class and socio-economic status also play a role, so that relatively dark-skinned people can be classified as white if they fulfill other social criteria of "whiteness" and relatively light-skinned people can be classified as black if they fulfill the social criteria for "blackness" in a particular setting.

As a biological phenotype being "black" is often associated with the very dark skin colors of some people who are classified as "black". But, particularly in the United States, the racial or ethnic classification also refers to people with all possible kinds of skin pigmentation from the darkest through to the very lightest skin colors, including albinos, if they are believed by others to have African ancestry, or to exhibit cultural traits associated with being "African-American". As a result, in the United States the term "black people" is not an indicator of skin color but of socially based racial classification.