Gregg Giannotti fired back at Carl Banks on Tuesday after the Giants legend criticized the WFAN host for calling Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns a “loser” on Monday’s show.
Giannotti, who co-hosts “Boomer and Gio” on WFAN with Boomer Esiason, opened Tuesday’s show defending his take and expressing shock over the strong reaction from Banks.
“I wasn’t making it personal about Karl-Anthony Towns. He assumed I did,” Giannotti said. “Then he made it personal about me. The same way that Carl Banks feels about us, meaning talk show hosts who didn’t play [professional sports]. How you guys can’t evaluate sports because you didn’t play, is the way I feel about Carl Banks when he starts chiming in on stuff like this. Leave this stuff up to us.
“The way you don’t respect our opinions on sports. I don’t respect your opinions on media, because he’s not very good at it. He doesn’t understand. His comprehension was terrible yesterday, and he spent years on this radio station putting people to sleep.”
The original comments made by Giannotti ignited a firestorm of responses, including a blistering take from Banks.
“This is genuinely pathetic,” Banks wrote Monday on X alongside a social media clip of Giannotti talking about Towns. “Calling a man you’ve never met a ‘loser’ says far more about you than it ever could about him. I’ve known Kat and his family since he was a kid — there’s absolutely nothing about him that resembles a loser. Try being a better human instead of broadcasting this ignorant s–t.”
Giannotti contended that he never commented on Towns as a person and that his comments were strictly about the Knicks star’s performance on the court.
Banks has a bit of a frosty relationship with WFAN after he had a very public split from the station, where he had done regular appearances.
Banks and midday hosts Brandon Tierney and Sal Licata had gotten into a heated debate over Kayvon Thibodeaux in 2023 that ended with Licata cutting the conversation short by telling his producer to bring the former footballer’s phone line down.
He resigned from his weekly spot on WFAN after the incident, despite the best efforts of station management to mediate the situation.