Local Hour: The 'Dunk On Jeremy' Show

I didn't know until yesterday that Kid Rock was lip-syncing. It's syncing. Lip-syncing. I thought I said syncing. I thought I heard singing, which is a common mistake. S-Y-N-C is what I was trying to say. But he was wearing white shorts, doing an alternative halftime show, and you can't be lip-syncing in that circumstance when you're going opposite the halftime show, can you? And the lip syncing was off. So the way people realized that he was lip syncing is that the lip syncing wasn't good. He actually created a Threads account and his first post was defending with an audio engineer the merits of the performance and saying like, no, I actually sung live and I told them to fix the sync, but the sync wasn't there. These are things that you do when the performance absolutely nailed it. to be honest all link all lip syncing sucks right because during the thanksgiving day parade you see them all lip syncing you're like oh wow they're so off that they're not even close so like all of it just as a blanket statement all lip syncing sucks no matter where you're right nobody does it worse anywhere in entertainment than greg cody during our various intros like there there is no i am in i am the pot calling the kettle a bad lip syncer because ours is the worst every time we The funniest thing I think about those intros with Greg Cody is he's forgetting half of the words. He's marching around. He's very pleased with himself. But it's obvious to everyone watching that none of this is synced up. He doesn't know what he's singing about. But if you're going to be Kid Rock and you're going to try and take America's attention away from the Hispanic-Spanish thing because your thing is better. Say what you want to say, Dan. Shaken ass. Is better. Well, I wasn't saying the shaking ass. They were shaking ass all over the place. If you want to take America from shaking ass, you got to do better than white shorts, buddy. No, he tried to shake his ass in those white shorts. We don't want to see that. He had the wrist brace like he was a pro bowler. How old is Bob? Can you tell me how old Bob is? So he's singing a 30-year-old song. He's singing it in white shorts. And he's lip syncing. And I saw a clip of him on with Laura Ingram. And he's like, no, no, no, I'm going to put it on my social media tonight. My DJ is coming over to my living room and we're going to show you that we did it correctly. Yeah, that's when he created the Threads account to defend himself. But he said he was going to do it. He was going to show everybody that the sinking wasn't his fault. The part about the white shorts, though. I think they're just jorts and the lighting makes you think that they're white. Yeah, in his defense, they're just jorts. Wow. But he went after the $100 million Super Bowl pregame show with jorts. Like, he decided to dress up. He has name in lights, too, Dan. But Bad Bunny, Bad Benny, Bad Money, he has all of those costume design. He's going super ethnic and flamboyant, and the counter is jorts. Like, how do you – the counter's not just jorts, because there was also that country music song about, I just want to sit in my truck and drink beer and mow my lawn and not have to think about trans people. Somehow the whitest moment of Super Bowl halftime entertainment was Lady Gaga's dancing. Did you see that, Dan? Did you watch the halftime show? Yes, I didn't understand why Lady Gaga was there. Why was Lady Gaga there? Why was she there? This is the Dan Levatore Show with the Stugatz Podcast. I mentioned yesterday that Mike is on an uncommon heater here with his sports teams where he's doing some winning with the team that he runs. Highly with Chris Cody. The University of Miami made a giant run that felt like cocaine snorting over the course of six weeks to eight weeks. Then there's a court sauntering yesterday, a court milling about when the University of Miami beats North Carolina. But I imagine that what happened to Mike Ryan yesterday post football, not unlike sort of the malaise that hits me around when Army Navy starts playing, is that Mike Ryan's wandering around his life, watching and thinking and remembering about what the last few weeks have been. And he's like, all right, I'll do Heat Pelicans. Like, okay, all right. You got nothing else for me? I can only be so mad at Boomer Esaiasen all day. Give me some sports here. All right, I'll check in on the Pelicans and see how Herb Jones is doing. I recognized him. He was like one of the three players that I recognized. No, it's a fair thing to throw in my face. You don't watch. I don't feel like I have to watch because I've been right again for two and a half years when it comes to this team. And it's not a debate. It's flatly not a debate. Like, you can argue stay the course, but it is irrefutable. No one has been more right about this team over the last two and a half years. It's amazing. It's not amazing. It's irrefutable. It is databacked. I don't even want to hear from Jack Shit over there. I don't want to hear from Jack Shit. I don't want to hear from Jack Shit. I don't want to hear anybody pushing on this. Dan, he said something today that I almost lost my mind in the morning meeting. Oh, I was there. We can disagree about the path forward. We have over the last two and a half years. But to this point, it is goddamn irrefutable that I've been right. Can I hear from Jack shit before? Like, there is no worse way to start a morning with whatever it is your life experience is than hearing Mike Ryan Crow about how irrefutably right he is. Like, that is not a good flavor to hit people with in the morning. So let me hear from Jack shit here. Oh, no. I'm not. Wait a minute. Do you know how bad? I tried to spur the audience from this. All right. Do you know how? I think maybe I'll just take today off. Do you know how bad it is that irrefutably right is so obnoxious to me that I find myself craving jack shit? I'm literally just sating it so we can move past it because I don't want to get bogged down on that right. No, you tried to move past Pelican's Heat on your TV last night and you couldn't. It hypnotized you. You had to wonder, why aren't they better with Zion Williamson? How are the Heat beating them with three guys? That was not my thought. My thought was like, man, this team is crap. and it wasn't about the Pelicans. The Pelicans are more crap. The league, you know, we spent a good amount of time yesterday talking to Pablo. I don't know. I really do wonder, because audiences are so fragmented now, that I legitimately wonder if fans of our show are noticing on their own without us pointing it out, because it's not like we've pointed this out that much. Huh, that's interesting that Pablo's talking about that Kawhi Leonard story which is a little difficult to talk about, and everyone else on television is just yelling about tanking. And sort of the difference in those things on how easy one of those is to talk about and how not easy the other one is. But clearly the one over here is the one that is harder to have opinions about that are informed. And so I just, I do wonder if people see the difference in substance on, yeah, anybody can yell about the problems the league has right now. Because you've got that Sacramento-Utah game last night is an abomination, right? New Orleans might be trying to win, but there's no proof of it. The career of Zion Williamson, that's one of the great expectation busts of our time. That to me is worse than Ben Simmons in terms of how hopeful I was for whatever it is that that was going to be. And I know Ben Simmons is an all-time short-circuiting bust, but I really thought that Zion Williamson was going to be a freak of nature who was able to be more physical than the most physical of men in that sport, and now he just goes to rot with a nowhere franchise. Well, kind of his fault, right? There's no other way to get around that. Like when he's on the floor, he produces and he's got such an incredible touch around the rim. He's so physical. He's so strong. Like what he's able to do when he's there is great. When he's not there, you know. Before the show, I was like, why didn't anybody try to get Kawhi? And then I was like, stupid question. My bad. I want to talk about the heat and I want to hear from Jack Shit because we beat him up the last couple of days a bit excessively. But as it relates to style of play in the modern age as the game goes further and further out toward the three-point line. I don't know how much Zion Williamson enjoys basketball. I don't even know how fair it is for me to make the assessment based on the outside, very little information, that I feel like he might not enjoy basketball that much. Certainly his basketball experience in the pros has to have been pretty unpleasant, generally speaking. We watched the Pelican game totally differently. Well, I'm wanting something. I wonder if he likes this sport. Yeah, you question if he likes his job? I feel bad for this guy. The part that I'm actually questioning is whether or not someone like John Morant still wants to play at the rim when he can get his 10 threes a game. Whether Anthony Edwards still wants to play around the rim because of how hard it is to play around the rim. The way that Zion Williamson earns his living hurts enough that I would imagine it's less fun to play basketball than the average person who loves to play basketball. unless you're like Andrew Hawkins, who says, no, no, I really miss the physical. I just love being physical. Hawkins is on television right now, by the way, saying that the Miami Dolphins should trade for Kyler Murray. He says that the Dolphins should want Kyler Murray. I would imagine that that would immediately excite Dolphin fans, even though I don't have a discernible eye for what the Dolphin plan is. It seems to me like they're rebuilding to be good by the time Josh Allen's done. I think the clubhouse leader is Malik Willis. bring him over from Green Bay because the staffers from Green Bay, the general manager, the head coach, they had some success with Malik Willis, which is, you know, grading on a curve, I would say. Because Malik Willis is considered to be good because of what people's expectations are of him. And sometimes he surprises people by not being terrible. The only thing that happens with Malik Willis post-draft is that every time Jordan Love goes down, they don't expect anything at all from the Packers, and then the Packers put up 17 points. Like, that's not an answer. And I don't care whether you're the guys who know the guy and therefore you want to try and develop the guy. That is not the answer. Kyler Murray would interest me, but please tell me what you're putting around him. Because I don know what the Dolphin plan is right now in terms of people they have that anybody else in the league would want They have like four of them maximum that anybody in the league would want Paul, Waddle, HN. I mean, that's not bad weapons to work with for a quarterback. And while Kyler Murray in previous seasons would be like, really, that's the gold standard? I honestly think Kyler Murray is probably the best option if you're hoping to upgrade at the position this year, and that includes the draft. He is the best name and hope option. That is not up for dispute. In terms of what's available, Tony, I know you're sour on Kyler Murray, but in terms of just putting an infusion of hope, people are going to expect, oh, it'll be scrambling offense, even though he's been bad and injured for years now. The fusion of hope or whatever kind of already died when you signed Jeff Halfley, and you're like, all right, hopefully he could do something. Mike already has the down low on him. We don't know how that's going to happen. You guys are so positive. Mike, go ahead. Coaches always pop up. Chris, if I may remind you, I'm right about everything. Thank you. And I saw Halfley at BC. This isn't going to work out. On top of that, you get your offense. You let go of a guy who was a scheme wizard in Mike McDaniel to bring in Bobby Slowick and Kevin Petulo, who both got fired because they were terrible. And now you're looking at two guys who are terrible trying to lead your offense. That doesn't have weapons. That doesn't have a quarterback. Did you just try to have hope and he got you with a Petulo? He got you. He undercut you. Mike's right. What do you want me to do? He took your legs out from you. I was whispering to Chris. I'm like, man, what a change for me. The dude to my right is just agreeing with everything that I say. And matter of fact, he said, there you go. All right. So let me. This is so refreshing. Oh, my God. This is incredible. Well, this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. March is one of those months where we talk about celebrating women. And it's very, very deserved because when you actually look around, a lot of women in our lives are carrying a ton. Work, family, relationships, expectations nobody notices or sees. I start thinking about the women around me, my wife, my mom, my sister, my friends, my coworkers, people who somehow take care of everybody else while still trying to hold it together themselves. And it's a ton to carry. Therapy can be a place to put some of that weight down. It can help you figure out what's yours, what isn't, and how to set better boundaries so you're not running on empty all the time. BetterHelp works with fully licensed therapists in the U.S., and they handle the matching process for you. You fill out a short questionnaire, and if your therapist isn't the right fit, you can switch at any time. With more than 30,000 therapists and over 6 million people served, it's the world's largest online therapy platform with an average of 4.9 out of 5 session ratings. Your emotional well-being matters. Find support and feel lighter in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash DLB. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash DLB. hey it's mike ryan and i want to talk to you about the random midweek hang that you have with your friends maybe it's an nba game you get a text hey come over you want to watch the game and maybe you're like i don't know i kind of just wanted to stay home and then you think about it after your buddy hits you up and you know just the thing that'll make that regular hang that regular midweek hang around the basketball game into a special time into a miller time that's right this happened to me just last week i grabbed a six-pack of miller light said i was on my way and next thing you know we're arguing about rotations like we're on the coaching staff yelling about a missed call and the game's coming down to the final possession it was one of those nights that you look around you take a sip and you think yeah this was the right call and my friendship's stronger for it cheers to legendary moments with miller light great taste 96 calories go to miller light.com slash dan to find delivery options near you or you can pick up some miller pretty much anywhere they sell beer. 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Bet must win to receive bonus bets which expire in seven days. Minimum odds required. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see dkng.co slash audio. Limited time offer. Don Lebertard. It sounds to me like everybody could use a hug because a hug is always the right size. Stugatz. All I have put in my body today is three cups of coffee and an entire cup of honey. Go to the penalty box. Don't let him fool you. He said in the break that he's jittery. This is the Dan Levatore Show with the Stu Gats. Let me go to Jack's shit on the heat. You're going to get mad, Dan. You're going to get mad. We'll get back to Kyler Murray. Well, I want to hear. Look, Heat fans are mad. You've heard me say over the last couple of years, when it comes to fandom that if you are an Alabama fan what you're presently watching because of what you got to experience before creates a hostility in you that is a bit unreasonable because it places your expectations on where the standard is in an unreasonable place if you're Alabama football or the last five years if you've been Patriots football where you're just used to winning for 20 years and so the standard gets put in a place where the Miami Heat are not the team they're playing against. That franchise that they're playing against has been in a quagmire beneath where the Miami Heat have spent the last 30 years. There are franchises all over the league that don't have what can be said is the consistent effort of the Miami Heat, and one of them is even someplace like Minnesota, which hasn't done any meaningful winning in 30 years, and Rudy Gobert is still out here saying our effort level is unacceptable. You get a basketball team that At the effort level, whether they're playing well or not, no one disputes whether Bam cares or is trying. No one disputes whether or not Norm Powell cares or is trying, or anybody on that team cares or is trying. Maybe they do some of that with Hero because he doesn't play enough and they have expectations for Hero. So I understand why Heat fans are frustrated. it but Jeremy I don't hear a whole lot of positive Heat fans these days because what they have is so clearly not good enough and what did you say earlier that got everyone pissed off and said you don't know jack shit all I said was that the team that is two games out of climbing their way out of the play-in might climb their way out of the play-in by the end of the season because Yesterday, you saw the third straight game of Kalil Ware and Bam Adebayo having a positive impact when they're on the floor together. You saw another one of the young role players continue to play well in Kasper Siakachonas. You saw Myron Gardner start. You saw a team that was without Wiggins and Powell and Pella Larson, who are all starters on this team and play big minutes, go win a game that they've lost all year long. When they have those moments in the fourth quarter where the other team is coming back to win, they lose that game. And it was a nice way to end the first half. You saw a nice moment between Spoh and Kalil Ware after the game. He's playing a little bit better, getting his minutes. And I'm looking at a team that actually tries to win basketball games, and I enjoy that. I enjoy watching my team not try to take. I need to find somewhere on the spectrum between Mike's obnoxious sort of I've been irrevocably right for the last eight and a half decades and you're I'm bored with the sound of my own voice. Yeah, well, I got told by the guy to my right, I'm an icon to the Heat fan base. Mike said it about himself. Not you, though. I wasn't calling you an icon. Yeah. No, no, no. Quote, I'm an icon. I'm an icon in these streets. What am I supposed to do? Seriously, what am I supposed to do? Now with the results in hand, people are appreciating the truth that I speak into these microphones. Yeah, this guy. What is the ad that Serena and Djokovic are doing for Icon? There's an Icon ad that they just stand there. You know it's them. Someone better say something. You guys don't know what I'm talking about. There is an ad for Icons where they're just silently themselves draped in some sort of... I don't see Googling. No, I see Tony Googling over there. Somebody's going to find what I'm talking about. You know the Heat are 10th in the NBA in differential? They're 10th in the NBA in differential. They have a ton of single-digit losses. They've played without several players for a whole chunk of the season. I'm just trying to say that maybe they could be the sixth seed, which would be cool to not see them in the play-in. And I don't know. We spent the last several days complaining about every franchise in the league tanking. and while I can understand looking at what happened with the Dallas Mavericks and saying, oh, but the Heat could have gotten lucky with a lottery pick and maybe they'd, that's not really normally how it works. That was better. You didn't sound as broken there. I'm sorry, but, all right. It literally happened. I'm going to try my hardest here to not sound like an asshole, which is really hard for me. All right? Really hard. Yeah. But you see teams like Indiana. You see teams like San Antonio. You see teams like OKC. Like, get it out of your head that tanking doesn't work. It does. No, so that's not the point. When I make the effort to not sound like an asshole, I'd like to not be interrupted. Please. Please. All right? I'm just done hearing about a 2023. Leo Messi wasn't on Inter-Miami the last time the Miami Heat made the NBA Finals. It was a different world back then. You keep holding that up, and yet the Dallas Mavericks made it to the Finals, and six months later traded their franchise player, tanked, got the best. Well, they tanked because the trade was a disaster and got Cooper Flagg, who was Miami's pick. They got Miami's pick. It would have worked. You can turn this around so quickly in this league. I cannot use Dallas as the example that Miami should be aspiring to, given what it is that Nico Harrison did to their franchise and how the howling around the Dallas Mavericks when they traded Luka is louder than any howling that's ever been around the Heat fan base. But Dan, they got the pick, right? Two three years ago I said tank for Wimbanyama And then they went to the finals Stop saying they got lucky Everybody that wins a lottery gets lucky The team with the best odds have 23 chances I'm just asking. It's a lottery. The question that I have is like, it's really easy for the Heat fan base in particular, a franchise that has never had to go through what a tank and a rebuild is. They've gone through, basically since Pat Riley got here 30 years ago, individual, maybe two or three individual seasons where they were one of the worst teams in the league, and then immediately were back to competing. Do you want to go through watching season after season after season of being bad to collect those players? The answer is no. I'm sorry. You just said it yourself. They had two bad years and were back immediately. Do you or do you not have faith in Pat Riley? Because when he's in the lottery, generally, he gets good players and he turns things around. I'm not saying let's be bad for four years. That's how bad franchises do it. I say let's be bad the way that the Miami Heat have been bad a couple of seasons, reload, and yet get a young player that has maximum value that you can maybe even flip to get a whale. But I'm saying stop treading water. It is flatly not working. That is not a debate. That is fact. I think that another fact is that none of the last 18 champions in the sport have benefited from tanking in any meaningful way. And given that you're saying two seasons that end up in the finals, two seasons end up in the finals, that that's not good enough. If I'm telling you tanking hasn't resulted in a championship in the last 18 years, you come back with it's not good enough to be Jimmy Butler in the finals twice, then what's tanking actually getting you if it's not getting you that result? It's getting you, you're no longer a sold-out stadium. You're no longer got the longest streak in the league of the stadiums always filled with people. I fundamentally disagree. Boston won a championship. They got a bunch of young players by tanking. Oklahoma City is going to be running the sport. San Antonio is going to be in that conversation. Yeah, you have outliers like the Miami Heat and the L.A. Lakers. Even the Lakers went through a minor rebuild like that. It's how the sport is designed. That's why so many teams tank. because you get a lottery pick, it can change your franchise. Miami has benefited from this. All the people that are arguing don't tank to me are just saying, I don't have faith that Pat Riley can fix this with a lottery pick. Realistically, what Miami's been very comfortable with is shopping in the discount bin and then turning those guys into players that get big contracts somewhere else. So you have your base of Max Struces, Gabe Vincents, Tyler Johnsons, all these different guys that you make serviceable players, Duncan Robinsons. You make those guys serviceable players for a little bit, and then you ship them off somewhere else and try to redo that. But you can only go to the discount bin so many times, and it worked, Dan. Well, you say the discount bin, but I think that the way that people get forgetful about whatever it is the evolutions of Pat Riley are supposed to be, throughout the majority of my career watching this team, he hadn't trusted young players and didn't care about the draft at all. The year they got Wade, he wanted Bosh. They got Wade. They got lucky with Wade. It's the one time they've actually had a pick that can change the franchise like that. And they got lucky. Beasley didn't work out the way that was supposed to. I guess Justice Winslow didn't work out either. But that was a 9. Devin Booker was on the... That was an 8 or a 9 pick. Yeah, but when they're in that lottery, Bam Adebayo was in that range that they're never really in. But he was like 12. But this is the thing, though, about Bam Adebayo. To me, the difference between Tatum and Brown in Boston and Bam Adebayo and Hero is where they were drafted. The skill sets on Brown and Tatum are, that's what they become. And the skill sets on Hero and Adebayo is, that's where they max out. Middle of the first round is, Hero, what are you shaking your finger about? Oh no, I'm adding to what you were saying in that Jalen Brown and Jason Tatum were a result. It looked like a Matumbo. Not of tanking, by the way. Those guys were those picks because they acquired them from the Nets. Those are Nets picks. Those are not their picks. And so you have to remember that it's not as simple as, oh, be bad and go through multiple seasons of being bad. Sometimes you have to get lucky that you pull off a heist against a franchise like Brooklyn that doesn't know how to run itself. Again, though, I'm just going to say it. There's only one time that the Heat franchise has actually used the best parts of the lottery to get to the championship round. That's not where you got Adebayo. That's not where you got Tyler Hero. Don't let them forget about the Icon commercial. Dan, what I found was a GLP-1 commercial, if that's what you were thinking about with Serena. All right, you guys can keep talking. I do have a stat of the day. We're talking to Tyler Hero. I do have a stat of the day, though. start of the day start of the day start of the day start of the day In the 2025-26 season, the recently fired CP3 has played 16 games. Tyler Hero has played 11 games this season. Yeah, my father's really mad at Tyler Hero. He calls him an assortment of injured names because he never plays. And when he does play, they haven't been appreciably better when he plays. El cojo? Is it called El cojo? You need something from him. It's amazing he's still here. We were at the Clevelander saying, like, he's definitely gone, right? He survived the Harden rumors, the Lillard rumors, the Giannis rumors. That is a frustrating heat player. Can you help me with the history of where it is that he was drafted? because I'm doing it off the top of my head, and I don't think I'm doing it very well when it comes to both Bam and Hero. But they're middle-of-the-first-round guys, and I've found interesting, okay? I don't know how the rest of you look at it. Boston's still very good. Boston right now is overachieving. Boston has a model architect in Brad Stevens that's viewed as knowing exactly what to do, not just because he traded for Porzingis and for Drew Holiday in pieces that helped them win a championship, but also because he had the guts to trade Marcus Smart, who was a very popular player, and then they immediately got better. But the starting point on it is we got Jalen Brown and we got Tatum. These are picks that at any time the skill set when they're running around for scouts is, oh, that's the best guy in this draft. Clearly and obviously, they got two of those, and as they grow, what happens? Bam Adebayo meets him at the rim in the bubble, but as they keep growing, they get better and they hit their ceiling, which is higher than where Bam Adebayo's ceiling is. When you just measure these things in a camp, Bam Adebayo was viewed as not what Tatum and Brown are. So your best player, your all-star, isn't as good as their all-star. Your Tyler Hero, when we're doing the simple measurements on what are these guys going to be, Brown or Tatum are drafted where you get the immortals. Like, that's where the immortals get picked. And Adebayo and Hero are maxing out their talents. Both guys, 13th and 14th pick respectively. The Heat have picked in the top 10 twice since Dwayne Wade. Those players ended up being Michael Beasley, who was selected 7th overall, and Justice Winslow, who was selected 10th. And you have all of these examples. Their last four, I believe their last four first-round picks, five first-round picks, if you look at it here, where they were picked in like the teens or 20, You have Bam at a bio, Tyler Hero, Jaime Hock is junior picked 18th, Kalil Ware at 15th, Kasper Sakachonas, who's a good young point guard at 19. He was picked at 20th. So you have all of these guys that they're able to go find and turn into good players like in those positions. It doesn't always work out when you pick in the top five. You can look at the last several drafts. Sure, but then you turn into a team that is exactly what the Heat are. They're a team of baseline, just okay guys. Everybody's okay. There's no guy that's a superstar. There's no guy that can be that immortal top five pick where it's like, oh my God, here it is. Here's the guy that's going to run the league for the next 10 years like those other guys have. It's like you got Jaime, you got Bam, you got Hero, you got Kalil Ware, you got Yakin Chone. It's like, okay, they're fine. They're 41 and 41. That's what the Heat are. Each of the last two seasons, they've had somewhere between $50 and $60 million on the bench for the entire year. Jimmy Butler didn't play for the overwhelming majority of last season and didn't try when he did. And now this year, you got 11 games out of Tyler Hero was making 30 million and Terry Rozier suspended for the season after he missed a bunch of games last year. So while you could talk about like, oh, they can't be that good around Bam Adebayo. If 70 million dollars worth of NBA players was around him that isn't there right now and you had all of those other good young role players, this team would be better than the eight seed. Don Lebertard. Teammates can't shoot from three. Now they're gonna see a different Jimmy. Now he's just, just playing Nickelback in the locker room and Stugatz They'll play D and show threes As they chase the Nets for the sixth seed These five words in his head Scream, are we winning games yet? This is the Dan Levatore Show with the Stugatz Maybe, because when Tyler Hero was there, it was also frustrating, but he missed the first 17 of the games to offseason ankle surgery, then 13 because of a toe contusion, and now 15 straight because of a rib injury. And you're out there, and now Norm Powell is missing games. And I've got to think, even though I haven't talked to him about it, and I've read some quotes recently where Riley, not unlike Wilbon, just sort of hates today's game, like has had to adapt, but doesn't love the way that everybody is playing basketball. I have to imagine that Pat Riley is a daily kind of depressed about what it is this league has become with guys sitting and him not having the control over being able to get people out there to play 82 games given the way, the probably inhumane way that he used to practice and people would play through anything I got to imagine that wherever it is that your grandpa disconnects from today kids today 20 I got to imagine that Pat Riley watching today sport is handcuffed because of everything you're saying. They will max out all the gay Vincents of the world. They will max out every 12 and 13 pick that they have. And if they get lucky on a Dwayne Wade, they can change their entire franchise. but he can't get everybody to play. Like it's not, one of the reasons I got to think Bam's untouchable is because he just knows he's going to be out there all the time. Yeah, but look, helpful footnotes here on the Michael Beasley and Justice Winslow stuff. Good points. Devin Booker was there on the board. They went for Justice Winslow. But my point is their assets. All right. Michael Beasley essentially became Mike Miller. Justice Winslow, however big of a disaster you think that pick was, especially with Booker on the board, that turned into Jay Crowder and Andre Iguodala, guys that helped make a final for this team that were key additions. They had value. And what I'm saying is when you're floating outside the lottery, it's hard to add pieces that maintain any actual value. I have a funny story that I think of every time anybody mentions Justice Winslow. Can you guys look up for me, please, what Michael Jordan traded to get ahead of the Heat that year? Because Michael Jordan that year made a trade trying to get ahead of the Heat thinking that they wanted Frank Kaminsky. And so he drafted Frank Kaminsky when the Heat were always zoned in on Justice Winslow. And Frank Kaminsky, on top of being a funny name and a funny game, also predictably ended up being a cement-footed human being who didn't give them much. But it was something that was laughed about in Heat circles, that that franchise owned by Michael Jordan, one of the worst there's ever been, tried to trade up because they thought the Heat was trying to get Frank Kaminsky. You know who tells that story best? The Phoenix Suns. Yeah, because they got Devin Booker. For all the shit that the New York Knicks fans gave Christophs Porzingis in the Knicks for that pick at four, if you look at who was taken after that, Porzingis has actually had the better career out of a lot of those guys outside of basically only Devin Booker. So the details there are just slightly off because what that was was that Charlotte was picking nine that year. The Heat were picking 10. Charlotte was intent on taking Frank Kaminsky and were afraid to trade down because they thought he might get picked before the next pick. They were offered four first round picks by Boston in order to move up to that nine so that Boston could take Justice Winslow ahead of the Heat because they knew the Heat would take Winslow. And to think about how the fortunes of the Boston Celtics franchise would have changed because I believe some of those picks turned into Tatum and Brown. The picks that they were offering to Charlotte. So Charlotte could have had those guys. The Celtics would have invested everything in Justice Winslow. And we'd be having very different conversations about the Michael Jordan tenure in Charlotte. I don't think we would have been. I think that. OK, that's how you handle jack shit. You got him, Dano. Again, I could just stop. I could just Samson. OK, him to freelance. OK. I wasn't taking that out on you. Michael Jordan was that bad an owner that I don't think that anything that he would have done there would have gotten him out of the morass. I was not condescending your point. I was just disagreeing with the idea that any one draft pick would have undone the many years of incompetence that Michael Jordan had in Charlotte. I think we fixed it. I went back and listened to yesterday to Jeremy's question. I listened to it multiple times yesterday. It was so good. I showed my wife. She laughed. What is he talking about? I'm like, I don't know. So do you have the question there from yesterday for Pablo? Because he could have just said. Wasn't a question. Pablo, isn't it that? It was an eloquent point. He's right. He's exactly right. Yo, that's a bar. It was an eloquent point when all I wanted was an efficient question. Like, I didn't want a tapestry. Here's Jeremy's non-question eloquent point that never ended. It just sort of stopped when I ran him off the road. He fell into a ditch still talking, but he never finished neither a question nor his tapestry. Going to the journalist element of it, like it is more complicated for these local media members who cover individual teams when they go out to All-Star Game to ask these questions. Because for them, they're looking for job security, right? In a media landscape that's shifting the way that it is. Do you want to be the troublemaker? Do you want to be the person who's asking the tough questions when you're making your money off of the team that you cover, giving you information and they're your sources? And now they might be looking at you asking those questions as who knows, maybe they're trying to cover up similar types of things as we're talking about. Like all of these owners and all of these general managers are looking for potential shortcuts to win. Do you really want to be the person that now potentially loses out on sources because of that? And in this specific landscape where journalism already isn't being funded, why are you going to join the fray of the sort of outcasts of the league? Pablo, the thing, it's a full minute. The question that wasn't a question was a full minute. And it could have been, Pablo, are they scared for their jobs? Like that, it could have been that. That was an eloquent point, though. A tapestry. Brought me joy, a lot of joy yesterday. So you went back and listened. Yeah, I had to. I can almost say it word for word. Please memorize that. I don't like what we're doing. This is mean, but it's funny. The wandering past the heat game last night when they're playing the Pelicans, and you're a champion. You're a reigning general manager champion. champion. Your JLI Cyclones started their season yesterday. And I've got to admit, when I heard you say it, starts at three o'clock, Hi-Li, it brought me back to my dirtiest days of the weekday matinee at JLI. The weekday matinee at JLI is a sad experience. There are a lot of, used to be, indoors, a lot of smokers in a warehouse and just the general feeling of leprosy in the proceedings, a lot of degeneracy, just anybody who's doing the too aggressively, the weekday matinee. At the time, keep in mind, there were people, it wasn't everybody working for home or different hours. Like if you're working, if you're at the matinee during the day at Highline, the noon matinee, you're somebody who really enjoys your gambling. Shout out Morty Fleischman. uh loved uh one of my favorite people there was marty fleischman the pr director uh who ran our poker tournaments uh thank you to marty fleischman for helping us save highlight in south florida all class but the uh the man they loved his brown suits from the 1970s made of a combination of linoleum and pleather it's a tricky one yeah linoleum is tough um the High L.I. J.L.I. matinee. Have any of you been there? The noon weekday matinee. Oh, yeah, back in the day. It's good stuff right there. Yeah, absolutely. $2 beers, $1 dogs. Had good wings there, man. Dude, you would inhale them. I've never seen someone eat a bone before. Roy, I thought of you while reading, this is an odd thing to say, I thought of you while reading a way-too-long Jonathan Kaminga story about how it is that everything fell apart with him and Golden State. I don't know if you guys saw some of the details, but the Warriors reprimanded him because one of the people around him was taking too much food from the family area. And so I thought of Roy and the idea that occasionally he'll leave here with a barbecue rib in his shirt pocket. I thought of you, Roy, because of how much you enjoy the food in the eating area. It is delicious, man. And it's the right price, right? I hear a number of people complaining about the food out there, but I'm like, it's free. Mediterranean again. I thought free. You promise? No, we don't have Mediterranean again. I've never heard people complain about free food before. To that point, the Kaminga story and the Kaminga saga has been weird with the Warriors. You just feel like anything like, yes, his boy's taking too many ham sandwiches. I mean, that is an uncommon kind of petty. this story to me was way too many words for the player we're talking about. Jeremy, write it. Yeah, I'm making the decision. I'm done with Kaminga talk. He's got to do something now. I just always wonder, using him as an avatar, right? I always wonder, when is a guy right? When is a guy like Jalen Brunson right if he's complaining as the second man? I should be touching the ball more. I shouldn't be behind Luka. Like, I never – now, obviously, he should be behind Steph, but once Steph is the star of your team, will you ever be? Like, I'm assuming that when Jordan Poole goes to Washington, he thinks, now watch what I'm going to do. Now that I don't have to share a ball with somebody who's better than me, watch what it is that I can do. I have no idea how good Kaminga is. I do have an idea that he's a good deal better than Steve Kerr thinks he is. Like, I think that it's not about the food and the eating area. It's about Steve Kerr doesn't think Kaminga's as good as Kaminga thinks Kaminga is. Now we're going to find out right now, right? He's traded. He's got his new team. He's going to be able to play the way that he wants to play. And we'll see if he's the Jalen Brunson type where we look back in a couple years and be like, damn, Kamingo is really being held back by the Warriors. It's just a hard one to do with Steve Kerr because he rules the sport, right? It's clear in that story that how personal everything had become there with him, that he was really pissed that somebody was just an anchor on his career. He's looking at the guy who's supposed to be the ally in Steve Kerr, and he's like, you are an anchor on my career. You're not making me better. You're the one holding me back. What a daily miserable experience that must be to think you're like Mike Ryan. I'm always right and I can't get off the bench. I'm the best who's always right here. And look at who they subbed me for. Old Jack shit is getting in the game bored with his own voice.