NFL Schedule Release + Top 5 Games To Look Forward To | Local Hour

This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugatz podcast. Five months. In five months, that's when football starts, but it's back. It's back now. Football. That's right. Schedule a lease yesterday. Everybody, we did it! We made it to Friday. Let's give it up for Friday. Give it up for Friday. Football missed you. There you go. Dave Damichek, of course, joining us from out on the West Coast. Hello, Dave. How are you today? Zaslow, first of all, congratulations. A nice little write up on you in awful announcing. Good to see you get some flowers there. And yes, like the football season 2026, I'm born anew. I gave myself a new haircut for this occasion, and now I'm ready to launch into 2026 football in five months. And in between. I hate to start off on a sour note, everybody, but I looked up this morning and realized it's just about all over. Yes, we can make snarky remarks about the schedule release of the NFL, but after a few more NHL and NBA games, we got nothing but baseball. Okay. Hold that thought for a second. I know Mike Ryan's going to jump in. Hold that thought for a second, Dave. You gave yourself a haircut? I did. Yeah, I since COVID, two major events. I haven't worn denim jeans since COVID, and I've been cutting my own hair since that event. All right. Now I want to ask about that. Why have you not worn denim jeans since COVID? What is the correlation there? It wasn't really an act of choice. It just is something that happened. And I looked up a couple of years after the fact and realized, you know what, then denim jeans have been sitting on the shelf for quite some time. And I went back in my brain and realized it was during COVID. You know, remember all rules were off. You know, as we get a half decade away from COVID, Zazzlow, can you look the man in the mirror and say that there weren't some benefits to it? I'm not trying to diminish the real life consequences, the heavy consequences, but for your life, did you gain something from the experience? I kind of did. I didn't mind sitting around a lot in the house. People lamented like, I can't go out. I was like, I can't go out. Terrific. I gained weight. That's it. That's the only thing I gained. How much? I don't know. I'm not one that steps on the scale on a daily basis, but I know that that is certainly what I gained during COVID. Now let's start hitting the bottle. Oh, of course we did so much drinking. Are you kidding me? Yeah. So much alcohol. Did you have a rule? Did you have a rule? I don't start until five or anything like that. Oh, you know what? See, that's an interesting question, actually. Okay, because there have certainly been times from, okay, I'm only going to drink on the weekends. All right. And then the weekend quickly turned into, okay, well, the weekend's obviously also Friday. So now we're doing Friday, Saturday, Sunday, but then it's like, hey, you know, when I was in college, Thursday night was a big drinking night. All right. You go out on Thursday. So now we're doing most of the week we're drinking and then it just turned into, you know, what if I feel like drinking a drink? Well, it's funny because I've been saying for about 20 years now that I have future Dave isn't going to be living for much. I'll live vicariously through my kids. That's why I had them because I'm vain. I want to get something from it. And I suspect that when I'm old, I'll just live through them financially and otherwise. But also I used to say when I turn 80, all bets are off. That's when the heroin starts. But then I moved it up to 75 a few years ago. I'm thinking now 65 years of age, 65, 65 years of age, I start taking the spike. I'll say you. Okay. I thought I was the only one. Well, me and my friend. And now Dave is doing the same thing. I have a pact with a friend that if we both live until 90, we're going to do heroin. I like I didn't know that that's something that other people have. Did you make that pact with Dan because he has this take to know? Yeah, really? He wants to become a huge heroin guy. Dave has to take also. I did not know this. William S. Burroughs, Zaslo and Damashek and Levitage. Welcome to the party to our heroin. Me and my buddy have a plan that when we get in our 70s, we're going to go to the horse track every day. So you're just going to be normal. So you're just going to become your dad. Okay. Now, now Dave, back to the hair. How are you cutting your own? Like you got scissors in the back of your head. Well, that's how I'm doing it. Well is the answer as you can plainly say, OK, the wife gets very upset. She's always got a list. I don't know who she thinks appointed her to be the negative Nancy about everything, but she's always like the she's like, oh, you got you're going to Miami. Oh, no, you have to go to a professional barber and get that fixed. Look at what you did to your hair. And I said, I can't see what I did. I can only see the front and that's all anybody sees anyway. Who cares? I'm not a three dimensional person anymore. All you're seeing is this punam staring at you. Who cares what's in the back there? It's an afterthought to me, literally and figuratively. Apparently I don't do a great job on the back. It's hard. I think the results are in. This looks pretty good. It looks like shit. I do my own hair. Please. I do my own. I do it myself. Is that surprising? That I believe. Yeah, I do it myself. How would we know with that hat? Well, you could just imagine. All right. So yesterday, the Dolphins schedule came out. That's right. A very big to do at eight o'clock last night, the Miami Dolphins and the rest of the NFL. They released their schedule. And I mean, I look at this and I'm, you know what? I got three wins here. Oh man, it's brutal. I got three. I'm looking at three. Dave, you should have heard Chris Cody's rationale as we're looking at the Dolphins schedule before the show starts. He thinks that week one game at Vegas. It's big. Huge tone center because if the Dolphins lose that game, that one, if they lose that game at Vegas, you're staring at a two-win season. And I piped up. I said, if they win that game, then you're staring at a three-win season. What's the difference here? If they win that game, they're looking at a standard bad four or five-win season. If you come out of the gates one and O against Las Vegas, even though Las Vegas is not good, you lose that game against a bad Las Vegas team. It's just like, this is going to be awful. They're not going to win a single game against anyone that's decent. They have two games against the Jets. They're like, all right, they got to win those. You know they're just going to split those. This is a two-win team. Big game week one, Dave. I mean, in the Copycat League, and what have you most recently seen? You know that the team that represented the AFC in the most recent Super Bowl in week one lost to the Raiders. And I don't know. I'm trying to think what happened with the Raiders the rest of the way. I don't think it went real well, except that it yielded them Fernando Mendoza, who the last time we saw him was beating Miami in a big game. And now in week one, who is Fernando playing? Chris, can you say that the Raiders are bad when the Dolphins are worse? Can you look at a team that the team is better than the team that you root for and be like, they're bad? If you're the Dolphins, you look at that Raiders game. I get it. The Raiders are looking at it like, this is a great week one game. I'm not saying, you know, both teams think this is a winnable game. And I'm just saying, you got to, this is just a tone setter for the season. The Raiders and Dolphins are two of five teams in the entire NFL. I think the other ones are Arizona, Tennessee and the Jets. Those five teams right there, no national TV games. Good. None. No national TV. And see, the schedule at least is stupid to me. We've known all the teams they're going to play. We know if they're home or away. We just haven't known exactly what week they're playing. Okay. Fine. Whatever. I don't care. What I feel like when I was a kid that I liked about the schedule coming out was, okay, how many games are the dolphins playing on Monday night football? Like that was such a big deal to me because that meant the rest of the country is going to get to see how good my team is, you know, and, you know, my father will be able to buy us maybe one tickets for one game a season. I want to go to Monday night football. That's the game I want to go to. Who cares about this schedule or at least I can't remember zero. Like even the dolphins who have been bad forever, they have one Sunday night game. And then even now they don't have 30, you know, they've gone away from every team gets Thursday. Dolphins don't even have a Thursday night game, which is kind of good, I guess. Good. Good. You know, I didn't remember until moments before I was on ESPN last night. So I happened to be thinking about this and I didn't remember until moments before the schedule came out. Oh yeah. This is when all the teams, their social media departments, they make the videos and they put the videos out on Twitter and it's like, all right, somebody's going to have to do an apology because they're going to be the ones that had Tyree kill and handcuffs, you know, and all right, then there's going to be another team. It's like the big winner. Oh my God, you were so funny and so creative. So that I do like a little bit, but I didn't see the dolphins like what are the, Chris, you know what the dolphins did? I did not see that. So dolphins did a thing where the players were pulling up to the facility and it was just like, oh no, this is intense. And the front desk person's like, Mr. Ross is expecting you. So players were like, oh, I need to see the owner. Mr. Ross. Oh no, this is scary. What players did they, like, it was just they should, I mean, Dan told us yesterday, as much as no names on this team. To that point, there weren't a lot of recognizable players, but just random players. Mr. Ross wants to see you. Mr. Ross wants to see you. Oh, I'm so nervous. They walk into the big reveal chair spins around and it's Rick Ross. And you know, I don't want to be the guy that I saw it coming, but I get soon as the first joke of Mr. Ross wants to see you. I was like, okay, clearly Rick Ross is going to appear. Like I saw it from a mile away, so it didn't do much for me, but it was trending. It was one of the more popular ones views wise. So what was there? Anyone that came out as like the clear winner, the most viral social media team? Detroit. What did they do? All business as it was Dan Campbell at a computer. He printed out a sheet of paper. He put a thumbtack to it on a board and it was a static image of a schedule. And I'm sure Dave Damichek loved that. Listen, I'm not such a cynic that I get down on this. It does have to Zaslo's point, a little bit of sort of a school project kind of effect that all the students go off into the 32 different directions and they come back to present to the class their cute little project for the year. Look at what Timmy did. Look at what he came up with this year. And then we all have to gather around and applaud and tell them how cute it was. It was fun. Listen, those videos are cute. They now pay top dollar. They pay, they go out and hire comedy writers and obviously big time celebrities. Well, the Colts use the Simpsons. They must have to spend a lot of money to do that, right? I was wondering about that partnership because clearly they had to flash the, what was it, Disney plus at the back end of it and hold on that at the end of the video. So that must have been a big part of the deal, but they still had to pay out, right? For the Simpsons. I would think so. Yeah. Chris, can we play a fun one that maybe we could play? One of my favorite ones was the Raiders one. It was, you know, they have the two quarterbacks that you would call maybe nerdy with Kirk Cousins and Mendoza. So they recreated the Step Brothers. Hey. Hey. Hey. I'm Kirk. I'm Fernando. You're going to have to call me Kirk Cousins. Cool. You're going to have to call me the Nandalorian. So this is the locker room and rule number one is do not step on the shield. Wow. There's nice things around it. Don't do it. What if I don't do it? So what's the best Star Wars movie Empire Strikes Back or Rogue One? Ha trick question Star Wars New Hope, which was originally titled just Star Wars in 1977, but then they've changed it to Star Wars New Hope in 1981. Say your favorite football play on three. One, two, three. Turbo ride 63 wide shallow. Jinx. Did we just become best friends? Yup. Number one, Fernando Mendoza, a little bit stiff. Number two, that's really funny. That's a great video. Dave, that's really good. I like that one a lot. That's very strong. I think that is your winner. I thought the Titans was good. That's good. I thought the Colts was fun in parts. I think that would be my winner stand there. One, two, three. Chime is changing the way people bank. And it matters because a lot of people are still doing the fees that do not need to be there. You know, overdraft fees, monthly fees. Chime is fee free banking built for everyday people, not the old system. But Chime, you're upgrading to a smarter way to manage your money. With direct deposit, you unlock access to up to 1150 and annual awards. And they are rated five stars by USA Today for customer service with real people available 24 seven. The benefits stack up. You can get up to $500 of your paycheck when you need it with my pay. SpotMe lets you overdraft up to $200 fee free. You can earn 5% cash back on your Chime card and save and scroll with 3.75% APY. So an I know could benefit from this. 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We take that first sip. We take that first sip. We take that first sip. We take that first sip. We take that first sip. We take that first sip. We take that first sip. We open it up and we're looking around. There's just that five seconds of almost eerie silence where you're just soaking it all in. And you're like, man, did we make the right color? What? That's why we reach for Miller light. It's clean, refreshing, easy to drink, brute for taste with simple ingredients. That golden color. Just 96 calories and 3.2 carbs. The original light beer since 1975 and it still hits different. I love the Miller light. Cheers to legendary moments with Miller light. Great taste. 96 calories. Go to Millerlight.com slash and find delivery options near you or you can pick up some Miller light pretty much anywhere they sell beer. It's Miller time. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. Tony, you know that moment at a party or a tailgate where everything just sort of clicks. I know it well. It's usually when I show up. Everybody goes crazy. Yeah, you usually take all the credit for it, but it's because Tony usually walks in with Quervo. Walking like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quervo is a thing that turns hanging out into this is the night. It has that effect on people. It does. You usually take the credit for it. But again, it's the Quervo effect. It's like that moment in a big game where everyone in the crowd just starts standing up, hooting and hollering. Keep it Quervo. Keep it Quervo, baby. This is the Unlebatard. My algorithm on Instagram is dance all boobs. Stugats. It's a good algorithm. This is the Unlebatard show with the Stugats. Dave, let's throw it over here to Tony, who was all over. Let's not acknowledge what just happened. Okay. Okay. I meant to say... Please acknowledge it. I meant to say Tony. I accidentally said Dave, so I tried to do a quick cover there. Quick. As if I was telling Dave what I was going to do. But there's no reason for me to tell Dave what I'm going to do next. I can just do it. Yeah. It's like a waste of time. But you're okay. Yeah, I'm all right. Everybody calm down. Tony. Dave. NFL schedule was released last night. You got a top five for us? I've got a top five NFL games I'm looking forward to now with all the schedules set in stone. Top five NFL games of 2026. To get music? Give him some music. Come on. Music means we're serious. First day of NFL season. Thank you. Okay. All right. Pick and choose when you're looking for a game. Pick and choose. It's the NFL. You know about music hits in the NFL season. How do you guys get that? Tony, you pick and choose when he has some music. All right. Number five, the first game of the 2026 season Super Bowl rematch, game one, Seattle Seahawks, New England Patriots big game. Hey, huge game. Not for on the field, but for things off the field. I want to see how my great will comes out to that one. I mean, everybody's like, oh my God, amazing Patriots, Seahawks opening like whatever. I'm a watch it. Like it does whoever's playing. I'm a watch it. Number two, all Thanksgiving games. Have you seen the slate for Thanksgiving? Wouldn't it be number four? I think there's like five Thanksgiving games. There is. So they have a Thanksgiving Eve, which I don't remember Thanksgiving Eve being a thing. It's like the day you go to boogies and hang out with all your friends. Correct? That's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Oh my God. You go to boogies. Zazz, you know boogies? No, too far south for him. Okay. Me and you, we'll see, we'll see each other boogies, but we'll also see Packers Rams on Thanksgiving Eve. So I'm going to read you the slate Packers Rams on Thanksgiving Eve. Then Thanksgiving. We got of course the Bears and Lions. We've got the Cowboys versus the Eagles. And then the nightcap. We've got chiefs and bills in a massive game plus black Friday. Oh, we got Davey Steelers against the Broncos. So I loaded slate for Thanksgiving Eve. Thanksgiving and black. Dave, you know about that black Friday? I know about black and gold Friday friend. Come on Broncos. We'll see you on the banks of the three rivers, Bo. Maybe Druella be starting by the number three. All Christmas games. Another just absolutely crazy slate for a Christmas day. What day of the week is Christmas? Christmas is always number two on these lists. You miss a golden opportunity. So Christmas is a Friday. So you tell me it's like a full slate of games on Friday. We've got Thursday night Christmas Eve. We've got Texans and Eagles Christmas day. We got a triple header Packers, Bears, bills Broncos Rams and Seahawks. The NBA must be so mad. More on that in a little bit. The Grinch stole Christmas. Number two, the entire bills schedule. Well, why? Have you seen it? Have you seen who the bills play? No, why would I be? Why would there be a point where I say you know what? Let me go see the bills schedule. Okay. Well, I want to read you some of the bills schedule outside of their divisional. It's almost unavoidable. They have so many prime time games. Dude, they are the schedules insane. All right. They start the season at Houston. They played Detroit. They play the Chargers, the Patriots, the Rams. Then they play Baltimore, Minnesota. Then they play Kansas City, New England again, Green Bay, Chicago, Denver. They play 19 games of straight bangers. The entire bill schedule is on my list of match watch, watch games. Like other than you just read every game except dolphins jets. Like do they have an easy game outside of dolphins and jets? Is there like a game that's like that could be considered Vegas? I just think it's interesting that Tony has been playing 19 games when the rest of the league is playing 17. That kind of thing. Number one week 18 Seattle versus LA in the battle for everything. I love how the NFL pits their two best teams against each other in the division late in the season. You could have had one game early, one game late. You could have had one game in the middle, one game late. No, let's go week 16, week 18 for all the Marbles, Rams, Seahawks, week 18, the most must watch game of the 2020, 60. All right. There you go. Excellent job, Tony. Top five from last night's schedule release. So that's breaking news. Tony just laid it out for us there. I don't know if everybody heard, but the bills have a tough schedule this year. Also we knew that five months ago. This thing about reacting to the schedule, even though everybody already had this information is so wild to me. I do think though, to Tony's point and because I'm a dip and didn't put two and two together did the NFL schedule makers really cynically choose the Patriots because of Mike Rabel? Is that why they're in the debut game of the whole season? I mean, they're going to get a lot of attention. You don't usually get the Super Bowl rematch as the first game. I know. It's lame. It's a paper that you're running. I mean, by the way, as a reminder for everybody who's like, oh, it's the Super Bowl. Why would you? It's the most lamest idea creatively. Like yeah, just what we just saw. Just do that again. Everybody will take that. But also does everybody remember that that game sucked? That's the start to this season? Weird. So I want to show you a podcast that I discovered yesterday. I want to show you a clip from it. If I were to tell you, if we were doing real or fake podcasts and I told you there's a podcast that is featuring Breonna Stewart and Miles Turner, they're the co-host of the co-hosts. Would that be real or fake podcast? What's it called? I don't remember, actually. That'd be a big thing because the whole thing is Mike really gives like witty names for the ones that are fake. So it could draw you. This one's ringing a bell. I think it was actually featured. So it's real. Breonna Stewart, Miles Turner. And yesterday on this podcast, they got into a conversation about, so I guess WNBA just started last weekend. And WNBA teams, coaches are starting to find players for more and more things, which I guess makes sense because now they actually make good salaries. So in order to keep everybody in line, coaches find you for whatever, any number of reasons. So listen here to Breonna Stewart as she then asks Miles Turner what it was like as far as the find system in Milwaukee and what the conversation then evolves into. We get fined for all types of stuff now. You guys get fined a lot? It depends on the coach. So Doc Rivers, he didn't find anybody. Guys were late all the time. Guys were showing up to film whenever they wanted to show up. Guys were missing meetings. Like, that was one of the craziest things I personally experienced. We literally, if the plane took off at two o'clock, we were leaving till 4.30. I'm being so serious, bro. It was crazy. What the hell? Guys were an hour late to the plane. That's the point where I just knew not to show up until like an hour after they said the plane was taken off. It was crazy. So who's the teammate that's most likely to be late? Well, all of yours, obviously, because nobody gets fined. Yeah, honestly, I'm just going to show up whenever he wants. Okay. So let's start with the first part. And that's Doc Rivers, who apparently is letting the team run wild. All right. He's being asked this stuff because it was his first year in Milwaukee, played the rest of his career in Indiana. Doc Rivers is now fired. And surprised, I guess, that Doc Rivers allowed the inmates to run the asylum. Like I don't think anyone finds that to be any kind of revelation. But the second part, which is certainly what is garnering attention, is that Yannis would show up hours late, several hours late. Now this is the kind of stuff that we heard about Jimmy Butler in his last year with the heat when he was clearly very unhappy. That Jimmy Butler was routinely hours late for the plane. But Miles Turner straight up offering up the information that Yannis behaves that way. The first thing I want to ask you, Dave, what is Miles Turner thinking in offering up that information? Like, why would Miles Turner offer that up unless he believes there's no way Yannis is on Milwaukee next year? Or there's no way that he is going to be on Milwaukee next year? Because that's a weird thing to offer up for the franchise's greatest player. I agree with you, but is it calculated to the extent that he is trying to call out Yannis to send a message or to your point that it is understood that Yannis is out of there, despite the fact, that's the element. And we kind of have talked about this over the preceding few weeks here where Yannis is concerned is that it's a troubling trend that he's a pain in the ass. He requires LeBron Ketch as a lot of crap in Los Angeles for more or less insisting that his son get drafted in the second round. This doesn't get, it seems to me from a distance, anywhere close to the heat that LeBron catches for requiring not one but two siblings be on the board. Oh, you're totally right. You know, I sit here and tell you LeBron's son is on the team and he does not belong in the NBA. Yannis is not brother, brother's plural. Don't belong in the NBA. And you know, part of the schism between Yannis and the team late in the season, he wanted to play, he wanted to get back out on the court at the end of the season where he ended up finding a grievance against the Buccaneer, the Bucs, was because he wanted to play, he wanted to play with his brothers. All right, that was part of what was going on there. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. May is Mental Health Awareness Month and it's a reminder that whatever you've got going on, you don't have to carry it alone because life doesn't slow down. Some days feels manageable, while other days it's everything at once. Work, expectations, things you're trying to figure out behind the scenes. And a lot of us assume we're supposed to handle it all on our own, but we're not. Like we'll figure it out eventually, but nobody has all the answers. Therapy can be a place where you don't have to. It's having someone there to listen and help you sort through what's going on. BetterHelp works with fully licensed therapists in the US and they handle the matching for you. You fill out a short questionnaire and if it's not the right fit, you can switch at any time. With over 30,000 therapists and more than 6 million people served, it's the world's largest online therapy platform. You don't have to be on this journey alone. Find support and have someone with you in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash DLB. That's better H-E-L-P.com slash D-L-B. Don Lebatard. John, can you rate my al Pacino from that billiard scene in Carlito's way if I do it for you? I think it's pretty good. Yeah. Okay. Stugats. You think you're big time? Or you're gonna die? Big time. That is on my infamous scale of one to ten. That's a 7.6. Solid. Good job, dad. Good job, dad. Good job. Good job. That's a suey nominee right there. Good. This is the Don Lebatard show with Stugats. Again, you know, I broke a record from a week ago or two weeks ago, Dave, but are you guys sure you really meditate on this? By the way, I saw a list of the three preferred destinations of Giannis and the Miami Heat. We're not one of them. And it makes me think because it always hurts. Well, when there's a big time recruit in the region of football America that I come from, and I see that one of the three final schools for a blue chip prospect is not pit. I get it hurts my feelings. Does it hurt your feelings that Giannis has not circled Miami as one of his preferred destinations? Or I'm not sure if it's even Giannis putting this list out, but they're floating all these names of appealing destinations for him. Miami isn't one of them. It does make sense to me, except that I don't think if you're the team receiving Giannis, I feel like you get about a year, a year for a magic season with Giannis, not an Orlando magic one, but a magic run to a title. And then that's going to be about the extent of what you get out of Giannis because he's old now. He's not going to be dynamic for much longer. Okay, so. It even still counts as consistently dynamic. Okay, so the first part, you know, does it upset me that the Heat's name was apparently not on the list? No, because while I don't expect you to remember, at the start of this past season, sitting in that chair right over there, okay, Dan was here that day. So Dan was in this chair and I was sitting in that chair and I specifically said, Giannis's people have reached out to the Heat, that they are interested in Miami if things go awry in Milwaukee. So I know this. All right, so no, I don't care what that list says. I don't care what that report is. But I think the bigger thing here is because it doesn't even matter if Giannis is the star, if he's the best player on the team. When you're showing up hours late for the plane, I understand star players get treated differently as they should. But it doesn't mean that they should be disrespectful to the rest of the guy, to your teammates. And that kind of stuff is disrespectful. And looking at things like filing a grievance against his team, all the stuff behind the scenes, the bigger question for me is, is Giannis a pain in the ass? Because Giannis has had a great reputation for pretty much his entire career. And I'm wondering, are we learning now? Maybe Giannis is a huge pain in the ass behind the scenes. I think that he's been at the perfect organization that is so grateful to have such a transformative player. I mean, he said in interviews, he wants to be buried in Milwaukee. That is such an insular town in franchise. Not a lot of leaks. I mean, expectations aren't as high. They're not this great legacy franchise, even though they recently won an NBA title. He can do things like miss a playoffs and you don't hear like, what a failure. Really, the narrative is whatever Giannis wants it to be. He's been in control of the message. He's even had people in that franchise do his bidding to try to protect him here. I think he's got to realize very quickly, wherever he goes next, because it seems very unlikely that he's going to stay there. How good he had it. And we talk about Giannis and we look at other superstars and other just like bigger than life personalities in the NBA. And everybody kind of goes to the beat of their own drum. Like you think that Jimmy Butler, you think that other LeBron, guys are making the team bent to their will. Like, yeah, I'm going to be late an hour and a half late to the plane. Like, what's up? You going to do something about it or not? I don't think that's normal. I don't think that's a common thing. Like, yeah, stars get catered too differently, but they, it doesn't mean that they put out their teammates. It doesn't mean that they're disrespectful to their teammates time. I don't think that that's a very common thing that you have the star player behaving that way. Like that's, that's not, that's bad what we're hearing there. The same way it was bad how Jimmy Butler was being disrespectful like that in his final year. And it just like, and so Miles Turner made those comments, which I think is odd. All right. And then kind of a sub tweet here. You tell me, all right, a little bit of a sub tweet from Giannis onto to Kumpa where he put out now. It's on Instagram, it looks like, where he was playing basketball. He's in the gym with his son and the caption underneath it is he just writes, getting better every day and minding your business. And he put that out shortly after that podcast dropped with Miles Turner. Kind of feels like he might be referencing what Miles Turner said there. I think it's a little bit of a sub tweet going on there from Giannis. But this, like, I think this is a guy who might be a little bit of a pain in the ass. Yeah. Are you souring on him totally since like the whole mid season trade drama striking out? I'm of the, the, That kind of behavior doesn't work here in Miami. No, I'm, well, it has. You do make some concessions. I mean, to a degree, they both bent, right? LeBron and the Miami Heat when LeBron came here a little bit, but they were rigid at first famously with Shaq like, oh, you're going to talk to the media. But, you know, as the times have changed, players have been a little bit more empowered. I'm curious though, where are you on Giannis? So the behavior stuff doesn't bother me as much as 32 years old. He's 32 years old and he's coming off of, you know, a season that he hardly played because of injury. And I'm not 100% sure if adding Giannis forget just, you know, doesn't make them a contender. You see what Oklahoma City and San Antonio are doing. And it's almost like, all right, does adding Giannis get us close to those teams? All right, if it doesn't, do we trade everything? Do we trade all of our assets right now when it might not even matter? Like overall, I think the heat are going to be all in on Giannis. And certainly they'll be better if they acquire Giannis, but my hesitation comes from his age and his injury more so than this. I mean, you're used to this franchise acquiring players that you didn't like, right? I've had, I always hated Kyle Lowry and I didn't really keep it secret. And I just had to like roll with the punches, but I held them to a very high standard. I didn't dislike Kyle Lowry before he got here. I disliked him very much when he was here and I was also very loud about it. Never disliked a Miami Heat player more than Kyle Lowry. Even Jimmy Butler, I didn't like Jimmy Butler when he got here. No, I was fine with that. Yeah, I don't think the heat have ever actually, like the closest I was to the heat acquiring a player who I've been very openly against was Kevin Durant. Like that had been interesting, all the things that I've said about Kevin Durant. You were a Terry Rose here guy? No, I just, he wasn't really on my radar. Like what, like, I didn't actively dislike Terry Rose. She was like who cares, you know? When you talk about OKC and the Spurs on the other side of the bracket, I feel like that's aiming a little bit too high. And I don't want to say that it's like NBA championship or bus and I get that. But we've seen so many teams get injured on the way to an NBA title. Like Lucas Mavs, we're just a shell of a team that we're getting there. And then obviously Boston ran through them. So when you look at Yanis acquiring him and getting him to the east, obviously you're taking from Milwaukee and adding to your team. But you're trying to beat the likes of Detroit, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia. Like those Boston, those are the teams that you need to make sure that you're better than because you can always have the punchers chance in the finals. Wemby gets hurt. Shea gets a check. It's like something happens on that other side. A dark horse comes through like you have an opportunity to win a title. This kind of stuff doesn't bother me as far as Yanis's behavior, if he would acquire him. The part that I find interesting is like maybe is Yanis a little bit of a phony. That's the part that kind of gets me. Yeah, I didn't think that. Really? I think this season kind of he's Dwight Howard, Redux. It feels a little bit like that. The same kind of corny humor, the same kind of half measures. You might be a little phony. Everybody likes him. He gives off Dwight. Also LeBron vibes, right? It's just like I want to say the thing, whatever I think the people want to hear that will make them be into me. I don't like that. It doesn't it exact money exaggerates what you're predisposed to do. So they say they say that about Larry David specifically that money hasn't changed him. It's just as intensified. Is that is that what they say? I've heard I remember seeing Jerry Seinfeld say that before I really knew about Larry David or had experienced him on camera himself that Larry David is exactly proves that point that money doesn't change you. It just exaggerates what you are. And maybe that's what's happened with Yanis. And I am intrigued to hear your thoughts on who there in that studio with you would be most likely to spin off if you started throwing a lot of money and say, Oh like who would change the most? Who the most? Yeah, who the most? Who would get out of bounds the quickest? Probably Roy. What? Hear the keys. Hear the keys to the organization basically. That's what happened with Yanis and already got corrupted. This happens all the time to people. It shouldn't be surprising I guess, but you know, Zazz you're right too. Tony, by the way, made a good point too that I think you do have to consider if you want to contend this next season. Robbing Peter to pay yourself is the plan, right? If you take, if Yanis goes to the Knicks or Boston or Philly or whatever, that really puts you out of contention period, right? If you're the Heat, but if you get him, you can at least indulge the fantasy that maybe this will be your year. It would be a huge blow. Look, the Heat fans upset as it is. It'd be a major blow if not only do they not get Yanis, but he goes to Boston. That would be a heavy blow. But you know, we're in an interesting inflection point in spectator sports. Russell Westbrook, I flowed his name for the last five years because I remember saying five years ago, how much meat does he have left on the bone? His entire game is dependent on attacking the rims and giving his physique. He's breaking down already. He's not going to make it much longer. And here we are. He's kind of sort of still relevant. And then there's Tom Brady winning a Super Bowl in his 40s and Sidney Crosby playing well, deep into his 30s and so on and so forth. So are we optimistic that Yanis is going to remain dynamic into his mid 30s? Or is he about to go the path of most athletes that we've watched in history, which is they start to break down and slow down as they get into their 30s? I think ultimately everything we've seen over the last few months and Miles Turner's comments yesterday, there's no way Yanis is on this team past the draft. There's no way. Zero shot. There's no way. The Haslam comments were pretty damning, but to echo Dave's point a little bit. He means Jimmy Haslam, by the way, not you, Don. Yeah, not you, Dee. But I do think while I agree with you, and there are holes in his game, right? He's not a consistent shooter from mid-range or certainly outside or the free throw line. And he has this frame where you put a body to him, you're rewarded to get him to the line. I still think as he gets older, he's a Greek freak for a reason. Defensively, he's going to be a force as long as he's able to step out onto the court. He's going to be able to be dangerous around the cup. Like he is going to be a big time factor in next season, provided that he's healthy. I don't think he's going to fall all the way off, but there are questions about his game. Going for two when you're up by five, switching the zone when man isn't working. Oh, and building your new stadium in the state your team actually plays in. In sports, some things just make sense. You know what else makes sense? Drinking Jagermeister shots. Ice cold. Drinking it any other way would be like punting on first down. Or letting your worst hitter bat first. Or like going for two when you're down three with a second ago. It wouldn't make any sense. So don't let the team down when it comes to Jagermeister. Drink it cold. Oh, don't drink it at all. Jagermeister. Damn, that's cold. Freak responsibly. Jagermeister liqueur, 35% alcohol by volume imported by Master Jagermeister US White Plains, New York.