Pablo Torre Finds Out - Share & Pardon & Tell with Michael Wilbon and Dan Le Batard

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Can rockstar sportswriters be friends with superstar athletes? How do you measure a good episode of sports TV? And what's so great about being an old dad? Plus: playing the human jukebox, brokering the Jordan-Barkley peace, writing about Holyfield's ear on deadline... and the word "podcast" as a racial slur.Further content:• "Ear Today, Gone Tomorrow" (1997)https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1997/06/29/ear-today-gone-tomorrow/3f93d30d-2606-4adc-aeb4-1bf26c9b9bb9/• "Mission Impossible: African-Americans & Analytics" (2016)https://andscape.com/features/mission-impossible-african-americans-analytics/• South Beach Sessions: Michael Wilbon (2023)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdUV2FxatwQ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre finds out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738, Accord Royale. Exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities. Please drink responsibly, because today we're going to find out what this sound is. S-b-them! Right after this ad. I wanted this to be a surprise, and instead I got levitarred on one side. I got Mike Wilbon on the other, and Dan has some tiny fans in front of him,

and I don't understand what's happening. Why do you guys have headphones? I don't have headphones. I can't have better equipment than you either because you're sitting in a trillion-dollar studio because I've been to that studio. I'm sitting in my fucking house in Scotts there. In the middle of PTI negotiations

that are heating up. No. Don't be bashful, big boy. Don't be bashful. Oh, boy. There's no middle of anything that I know of. Well, you mean there's no middle of anything that you know of.

That contract expires next month, and they losing Wilbon and Coronizer, you know that. Maybe, shit, I might just go to Chicago and do something wildcard. I don't know. Well, our air conditioning was down, and you have not prepared me for this, but I am delighted to see our old friend,

Mike Wilbon, El Padino, the godfather. It is nice to see him. Oh, Pardingo. Wow, thank you, Dan. Wait a minute. I think you changed that word. Padrino is what I called you. Pagrino. I thought you said Pagringo. I was like, oh,

You came very close to saying, like, fucking Spanish. They're very dangerous. More or less racist, actually. That might have been both at the same time. Good to see you guys, both. Likewise. This is something that I am doing for a number of reasons, one of which is that as part of the PTI cinematic universe,

I saw you growing up co-hosting PTI together when Tony Kornheiser was out. And now I'm the guy who only fills in when Will Bonnie. is out. And I want to get a sense of what your actual dynamic is, because you guys, Padrino aside, it's weird. I don't quite know if Wilbon actually totally likes you, Dan, honestly. Love him. Love him. Absolutely love him. I love Dan Ledotar. Let it be on the record. Well, I wonder why it is that Pablo comes by this confusion. I think it has something to do. Eric Ride Home, the producer, pardon the interruption, has apologized. about this to me in the past.

He said he went too hard at the beginning, trying to beat the audience to the joke of nobody wants Lebitard here. They want Wilbon and Kornheiser, so I'm going to make him right off the bat, the hateable Dan Lebitard. There are enough people in Danza-Luna Needs to know who know that when I went for decades to Miami, there were brunches, dinners,

attempts to strong-armed Levitart into buying 4,000 bottles of wine. at Prime 112 for Miles. Miami Heat Games going back to Shaq and Wade. We're talking about the aughts. You know, my mom was alive at the time, and Dan and his mom were just unbelievably great to my mom, who lived in South Florida at the time in terms of all kinds of stuff,

even at Gaines helping her get to heat games. Now we're just talking 20 years of history that have nothing to do with PTI, So I think I can well chronicle my love the lebitrar. So I just need to clarify here, and I should clarify this this week, especially, I think, that while we are over here striving to create the weird new future of sports journalism, I also have a deep, deep affection for the past. And for the even weirder coaching tree from which I have sprung.

Because for the last decade now, I have been a few. fill-in co-host of Pardon the Interruption, the Daily Sports Television Show, starring Tony Cornheiser and Mike Wilbon, that airs at 5.30 p.m. Eastern on ESPN. And if you've never seen PTI before, just know that Wilbon and Cornheiser are the predominant married couple

in all sports media. They are two incredible journalists who met while working for Ben Bradley's Washington Post, and by now, PTI is so good and so influential, inspiring imitators across not just sports, but all of cable news as well, that for Tony and Mike's 20th anniversary in 2021,

I got one of the show's biggest fans to send them a special message. Tony and Mike, congratulations on 20 years of PTI. And Pablo, I hope you're proud of these guys for staying together so long. I know I am. Because 20 years is a long time. When PTI first came on the air,

I was a state senator in Illinois. and whenever I had a little extra time, I would turn on ESPN. If I was lucky, there'd be a good basketball game on. If I wasn't, it would be you guys. But as my colleague and now boss, Dan Levittard, knows better than anyone. Summertime is PTI substitute host season. And I always pair up with Kornheiser, whom I have come to regard genuinely as a mentor in this business. And I feel that way, even though the most time

he will give my podcast here is this voicemail from episode one. I was Tony Cornhurst who leaving this message. Pablo's podcast is launching today. I wanted to help because I love Pablo. I, of course, have forgotten what the title of Pablo's podcast is. I think it's Pablo Tori just found out or Pablo Tori knows this. Maybe it's Pablo Tori has gout. I'd have made it.

Pablo Tori graduated from Harvard, so eat it to kill a mockingbird, death of a salesman, the Bible, they're all taken. How about this? Squeeze this with Pablo Tori. Huh? Squeeze this. I like it.

Good luck, Pablo. But speaking of eating it, while I always co-host with Coronizer, I do remember Lebitard, before, you know, he's self-deported from ESPN, most often working with Wilbon. And Wilbon is, in some key ways, extraordinarily different from me.

He's more opinionated in general. He hates analytics as a concept. He regularly rails against terms like exit velocity and launch angle. He might also be the last man on Earth who doesn't have a podcast. But when I was growing up, watching PTI and Quetion, and Kornheiser was off traveling somewhere, I would delight in a combination that I shouldn't have loved on paper,

which was Wilbon and Lebitard, doing stuff like this. Pardon the interruption, but I'm Mike Wilbon. Tony's so tired from doing Monday night football, so please say hello to Dandy Dan. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Bam, bam. Why did we do this?

You know, I think. I think I tore this jacket. I think you tore a pictorial muscle. This ridiculous jacket is torn. And I thought to by itself, one day, I want to sit in that chair. One day I want to work for that asshole. That jacket, Mike, I think I have this right. I don't know if you guys have moved.

I was so poorly dressed at the time, did not know how to dress at the time, that I would often go down the street, because I spend like big chunks of summer getting really shi schedule when those guys would go away and make me cover like a really dry time. Yeah. And I think I still have jackets bought from Macy's in your wardrobe closet at PTI. If I had to bet, I think I could find them there.

That's the only way something would get from Macy's into my closet. He really drilled me with that wardrobe elitism. There was no idea. No smile in his voice. That would happen. He briefly wardrobe shamed me. I volunteered that I was buying

Shepin. And by the way, see, that's about Bobo. That's what Dan would do. He would offer himself up for the show for the greater good for Tony and me to do stuff like that. That's a perfect way. It's natural and

Rhino didn't even have to write it. I don't remember any of that stuff until somebody brings the clip up, and it makes me smile and it makes me genuinely happy to see it. I don't remember any of it. I don't consume anything you guys consume. I don't consume podcasts. I no longer consume sports talk radio. I just don't do it.

Well, you know, though, Pablo, that these guys are genuine heroes of mine and in one of the stranger ways you will ever arrive at your heroes, where you feel like you know them. before you've met them because you're just looking at their work. And you're a columnist, so you know what that relationship means. And they welcome me into their world, which was the very top of this world, to play with them. Two very different creatures, two persnickety creatures, one, a good deal more persnickety than the other. Wait, let's rank the persnicketyness for those who are not familiar with the family tree. Okay, but okay, which way do you want to go here? Is it that Wilbon delights in being 45 minutes late,

according to Kornheiser's schedule every day purposely for 20 years in a gangster move that Kornhizer still resents, but will never say so to his face only in private behind his back and Wilbon doesn't care and delights in that? No. Or the fact that Tony Kornhizer still writes in a yellow legal pad, the notes that he's taking before the game, as Mike Wilbon just announced to you,

I don't consume anybody because I know more than them already. I don't need sports radio. I don't need any more information. I know it all. No. No, that last part was not saying. I don't consume anything, anybody, because I don't give a shit. I don't.

But I do think I know more than most of the people doing all these podcasts and all this shit now. Because I don't believe that they've come by much of anything authentically or genuinely. So Dan is on to something there. The late part is right. I'm usually intentionally or cavalierly somewhere between 30 seconds to seven or eight minutes late. I don't give a shit about that either. I like how the podcast Mike Wilbon would host if he gave a shit about podcasts would be titled, Mike Wilbon already found out.

No, no, no. Mike Wilbon doesn't give a shit would be more accurate. I don't give a shit. Mike Wilbon doesn't give a shit about your podcast by Mike Wilbon. There we go. There we go. I do want to say, like, Cornheiser refuses to do this show

or any show that's not his own at this point. Tony's afraid. Mike, you know this. Tony doesn't want to... You will say stuff into this microphone, and Cornhizer is running as far. Not even running. He's just locked the door

and is sitting behind the locked door. And even to me, he's like, I'm not... No, I'm not doing that. I mean, that's largely who Tony was before he... decided to do daily television. Tony didn't engage with everybody. I tell the story that when I started covering Georgetown basketball, when it was far more important, groundbreaking, culturally relevant than any other story in college sports at the time, early 1980s,

John Thompson, the person, the coach I was covering for a beat, did not speak to me for a year. didn't speak to the Washington Post beatwriter for a year. Well, when I got to the post a couple of summers early than that, I don't think Tony spoke to any for a year. I say this with the most respect, and I think you guys can vouch for this. I love Tony, but he's crazy. Yeah, I can vouch. There's no one I adore more than Tony, obviously.

I'm somebody who professionally investigates things, gets people to say stuff. And yet, the guy I would consider a mentor as well, won't, won't do it. To Dan's phraseology, he is the hardest nut to crack. And it only makes me want it more. I've had him on our show once or twice in 20 years. I think him and Wilbon did me a favor when I was starting the radio show, like the first week, they did it as a favor to me. But I've asked Tony over the years and then stopped asking because he didn't want to do it. I think that we're the last of the people who did daily stuff the way we did it. And when you do daily stuff the way we do it, there's not a lot of time.

I don't examine anything. People say, how is this show today? I don't know. There's the one tomorrow. I don't know. It's like a baseball season. And so I think that Tony is, I don't think that there's as much. He just doesn't want to do it.

Wait, so Mike, so Mike, you don't, you don't get the. I imagine that you're not so hardened that you leave every show, because I leave every show and don't remember what we did. But I do have the feeling of whether or not we did well or not, whether or not it felt good. When you leave a show, you may not remember the details, but you know when it's good and when it's not, right? No, because I don't allow myself to examine it.

I don't consume it that way. I know when there's been a particularly good one. that's it how do you measure it how do you know how do you know when it's particularly good one mike it's just it's just it's just it's just my sense of what's good and what's not that's it well but but when he says that though pablo that sharpened over years of when he says my sense of what's good a columnist's gift is knowing for his audience what's good like it's it's one of the strengths that that's what these people sharpened it's why they put us on television honestly it's why ESPN decided to put newspapers on television,

going back to when Mark Shapiro was the president and the Sports Century Series was just a series, before 30 for 30, documentaries that just had sports writers talking. 1997-98-ish starting then, and that's very well said, as always by Dan. It's very well said. We have a sense of audience, which nobody has anymore. Can I talk about the competitiveness, though?

Because, again, I was already after this. When I came in through magazines, I have a totally different path. I'm trying to do like new media stuff now. The competition among columnists, right, which is really the thing, the primordial ooze that birthed all of the argument television stuff because of PTI.

With that competition, Mike, could you speak to what it was like to open the paper and figure out did I just get beaten by somebody as a columnist? What did that mean? Well, I mean, you, first of all, you started as damn minch.

You started as a beat writer. You were competing against most of these same people all the way up. So from 22 years old, when a lot of us got out of our internships in the full-time gigs in Washington, and New York, in Miami, in Chicago, and L.A., and San Francisco, and Atlanta,

and smaller places, too, Columbus, you know, or Oakland or wherever it is we were. You were covering the same things. I mean that you were all at a Sugar Ray Leonard fight if you go back when I was young, or then a Mike Tyson fight. And so you could all read the way

Wait, 26 people wrote about Mike Tyson biting off Evander Holyfield's ear and spinning it out. You could read every one of those the next day and have a sense of who did a better job. Who was more eloquent? Who was more forceful? Who was more influential? Who was more passionate? Who had details that somebody else didn't have because they waited and they talked to Mike in a parking lot in two in the morning and rewrote? You had a sense of all of that.

for decades on everything. You had it on Carl Lewis and whether he hated Ben Johnson even though he ultimately won the race. You had it on Martina Navajovo and Chris Everton, whether they really liked each other or not. You had it on everything.

You had it on Michael Jordan and the bad boy pistons and what had... You had it on everything. You covered everything. I'm sitting there with 25 other dudes writing about Holyfield's ear rolling across the mat at me. and I wanted to compare those.

And in that moment, it wasn't could you go out and get some other story. It was could you get this story? Could you do this one better? Could you tell it in a way that would keep 80-year-old men by the fireplace or in the barbershop or at the gas station? Could you do that? But at the same time, I wanted to read Levitart the next day on game one of Dallas, Miami.

and whether or not Dirk got in their ass. I wanted to read his take on that and compare what I said. And that was competitive too. And there may not even be a real answer. For me, that goes back 45 years. 45. I have later in life lost some of the value that I used to have in being competitive and however it is that competitive masked my insecurities back when I was coming up.

I was not good at news-breaking competitive. I remember sobbing in a Miami-Herald bathroom at midnight because I didn't want to be doing, I wanted to be telling stories. I didn't want to be chasing where the Marlin Spring Training complex would be. And so I didn't really like what I was doing. But later on when it became writing, writing stories, I wanted to beat Mitch Album at whatever the things were that got you awards when you were the best sports writer in America for telling the best stories. But I will tell you where and when, because I remember it, some of this got

knocked out of me because it was around a dressing room at PTI, where Skip Bayliss runs into one of your dressing rooms and hides because he doesn't want me to see what his arguments are on the show. And I'm like, okay, I don't want to, this is not, I don't want to be this kind of competitive. This is not. I don't want to play the game this way. I'd rather just put on a policeman's cap and talk to a mailbox and see if I can ruin this game

instead of winning this argument. I forgot. But only because you guys existed, but only because you guys existed, could I zig while you guys were zagging? Because you guys had to establish the bit that these arguments matter. I wasn't interested in zinging when people zacked.

I wanted to zig. I wanted to compare everybody's zig. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to sit. I wanted to sit. in the same press box on the same Sunday afternoon because I sat there with Eddie Pope. And when you replaced Eddie,

I wanted to compare the Zig. I didn't give a shit about Zagging. I wanted to read everybody. I cannot relate less to just loving Ziggs. I was like, that's just so the opposite of how I approach. No, no, no, no, wait a minute. I know what he's doing there on the Ziggs. See, this is the confidence of a man

who knew his Zieg was going to be better than most of the Zigs. So he's comparing and he's like, no, mine stacks up here. Mine stacks up against just about anybody doing the writing. Wilbon likes the fastball. That's what he's saying. He's like, you know you're getting 100 miles an hour. Can you hit it?

I love the deadline stuff and comparing. Who had balls? Whose nerves were shot? The night, I'm going to go back to the Holyfield Tyson, the ear thing because I was that's a real thing for me. When Holyfield jumped and you can see his ball. both feet in the air and Tyson did his ear, but we didn't really know if you were sitting in the arena. You didn't really know what happened instantly. You had to see a replay. I remember thinking

when I, you know, in three seconds when I figured out what happened, there was a calm that came over me and I remember looking down at David Remnick, the great David Remnick, who was at the fight. Editor of the New Yorker now, yes. And I said, I remember saying to him, mouthing to him, column. That's it. That's it. Because if you couldn't do that, I didn't respect you. If you got nervous at that, if you missed deadline, if you couldn't get it done on the East Coast in 23 minutes,

if it was 1137 and your deadline was midnight, if you couldn't get that done eloquently in 23 minutes, then fuck you. And I had you. So I ask you all these years later, Wilbon, who wrote the best story off of Holyfield Tyson? Because I think you're bringing it up because you know that you did. You know that you read 26 stories,

and on that day you kicked Remnick's ass. No, I like what I did that night, but I do go, I did respect the people, the giants who covered Ali Frazier, Ali Foreman, all of it. I mean, those guys, when I walked in a press box, Dan, I revered them. I was in awe.

I was sit around and listen to all of them. And I remember when Ed Pope called me in my dorm room when I was a senior saying, if the Washington Post doesn't hire you, I got a job for you here in Miami. There's no higher praise. That phone calls 47 years ago because he was at those things and he covered those things and those people, those things that mattered to me. David Halberstam covered those things. He covered Vietnam.

but he also covered Ali Foreman. I'm going to embarrass you right now. Pablo, I don't have this wrong right. Wilbon, you're that for me and Pablo. That's frightening. Yeah, absolutely. No, I mean, look, you are, though. Oh, this is...

You're paved the way, whatever. How you talk about Edwin Pope has to be how me and Pablo talk about you and Tony. Jesus. I don't know. What are you doing? That's the highest compliment. It's a great compliment.

It's also... it's sobering. It's why I'm sitting here recuperating from foot surgery because I'm fucking old. You showed us what the top of the mountain could look like, Mike. No, that's praise too hot. That's a bridge too far. No, it's not, Mike.

I don't know if I've told Mike this. When I was at Sports Illustrated, they would assign me to, like, you know, the regionals of the NCAA tournament and I'd show up at various sites around the country. One of the sites they assigned me to was, of course, Washington, D.C. at some point for like a sub-regional.

And it was a sort of thing where I wander through the press box. I wander through the media area where it's just like, you know, media guides and plates with gross rotting food. And there typing by himself is Mike Wilbon. And I did not go up to Mike Wilbon. I did, I was starstruck. But what I did do, what I did do was I took out my iPhone and snuck a photo of Mike Wilbon working and just sent it to my friend. And I was like, look at what I saw. I was peeping Tom, old peeping Pablo over there.

I was paparazziing Mike Wilbon when I was a reporter. Like, that's what it was like to encounter you. Are you old enough for that to have been 2006 when George Mason was making of Cinderella run? Might have been. Might have been that. You could feel, you remember the creepiness 18 years, 20 years later? He mentioned being in Washington, D.C., and that would have been like the only time I was

in D.C. because I was on the road. I went to where the stories were. I didn't wait for them to come to me. And so we didn't have very many regionals. That's a movie poster. It's a pathetic journalism movie poster, but I went to where the stories were. I didn't wait for them to come to me. Remember that, Dan?

Remember that those days? You are, can I just ask a question here at the risk of getting a little too intimate with a man who doesn't like that publicly or privately? Does Matthew, does anyone in your life who loves you say that, you don't receive affection well, that me and Pablo are here, and we are trying to honor you the correct way for someone who is a hero and an idol in our business,

gave us permission and paved the way for us, and almost any time I tell you this, you get uncomfortable and run away. Yeah, I'm not that. I'm not from that generation, and I appreciate it to a level that you two don't understand, or I'm not letting you understand. But no, no, because that's not,

You know, I tell Matthew, you know, I've hugged Matthew a million times in my life, a million. I was 27 years old when my dad died of cancer at 60. I never hugged him. Never. Let me try it again. Never. That's not what we did. That's not what that generation did.

I don't know any of my male friends or relatives hugged their fathers. Never. So, you know, the world has changed. men are allowed to express things that they didn't express. Listen to them. Lamenting. These men, they used to bottle up their feeling and push it down with all that brown liquor. But now they're out here just talking, talking about their feelings.

Yeah, yeah. That's how the world has changed. It's gone from watching the games to watching clips. We evolve from something. You have not evolved here. You have not here. Look at Mr. Beast out of your hugging his dad. You're staring into the camera.

I accepted no hugs. I gave no hugs. I'm giving you. I'm just chronicling like the journalist I used to be. I also told you I hug my son every day. Yes, you did. Well, I want to ask about that. I asked you about receiving affection, not giving it.

I don't know. I don't receive it. Not how I was, you know, that's not how I. And you know what? You know what? Dan, it's great because obviously our work comes through what we are personally, at least that used to be the case. I'm not sure it is anymore. But, yeah, I'm glad to be a product of what I'm a product of.

I wouldn't change it. I mean, maybe, a little. But overwhelmingly, I wouldn't change the way I was brought up. And there are certain touches of that that I still include in the rearing of my 17-year-old. who just has to shake his head and go, Jesus Christ, how did I get stuck with the old dad? You got stuck. What has old dad life been like for you? Great.

It's the greatest thing ever for me. It's the greatest thing of my life. It is the greatest thing of my life. And I tell my son, and there's no reaction from him because at 17, 17-year-old boys are the same as 17-year-old boys were when we were 17. They don't give you anything. But I tell Matthew, the greatest thing. thing I've ever done in my life is be your dad. That's it. Pablo, I will tell you, having seen Wilbon make a decision late in life to be a dad and at the time, when he's talking about the

story, I went to it, it doesn't come to me. He was busting his ass, and he loved that life, traveling, living a big life. It was an unselfish act of clarity and maturity for Wilbon to decide to become a father at the age he decided to become a father. because he was plenty happy with what his life was at the time. He'd arrived at his dreams. That's true. Dan knows how often we talked about it. We did.

We talked about it in person. And I tried to convince him of the same thing, especially when he got to the exact age that I got to when Matthew was born. And so, yes, I had, yeah, I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. Daddy, the only thing, I won't call it completely unselfish, I always wanted to be a dad. I didn't know what that meant necessarily, but, you know, but yeah, it's the greatest thing I would trade all of it in for that.

And it's the only thing I would trade. The only thing. What's better about being an old dad, Mike, now that you clearly love being the old dad? You know all the shit that you didn't know it. I didn't know anything at 32. Nothing. I knew how to get on a plane and go find a call.

I didn't know anything. That's so funny. That's all we knew. Mike, that's all we knew. I'd say that's all the three of us knew at 32. I'd say that the three of us were toddlers who had done and gotten good at a specific thing and probably weren't very mature in other places. But that one thing we were pretty good at. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I think we were. And so then to depart from that took, I won't say in selfishness, it took a certain. determination, and that could be selfish to prove you could be good at something. Pablo, I don't think he's remembering because he's been a dad now for so long.

I don't think Mike Wilbon is doing an accurate appraisal of the dusty cobwebs around exactly what he was 18 years ago, watching games at midnight and 1 o'clock in the morning, really liking being on the road, liking the travel, liking, really enjoying NBA cities. Mike, Mike, it's talking to Kornheiser, because look, I have the weird position of like, I'm the other woman sometimes where I'm like, you know, filling in for you and I get to hear about you from your spouse, Tony. And he still is saying Mike loves to go out, loves to travel, loves to be out in the world. So I can only imagine what you were like before, before you quote unquote settled down. It's interesting, Pablo, that you hear that from Tony. Dan moved on. from that, and I didn't. Dan moved on to a life that had other meaningful touchstones, and so we weren't necessarily at an arena at Prime 112 at 3.30 in the morning after a game or after a ballgame. I did not move on from that willingly. I loved it. By the way,

by the way, I still love it to some degree. And I take Matthew with me. Dan, I'm I don't know if you know this, if Miles told you this, Boston, Miami, conference finals, I took Matthew. I said, you want to see what it's like. We get on planes, we go to stadiums, we go to dinner at two in the morning. He's sitting at Prime 112 at 15 years old at two in the morning, you know, with whatever players from other sports are around. And that's what I wanted to introduce him to so he could at least feel it. Both of you guys have had the distinct experience of, of becoming so good and famous at what you did that you began to know someone you covered

a true celebrity athlete in a way that became personal. And if you're going to talk about navigating fame, I'd love to know what it's like for you guys, journalist, columnist guys, to figure out, okay, wait a minute, now this relationship with a very famous athlete or coach or whomever comes to mind here, that is something that you're navigating suddenly.

Will Bond's list here is going to be so much better than mine, and he is so much better at this than I've ever been because he almost traffics in the relationship business. The columns would have a richness because he was in the relationship business. So he's got, I mean, how many friends you got? Michael, I got to think that most of your friends are either in writing or in basketball. Look, I mean, I guess it's, It's no secret and I'm not going to be disingenuous.

I covered people who I covered as a newspaper person and they knew me that way first. And then the television happened and it segwayed and they got a kick out of it too. I don't know that there's any PTI and Tony can substantiate this if not for Charles Barkley sitting us both down saying, you're not going to do what? You told Mark Shapiro maybe. Charles Barkley. I'm being real now. But there were people, obviously the guys in that generation, the guys on that team.

I covered David Robinson in high school. So these guys got a kick out of seeing what happened to us, both of us, in the case of people in and around Washington, D.C. You see a signed jersey from Charles Barkley in that corner of my me room in Arizona. If I do it this way, you'll see one of Magic Johnson that's game-worn. Game worn of Magic Johnson as a Laker in a championship series. I look at this stuff and freak out too. I go, this is insane. These were people I had good relationships with and then it crossed over.

And there's one, if there's a 23 jersey in here and there isn't, there's one that, you know, people would say if there's fame, it trumps all of that. one night I'm sitting in Madison Square Guard and a guy comes up to me a guy in a trench coat and says Mike I just want to introduce myself I love your work shook hands and he said David Halberstam nice to meet you and that's as close as I'm going to come to peeing on myself okay but the others are more famous for most people and Dan has these don't let him I know I have a few but no I have a few but might know but see my

minor different, right? I have a few minor different, though. A, I gravitate toward the weirdos, the people who others might see as weird, so the John Amici's, the Ricky Williams, but also, and I think you can both speak to this as writers, as storytellers, in some ways we sometimes have to fall in love with our subjects, and when we write about them, they're giving us a great vulnerability, the care of their story to tell it well, and a real intimate trust can be built by about somebody with great care. So I don't know how many of your two relationships can be there, but when you've told somebody's story

with a care that they appreciate, relationships can blossom from there because these things can be painstaking, feature articles, and you really immerse yourself in someone's life, talk to the people who love them, get to know them, are curious about them, and look, that's a fast-forward to a friendship. What Dan's describing is very organic, and it happened before we became famous,

happened before television or podcasts were in our lives. I know I went to Philadelphia in the early 1980s. And when I said to Julius Irving, when he was the doctor winning a championship, I'm Mike Wilburne of the Washington Post.

He said, sit down here. How's my friend Anthony is in Kornheiser? And it's like, that was intoxicating. Another fake doctor. Yeah. It was, yeah. Yeah. Didn't need a coat, though. That, you know, that was intoxicated.

to have Reggie Jackson and Julius Irving, like, connect because of Tony, who I inherited full-blown relationships from because of that before television. Because of how he wrote about those people. Because how he wrote about those people. And Dan and Tony did much more of that than I did. What I wanted to know about, really, was what is the most dislike you engendered from someone you had a relationship? with because of something that you wrote. So you become closer than a standard journalist subject,

but now you do something and they let you know about it. Do you remember something? I've, the funny thing about what you're saying is that I can now look at relationships, and this will not surprise Michael at all. I'm sure he's got similar stories like this, but these people tend to be tougher than us in general about criticism. So whatever friendships I have with Pat Riley and Jimmy Johnson and Stan Van Gundy begins with me criticizing them, them being really mad

at me, letting me have it and me taking the letting me have it and over time repairing whatever needs to be repaired because I'm either fairer or more human or receptive and so I'm not a caricature media monster.

Those three relationships I'm thinking of, all three of them started with withering criticism. None of those people liked. Yeah, amen to that. And luckily for people having thick skin in public life, and we had to develop it because we came to public life after the people, Pablo, that you're asking us about criticizing. Mine was probably one of, my most notable one, was probably more difficult because it goes back to childhood. I grew up watching and being on a playground and then watching my brother play against Isaiah Thomas at 13 and 14 and 15 years old

and then writing about the bad boy pistons against the Chicago Bulls and criticism that then fractured and then changed and then you know reorganized reworked a relationship into being grown men that probably resented certain things that were said and happened in the 1980s, look, but I tell you what, you can look at sometimes how these things fester and don't necessarily evolve as much as you want them to. But I look at that one because it was complicated. And Isaiah Thomas is somebody I talked to all the time now, all the time. But there were times, I'm sure, and it was like, wait a minute, I knew this guy growing up. He went to rival Catholic school, high school. No, but Isaiah's complicated. You're going through. Wait a minute. Criticizing him when you're

the black guy criticizing the black guy. Criticizing the black guy. black guy and he's in the middle of all the Chicago things that you're in the middle of. His hometown, my hometown, you know, rival schools, Catholic high schools, when Isaiah's school went away, sadly, a couple of years ago, I knew a lot of people who went to his high school. The first person I called was him. Just say, I know how much this means to you. I am sorry today. And so ultimately, you put relationships. I'm not going to say back to But Dan knows the complicated nature of those kinds of relationship and particularly, I brought it up. So that one.

But yes, there are relationships plural like that. I had one that doesn't count at all relative to Dan's with Pat Riley. And it just speaks to the greatness of Pat Riley that he probably doesn't even remember it. It doesn't even matter to him. but Pat Riley, you know, when I see him, I'm able to have warm conversations. And I'm just thinking, my God, when he refused to put Rolando Blackman in the game, Dan,

I didn't let that go for years. That's John Starks. That's the next year. John Starks, two for 18. Yes, John Starks choking. It speaks to how large those guys were and are. Pat Riley singularly to me. how large a person he was and how tough a skin he had,

that he doesn't, I guarantee you, it's not even, it's not even a footnote in his sort of professional life, even with journalists. It doesn't register to him. I can't believe it ever did. Have you guys lost friends or subjects that you thought you had a relationship with because of something that happened at the job? because of you choosing, I got to be media person,

journalist person, over guy who's going to say the thing that you want. Yeah. Yeah. I have a longer answer in documentary form that I will tell at some point with Ricky Williams about a complicated situation that has a lot of details in it that are rich and interesting, that really push the boundaries. that when I say at the beginning of this that Wilbon has navigated these friendships well,

you will find no places publicly where Wilbon is compromised by any kind of journalism, integrity thing because he's too close to somebody. There are no stories like that. People will question how close he is to Michael Jordan, how many years he has spent being not very critical of Michael Jordan,

even though there aren't very many reasons to be critical. Mike, have you not brokered the piece between Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley yet? How has that not been your job? How have you not succeeded at that yet? That has been my job and that's all I'll say about it. That has been my job. All right.

That's the other documentary. We're going to have to work on that. That one will sell because that friendship used to be a very special friendship and it doesn't seem to be anymore. Yeah, that's very true. And it has been my job. It has been my assigned.

job. The thing I think about is the toughness of skin that you got to have to live in public. And Dan was referencing it that like we talked to former athletes now, retired guys, Mike, and they're like, you guys are p-h-dies. You guys can't take the criticism. Well, they say that about current athletes more than anybody else. We've heard that because they've all got podcasts and they're all able to level that criticism personally without it being filmed.

All roads. All roads. Yeah. Well, the way, I've got to be honest, though, Mike, you said, you said the word podcasts with such a disgust a couple of times on this show so far. I felt like it. It's almost like a curse word. It felt like me and pop. I'm not even understanding what happened to me, but the way that you said podcast felt racist to me. Oh, see.

I'm not saying it's an accurate criticism. just saying the way that you said it felt like that to me. It was a hard pee. Like every black person besides me doesn't have a podcast too. Um, no, I, I like it with you guys. And I am, I am honored, honored to have been on your podcast, on multiple podcasts with both of you. And Dan, I think the two discussions, the most revealing discussions I've had in my, life are with you and Mr. Axelrod for your podcasts. Within a month of each other, God, has it been three years ago now? Yeah, it's been about that. It was nice to see you, I think. It's not the last time I saw you because I saw you recently in New York for the, for the finals.

But what I remember about that time, in keeping with what it is I was saying about him being very bad at receiving affection, Wilbon, this actually happened on South Beach Sessions, you'll appreciate this. Wilbon's in the middle of telling a story about seeing his late father for the last time, and he tears up. And as he's tearing up, he says to me, this is something that happens to me after I've flown sometimes. It doesn't have anything to do with the emotions of talking about my father's death. I am not crying because it hurts to be in pain about the death of my father. I'm crying because the flights do this to my eyes sometimes. do, they still do. They still do. No, so podcast is not a dirty word to me. I'm the only person

in media who doesn't have one. I'm never going to have one. There was a time it was I wanted to do everything or anything that was hard to prove I could do it. I'm past that point now. I want to watch Law & Order reruns, anything by Dick Wolf, who should have hired me a long time ago as a consultant. And I want to watch the Cubs and the Bulls and the Bears and the Blackhawks. And that's what I want to do and play golf. That's it. That's all I got. I like it.

Sounds pretty good. You want Law & Order Sports columnist's unit. I don't want to have to die on it, and I don't want to have to cast Stephen A as a fucking villain at the top of this show. Sorry to interrupt. I'm going to need CISOMID. ID. Now. Of course.

You don't want to fire a gun like Stephen A on General Hospital? No. No. No, I don't want to do any of that. But all of my best friends have podcasts. Oh, God. Now it's racist. Now it's racist.

Some of my best friends are podcasts. Some of my best friends have podcasts. Now apologize to the people who talk about law and angle, Mike. That's why I really brought you on here. Apologize to people who believe in exit velocity. We can curse, right? Can we can curse on this podcast? Yes, you can, yes, yes.

Let me lean into the, let me lean in here. Oh, I have to lean back now. There we go. No, it's not going to be very brief. I'm not going to go far. F*** them. That's it. Because they've ruined,

I'll go one sentence further. We get it. We get it, Mike. They've ruined everything. Wait, wait. Wait, what would a podcast be without some mention of race? So I'm going to go there now. You guys tempted me.

You dragged me, and now I'm going to go there. Oh, no. And I wrote a column, one of the last columns I wrote was about this. I remember this column. I remember arguing with people about this column. You know what I'm going to say? I do. Black people don't ever talk about sports leading off with points per possession.

Or launch angle. White people talk. about sports that way, because they're excluded from the fucking conversation in every other meaningful way. Mike. They're excluded from sports. Mike, look. So therefore, they've invented, I'm only half joking, maybe not even half, about 20%.

They've invented a way to get back to reclaim sports by getting into Velo. Anybody who starts a baseball discussion with Velo should be shot in the, fucking here. Mike, do you realize you're so close? You were so close to inventing a joke per take statistic. You're like, 20% of this is a joke. I'm like, Mike, you're so close. You're so close to being an advanced statistic.

I went to Law & Order. Opening scene, bang. Mike Wilbon, Dan Lebitard. I say this, unironically. Two of the weirdest and greatest people I've ever met. Thank you for doing this. Pablo, thank you. Dan, thank you. Love you, buddy.

Love you guys both. Love you both. Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Walter Averoma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumenello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by NGW Post, theme song, as always, by John Bravo,

and we will talk to you next time.