Pardon My Take - Brian Windhorst, LIV And PGA Merge, Dan Rapaport Breaks It Down For Us, Hot Seat/Cool Throne + Listener Submitted FAQ's

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

The PGA Tour and LIV have merged and Jay Monahan is the world's biggest hypocrite. We talk about the colossal golf news and what it may mean going forward (00:00:00-00:29:36). Hot Seat/Cool Throne including Wildfires in NYC, Stanley Cup Final Game 2 and more (00:29:36-00:55:43). Brian Windhorst joins the show to talk NBA Finals, His career and relationship with Lebron, whether he ever fell asleep on air and how strong is Lebron (00:55:43-01:43:52)? Dan Rapaport joins us to tell us what happened with PGA/LIV, what it means going forward and who the big losers/winners are (01:43:52-02:15:36). We finish with listener submitted FAQ's (02:15:36-02:26:03).You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/PardonMyTake

Hey, pardon my take listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen, ad-free, on Amazon Music. On today's pardon my take, we have a twofer for the people. We have Brian Windhorst on the show talking NBA Finals, talking NBA, Wemben Yama, LeBron, his tweet about him being strong. Great interview with Brian Windhorst. And then we have our colleague Dan Rappport on the show to try to walk us through the

entire live PGA. Crazy news that happened. We're going to start the show talking about that as well. We have Hatsi Kulthrone. We talk a little Stanley Cup Final game two. We also have FAQs, some great FAQs from the people, and it is all brought to you by our friends Ed Morgan and Morgan. If you've been injured in an accident, Morgan and Morgan makes it easier for you.

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Boy! Boy! Now in the streets there is violence, and then there's lots of work to be done. No place to hang out or wash in, and then I can't live all on the sun. Oh no, we're gonna rock it down, rock it down, rock it down, rock it down, rock it down. We're gonna rock it down to electric avenue, and then we'll take it higher. Oh, we're gonna rock it down to electric avenue, and then we'll take it higher. Welcome to part of my take.

Today is Wednesday, June 7th, and PFT stopped me if you've heard this before, but cash rules everything around us. There you go, little Wu-Tang clan. Everything around me, but everything around us in terms of the live and PGA, the huge news, the huge merger, money talks, and the golf world was rocked today. We're gonna get into it more with Dan Rappport, maybe the details, but we're gonna do our takes right now. PFT, Jay Monahan?

I don't know, he doesn't even deserve to be called by his full real name. Jay Monahan? The biggest scumbag in the world. The biggest scumbag in the world. He is such a dickhead, and everybody that's on the PGA tour right now probably hates his guts. I don't know how he survives this. He definitely put in some sort of stipulation in the contract.

I read the press release, he's planning on sticking around as the head of the PGA tour. They're debating what framework is gonna be put in place once the live and the PGA eventually converge, but the bottom line is Jay Monahan kept players on the PGA tour from taking money to go play on the live golf tour by telling them that they would have 9-11 blood on their hands. Invoke 9-11? If they were to accept $100 million to go play golf on the live tour. He said that to his players with a straight face.

He brought in 9-11 families to act as a human shield for what he was doing behind the scenes, which was negotiating with the live tour to try to make the PGA tour more money in the long run while again telling the golfers of the PGA tour don't do business with his people, they are evil, you are bad if you do business with them. So yes, he's the biggest piece of shit in the world. The live tour, by the way, they come out of this smelling like roses. They're the Michael Scott paper company comparably to the PGA tour. They started their own tour, everybody laughed at them, their ratings were bad, but at some

point along the way, the PGA tour needed the live tour just as much as the live guys needed the PGA tour, so they came to the table, brought them back in, and now everybody that ended up going over to play live golf looks like they made the right decision financially at least. Well, and so we start with Jay Monaghan because obviously I did a bad job starting there. If you are living under a rock, the live and PGA tour, they've called it a merger. Like everything I've read and everything I understand, it's essentially the live just being the money guys now of the PGA tour.

The PGA tour is keeping what the PGA tour is, so it's not going to become, the PGA tour is not going to now be 54 holes and everyone wearing shorts. The PGA tour is still what we think it is, but the live is now invested in it and the live now has power in it to a point that we didn't think was going to be possible a few years ago and the live tour created this golf league as kind of a farce. It was never going to exist long term and they did it so that they would put the pressure on the PGA tour who was going to run out of money and they got them to the table and Jay Monaghan who invoked 9-11, invoked 9-11 families, did an about face with like two other people,

sat in the boardroom for the last seven weeks and did a deal with the guys that he was saying were the baddest dudes on the block and afterwards, after the dust settled today, he said, this is his quote, I recognize everything I've said in the past is in my past positions. I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite anytime I said anything I said with the information, anything, sorry, anytime I said anything I said, I said it with the information I had in the moment. So essentially either Jay Monaghan's doing a material change or he watched loose change and has decided that history is completely different and that's why he's okay with everything.

He was not okay with two years ago and I want to clarify because PFT and I have been pretty clear that like those guys who took the money, like take the money, take the money. It's Jay Monaghan who's the hypocrite here because he like went out and basically was like 9-11, bad things, bad guys, we have to protect the PGA, we're going to ban everyone and not two years later has completely turned around and done a deal with them. The information he had at the time though, Big Cat, was different than the information he has now. Now he believes that there was thermite that was planted in the towers.

George W. Bush is no longer welcome on the PGA tour. If he comes out tomorrow and says that, then I might give him like 10% credit for it but if you just said I talked to Pete Carroll, we had a long talk with Pete Carroll and I've seen the light. He is a real, real piece of shit for sure and there's really no excuse for it and he did take money out of his own guys' pockets who had the opportunity to go make hundreds of millions of dollars and it's fucked up. It's absolutely fucked up but there's something, I think you said earlier that it's going to

be the same PGA, it's not going to be change or whatever. We don't know that because it is changing. It's changing. It's no longer going to be a non-profit entity, it's going to be a brand new for-profit league though. It's not going to be teams. It's not going to be this like weird golf hybrid. Maybe I'll be way wrong but I would be shocked.

There will be events that are teams, they're going to be in the middle so it is definitely going to be a new league. It's going to be called the PGA tour and they're still moving forward but it's a brand new for-profit entity is what's being created. So yeah, there's definitely going to be changes. I don't think it's going to be drastic like they're all playing on teams now. That was my point. I think you're still going to watch the same tournaments that you've watched in the past

and the majors are going to stay the same and yeah, there might be some additional events but it's not like the live is just making the PGA just now playing shorts and play on teams. No, it's not going to be the live tour but there's definitely going to be some elements of the live tour that are brought into the fold and we don't know what those are going to be yet. Also, Greg Norman comes out of this looking like a dude who's on the up and up compared to Jay Monaghan.

Oh, totally disagree. Why's that? Because he's completely out. He took bullets for the last two years and got completely railroad like everyone was hated him. He was the face of the live tour. He's out. He wasn't in the press conferences.

He wasn't in any of the releases. You don't think he got equity or anything like that? He has no power anymore so Kevin Van Valkenburg who covers golf had a quote or posted a snippet. Norman did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday but a source told Sports Illustrated that his duties of late have been more as a figurehead and that he is not expected to be part of the venture going forward. Norman's name was not mentioned in the announcement. I would imagine he's probably a little pissed that he was used in the manner he was used

and now doesn't get anything going forward. Well, that was going to be my other question is who had equity in it. So Norman might have had equity in live to act as their figurehead for so long. Some of the players, the captains of the teams on the live tour, they had equity in their teams. I don't know how that is going to translate over to the merger. Are the four aces going to exist? Are we going to get more aces?

I don't know. Are we going to have like six or seven aces? Yeah, but I think Greg Norman's a loser just because he's, it seemed like the Saudis used him pretty effectively. And now they're like, OK, buddy, we don't need you anymore. Thanks so much for your service. See ya. Well, from a financial standpoint, I think he probably did OK is what I'm saying.

But he wanted to be in it for more than that. I mean, he was, that was, he was the head of live. He was the figurehead. He was walking around doing all the press conferences. I feel like Greg Norman probably wanted to be part of the future and is now out. So we don't, the bottom line is we don't know what, what the PGA tour is going to look like, how much it's going to change. But it's a, it's a very, very weird day, I would imagine, to be a PGA tour golfer who

found out this information on Twitter that after being told for two years to just hate everybody that's going to live, being threatened to have, you know, to not be admitted into major tournaments if you go overseas or if you play for the Saudis. And then now it's like, OK, water under the bridge. Let's move forward now that me, Jay Monahan, has figured out a way forward through this. Now, and I tried to make this point on Twitter, I probably did a terrible job. It's got to suck to be a PGA tour player today because they were blindsided. They were told one thing, something completely different happened.

I would imagine Jay Monahan, when he had his 4pm, you know, meeting with all the players, he probably ate a lot of shit. I saw one report that it was 90, 10 negative to positive, which makes sense. But he also was probably like, everyone's going to make more money now. And again, it's not the same money that they could have made if they had gone. In like 10 years, they'll probably look back and be like, yeah, we did make a lot more money. They already are making more money because of the PGA like having to compete with live. They're probably all going to make a shitload more money now.

It still isn't good because it still isn't. It still probably doesn't sit well with them because they were lied to and basically told it's a player's league. And we know at the end of the day, the money rules and the rich guys talk. And that's how decisions get made. But like far in the future, they probably will make a lot of money from this day happening. Yeah, that might be the case. But there's definitely a lot of guys that just want to kill Jay Monahan for sure.

Because they probably didn't go to play and live golf because they wanted to have some sort of a PGA tour legacy. They wanted to play in all the events that they grew up watching. They wanted to golf here in America. They like the format and they were probably told like, you don't go over there because then we will excommunicate you from everything having to do with American golf. Don't take, you know, 50 million dollars, 100 million dollars. They probably took him at his word and then a year later, they're like,

well, tell you what, we couldn't. I know you missed out on that 100 mil, but good news is we're going to increase the prize pool by 30 percent next year. So you're going to make more money. That probably doesn't sit well with most of the players on the tour. See, when you say format, like I still don't. I think the live knew that like team format doesn't work. Team formats don't work in golf.

It just doesn't. And so like this was also part of them being like, we're not a real golf league. We never really will be the like the way golf works is you have a bunch of guys competing against each other for the best. And so now the the live tour gets the benefit of getting to put money into the PGA tour and having a say in the PGA tour and also having it be a real golf league and stop the charade of whatever it was they were trying to do. But so the main thing that the Saudis want to do with the public

investment fund investment in the PGA tour is creating a for profit league. If the PGA tour wasn't making enough money to begin with, then they're definitely going to change something. Right? I don't know. I actually don't know. I I I I wouldn't be shot like this is at the end of the day. The Saudis wanted to have a seat at the table and now they have a seat at the table. I don't know if they I don't know if it goes further than that.

Like they have they have power now. They have major investment in a major sport in America, like mission accomplished for them. I don't I honestly don't know. I mean, I guess we'll we'll find out. I just I feel like the live was always like do you agree? Like team golf doesn't work. So team golf could work if it was a limited thing.

I don't think it can work as like a season long thing. My son Chris will disagree with that. But I'm telling you like I think that in limited like one or two events per year. Yeah, I think I think that is that right. Exactly. But if you brought that that same like team competitiveness to like one or two special events that are played during the regular calendar year, I don't know. Let's ask the youths. Billy and Jake, does team golf work?

I think team golf, like you were saying, is good and limited. Like the Ryder Cup outside of the majors is probably the most circled event on the calendar. So right because it's unique. Right. So I don't think. Yeah, year long is born. Year long is born. The live on CW like barely got a rating, right?

Like no one cared. Like we like the individual golfers. We love Brooks, but like we were not setting our schedules aside to watch him in the live tournaments. Right. I'm just thinking that there might be there might be a handful of new ones that are spring. Sure. I don't think it's going to it's not going to be a complete format change. It's not going to be 50 whole golf or 54 whole golf.

They might do things with more more events that don't have a cut. That might be part of the process or paying players for appearance fees, which is was was discussed when the PGA was when this first happened and the PGA was like, why aren't guys getting paid just to show up if they're big draws, which makes sense to me. And it like does all come down to money. The PGA was running out of money. They'd already kind of pushed themselves to the limit where I think what was it

last year or maybe it was two years ago, the memorial that was just played this past weekend was like a million and a half or a million million point two. Jake, you can look it up prize for the top winner. And and now like last weekend, I think Hovland won like 3.6. So they were already making those adjustments. I feel like it's just going to be even more money. And yeah, I would be shocked if the PGA like completely changes what they do. There could be additional things, but I think that the I think the Saudis

just did what they wanted to do and they now are there. They're at the there is a seat at the table, right? Yeah, I agree. I do think that there's going to be small changes. I don't think it's going to be wholesale. You know, it's not going to be different format for golf altogether. No, I think it's going to be money changes. A lot of money will there will be money changes.

Whatever is making money, they'll end up doing that. If anyone's got the money to build an indoor golf cart, of course, it's Saudi Arabia. Like you could probably just play a tournament out in the desert somewhere. But yeah, it's it's a very, very strange day for golf. And the Saudis have been trying to get involved in American sports for a very long time. I know the NFL doesn't allow any sovereign investment fund to make a purchase in terms of like ownership in the team. So the NFL is trying to keep that type of money out.

But who knows where we're going to be in like 25 years as. So this is a weird thing as NFL teams keep getting more and more expensive. Like the commanders just sold for a record six billion. And their team has been running to the ground for the last 30 years. Imagine when Marquis franchise, one that already has the infrastructure in place to be worth a lot of money. If the Dallas Cowboys were to come for sale after Jerry Jones dies, God forbid. At that point, like you're going to be talking above ten billion dollars.

And as the teams get more and more expensive, there's fewer and fewer people who can afford to pay for these teams. Like at some point, most billionaires in America that want a team will have been had the opportunity to purchase that team. At some point, the foreign investment funds are going to become part of the shrinking pool of available billions that can buy American sports teams. Yeah. So it's probably we might be like on that slide down there. We'll see where it goes in the next 15 years.

And we're going to talk more with Dan Rappport, but it does like at the end of the day, fans, which we are, like we we I'm a patron. We we we benefit from getting to watch all the guys now again. And I don't know, like they said, there might they might enforce fines for live players to come back to the PGA. It feels like it feels like to me that they would. And again, I have no expertise, no knowledge, but it feels like they also will probably have to pay some of the existing PGA to our guys to make them happy

for like the fact that they walk, they didn't take this, you know, money. And now they have all the money in the world. They literally have more money than anyone. And the shitty thing for players that are on the PGA tour that didn't leave to go over and play golf is you're you're pissed off right now. You're very mad and rightfully so at your own league. They could give you some money to make you happy. But if they don't now, you really don't have an alternative.

Like what else are you going to do? It's I guess the only thing that could happen is like if the top players tried to unionize and we're like, we're not playing, which seems like it would be hard to pull off, right? Like it seems like it'd be pretty hard to get a bunch of guys because whenever it comes to that type of situation, then you have guys who are in the middle class of golf who are like, wait, we want to keep playing. We want to get paid money.

Like it's easier for a guy who's made, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars or 50 million dollars in his career to be like, hey, let's take a stand versus a guy who's made, you know, five million or 10 million. Like Will's Alatoris made 10 million dollars. He's not going to be like, oh, I don't want to play golf. I'm going to stand up for this. And like those guys, it sucks for because Will's Alatoris was offered a lot of money and he stayed on the PGA tour, then he got injured.

Like so I, I wonder if maybe the PGA tours has to, has to do something to take care of those guys, whether it be appearance fees, whether it be like guaranteed money. I have no idea, but it feels like something like that. They're going to have to do a lot of smoothing over. And more than anything, Jay Monahan, like I don't, he's now the CEO, but I don't know how like they must be so fucking pissed and probably want him out, which rightfully so, because at the end of the day, it will all get settled.

It will probably like five years from now. We'll be like, oh yeah, look, now they're all making more money. But Jay Monahan still stands as the biggest hypocrite who essentially told the players one thing and then behind their back did another. And yes, it is a just tough lesson to learn that the, guess what? Like as much as player empowerment has come a long way, like eventually like the big money always talks and is able to make the decisions and players are kind of left standing there being like, oh, Colin Morikawa

finding out on Twitter this morning that the PGA tour is merging with Lyft. He probably had an offer for like a hundred fifty, two hundred million dollars, maybe more to go join the Lyft tour, which will turn down. So there's one name out there that we haven't really heard from in this situation, who could be the other alternative to the PGA tour. That's Tiger. The Tiger tour is something that had been talked about for years and years and years where he got so big, he was literally bigger than golf.

So if he wanted to, he could just say, OK, I'm playing these 20 tournaments a year and then I'm going to be the CEO of, you know, my own tour basically. And because he was such a draw, it probably could have worked at some point. Tiger Woods could come out and make a statement. I'm curious as to why he hasn't. I if it's, man, that'd be so much work. If you're Tiger Woods, you want to do all that work.

You'd have to do so much work. Like, yeah, like a lot of walking, a lot of driving, you have more like more money ever dreamed of and be like, well, we got to start from scratch. I got to do just a shitload of work. He's human too. Or what tigers should do is he should just start his own Michael Scott paper company, start the tour, start the tour, play for like six rounds, get a contract with, I don't know, true TV to put your game, your matches on

at 1 a.m. And then hopefully you get a couple of billion out of it. If Tiger and Charlie just played, like NBC would give him a contract, swaps the two of them play. It should be Tiger, Charlie, and then somebody like like Charles Barkley. It's like a really shitty golfer because I feel like sometimes people like watching bad people play golf more than they like watching good people play golf because it makes them feel better about their swing. Yeah, I'm also so curious.

And I feel like I haven't because it's they don't have to disclose this stuff. How the payments all worked. And it seems like it might be just like golfer to golfer was different for the live tour. Like if it was a contract, if it was lump sum, because then it obviously changes it. If like, say, Dustin Johnson, he didn't get $150 million. He got $25 million and he's going to get $25 million next year.

And now it's all going to get reconfigured. Maybe that's part of like appeasing the current PGA tour guys being like, look, he didn't get this much. He got this much and now we'll spread it around and make it so that it, you know, everyone can kind of swallow this pill. Yeah. And if you're if you're Dustin Johnson and Mohamed bin Salman doesn't pay you that second left lump sum of $25 million, what are you going to do about it? Right?

You assume what are you going to do? Are you going to go knock on his door and be like, hey, man, you kind of owe me $25 million? That's that's the craziest part about this because the Saudis have so much money and they can really like make the rules themselves. So they could be like, oh, yeah, we're not paying any more of the live contracts. But and we're going to give some money to the PGA guys. Everyone get in the boat.

Everyone make more money. Let's fucking go. Yeah. Now, I'll tell you what the emir of Qatar would never behave like this. He would have created a stand up league. He should start his own league. Yeah, he should. Other losers.

I mean, Rory, have we heard from Rory? I think he was was he at the meeting, I believe so. He was at the meeting. He claims that he had no beforehand knowledge of any of the situation. I don't think that Rory is involved. I just I don't get that vibe from him. He does seem like a guy that was just. You know, the most supportive of the PGA tour

because he cared about the corny stuff like legacy and all that. He was their poster boy, their golden child. If he was involved in this, good luck to him because step aside, Patrick Reed, Rory is going to be the most hated guy in golf. Yeah, I mean, I I probably I'll take his word for it. I just know that he also had changed his tune the last couple of months about live, which seems a little bit like, huh, that's weird. You know, like he wasn't he wasn't going at that.

Maybe it was as simple as he was tired of talking about it. He wanted to focus on his golf that completely that that makes sense, too. So it just the whole thing sucks for guys like that. Good for golf fans. And yeah, I mean, Brooke, well, we suspended Brooks for one day. It's funny how some people forget that it was one single day that we suspended him for being like, well, oh, now now you got a back track with Brooks like, no, I think we're good with Brooks.

We suspended him for one day as a joke from Brooks of the year or Blake of the year. And we're also on the record saying that if if MBS wanted to pay us a hundred million dollars to do a podcast just for him, it'd be pretty hard not to. It'd be very hard to say no to that. Well, and yeah, this is why this is why the sports washing works because now they they're in the PGA. So the next one gets easier. Like it all gets easier after you get the big one.

So yeah, I guess off for us a hundred million dollars. Or just one of us or just one of just one of us, Billy organically. To integrate some great propaganda. Mm hmm. Yeah, Billy is very. How would you do that, Billy, if the Saudi government asked you to like organically say nice things about the kingdom of Saudi Arabia? I like to drive. I would imagine nuclear power is dangerous.

Yeah, they also just hand Billy a computer that's just full of like fake websites and he can only go on those and then he comes out in a week and he's like, I've been reading some really interesting stuff online, guys. You heard about some of these things. Yeah, the line sounds like a glorious invention. Who could who could turn down living within five square miles of everything that you need for the rest of your life in a line in the middle of the desert? Yeah.

Um, last thing we should talk about Phil real quick. I mean, Phil, the whole story of Phil Mickelson is like the most fascinating story ever. Basically, his gambling debts are so huge that he then has to start. Like it's it's it's the it's the domino meme. Like Phil Mickelson loses a five game parlay and then like hits the first domino and golf changes forever at the end. That's essentially what happened. Yeah, it's it's pretty much going to be Phil.

Phil Mickelson or it's like the Jets lose week three of 2011. Domino, domino, domino. And now MBS has a major part of a massive sports league in America. Yeah. Yeah. Brett Farr sends dick pic. Yeah, exactly. There it is. So, um, crazy day.

I was actually thinking, not to brag, I was at the gym and I was like, what are we going to start the show with today? And then this happened and it was like, holy fuck out of nowhere. It's rare in this day and age, too, that we would we have a story that like blind sides, everyone, all the reporters were blindsided. Everyone, no one saw this coming. So it is kind of a wake up call, though, to any player in a league like like the PGA tour, any professional athlete.

If somebody is offering you an insane amount of money to play a sport, you should probably take that money because guess what? When it comes down to it, the league that you have any sort of loyalty to will not have any loyalty whatsoever if they can make a tenth of a percent more in net profit 10 years from now. Yes. And it's, you know, we do it all the time with sports. We're like, oh, this guy should take a hometown discount.

It's like, well, like Jalen Brown right now, like the Celtics debating whether they should pay him like whether the Celtics should pay in the Supermax. I would imagine Jalen Brown's like, no, I you need to pay me the Supermax. Like, yeah, get your money. Get your money. If anytime, here's a blanket statement that I've learned from this. Anytime somebody can pay you 10 times your total income to play a sport for fewer days a year to work less, to not have to wear pants at your sport.

Absolutely 100 percent take that money. Yeah. And so Jake just put in the chat, can't Lee in 2021 would won the Memorial 1.7 mil Hovland this year, 3.6 mil. So you already had seen it. Like you already seen it was doubling. They were doubling the purses.

That was probably why the PGA had to go to the table, too, because they were pushing the money so to such an extent that they probably couldn't afford it. And they're like, we're kind of fucked if Liv, who is never going to run out of money, just keeps doing whatever they're doing. Yeah, the Mohammed Salman paper company. That's where it was. It's fucking crazy. OK, let's kick it back to ourselves.

We have great wind horse interview. Awesome time. Fucking I love that guy so much. Dan Rapport talking more live PGA, Hot Sea Cool Throne, and we have FAQs, listener FAQs, which are great. OK, before we get to Hot Sea Cool Throne, brought to you by ourselves. Fourth of July is coming up. Shop USA merchandise now on the Barstool store.

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Also, Father's Day, do it now. You have no more days left. Father's Day is coming and it is coming fast. So make sure that you go to store.barstoolsports.com right now. OK, Hot Sea Cool Throne. Hank, my hot sea is college baseball. Hmm. College baseball World Series is going on.

Obviously, great, great time, but they had two two things. An Indiana player, Tyler Cerny, they hit a home run and he just I think he brought out like a chain or something. They put around players in the dugout and he got suspended a game for that, which is pretty crazy. It was nuts. If you watch the video, like you could barely tell what the suspension was technically bringing a prop onto the field.

And it was one of those like, fuck the NCAA. Everyone agrees is the dumbest rule ever. Yeah, I don't know why that rule is in place at all. And he didn't even bring it out there. His teammates brought it out for him and put it around his neck as he was going down the third baseline right before he touched home plate. You should be allowed. There are some rules that should remain unwritten in baseball.

Like if that if it's that big a deal, just let him wear one of the ribs the next time he gets up to the plate, don't make him sit on an entire another game. And then it's also. If the majority of guys playing in a game are not going to be pros and get paid to play, they should get to have maximum amount of fun. That should just be the rule, because like for a lot of those guys, that is the biggest moment that they will ever have as athletes. Let them enjoy it.

Right. And to that point in another game, it was Penn versus Southern Miss. It was three, two bases loaded, two outs. So like the best, probably one of the funnest situations in baseball crowds going crazy and I'm called a clock violation and called them out. That's fun, which is just like always. Everyone always wants to see the game in that way. That should be another unwritten rule. Or if it's if that's the count, that's a situation like the clock does not matter.

Turn the clock off. I agree with that, Hank. There should be unwritten rules for umpires, too. There you know what they should do. That should just be a written rule. It should be it should be like like the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. Like you get more life. If you like they like the ump just pulls out a slice of pizza. If you eat it, you get like another 20 seconds.

That would be fun. Mike Greenberg's dumb rules. Like something to gain more life. I don't know what they what you could do, but like it would just be a fun wrinkle where it's like you get to do it one or two times a game where you just get more life on the at bat. Maybe an extra strike if you eat a whole pizza. Yeah, this is a banana banana stuff.

This is just a way to get players to get fatter. We want every baseball player to look like Vogel back by the end of the season. Could you imagine though, bases loaded two outs and you're like it's the most intense moment. And first you have to just scarf down a slice of pizza. And then get back in the box or if you smoke a heater at the plate. Yeah, yeah, it would be safe. Like you should get you should get four strikes if you're smoking a cigarette.

If there's a cigarette in your mouth while you're batting lit cigarette. Yes. Yeah. If it drops automatic out. Yep. And then and then pitchers trying to hit the cigarette out of the mouse. Yeah. If you knock it and yeah, and you're blindfolded and pitchers got a gun. Yeah, these are great rules. OK, your cool throne. My cool throne is I was bonka holics, bonkologists. Yeah, thank you, Hank. PFT.

Yeah, you're welcome. I'm sure you're going to be there covering the sport, maybe maybe participating. But a Swedish strip club owner is trying to start a sex league. Oh, OK, it's a six week sex championship. The guy's name. I mean, the owner's name. This is a classic guy that would start a sex championship. Dragon brought it. Hmm. Mm hmm.

His last name is broad broad dick. Brotic. Drag in broad dick. Dragon brought it. Six different disciplines practiced. Body massages, foreplay, oral sex and endurance. Six hour sessions each day. Each discipline lasting between 45 and 60 minutes.

OK, so a real it's a real marathon. I think they're they're judging endurance the wrong way. It should be it should be time for speed. Yeah, who can nut the fastest? Yeah, zero to 60. We don't do we don't do like who can who can drive the longest in a race. You know what I mean? Like you're not like, oh, yeah, who could drive slow and and, you know,

for 24 hours, like let's get let's get moving. Yes, I mean, they need the Olympics where you can do different like track and field. Yeah, yeah, a Dick Athalon. Yeah, things got to be the number one pick, right? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I feel like Sting is like a well known like Kamasutra, like 24 hour sex haver.

Oh, and nations will compete. They're doing it. They are doing it the that way. I would go Sting Lenny, Lenny Kravitz Lenny Kravitz feels like yeah. That's what you want representing America. Yeah, Lenny. The problem with Sting is that he's not actually all that he's cracked up to be. So he gave one interview where he was like starting to get into tantric sex back in the 80s, I think.

And then his wife for the rest of their life has to deal with everybody that meets them, thinking that she just has sex for like five hours at a time. And apparently that's not true. I just found this out like last week. So Sting might be overrated as far as sex havers go. What about Michael Douglas? Tap him in for some oral.

Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, I mean, the guy literally risked his life for oral. Yeah, Nancy Reagan should be on the medal. Yeah, the Nancy Reagan Dick Sucking Award. Yeah. OK, I would go to cover this event, not because I'd be horny about it, but because I'm intrigued about the entire or the fanfare around it, all that stuff.

I'm sure it's going to be a once in a lifetime event because they probably won't do it a second time. Oh, it's in two days. So I guess we'll find out. Oh, where is it? Sweden. It's in Chicago. There you go.

Really? All right, PFT, your hot seat, cool throne. My hot seat is our brand's big cat. Speaking of events that are taking place in Chicago, it's going to be me, you, Dave's team, and then Kirk Manahan's team in the finals of The Dozen, which are going to be broadcast live on Thursday evening live from Chicago. So Big Cat and the Yak, that team is flying out to Chicago.

Brandon and Fran are flying out here, Eddie and Clem. I guess Eddie's already here. Clem's flying out with Dave. And then whoever Kirk Manahan decides is good enough to be on his team tomorrow is going to fly out to Chicago and. Rico and Quakes. Rico Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, never break them up.

They're going to be. Yeah, we're going to all be competing in live trivia tomorrow. So it's it's the annual crown. Last year, a lot of people said that me and Brandon and Fran choked. I don't know what tournament they were watching. It was just me that choked last year, not Brandon and Fran. But it's it we've got redemption on our minds. So it's going to be fun.

And if you're in Chicago, I hope you come by and see us. I'm very excited. It's going to be it's the live crowd is always awesome. And yeah, live broadcast is live broadcast. It's going to be I do think it's the four best teams. I'll say that. Like, I think you could make the argument for Frank and Frankettes. But guess what?

They're not going. So it's going to be the dozen trivia has some very, very die hard fans. And I know it's going to be packed and it's going to be a lot of fun. I just want to say big congratulations on winning the regular season president's cup trophy of the dozen that's very important. I know a lot of people are saying that's such a huge, huge, massive award. So congrats on being the regular season champion and congrats on your teammate. Brandon Walker being the narcissist.

He is spoiling the match that people watched on Tuesday night so that he spoiled the match before his match. So no one has to watch our match. They can only watch his match. OK, I was I saw that and I realized that the spoiler people are on Twitter. They're just as bad as the people that do the spoilers because what they'll do is they'll reply to like whatever tweet and be like, thanks, Brandon, are you spoiling?

We already know that his team moves on. And then they're spoiling it to everybody else. Yeah, no, the Jeff DeLoe said that he's like they're just as worse because he closed his replies to tweets to limit that happening. But yeah, it's I guess the nature of spoilers. You get a hot tip and then you just want to tell everyone. So yeah, it's it did kind of whatever. Just enjoy the match.

Enjoy the matches and guess what? You can't spoil a live live tournament. So on Thursday night, you'll get to watch it live. And whatever happens, there are no spoilers. There still will be, though, people in the comment section to be like, already know who won 13 to 6. Yeah, like that that always happens. There are also people that that zoom in real close to try to find cheating.

And there was one guy I'm pretty sure he was joking, though, who saw quigs and said that quigs was tapping in Morse code to give the answer to Kirk Minahan. Respect to that guy. That's next level investigative skills. So yeah, you caught quigs. Yes. All right. Your cool throne. My cool throne is aliens.

Yeah, because there was a report that came out yesterday around midday that aliens exist, that the earth that the US government has found and recovered partial alien crafts and that they are not of human origin. And then immediately nobody cared about it because Taylor Swift broke up with a boyfriend. So Taylor Swift absolutely cucked the fuck out of aliens yesterday. In fact, I went up to our friend, Kelly Keigs, who is maybe the biggest Taylor Swift fan in the entire world.

She's not part of the union. Yeah, well, she's yeah, she's a scab fan union. She's a scab. I went up to her yesterday at the end of the day. I was like, so did you hear about the aliens? And she was like, what aliens? No. So in every like big horror movie and in every sci-fi movie, we've been told for years and years that when aliens do come to earth,

there's going to be riots. There's going to be people burning things in the street. They're going to try to overthrow the government. It'll be utter chaos. The markets will go to hell. And then that all turned out not to be true because Taylor Swift broke up with her boyfriend at the exact same time as the alien news announcement came.

The aliens got a like, I think it's people have just accepted the fact they've seen it. All the reports have come out. The former people that work in the government, you know, admitting it that they've, you know, known about it since the 70s. The aliens have to destroy something. Yeah. And then they got to show some show some muscle. Yeah. Like, yeah.

Like they got to they got to take something out or like a massive, you know, you're literally just saying you're literally just saying aliens come at us, bro. No, I'm just saying, like, I it is crazy. The more the news comes out, it's like, damn, like aliens exist. Like it's just it's just known now. Well, I also agree with PFT where it's like everyone thought that when they it got known aliens exist that people are going to freak out. But the reason it hasn't is because they haven't done shit.

I also just assume whoever talks about the aliens, like there's a former government guy. The government basically was like, this guy doesn't know everything. Let him fucking talk. Everyone will say he's crazy. Like I want to know the stuff that we still don't know, because that's the real shit. The whistleblower, we just don't know. The whistleblower also commented that not only did they have intact crafts, but also intact bodies of the pilots of those crafts.

Oh, yeah. I mean, like the stuff that we didn't know is what this guy just told us yesterday. But I there's more did know something we didn't know. There's more because they would have killed them if he knew the real stuff. Yeah, I think what Hank's saying is when one on the road, then we'll take you seriously. Yeah, then the series starts. The series hasn't started yet with the aliens. Yeah. Also, another theory that that I was thinking over earlier today

is that this guy might just be making it all up. And he's authorized by the government to make it up because that way China and Russia are like, wait, what the fuck? We don't have any alien craft. They they know all this technology in the United States that we don't know yet. And then their military starts to panic and they get scared of us because we think we got that alien shit. That's what I'm saying. Like this guy talking so freely, I feel like they're like, let him talk freely.

You know, and if they the United States government has killed people like, you know, opposing and leaking information for a lot less. So I just feel like maybe they let this guy run out there being like, oh, yeah, he's crazy. He'll say some shit. Everyone will think he's crazy. Taylor Swift will break up with a boyfriend and no one will remember. So one thing other was. Yeah, Taylor might be working for the United States government.

And they just told her like, hey, Taylor, please dump your boyfriend right now because we need to cover up the alien thing. Yeah. The other thing is with this guy going through the proper channels. So everyone's saying that the reason why he was allowed to talk about this is because he followed mandatory whistleblower policies, which give me a break. I mean, if you really wanted to keep this guy quiet, you wouldn't you wouldn't have a sniper positioned outside this guy's house. And then the guy in the van gives you a call.

He's like, stand down, stand, stand down. It turns out he actually filed the paperwork correctly. So he can't kill him. Right. Right. OK, I just also don't think that like if there is. Alien spaceships that could get from a different planet to Earth that we have. Like, why can't we just flip it and go back there? We don't know the controls. I never tried to drive a fucking manual car, Hank.

We could figure it out, though. I don't think we've had it for a long time. Like, Billy doesn't think they're from other planets. He thinks they're from like they're more likely from Earth. Yeah. Think about it. Well, it's like they're from underneath the Antarctic shelf. Oh, OK. Think about we haven't just like we haven't explored that much of the ocean.

We haven't just explored that much of the center of the earth. Just on the thing. It's pretty hot, I think. It's part of why we have a condo on the Earth. But like to the sky. I tried to dig to China when I was like seven. You know, what's fucked up is that we haven't tried to dig to China recently. Yeah, like we haven't. No, you know, the the the deepest hole that's ever been dug is only like,

I don't know, what is it, a mile, mile deep, couple miles deep. And we haven't even tried since the 1960s to dig to the center of the earth. We need to get back on that shit. Yeah, we do. That guy who was digging the holes. He he described the plot to Kong skull skull island. Yeah. Oh, OK. So that's where you got from. All right.

My hot seat is also lost PFT, but for a different reason. So we have a great life advice or life episode coming with Russel and Titus on Monday. We're going to talk about game three or game four of the NBA finals as well. But we have two hours that we taped with them. We talked to everything. We also did a Mount Rushmore of things that make us feel old. And after we finished taping that night, I watched the Blackberry movie

and PFT, I feel like we are officially at the point where they're now making movies of things that we fully lived through and can completely remember. And that fucking sucks because there were parts of the movie where they were like flashing to 2007. And I was just sitting there like, yeah, I remember when I got my first Blackberry and I was so pumped and now like the like kids are going to watch movies and be like, what was it like then? It's like, fuck. I was I was like 25. Yeah. What the hell? Shit.

So what else is crazy along those same lines? The Woodstock 99 movie. Yeah. Right now, people are looking back on Woodstock 99 basically the same way that we looked back on the original Woodstock. Yeah. When we were growing up, which that that blew my mind. Yeah. So that sucked. It also big missed by them to not throw in anything about Brickbreaker because that was the greatest game ever.

I spent so much time in my office pretending to work just trying to beat levels in Brickbreaker. I've got a boomer take about the Blackberry. I missed I missed the keyboard. Yeah, there should be there should be keyboards on iPhones. Like I like pressing the buttons and feeling the buttons get pressed down. It's a good sensation. The iPhone is a superior phone in its totality.

But in terms of like business, the Blackberry was king. That was business. You did business on your Blackberry. Closing deals. If you see a guy walk into a walk into an office with a Blackberry and a Bluetooth piece in one ear, you know that guy's a billionaire. Yeah. Our boss Dave Portnoy invented the iBarry where he just Velcroed a Blackberry on on the back of an iPhone.

And he just flipped back and forth for business and pleasure. Got it. All right. My cool throne is our Vegas Knights and AWL Alec Martinez who scored a goal. That was a shit pumping. They kicked the fuck out of the Panthers. Panthers still tried to, you know, rough them up. You had the big hit from Kachuk on Eichel. But it looks like the Knights, I mean,

you can't be more dominant than they have been through two games. I know that we're going back down to Florida and and Jake and Brooks are going to be saying go peas. But it the Knights look good. The Knights looked really fucking good. Yeah, they were dominant. The Panthers did exactly what I would have done to if I were the Panthers at the end of that game.

If you're just getting the shit kicked out of you in game two, you want to just you want to make it as physical as you possibly can. You want to get into fights. You just want to let all your aggression out. You want to get it out there on the ice in game two so that you can turn the page, go on to game three. Like, don't try to win that game once you fall down five to six to. You just turn it into a shit kicking.

You try to get in. You try to hit lay the dirtiest hits possible. You just try to get physical. You try to get all that out of your system. And then you regroup and you go back to Florida and you're like, OK, maybe this can switch around. But that hit that Kachuk had on on Eichel, that was awesome. Yeah, that way. And it was a clean hit, right?

Like, yeah, I called just going across the ice and he was he was leaning forward. He was off balance and he kind of leaned into the hit a little bit, which made it look and it was a bad hit. It was like very violent. But the most impressive part of that hit was Kachuk was chewing on his mouthpiece. So his mouthpiece was sticking out of his mouth and when he laid that hit on him, it knocked off Eichel's helmet, but Kachuk kept his mouthpiece just dangling out of his mouth the entire time.

Yeah, it was awesome. Yeah, I mean, it was my point that I made on Monday that the Panthers are going to try to rough up this series. The Knights are just like they're too disciplined to like they've been there. They got fucking big dudes like they're just not going to play that game. Also, shout out Conor Bedard, future greatest player of all time for the Blackhawks, saying when he went on the desk for TNT, he was like, it's great to be with a bunch of hockey legends and biz.

So knows that he can throw a joke around. That's good personality. He's seen the stats about how how Henrik Lundquist has more career points than BizNasty does, which I looked it up. Turns out they were right about how many people didn't realize we were. No, we were joking in that. Like, like, no, you don't understand, you know, Lundquist has assists. Like, no, we do understand.

We were just making a joke because biz, like we felt bad for biz. Couldn't be making fun of we're also making fun of we were making fun of because we knew that it was true. But yeah, he also said Bedard said that he if he's lucky enough to be drafted by the Blackhawks, he's excited to play for him. So maybe there's a chance Blackhawks pass on straight to pick. All right, Billy. My hot seat is Eastern Canadian Forests.

If you haven't noticed lately, OK, the air quality in the upper Midwest and the Northeast has been pretty shoddy. But we've had amazing sunsets and sunrises. That's because there's some wildfires in the Eastern Canadian Forest. Got it. Second hot seat. Everybody in Charlotte, who loves La Crosse, Dugues last weekend was at the bar down beer lounge in Albany. This week, I want to see if Charlotte can out compete the Albany crowd.

And come to the bar down. Are you going? I'm going. I'm clear. I like this. You're just going this week and we got to go on the PLL tour now. I like that. Yeah. I mean, some people train to play La Crosse. I train for the beer garden. This is what's happening. Not well, because you got beat. I beat Paul Rabel in a beer chug.

Well, Paul Rabel is a martini guy. I know, I know, but still counts. And my cool throne is like I'm cleared to participate this weekend. I was not cleared last week. All clearance. I was not cleared last week. This week, I am cleared. OK, clears you the league. The league cleared me. They're going to have to revoke that after this week.

No, no, I was cleared. OK, right. But they can revoke it for next week. I wasn't cleared last weekend. Right. Why? Why weren't you cleared last week? I had a funeral in my cool throne is the matrix. So Apple is now getting into virtual reality, and which means it's actually going to catch on. So that sucks. Goodbye.

Yeah, it's true. Like when other companies do it, when Facebook did, they were trying to make it more accessible. So they were lowering the price of it to what was it, four hundred bucks for the meta thing. Metta Facebook changed their entire company name to meta to get behind this thing. Now Apple is going to come out.

They're going to make it. It's going to be like four grand and everyone's just going to buy the Apple. Yeah, I just want it because it's like, oh, it's Apple. Yeah, you know what? I I think I'm going to get one. Yeah, got to that price right out. If there was if it was two hundred bucks, I'd be like, no, thanks. I got to have it.

It's a good business lesson that sometimes you don't want to pay a lower price for something. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm going to get it and I'm never going to use it. I'm going to use it once and be like, all right, and then probably end up giving it to like one of Brandon Walker's kids. Or you get one for the office. Yeah, yeah, I did that with the Oculus. I bought the Oculus.

I'd never even opened the box. I just gave it away. So yeah, I'm going to buy one. All right, Jake. My hot seat are fans who are trying to get on camera. So there was a fan. There was a Miami local sports reporter named Samantha Rivera on site in Vegas after the game.

And there was this fan trying to get on camera and she just stiff arms the crap out of. Oh, yeah, that was awesome. He had no shot of getting in the frame. So that was a great move. Yeah, that was in that happened. Also, there was another guy who had to do that with Nights fans as well. I think came one to rowdy. Yeah, don't get in the shot.

No, it can't get in the shot. I like to do my cool throne is our friend, Charlie Woods. Yeah. Yeah. Good job. Futurely, Charlie Woods just won a major over the weekend. The major championship at Village Golf Course. He beat the field by eight strokes at one under par. He just dominated these trucks.

Not. Yeah. Yeah, Jake. I'm concerned that you're surprised by this. Yeah. No, I'm not surprised. I knew that this was going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. The top five was rounded out by Noah Manley, Luke friend, Cameron Cantine and Logan Fox. Don't care.

Logan Fox, Charlie Woods, no one cares to blow par, Jake. They're bums and losers. Yeah, he was his one under and Noah Manley was seven over. He should get second place, too. Charlie Woods should get all the fucking there's no prize money. But if there were, he should get it all. Yeah. So he won the boys, 14, 15 division. And he's what, 12 years old?

14 or 15, probably. Oh, OK. I I floated this out there to our good friend, Max Salma, who's very excited about Hank almost had a hole in one today, which I can't believe we haven't talked about. But that was that was from I saw you. That was from that was from at least a month. Yeah, that was a long time ago. Oh, OK. It was a six shot, though.

It was a six shot. I would like to see Charlie Woods teamed up on Max Homer's team on the PGA if they're going to do team format. Let's get let's get our squad together. Yeah. OK. Let's get to our interview with Brian Windhorse. And then we have our good friend, Dan Rappaport on the other side, talking about live PGA.

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Just stock up on sunglasses for the summer with this deal. 50% off, half off, two or more pairs of polarized sunglasses from our friends over at Shady Rays. And now here's Brian Windhorse. OK, we now welcome on a very, very, very special guest. Been looking forward to this one. Three varies. Three varies.

That's the voice. It is Brian Windhorst from ESPN. He is the best NBA guy. I'm going to say it right now at ESPN. The best. He is a two time New York Times bestseller for books. And we have Wendy. Wendy, thank you for joining us.

Where are you right now? You're in Miami, right? I am in a green room that I stole from ABC in the Kasaya Center. I don't know what Kasaya is. I we have our official ABC interview in progress. Nice. That I put up so they could not bother me. It's just an off day here.

Interviews went on. I think the nuggets are finishing practicing. This is like a dressing room that like Jimmy Buffett's backup singer would have. This is not the main dressing room. This is just like a side dressing room that has like a couch that has tears in it. I love it. It's perfect. So I know people would have a bigger dressing room than this.

We're going to we want to ask you a little bit about your career. But let's start with the NBA finals. You you saw the teams today. What is the vibe both with the nuggets and the heat? And I also want to just throw out there. Wendy was the only person I heard after game one to be like, Hey, the heat were a little bit more live in that game than people give him credit for. This is going to be a series. So you kudos to you for that.

So you know, Michael Malone, the nuggets coach, he's not afraid to like jump his team. He's been doing it for years, like probably about three times a year. He rips the hell out of his team to the media. Who knows how many times he does it to their face. So they hadn't lost in a month. Like they literally like they lost like May 7th. Then they won the last two games of the Sun series and they swept the Lakers and they had 10 days off and they won game one. So like they hadn't experienced a loss in like a long time.

And so when they lost in that game, even though I don't think that like they're. It wasn't like they were terrible. Just Miami made a bunch of shots. I mean, they obviously could have been better. Like Malone jumped them, man. Like he he he ripped them in the locker room that he came out and ripped them to the media. And so they flew here to Miami on Monday. And then they went to Jeff Green's house for dinner.

I Jeff Green has played for like 14 teams, but I don't think the heat or one of them. But yeah, he's got a house here. Okay. So and I asked Jamal Murray where the house was and he said it was in Narnia. It was so far. I feel like he was going in Narnia. So my guess is my guess is it's somewhere in Broward County, but I don't know. So I can imagine like the bus just pulled up because you know, they're not they're not taking Ubers.

I'm sure the bus just pulled up to Jeff Green's house. And so they had a bonding dinner on Monday night. And then today, Tuesday, they had a film session. And Malone said he showed him 17 clips where they screwed up. And then that's a lot, by the way, like normally a film session with an NBA team, you're not showing him 17. You know, there's a, there's a, you know, attention span challenge there. So they like had this monstrous film session here in Miami today and then they practice. So they're, they're saying that they're going to do better.

I have to figure. I don't know because I like, during the games I'm watching, I'm not, you know, in the gambling space. Is Vegas getting slaughtered on live lines in the fourth quarter by the heat? They have to be getting slaughtered. They've been underdogs in every game pretty much. They've been, I can't count the amount of times where they've been eight or nine point underdogs in one outright. It's just, it's a wild thing to have a team in the NBA finals, one, one. And still everyone's like, well, it's a wild thing to have a team in the NBA finals.

Well, it's the heat and the nuggets are better. Yeah. You know, it's wild. I was talking with some people from the heat. When they were going into game two, they had lost four out of the last five games. Yeah. Excuse me. How are you in the NBA finals?

You lost four out of five, but I mean, this is, this heat team is, is, well, I got to imagine. So they've only been favored like in one out of their, in one game in the playoffs and they lost it. It was one of the Celtics games. I think it was game four. And I think they've won nine games as an underdog. And some of these fourth quarters when they've been down double digits, I don't know, but I got to believe the live numbers have been wild that they've come back from. So the nuggets are trying to convince themselves to, to wake up and treat them like a, like a real opponent. I think that's kind of what's happened in the last 48 hours.

Yeah. The heat are very, very tough to kill. So it sounds like what you're saying is, and I'm going to spin this into my own way because I am moving for the nuggets. It sounds like this was a good loss. It's a good thing that the nuggets lost because it will come up. They needed, they needed something like this. Like you mentioned, they hadn't lost in 27 days to kind of get their shit kicked in in the fourth quarter. Might have been a wake-up call.

That's exactly the way Michael Malone phrased it. You won't see it on television because it had to be bleeped. But that's, I don't know, how'd you know? It's exactly what he said. It's amazing. Yeah. We share a similar mindset, but so you're, you're expecting the nuggets to come out and have more. Is it, was it a lack of effort that you think happened to them in game two?

Or was it just, there were some issues on switching on screens that might be able to be explained away by a lack of effort. But I feel like it was a lot of other things that went into it besides just not wanting more. Yeah. So there was a couple of times where they screwed up. Like you said, like there was a couple of times where like Michael Porter, like they would set a screen. I'm not an X and O guy because I'll look foolish pretty quick. But there was a couple of times where Michael Porter, there was a screen and Michael Porter was supposed to switch to the other guy and he just double teamed. And so the other guy just went over and was wide open and, you know, Malone went ape over it.

But the thing about it was in game one, the heat were five of 16 on the quote, wide open threes, which is over six feet of space at the tracking software. And like the five out of 16 was like people were like, wow, that's really bad. But I was like, man, 16 is a lot. Like the Nuggets won the game by like 12 or something. And they only had eight wide open shots, eight or nine. And the heat and the heat had like almost double has been of open shots and got beat. And so like the Nuggets noticed this, the coaches were like, not necessarily a good idea. And like they tried to like tell their players.

But like you said, PFT, when you haven't lost in a month and you won game one with, I mean, having a B game, C plus B minus game, you know, it's sometimes hard to get going. And I think they got caught. And by the way, they lost by three. Right. And if Murray hits the last shot, like the heat made like almost everything and they lost by three. So I still think the Nugget, I mean, I huge respect the heat, but I still think the Nuggets are in pretty good position here if they don't screw around, which they could have not done this before. So talking about the heat, we all talk about heat culture.

You know it because you've talked to Spoe many times, Pat Riley many times. What is it about their organization that has them in these spots and always competitive with guys that you wouldn't be like, oh, that team looks like one of the best teams in the NBA? They are super duper crazy competitive with everything that they do. Like they'll be like a one on one or one on zero. Just a player doing a workout with a coach in August and the coach will try to make the player like pass out. The heat are relentless. Like they weigh their players like every few days or like I don't know what it is. Like don't quote me on this exactly, but like they're obsessive about weighing their players.

Like normally teams will weigh them unless the player has like a weight clause. They'll weigh them at the beginning of the season at the end of the season. The heat like weigh their guys like all the time. And it gets to the point where the players just weigh themselves. Yeah. Because the heat is so like there was a player when I lived here for a couple of years covering the heat. And there was a player that they were trying to get to lose weight. He was a young guy.

They're trying to get to lose weight. And somebody saw the guy. There's a Taco Bell. Like at least there used to be like maybe three blocks down the road. Somebody saw the player. Remember a Taco Bell. You used to have like the the sign. And it would say how much money you spent your costs like before they did that on the drive-thru.

There was like that little thing that told you how much money your order was. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah. You lost. So this is 10 12 years ago when I was here. Somebody saw this player in the drive-thru line. Somebody like worked for the heat saw the player in the drive-thru line. They saw the number was like $28 which in like 2010 like $28 Taco Bell was enough to feed a wedding reception.

Yeah. And so like the heat found out about it and Riley like called the guy in and like weighed him. He was like oh coach I was just buying for all my boys. You know I was taking home a piece. And like that's how the heat roll like and like Shane Badi one's told me is like if you have a big lunch they know about it. And LeBron when LeBron was here he used to weigh himself before and after every game or at least a lot of games. And there was there was one game where LeBron claimed to have gained like eight pounds in the game. Which I found completely unbelievable.

There had to have been some sort of flaw there but LeBron told the story and I checked with the trainer his trainer and he goes yeah it happened. When Jimmy Butler came to Miami on his recruiting visit like we want to sign you. They brought him into the locker room and you know had his locker all decked out and everything. And Riley Riley stepped on the scale. And he was like exact. He's like I got my exact weight when I was a Laker. Let's see what you are Jimmy. Like it was like a trick.

It was just recruiting visits. So that's just those are just the heat weight tails. They just they they're just maniacal but I don't say that in a bad way. They're maniacal about everything. They compete at everything. So that's summer league. They compete like the heat do two summer. They've been doing two summer leagues for like years.

They like they just they just they're just maniacal about competing and that carries over to just whatever whatever they do. It's it's kind of it sounds corny but ABC always be competing. That's like Riley's methodology. And so that's heat culture. Yeah. And he culture is also like if you're not getting it done they'll. Slice your throat. Yeah.

Get out of here. Yeah. You told the story. Mario Chalmers can't even go to Taco Bell. It wasn't Mario Chalmers. It was a guy who never really. I was trying to get it out of you. No.

But. You start naming players. But that's a great answer. I mean that's that is I know that like it seems corny. But if it's a cultural thing and everyone from the top down is doing that in your face all the time. Everyone starts competing like that. That's why you're exposed to says this. We're not for everybody.

Right. Yeah. I mean I would not last in Miami. I had to wait every day. I would last. You're the way people every day. You think I'm last. I don't think so.

You're telling me they're competing. I'm hearing that their body shaming. Yeah. Well I just like they're like they have expectations of what you're going to be listen. It would take one big cat Saturday morning donut. Yes. I'm out. It's not for everybody.

Not for me. It is very Miami. Yeah. I guess to be doing this. So can we get your official prediction for game three. I don't make predictions. But even if I did I. Yeah.

I mean I man if any I wish anybody luck who's going to predict what's going to happen with the Miami Heat because this team is I've been calling the bizarro team because I shouldn't make science references probably to your audience especially because they don't know what the hell I'm talking about. But like they just they do things weird. They just do things backwards. So like I'm telling you that I'm looking at this and I think the Nuggets didn't play that bad in game two and could have won and are probably in pretty good shape.

But right when you think you got it figured out that he'll put you right on your backside. Yeah. So my guess is that we'll be two to by the weekend. But that's just a guess. I don't I don't have like a great feel for it. Yeah. So talking about your career you've had a fascinating career because for the longest time you were deemed the LeBron whisperer.

You obviously are from Akron. You're also a kid from Akron. I think is a story right that your mom taught LeBron or was a teacher at LeBron's high school. So yeah I'm curious like your career obviously has evolved. Was it annoying at some times to be like I'm more than just LeBron guy like I know that I cover him. I know I covered him in Cleveland in Miami then back to Cleveland. But like I can talk about the whole league.

I have more than just one player here. I mean obviously I made it a priority not to be that guy forever because I mean I haven't covered him on a daily basis for a decade right. But I mean he was absolutely incredibly tremendous coming across him when he was 14 years old was the greatest break in my professional life. So like it was amazing to do that. And I don't regret one second of it. And if I have to get made fun of for it then so be it.

You know I think the one thing I would say is that when I came down here to Miami when he came down here I joined ESPN I got kind of slaughtered for it. And like the thing is like if I was getting special access then it's like OK you made a choice. You know you decided you were going to go be on team LeBron and you know that's your you've sold out. So but at least you get the the cream right at least you get the interviews and everything like when I came down here to Miami like he was furious at ESPN because of the way the

decision played out. And he basically I mean he was totally a pro but he basically didn't give ESPN anything for a year. For some period of time I don't want to say it was like the whole season but for some period of time he wouldn't even do walk off interviews with ESPN or maybe he did walk off interviews but he wouldn't do pregame sit down interviews. Whatever it was he like restricted ESPN access and you know we announced this big thing the heat index where we had multiple writers like covering him and like he thought it was the

worst idea ever. And so even though I knew him real well and had known him for many years at that point like he had no interest he was not interested in doing anything for me. So I was like getting skewered for being this sell out. Meanwhile I left a newspaper I left the newspaper business which you know I love the job that I had which is the Cleveland playing dealer but like I had been trying to get a newspaper for five years. You know I mean like I was not in position to turn down a massive raise and getting out

of newspapers. It would I mean if I had turned it down I would have needed you know medical attention. So and then so I got this reputation you know in by the way after a year everything was sort of fine. He sort of came back around but then like I haven't been his guy like I've written and said many critical things he's trust me he's been pissed off at me many many times and like if like like I didn't get the decision or I'm not the decision I didn't get the return to Cleveland interview like Lee Jenkins got it like good for Lee Jenkins but like

if I had if I had sold out and been like a sycophant then at least I would have gotten that interview you know. So I you know so while that is annoying I have no regrets and everything that you know LeBron helped magnify and uplift me I mean like the classic rising tide raises all ships I mean there's a whole bunch of people around LeBron who players coaches media you know other people his that he's worked with that have all benefited from him and I am definitely in that tide but but I've never been on his payroll and that's I've never been invited for Christopher Thanksgiving dinner I never will be but I've you know always very very

very blessed to have been to have come into his life when I did. If you were LeBron sycophant you definitely would not come on this show that should put everything to bed right away there we go thank goodness. What was the moment that you realized though because you you're from the same area you went to the same high school right you went to St. Vincent St. Mary's yeah when did you realize that LeBron James was going to be LeBron James. Well first off let me be clear I had no idea what the hell I was looking at because I was you know I'm seven years old I think I'm seven years old you're seven years old we're the

same age as LeBron we were that close to go to the NBA just like him. So like I really didn't know what I was doing either I was like twenty twenty one I think my first song I was twenty one he was fourteen yeah so it's not like I was like well I've seen a bunch of recruits in my day and this guy's the best one I just you know thought like this guy's really good and so when he was a rising junior so you just finished a sophomore year he's going to go junior year he goes to this camp in New Jersey Fairleigh Dickinson University before they were the sixteen seed champs and by the way their gym was a sixteen seeded gym like it was only like half hardwood it was like half like sport

court and they had this huge to have this huge camp there the Adidas ABCD camp and really the camp is designed for rising seniors guys were eighteen you know going to be seniors so LeBron was kind of there a year early but that summer was the summer that Kwame Brown got drafted first and like if you remember like for the top eight guys were high school guys Eddie Curry Tyson Chandler Kwame Brown Sagana job and so it was like oh man like I guess the NBA draft is just going to all be high school guys now so I go to this camp my boss didn't want to pay for it I was working at the Akron Beacon Journal you know medium sized paper we had a really good sports section but my boss couldn't comprehend the need to

cover an AAU event it wasn't AAU but you know a camp in New Jersey you know it required like a plane flight and hotel he thought I was insane so I paid for it in my own pocket because I knew that it was was worthwhile being there so I went and on one side of the gym were all the best college coaches in the country it was like Sheshefsky, Bayheim, Calipari Patino had just gotten hired at Louisville like a couple of months prior and then on the other side there was all these NBA scouts because now the NBA scouts got all got to come watch the 17 year olds so it was like you know Danny Ainge you know Pat Riley I don't know if Riley was there but it was like all those guys okay and LeBron completely dominated

the event from start to finish it wasn't like oh no I like that kid from Phoenix or you know those two kids from LA are probably better he dominated it from start to finish as a pimple faced 16 year old and people there like not when I say people I'm talking about like the coaches weren't allowed to say his name so they were talking code I remember Patino was like there's a young man here who would be the number one pick on the draft if he was right now there were people who were like there all the basketball scouts in like you know all the top basketball people in the country were there and they were all like yeah this 16 year old kid would be the number one pick on the draft if the draft was today and so that's when I was like oh

he's not just gonna be like a North Carolina recruit he's actually like gonna possibly be the number one pick on the draft so that's when I kind of got it and um you know from there kind of my outlook changed yeah so going off of LeBron you had uh from great to great because we are web and yama podcast uh you were in Paris you got some flak for it which I didn't even understand because it was so clear like people were like oh windy went to Paris for 90 seconds like it was pretty clear you were also starting a relationship with a guy who hopefully will be the face of the NBA for the next two decades uh is the hype should we believe all the hype what is what are you hearing and knowing the guy now and meeting him like our should we we bought a lot of

stock should we hold the stock well first off I went to Paris twice bros I went to Paris in January for a whole week wow forget about this 92nd I was there I went I'd never been to France before I have now been there twice you speak French I uh I you don't have to speak French you can get by I'd be deaf to you know part of who part of who in glass is what you gotta say uh I got a photographer I know or you know a videographer I know over there whose name is Jean Claude perfect you know when he said his name was Jean Claude I was like you gotta be kidding right um you know I I got my favorite truffle bar there I mean like come on I mean people were like oh you went there for 90 seconds I was like no I I made two trips yeah you think you think I made you think

I made one you know BS trip I made two BS trips ladies and gentlemen so uh I spent you know five or six days there I got to you know his coach is great his coach is you know they want kind of media attention quite frankly and because by the way but he came over to Vegas like he might have made 50 to 75 million dollars by coming to Vegas um you know because he's got indoor he's basically telling indoor some people to just wait it wait out wait outside um so I got to see him play got to see him practice got to spend time with him uh rode in a car with him he we were in this range rover that his agent owned and it was like I just felt bad for him like him sitting in this car and I was like Victor two words Cadillac Escalade you know Chevy Tahoe like you're when you get to the

U.S. you're gonna get taken care of um I just felt bad like he was so packed in there so I got to spend quite a bit of time with him and more time than because you're saying no to like all media requests they're like but they recognize that ESPN is you know a key to to introducing himself to the to the to the market Jonathan Givoni who's our draft analyst who's been scouting Europe for 20 years like opened a bunch of doors so I already I spent a week with them so like when I went back over there like I had already went when we had this party uh first off there was we spent another day with him doing an interview which with um a high-profile person that will run close to the draft so I was there for like three days um and then like when I went to this party that he had

for his like his whole people in his life like I like knew like 20 people to party because I had interviewed all of his youth coaches I had interviewed his some of his teammates I had interviewed um you know members of his family you know um so like that just just that moment like where we're it's 2 30 in the morning I mean Mbappe is there yep Mbappe is is at the like who are the most famous people in France who are the most famous there's some guy named um there was some actor who I don't know who he is he was in I don't know this guy is like the Tom Cruise of France I didn't know who he was his last name is is spelled s y si c I I don't know pop culture he's this like when he left early he didn't he checked out like at midnight

Mbappe's hanging out there why am I saying it wrong no no you're a basketball guy don't even put on pretenses that you're anything else there's no one thing I don't do is pretence so like like several of the most famous people in France are hanging out there's only like 65 people at the party by the way it wasn't like the Vogue party it was you know and like I know like 15 of them so like that's a great opportunity to get to know them they played a game that night so it's 2 30 in the morning and like guys this we got this was so tightly scheduled it was like okay 224 a.m final envelope is opened 226 a.m victor uh does interview 228 a.m turn on Wendy's mic right I don't I don't even know how that went John I was John Claw's job uh 222 30 228

toss back to Malika 230 game one western conference finals it was like that tightly packed and I was like I don't know this is going to come off um but it did and I had the broadcast in my ear through like our feed and I was about two seconds ahead of the feed they were watching they were watching the American feed they were getting the SPN they were watching wojj say he's one of the greatest prospects and that was like that'll be the memory that I have wojj is up there on the broadcast and wojj does not overextend when wojj says something he's got it locked down and wojj is on the broadcast saying this is maybe one of the greatest uh prospects in the history of team sports he's saying this I'm looking at his coach who's the French national team coach who understands what

he's being said not everybody in the room spoke English he's looking at me like oh my god can you believe this I'm like no I cannot believe this victor's looking at he's playing it cool and um so then so I'm hearing two seconds ahead and I asked his agent I said do you want me to signal you and he's like no I want to I want to see it in the real time so I was able to have just a little bit of a heads up to know what to look for and so then he did he celebrated with his family for like one minute came over and did the interview granted it wasn't the greatest interview in the history of interviews um but we got his reaction to being a spur 90 seconds in real time after he found out so that was a once in a lifetime thing that's not what you asked me you asked me

what is he going to be for real guys he is super duper as you know if you've seen him he's very very light he's got a very high center of gravity it's very easy to get him off balance so he is going to get embarrassed at times you know there will be highlights where people will laugh at him and say this guy can't play and then he is going to bust your ass so like there was this this video that went viral he played in this event with the french national team like in february and he was playing against like this 37 year old you know like seven foot guy from the check republic and he's backing him down he knocks him out of the way and he dunks and he glares at him and I saw it go viral and people are like oh my gosh this guy can't play in the NBA how is he going to be the

number one pick he had 22 and 17 in that game okay so this is what's going to happen yeah he's going to get embarrassed and then you're going to take a shot from the three point range from three from three point range and think that he's in the paint that he's getting in the rebound and then you're going to launch it all of a sudden you're going to eat the shot because you're not going to comprehend how long this guy's arms are and his hands his hands are like a foot long um he can almost he can almost grab the rim I'll bet if he got on his tiptoes he could grab the rim from the ground I don't think people understand how long his arms are and that he can defend the basket and the three point line at the same time and I tell that to people and they go you are out of

your mind why would you even bother saying that because I'm telling you I saw it he'd be in the he'd be protecting the front of the rim dry wood dribble in there okay I can't score here and he kicked it out to the corner and the guy would catch it in the corner okay this we shrunk the defense we're going to shoot our three and the guy would launch the three and he would get out there in time to block it now he's not going to do that but if the guy in the corner six ten he might not get that but that's the kind of plays he makes that is why everybody gets excited okay um follow question about about draft night or about the draft lottery night when did you find out that he was going to be a san antonio spur was it right before the

envelope was shown or was it on your first trip to paris when you went over there at ESPN and the NBA Adam Silver called you up he goes get let get ready to learn french buddy so first off the night that all can you know we wouldn't you know we at ESPN wouldn't have wanted him to go to san antonio and I'm saying this is a guy from Cleveland who lives in Omaha you know um the night all lottery conspiracies went to die was the Zion lottery yeah because Zion and Ja remerent were in the same lottery and the final four were nicks lakers grizzlies um pelicans are you kidding me and the lakers and the and the nicks miss out on that the Zion and Ja go to the the pelicans and grizzlies all conspiracy theories died that night so I mean I mean like you know people can come up with them

and it's fun to talk about or whatever but but I will say this pft like multiple nba general managers who knew I was over there um because I called around to some gms before some some teams that were in the lottery because I wanted to like have questions prepared so I called some of the teams are in the lottery like if you win and they were like well I don't know why you're calling me you should just talk to the spurs because they're gonna win it like several of them said that beforehand having having denied all conspiracies yeah yeah so uh you got to see him and get his reaction right afterwards in the interview and also you were around him and his family and his friends right after the cameras cut away what was his reaction genuinely you know not not the boilerplate interview

to finding out he was gonna be a spur how did he react to that information after the fact was he just really excited about because it does feel like it's the perfect fit for him yeah they were relieved I mean I do think he would have been okay with just about any place but there were some places that you know I think may not have been the best fit right out of the gate um that one they you know they they they know what they do with guys like that you know they and plus the spurs are like the most popular team in France or well the Lakers are probably still the most popular team in France but you know because of tony parker you know the Lakers are you know the spurs are way up there so um there was a comfort level I think they knew they'd be taken care of and like

when I went to um uh when I went to Paris the first time in January right after the new year the spurs were there they had three executives at the games at the practices um when some of the interviews we did with like various people in his life like his youth coaches and everything like that the spurs had already been there and talked to them or the spurs they were like leaving a meeting with us and going to a meeting with the spurs so like they were like doing their full work up on him you know in the month leading up to it um so like they are going to be ready for him ultimately he's got to stay healthy and he's you know the track record on guys that big is not good but he played every game this year and looked great and took these teams in the finals right now

was there any talk and this is a scenario that will never happen now that we know that he's going to the spurs but do you think he could have done a power play like an Eli Manning if one of the teams that he didn't want to go to got a number one pick he absolutely could have because he's European like it's one thing if like you realize or you know let's say you're scoot Henderson you were the number one choice you could be like well I don't want to play for team X I'm going to go to Europe or I'm going to go to Australia well it's you're kind of you're kind of bluffing right you don't because if you if they call your bluff then you actually have to go to Europe like Danny Ferry back in the 80s like he had to go and play in Rome right well Wenbenyama is French

like he would just like okay I'll just stay here and play for Real Madrid and I'll make 10 million euros tax-free like it was it was he had plausible he could have plausibly threatened to do that having said that when I talked to him in January he made it clear to me that he wasn't going to do it that he didn't care where he played that he was going to make it work but you never would have known for sure until you would have been until you would have played out yeah um I got a question a podcast question so you host the hoop collective great podcast with Tim McMahon and Tim bomb bond temps um so you guys sometimes have gone viral for a little tension in the podcasting the famous straw poll last year within beat how real is that I I love

it I you guys you guys snippet each other every now and then it does feel like you guys are still friends but um I like it because it's just like it's it's not it doesn't feel contrived debate it's real debate where you guys disagree about something and you have it out like unlike your relationship which is totally fake yes we should get this whole thing yeah that's right I saw you guys are in separate buses separate now you're in separate rooms there's a real there's a conspiracy here I mean we don't talk yeah we're mic and mic we don't talk off there yeah yeah yes when is the when is the in-depth profile gonna come out on the um no we we we talk every day and we get an arguments every day not every day we get an arguments regularly and um you know uh Tim

bond temps likes to call McMahon a bozo he does it three to five times a week and he'll he'll do it right on the podcast like that's all real I mean um I don't want to argue every pod I don't think that's an effective way of going about it but um we do it and like here's the thing like we're all out in the field like right bond temps goes like six 65 or 70 games a year and McMahon is in Texas and like you know you know he was up one of the first people I called and I was like hope you better check that because he lives in Dallas I was like you better check that flight schedule to uh San Antonio big boy your uh your backside's going to be down there on women yama watch you better learn French and um so yeah no that's all it's all real I mean we don't trust me we get into

disagreements um you know there have been times where bond temps won't talk to me for six to eight hours at a time um but uh it's always you always we always end up okay I love it too because you guys are in the field like you said and that's something like you know we we talk out of our ass we we we have takes for sports fans but we don't know day to day when I listen to you guys it's a perspective of okay they're talking to the players they're at the practices that's stuff that's invaluable that you really can't replicate unless you're actually there so what's happened is you know we've been doing that pod for years now and it kind of in the last you know three or two or three years has gotten widely listened to by the league and so like not some

players but more the executives the coaches the referees uh like they're definitely hearing what you're saying like it's that's always an exit like you guys live in that world yeah you guys are very high profile you know when you say something on pti or you say something on um on first take you're the guys are going to see it especially if it's somewhat controversial maybe that they're not watching but it's going to make it to them and so uh you'll hear about it but that's now becoming the case with our podcast it's become one of those things that people in the league listen to the agents um people reference it to me like in locker rooms and stuff so we've had to be a little I mean we always realize that we got held to a certain standard when you put DSPN behind

your name you're talking about the league but it has become something we've got to be aware of when you I say something about somebody especially when you're covering a series like we're covering the finals right now and like I'm not sure the players are hearing that during the finals but like you got to say something you might see the guy you said something about you know six hours later yeah you got to be aware of that and when windy speaks people listen there was an all-time moment from last year you went on first take I think you know what I'm about to ask you about you go on first take and you ask the question that nobody in the world cares about or is thinking about what is going on in Utah what are they doing and all of a sudden we all start to care about

what's happening with Utah Jazz like something's happening with Utah Jazz windy knows something he's not telling us why would windy do that what that we we became you in that moment trying to figure you out did you know that you were about to just lead a trail of breadcrumbs out there and you were like I'm about to go on national television and put on the performance of a lifetime I definitely just leaving the breadcrumbs but I didn't know it's going to go viral um look here's what happens that was a Friday it was a Friday of July 4th weekend and like 94 percent of ESPN was on vacation uh you know the NFL is in its dead period so people are already on it's you know I think July 4th last year was on a Saturday or Sunday everybody was gone so not only was like

this there were skeleton crews everywhere but like I basically had the a block of first take like steven a like the a block of most shows is like eight to nine minutes like get up has a little bit more flexibility the the a block of first take can go 25 minutes steven a has that real estate that he earned and so they will give you 25 minutes and they will talk about the Utah Jazz like like sometimes ESPN we make decisions not sometimes a lot of times we make decisions based on what the fans want to see I mean it is it is data driven like I'm sure you guys live in a data driven world you understand like um we talk about the Lakers and the Cowboys because the data says talk about the Lakers and the Cowboys well on first take there's a little bit more flexibility

so I had 20 minutes where I happened to be the authority on the set at the time if we were talking about the NFL I wouldn't have been the authority if we're talking about boxing are we talking about college football I wouldn't have been the authority but I kind of had first take and I had it because it was Friday of you know Stephen a was gone Chris Russo was gone Molly here and was gone not that the people on me were nobody's but I kind of had the stage and I had all this time I would never get three to five minutes to talk about the Utah Jazz on the highest rated show on the ESPN Slate I don't know if PTI or first take one of the highest rated I sort of fell into that moment and that's why it went viral it went viral because I had that stage and it just so happened I

I knew that something funky was going on with the jazz I had done a podcast in midnight the night before with Bontemps and McMahon where I talked because I had heard that Gobert was about to get traded but I wasn't a hundred percent sure it was going to happen so if you go on TV and you say I'm hearing Rudy Gobert is going to get traded and then he's doesn't get traded which is very possible in any deal then you're the asshole who said there was going to be a trade and there's not a trade and then you don't know what you're talking about you're actually a moron but if you say something is going on in Utah that makes me wonder whether they're going to break this team up and here's my seven reasons and I have five minutes afforded to me I can do something that you rarely

see which is to cherry pick a perfect situation in a high profile moment so a whole bunch of things had to align and then thank you Utah Jazz they did the trade like two hours later in the fingers they put it on the trade they could on the trade the following Monday they could have waited through the holiday but they did the trade two hours later so the thing was starting to go viral and then they did the trade and so I looked good and then it was a holiday weekend but there was no new content everybody's on their phone for the holiday weekend I will go 30 more years in my career I could have 25 times where I predict something that is better than that but it'll never go like that because of the circumstances that lined up the way it did

and now when people google your name the first picture that pops up is you it's the fingers you gotta also make the fingers real quick yeah can we see the fingers I'm in France I'm in France people are stopping me on the street they're doing the fingers to you yeah the fingers are the best um all right well Wendy this has been awesome I have a couple last questions real quick uh one of my favorite tweets ever it wasn't from you but it was uh your quote from uh March 15th 2017 ESPN Cleveland tweeted out Wind Horse as far as LeBron recovering and not being injured he has more equipment in his home than most colleges and he is so strong what was going on there what was the last part and he is so strong

he is so strong well he is yeah uh I have no idea what that was being taken from but he does have a lot of stuff in his house it's my favorite I don't know why but just ending it and he is so strong like reminding everyone like LeBron James he's pretty strong you know the thing about LeBron is that he a lot of people have hot tubs obviously but he had I don't know if he's got an LA but in Cleveland he always had like a cold tub at the ready like it was like your lifetime fitness your 24 hour fitness like his stuff was like ready to go at the drop of a hat whether it was 3am or 3pm like it was he had like uh professional great equipment at all times and he is so strong he's very strong so strong how strong is he not just strong so strong so strong um all right and

then my last question it's a row back question rhoback.com use code take for 20% off your first purchase q zips polos hoodies uh shorts joggers everything row back dot com promo code take 20% off uh this has been fantastic Wendy you are now a recurring guest so you have to come on anytime we ask uh that's legally binding anytime yes okay um my last question is and this is a weird one but I whenever we have a guest on I like to look through some of the tweets that I've had um I think I might have uh fetish with your hair there's a lot of tweets I've tweeted out of talking about how good your hair looks what what products are we working with like I I'm literally like looking back five years and I'm just like Wendy with the double-decker because you had like the two waves going in 2018

and Wendy's hairs and sway go and all this right now you're getting me I haven't I've been on the road basically for eight weeks so like I haven't had a haircut in forever I've got like part Conan O'Brien I got like the Mel Kuiper is working here like this is kind of getting melly over here um I use this this this this uh like you know pomade product which was recommended to me by Kyle Korover oh because I was like because I noticed that Kyle he his hair would never move like throughout an entire game and um he he I think it's like Aveda is the product I please send me a case and um you know I just there's a lot of physical attributes about me that are not attractive but I do have good hair and if but if and when I came to ESPN and they started doing TV there was

like certain things they wanted me to do that I wasn't like they were giving me these breathing exercises and they were telling me lay on the ground and stretch your back out and all these things and I've been like I'm never going to uh look like Kevin Nagandy but they were like grow your hair because I used to get the number two guys oh yeah I remember that because I would get my I get my haircut all over the country I mean I you know on the road six months a year I'd be like if I was in Dallas if I was in Vegas if I was in Portland I'd be like number two and I had the buzz cut no maintenance awesome and they were like grow your hair you're like grow your hair so I was like basically I was ordered not ordered heavily suggested by the ESPN talent coaches to grow

my hair so it's great hair it's great hair yeah it is it looks very nice beautiful hair thank you kind it's got I don't have much going for me no no stop that your hair's great I mean this the nicest way uh it's going to sound like it's not nice but it is nice I promise there's a little bit Conan O'Brien like a little bit snooki you got a pop yeah a little poof up it's got a little wave it's really getting there now man I mean if this goes seven games it's going to get it's going to get a really wild and you know hey I'll take it yeah I'll take it yeah I'd agree the last the last thing I have for you it's not really questions it's more of a compliment you didn't you didn't fall asleep during this interview so you don't have narcolepsy confirmed okay thank you for

saying that I realized that it when I looked back and saw what you're talking about which was the appearance that I fell asleep on the air I had an agent at the time and he called me immediately he was like oh my god are you okay are you okay it did look very bad like I fell asleep I did not fall asleep I swear to god I mean it's been like six years now I would admit to you you know and like it looked especially bad because you know you know fat guy fell asleep you know blah blah blah um what happened was that I was with carry champion carry champion was doing the interview and they told me that I was off that I was only getting that one question or whatever and I was looking down at my phone and I got heavy eyelids on a good day I used to get pulled over

you know I got pulled over several times because I used to work late at night and newspapers and I was in a teenager and they were like violating curfew and I'd be like driving like three in the morning and the and the guy was convinced I was you know high because I have a heavy eyelid so anyway this is too much information but I was just looking down at my phone it did look like I fell asleep but I would have had to have fallen asleep in like five seconds yeah it would have had to have been like narcolepsy but I have to admit that if I was on a jury and I saw the video I would convict yeah no you fell so you could you could just yeah I mean what do you want me to say big cat I mean I plead I plead not guilty yeah you know I throw myself at the mercy of the court at no point

was he asleep at nope nope I think they call that an Alfred plea right when you're not admitting guilt but you acknowledge that there's enough evidence to convict you yeah that sounds impressive I will take your word for it so I you know but uh I would let's put it this way I would plea bargain yes I would be enough trouble right I probably have to please yes all right well windy I believe you thank you so much we really appreciate you are coming back on your recurring guest now good luck with the rest thanks for having me on yeah and you you'll probably cut this out but no BS your guys work ethic is absolutely jaw dropping and we stay up late and record as late as four in the morning um we've recorded as late as four in the morning after some of these games

and it's hard but we do it because I know that you guys do stuff like that and I know how your audience appreciates that so I don't want to make this like a love fest but I would just say real talk media person to media person content creator content creator much respect and inspirational why would we ever cut you're so strong why would we ever cut that we would never cut that that was awesome thank you we're gonna we're gonna actually take that piece and put it the beginning of the interview as well nice little sandwich and then you can just end it right there all right yeah windy thank you so much and uh appreciate all your time Brian Windhorst was brought to you by our good friends over at front door we all had that long

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buying houses in Chicago I'm going to be using front door I can think of three things right now I can use front door for I desperately need help with front door is going to help me get it done and it's so easy you can video chat with experts they can tell you what to do so you can fix it yourself or again if you can't fix it yourself they'll give you a list of people that can download the app now get a free video chat at front door that's front door download the front door app now and you get a free video chat and now here's Dan Rappaport and now for something completely different okay we now welcome on our colleague Dan Rappaport here to talk to us about the crazy crazy day that we've had in the golf world live PGA coming together I don't know

even where to start I guess let's start here on your shock level where was it when this news came out because it came out from a CNBC tweet that was the first I saw I think the world saw what was your shock level in like instant knee jerk reaction to what was going on a 10 out of 10 I mean the players had no idea I spoke to a bunch of players including major champions who they didn't know how to react to the news because they were still processing it like the rest of us like the rumor mill for this has been churning and churning for years and years and I've heard so many batshit rumors this guy's gonna go that guy's gonna go the Saudis are gonna do this I never heard a peep about this I was at the memorial last week in Columbus in Columbus talking with players

talking with PGA tour executives about next year about live it never came up so really really shocked that it happened as quickly as it did I mean it was only a year ago that Jay Monahan was on TV and telling us that these are bad people these are nefarious actors they're trying to buy the sport and you shouldn't do this you should say loyal do not betray the PGA tour now you've got him on CNBC sitting next to Yasir al-Rumaian like their best pals it's it's genuinely wild how fast it happened and I cannot believe that they kept it quiet so how how big of a revolt could the PGA have on their hands with their own players because if I was a player on the PGA tour I would be extremely upset at the commissioner I'd be upset at the entire tour because they just like you said

they spent the better part of two years vilifying anybody that took the money insinuating that there's blood on people's hands for getting paid a hundred million dollars to go play golf and shorts and now it turns out they've been negotiating with them the entire time behind the scenes to do business with them give them a seat on their board basically merge the two tours together and they actually like the tour took money out of its own players hands by doing this so what what recourse do the players have in terms of like I know there's gonna be like a closed door meeting there's gonna be meeting with with monahan they're probably gonna want to beat the shit out of them like what what do the players have what power do they have right now and how do you think

that they're going to react what the what the entire tour did I think they have less maybe less power than they thought they did because throughout this whole last two years the PGA tour has made a point to say that the PGA tour is its players there's they're they're one they're one in the same it's a player-run organization it's different from the other two from the other sports leagues it definitely doesn't feel that way right now I mean I guess they could strike but I I don't see that happening you know there are guys people will be different levels of piss right you'll have you'll have the guys who are kind of the rank and file who are just upset because it you know it's it's a big it's hypocritical and and jay monahan said one thing into the other then you're gonna

have the guys like you mentioned like ricky fowler who was offered seventy five million dollars will zalatoris 130 million dollars I heard a rumor that was I think pretty credible that they offered Hideki Matsuyama 300 million dollars and he said no and one of the reasons they said no was because jay monahan said to them stay stick with us we'll take care of you stay loyal you won't have to apologize for being a member of this tour so you know there's gonna be players who are gonna look jay monahan in the face and say you need to resign because you lied to us you told us this was never gonna happen and now it just happened I mean there was one one guy Dylan Wu who fell in Northwestern Wildcat I had to get that in there who uh he basically went on Twitter and

said can someone explain to me how this guy gets basically a promotion right because in in the release he's the commissioner of this new entity after just saying one thing for two years and then just completely doing the opposite like how does that work so monahan's got a lot of explaining to do as they say okay so I know pga tour players are pissed right now obviously they have every right to be is there a small part though because it's a take on workshopping that probably doesn't make any sense I was just firing off tweets when all the cast was going is there a small part of them though that they know that now they're gonna get more money like this means more money I would assume for pga tour players because at the end of the day the pga tour was running out of money they

couldn't compete with the money now live is investing like guys who can can twist in their mind I held my moral moral ground when I when I had to but now I also get the benefit of having more money going on in the future yeah I had this conversation with with Harris English who played on the Ryder Cup team and he was talking about money money money and I basically said like it's at the end of the day it's more money in your pocket and jealousy is a nasty trait and look maybe you didn't get the 50 million initially but but money will flow to you yeah I think that's what monahan's gonna try to say today to his players is like there's a lot of noise going on right now but if we look back on this in five years your golf we've had this kind of white whale in our

sport for a while of this global tour because golf is not just an american sport it's obviously huge in the uk huge in scotland ireland england australia japan but the pga tour is like so so centric so there's been this kind of pipe dream of we could have like a formula one circuit where we've got events in LA and New York and Rome and Paris and australia and tokyo we are closer to that you know the dp world tour is also involved with this which is the former european tour so golf is probably going more global there's definitely going to be more money involved eventually I think people by nature when there's a change this big and they weren't they didn't find out about it I think in your life if someone tells you something huge you didn't know you're like why what the fuck didn't

you tell me so I think there's that and I do think when the dust settles this whole thing has definitely been good for professional golfers they're richer than ever yeah and so tell me this because it's basically like putting it into two camps there's the guys that passed up big big bucks how many of those guys existed like that you know the ricky fowler's will's alder because they have a different level of pissed but if you're just a guy who wasn't even considering live this is more money for you going forward like the pga tour will have more money going forward yeah how many players would look like different guys flirted with the Saudis to different levels there were some who got as far as an offer but basically every player had an agent at least take a meeting

I mean it would be professional malpractice not to you've got this new entity that's coming in is going to pay people hundreds of million dollars if you don't at least have your agent sit down with them and then you're an idiot but there's different levels of this guys like rory mackleroy and jordan spieth they never really got to that level but they did know and all these guys know that in the back of their mind if they did kind of put themselves out there if they did flirt a little bit they could have gotten that money so any player that you know these people name will recognize like zander shawfully patrick cantley victor hovland you know willsal torus matt fits patrick all all of these guys know they could have gotten 50 a hundred million dollars to pay you know and if

they knew that this was going to happen how many more of them would have done it probably a lot yeah that's the thing is like there there are a lot of people out there that might be happy because they're going to get more money on the tour once the Saudi money comes into it but they also would have gotten much much more money if they had taken the live deal gone over there for a year come back and then now there's a merger and now they're making more money on the pga tour too so there's an enormous amount of money that a lot of golfers have lost and also i got to imagine there's probably a handful of golfers on the pga tour who are morally object they're objecting to doing business with the Saudi government right now even if they hadn't you know gone out and flirted

with the live tour in the past if there are guys that didn't even think about jumping ship that might not be so happy that now your boss who has spent two years telling you how evil this tour is is now forcing you to also work for them there are probably a couple guys out there that that don't care as much about the money that are thinking about that yeah i mean there there are good people in the world there are definitely people who objected to this from from a moral standpoint and they'll continue to do so and i think there's like a general sadness uh in in the in the sport right now from a lot of people which is like at the end of the day and it sounds simplistic and it sounds kind of depressing but like the the money went out there's really no other way to put it

you know there were all these moral moral objections and and that's what the pga tour was was trying to do initially they took a really hard line stance on this they said if you go over there you're banned and then they also you know they there was a concerted effort to to tie these people to 9 11 to these human to Khashogis merger to the women's rights in Saudi Arabia they they wanted to make it really hard for people to do business with live golf because they thought okay if we can keep live golf as a money losing entity right then eventually the Saudis will just get bored or they'll move on or this won't continue forever and it will just kind of fizzle out that's that's obviously was never going to happen these guys have endless pits of money they just paid

an aging french striker kareem benzema 215 million i mean this is it's it's monopoly money to them so the pga tour i guess was was wrong in that assessment they were wrong in thinking that they could outlast live when really live was the ones who were gonna prepare to just keep pumping money in and money in and money in and basically bleed the pga tour dry and the pga tour responded by whipping together all this money and that was initially filled nickels and things like where did all this money come from all of a sudden there's this competitor and you have all this money now to pay your players the answer is they had to ask their sponsors for a lot more and they went into the reserves they like basically borrowed against future earnings in order to fund these

tournaments this year that's why guys are making so much more like everyone is going to break the record for pga tour earnings this year john rom and scotty shuffler already way past what anyone's made it's not even june's you know it's june 6th and and that was not sustainable and i think that's what the pga tour realized when they came to the harsh realization that we cannot outlast these guys and and we're really extending ourselves thin trying to whip together enough money to appease our stars when you realize that you can't continue to do that like what what do you do at that point so so that's a great point because it's it's clear that like the timing was running out for the pga i've also seen uh thrown out there that obviously the ongoing litigation they were going to start

looking into the pga being a nonprofit organization how much did that play into this happening right now it's it's definitely possible i i don't know the answer but you know no and no entity wants their books opened up especially when you're a nonprofit organization you know that has a bunch of vps who live in very nice homes and you know commissioner who makes good money and flies on a private jet like it's just not really something that you want coming out and other proto leagues were nonprofit organizations it's kind of like an antiquated thing the nfl was until not that long ago and then eventually they're like all right like we're a real business we really got to shift this but the pga tours has kept it like there was in the 90s they were

challenged and the pga tour commissioner basically lobbied congress to to basically call the dogs off to to let us keep this so i don't know is it possible that the doj went in and sniffed around found some things they didn't like said to the pga tour look this is not going to go your way i don't i don't think that this is going to go your way and and that that's what brought them to the table it's definitely possible i i don't know i just don't know there's so many questions my my thought was that there had to be some sort of inciting incident that made the pga come to the table and reverse course all of a sudden something was happening behind the scenes i don't know if it was something along the lines of like more big names were going to go like if they were going to get

scottie sheffler to jump if they can't afford to lose all their best players to go over to live and so that would be something that would bring the pga tour to the table or it could be like you mentioned um the lawsuit uh even though it looked like a lot of live players were jumping off that lawsuit they were still running the risk of discovery and they don't want to go to court but outside of that outside the legal ramifications have you heard anything behind the scenes about more big-name players that were prepared to go over to the live tour that made the pga tour finally say okay enough is enough we need to do business with these guys it wasn't going to happen this year because unlike last year when when live was kind of

throwing together everything and they were signing new guys every week it was it was electric in my business there were rumors for the first time you know golf doesn't really have rumors like that it was like the NBA trade deadline um but this year this year live had their 48 players set and they have the you know the 12-4 van teams it's a huge part of there so i don't think it was players about to jump one thing that comes to mind in this is is brooks won the won the pga championship i know that's your guys boy you know it it's not so much that he won because we knew these guys were good it was kind of the reaction afterwards they're just there was a lot of heat taken out of it there was a lot of heat taken out of the battle it wasn't so oh like these guys are terrible even

rory mackerel in the last couple weeks that's sort of like softened his rhetoric i you know i don't hold it i don't hold this against guys who went and did it so i just think like when it initially came it was when live initially came on the scene it was it was such a a crazy thing i said the Saudis are going to come over and try but like and maybe this is sport washing and play after a year or two it was kind of like okay they're still around they still have all this money they're still going to offer this money to these players so i don't know if it was one inside the incident or more of like a slow burn you have you make a good point which is that brooks kepka might have he might have created peace in the middle east he might have solved that entire entire conflict

by winning the pga championship thank you brooks yeah he tweeted you know welfare check on shambli and and that's actually a point that i've like tried to make is is in my world we're so inside golf that we can we can convince ourselves of so many different things and you talk to people at the pj tour and they say this and that and it's actually good it's actually kind of nice to just zoom out and be like all right what's the general reaction from people the general reaction is that this is a win for the Saudis what's a reaction from the players you've got the live players taylor guj is on there tweeting a picture of his feet out of beach being like what happened today phil is is dancing this is like the best day of phil's life brooks kepka is taking shots at brandel shambli

meanwhile you've got callin mori kawa sending tweets like oh i love finding about this on twitter justin thomas you know tweeting of uh screenshot or a screen video of how many techs he got the pj tour players are not happy and the live golfers are very happy so sometimes it's it's important not to read deeper than that yeah so um would you say it's fair to say that like live golf this was kind of their plan all along they wanted to be part of the pga they were never really gonna be sustainable as their own you know golf league they were on the cw no one was watching the whole team method and everything so if they're this was their plan all along and you say like it's a win for them what is it gonna look like going forward like did they so the pga is still

the pga but now the saudis have invested in the pga i explain it to me essentially like i'm naming i would i would love to explain it to you i i don't have a full grasp because i'm not sure they have a full grasp but yes i i do think it's going to continue to be the pga tour i think you're going to continue to see the tournaments that you've seen before you know riviera players championship tbc saugrass the memorial obviously the majors but that's sort of outside this discussion you know it might look like what there's actually i don't know if you guys know this there's actually a saudi funded series on the lpga tour right now called the aramco series and they pay them weight like way more money than the lpga events and all the women play and no one

said anything about it that's again a discussion for another time but yeah it could be like you know there's a certain live circuit or maybe there's a live team competition that's going on in the background the release did say that there will be a team aspect to this so i think they're still figuring all of that out i think it will look more similar to the pga tour than it does to 54 holes shotgun star right like i don't think that that entity and their business plan which was to sell these teams for hundreds of millions sell the cliques and then like that was in my opinion that was never going to work right that was just almost a front for them to just keep pumping money and keep pumping money and saying to players we're still gonna offer you this we're

still gonna offer you this when their season ends in october there is going to be a whole new round of them coming to players and saying hey 200 million let's make it 250 so yeah it was their it seemed to be their plan all along this is a victory for them and just just look at the way that they're responding to this news it's a yeah yeah because it did feel like the live like we could pretend that they were trying to make a sustainable alternative to the pga tour but in reality they were just trying to get the pga tour to the negotiating table and that's been that's been the goal for all of their investments really in sports think about golf is such a well-moneyed sport you look at the look at the sponsors of the big tournaments it's like Rolex it's like

Mercedes it's MasterCard it's these you know insurance companies like these huge American companies and what better way to get a seat at the table to start doing business with these people than to be on the policy board of the pga tour so now you've got Yasser al-Ramiyan who runs the PIF which is the Saudi sovereign fund it's controlled by the government he's got a seat at the table this is what they've wanted all along and if you think that this is not going to embolden them to do this in other sports like what's stopping them they haven't they have all this money and they also know they're smart they're definitely smart they know that oil is a finite resource it's not going to be there forever they have to do other things with this money and they've obviously

decided that sport maybe for business maybe for PR maybe it's an indirect way to make more money by being able to invest with these people because oh yasser he's on the pga tour policy board like this has very wide-ranging implications yeah it has been crazy because i i've been saying that if their goal was to launder their own reputation the creation of the live golf league up to this point has actually kind of done the opposite of that if anything it had gotten more people talking about any human rights violations and all the problems with with the Saudi public investment fund but now that they are fully integrated with pga i think that it's definitely going to spread soft power and mission accomplished to them i actually in a weird way i think the pgh or

they're the ones that look like the biggest assholes and all this because of everything that you said like linking the public investment fund to 9 11 all that stuff to be doing that while also going behind your own players backs and negotiating i think that's so dirty with the pga tour did to their own players my big question though is with a seat at the table are the pga players going to be allowed to golf in shorts now moving forward it's a great question it's a great question they would they would certainly like to it's probably i mean it's definitely possible i mean you're going to see a new commercial entity right there's going to be there's going to be new rules we don't know what the future is going to look like yeah well they'd be wearing shorts will they be

teeing off on the 13 pole anything is fair game this the Saudis are in the mix now so yeah i want to go back to something you said with rory um i have a theory that rory knew i know that most almost all the pga players didn't know but if you could track what rory the way he was acting how staunchly opposed he was and then the last couple months he's backed off of that do you think rory knew and do you think rory maybe got something to be like hey rory stop talking about how bad this is because we're making a deal with you or without you you could you can come along right now and and get a little money or you can you know just deal with it and find out like everyone else one part of me says yes if there's one player who would know it would be rory mackerel he's been

the front man he's been the spokesman but i talked to a source pretty close to the pga tour who was like if the players knew about this it would have leaked immediately the the players don't don't really keep secrets and rory mackerel talks a lot so in that sense i feel like maybe he didn't know but yeah it's it is conspicuous timing because there he did soften his rhetoric he did come off it a lot if he knew and no one else knew then that's gonna make them mad too right that's gonna make the players mad too they're gonna be like oh you know you're taking care of some guys but not the other guys i think you're right pfd i think this is a you know if you want to look at the pr spin it's it's it's a really tough thing for the pga tour to explain this this complete 180

you know i saw dave tweet a clip of j monahan with his piercing blue eyes looking at the camera and being like i have family friends who died in 9 11 and my heart goes out to them and now he's calling them like a groundbreaking entity that he's going to do business with the word hypocrisy is comes to mind for sure yeah and they're and you know there's going to be a lot of people who want him out yeah no he looks like a huge dick huge dick yeah he comes off way worse than mbs and all this which is hard to do he's pulled he's pulled it off uh it's just a reminder to the players like take the money always take the money and sometimes you have to learn a lesson like this the hard way but if somebody's offering you a hundred million dollars to do anything my stance is i will do

anything for a hundred million dollars you can name it that's that's my price we all have a price to pretend otherwise i think is is lunacy everyone's got a price know what that is and uh yeah they fucked the players over so when are we gonna when are we gonna find out more about what the framework is is there a scheduled announcement about when these new rules what the format's going to look like a super league for golf or is it just going to be dangling out there for the rest of the year i think they're going to figure it out as they go i mean i have a really hard time taking the pga tour for its word for for anything right now um just just the way the last year is gone you know there's this meeting at four i'm going to definitely talk to a few guys afterwards but

i think if they knew more they would they would give more because they know that this is looks like a thing that was cobbled together you know kind of behind closed doors the last minute i don't think we have any idea what it's going to look like going forward and i think next year probably won't be the final product i mean this is just the beginning of this we we haven't this hasn't happened in in in sports really like the nfl or the mba or the nhl just like basically letting in a huge sum of money from a foreign investor with a nation with a crazy bad reputation and now they're going to have a seat at the table deciding the future of the sport i got no idea i mean i'm sure there's there's calls going on the gus a national like well

so what what's going on here do we we got to deal with these guys now it's it's just starting you know we thought this we thought it was kind of coming to to a not an end but it was slowing down the live news cycle they were just kind of doing their thing on the cw and then boom this drops to that on the other side of it is there anybody that's on the live tour right now who is upset about the fact that they're going to have to go back and merge with the pga is there anyone who was like you know getting cut every week that decided okay i'll take the money go over to live oh shit now i got to go back over and play in actual tournaments and risk not making as much money is there anyone out there that's like actually looking at from that point of view yeah

it's possible guys like i got a pretty sweet deal i shot 80 76 and i made 200 grand it was pretty great yeah yeah i don't know if that's going to happen anymore no i think i think that they're you know they a lot of these guys took a lot of heat like you said people said really horrible things about them and whether you believe that or not you know that's that was the narrative surrounding a lot of these guys you had phil mickelson and all-time great who like turned into a ghost for a year because of this thing and he's like the most gregarious character flashing the thumbs up he didn't even defend his title at the pg championship last year because this was such a horrible thing he couldn't show his face now they feel like they've it's like a screw you

you guys were all hypocrites we were right the entire time so is there a chance that the new pga tour live do they pay because like it feels like all the pga tour players are gonna be pissed do they just like essentially how this whole deal happened because that's really what they can say is like money talks is there a chance they pay all the pga tour players like hey shut up here's some money here's some guaranteed money i know that they they offered out that live players might have to pay fines to get back in the pga tour what do you think's going to happen with that yeah i think a lot of that money that the pif is pumping into golf will be funneled directly to the players and that's what we talked about earlier at the end of the day you give them enough money

and and they'll probably be okay with it um there's definitely going to be some some awkward conversations there's going to be some really upset guys who are like i can't believe that you you know j monahan like went to visit a lot of these people in person like there were phone calls and dinners where he was not threatening and not begging but like really really saying appealing to them on like an emotional level like let's stay united that was the that was the messaging and all the player meetings throughout this whole thing was let's stay united front this is our tour we're doing this for us um so yeah i guess they'll probably redistribute a lot of that money to the players but you know it'll definitely make them feel better if they have a couple extra million

in their pocket and the players are the players are the winners in this they're making a lot more money than they were before right right that was my initial point that like it sucks really bad right now and there's some guys like i i miss out on a hundred million dollars but at the in like five years i would assume a lot of these guys are gonna look back and like well it that was the moment that we started making a shitload more money it gets to a kind of a you know we i know we got to keep things light on this show but it gets to like a very serious question of like is any money just like fine just take any money because it opens up that question in other sports if you know some guy who controls some country's money you know says oh i want to give the NBA players a

billion dollars you know and distribute it evenly whatever it is five million dollars and you know we'll go play a game and whatever country like the pj tour set a hell of a precedent yeah well vinsberg man did vinsberg man is always right is ahead of the curve when it comes to all this stuff is this the future of sports just every league will now be run out of Saudi Arabia it's it's it's you know it's a question that you want to laugh at but it's actually like a fair question they're they paid for Ronaldo they paid for it's a little different in soccer because there's so many players but like a sport like tennis is a good i think example if the Saudis came and offered tennis because tennis is really great for the like the top 20 players but

there's not nearly as many players making a good living in tennis as there is in golf the Saudis came to tennis and said here's a bunch of this money let's make it the pif tour they would say yes in a heartbeat yeah that's crazy i mean that's like it's it's we're sitting here and we're talking about like our sports about to be bought by the Saudi Arabian government or other governments and it's not a ridiculous question it's not like a laughing man i mean it's sort of a laughing matter just the ridiculousness of it but it's not like so outlandish well once the Saudis get involved in like name image and likeness and college football that's when that's when we're going to have some real real conversations yeah this guy went to uh you know the University of Alabama presented by

the pif yeah yeah University of Riyadh becomes uh number one pre-season ranked in yeah the the the date line on the on the release today was New York Riyadh Panavidra beach it's just like put it in there it is like that's just yeah Saban ending his career coaching in Saudi Arabia would that would be that would be quite the same it's twilight years um all right well Dan i got one last question it's roback question rhoback.com use code take for 20% off your first purchase roback.com code take for 20% off your first purchase qzips polos hoodies joggers shorts all at roback.com promo code take uh so Phil Mickelson's kind of the biggest winner here right like he yes maybe you could give us your top three winners and losers because phil feels like

the the guy who was like he was telling everyone and similar to Rory changing his tune phil coming back on twitter and starting to like jump at people and like jump down people's throats like that should have been an inkling of oh something is up because phil's getting he's getting chesty out there i i asked phil this question at the pj championship in rochester i said like why why are you continuing to do this he's like what do you mean i'm like why why do you keep talking shit on twitter like surely you could just coast on all of your money and being an all-time great and everybody loves you he's like he gives me this look and he goes i know some things that other people don't and everyone gets quiet and we're like what do you mean he's like oh it'll come out soon

it'll come out soon so i would say number one winner is phil mickelson or man number one winner would be mohammed bin salman number two winner would be phil mickelson number three winner i think would be the golf fan because this is dramatic golf twitter has been electric and again i think this will result in a better product morality aside it's a big asterisk it's a big asterisk but from a pure product standpoint it will probably be a better product than it was before um the biggest losers in this uh j monahan number one um it probably rory macaroy number two not because rory's a bad guy just because he was the most vocal tiger also hates live and i think this is probably a moment for tiger where he's like shit like i he doesn't have the leverage that he

used to have because he just doesn't play he just got another ankle surgery it's like what is his role in this going forward probably he doesn't he only plays the majors anyway so he doesn't have a huge role in this so i'll say j monahan i'll say rory macaroy and brandl shambly yeah because he he really he really and i i do admire kind of how strong he's he's dug his feet in on the take uh you i just saw him on golf channel say it's one of the saddest days in the history of professional golf so yeah those are those are your winners and losers i i find it hard to believe that phil michelson would have had inside information about some business deal that was about to go down and then capitalized on it that doesn't sound like the phil that i know dan look it's it's another

chapter in a in a career unlike any other it's he he you know there was a book by by allen ship like that came out we need another we need another chapter like we just yeah we need more he just studied for the us open that's going to be that's going to be insane the press conferences everything around it is going to be wild yeah there there's energy there's attention in golf again there's there's you know we're going to have those awkward pressers the netflix show the netflix show might be might be the the third biggest winner also because they got they got a blessing with live the first season and again it looked like things were coming down and then this happens again they've got a whole new round of drama yeah allen shipman might be one of the losers because he tweeted just last

night uh saying that he finished his book uh live live and let die so he had just finished he was literally showing a tweet of him submitting it and now i i think he i think you probably have to go back and and work on it a little he's a winner allen's got four kids to put through college he's an absolute the book will sell even more but but just knowing like he had 24 hours to be like done with my book it took a year and a half and i mean one of the biggest one of the biggest losers is me i'm getting married this weekend true um and my my fiance soon to be wife is is is not pleased with the timing of this news so you know not it's not about me again this is not about me but it's uh it's a tricky one i might you know i might be the first person to get divorced before

they get married in human history you should you should invoice the saudis yeah yeah they're they're clearly hanging out yeah hey can you just you know we got some money we got this wedding um can you just put the bill maybe like no problem celebration yeah they love the press yeah they love the press they love the press all right well dan thank you so much good luck with wedding week um appreciate you filling us in on all this and uh yeah talk to you soon thanks guys see it dan raport was brought to you by the barstool sports book app the barstool sports book i've got on my phone right here i'm looking at it i'm checking out some baseball bets that i can make today my system the system of just betting against the athletics has been insanely hot this year i

recommend you follow that you can find that bet on the barstool sports book you're betting against the oakland days money line and you're combining it with the oakland days under it's been a hot bet making some good money i'm also doing some things with the nva parlays big cats got parlays prop lays that come out before every game hanks got some stuff on there too the barstool sports book is where i make my bets i'm using it now i'm in chicago so i can use i can log on from my house now and bet on the barstool sports book it's been amazing you can download and sign up today for the barstool sports book terms apply must be 21 or over if you have a gambling problem called 1-800 gambler okay let's wrap up with f a q's uh who's asking him max hank memes memes memes should do

yeah memes should do it he's in studio memes come on memes here we go you can do this memes i know you can read i struggle with it no you're good you're good you're a great reader remember to cut yourself too okay he's a lot lot going on in memes his brain right now let's see if he can get this hey father of three cat pro nuggets talk commenter and others in honor of skip and shannon breaking up if either of you were to call it quits but pmt had to go on who is your dream replacement for your co-host not billy that's a very good question uh probably skip yeah i'm trying to think i don't really know like i don't this is one of those things like they're basically asking us to think of like hey if you if you could cheat with one person who would you

cheat with yeah who's on who's on your whole past list i mean big cat um hmm yeah but like more thing about it more in like a chaotic way yeah uh manuacho done okay just to beat him yeah heavily just just bury him i would just be so sarcastic to him just do a whole show where he never he thinks that we're like getting along the entire time for me i think probably revel and i would just be i would just beat him up every podcast all right time to record another part of my take darin kick him in the nuts that'd be fun yeah rick riley oh everybody would hate that podcast that would that would just be me and rick trying to one up each other nothing would ever get accomplished yeah what about billy and jake if you guys had to host with anyone else

who would you host with anyone in the world jake would just be like uh al michaels like to riko yeah any of them are we talking sports or can we talk about any sports okay this is a sports show jj watt okay and kyle long just so that they could fight the whole time oh nice billy just wants to create like a grizzly bear fight video with humans he should have done taylor luan and tj watt that would make it one too yeah real beef okay next question will the new studio look like a production studio or will it still look like a strip mall tax guy's office calpher news so i don't know what a production studio looks like all say is it will be if you were if you go back i think the pm tv where we did memories uh there was a scene where

we first met jake in this studio it was clean there was nothing in here the new studio will be the same where the first month or so will be clean with nothing in there and then we will live in there and then it will become exactly like this the biggest difference with the new studio really is that we have a controlled booth yeah so max and memes will be behind the glass yeah but pft we're gonna we're just and jake well yeah so pft we're just gonna i mean we're gonna do the same thing well the biggest difference is we don't have any plans on having a squat rack in the studio yeah yeah so that that will live outside the studio there will still be a squat rack there because we can't sacrifice these gains that we've made yeah and we're in great shape if

you look back compared to like six years ago when we started this podcast we're so much fitter and stronger and younger looking it's crazy it will be nice to not be like hey let's put this gigantic thing in the middle of the studio that takes up space all the time yeah so instead of the squat rack we're getting an f-18 cockpit simulator well and also a lottery ball machine that is going to be enormous oh i saw you got spinal yeah i know i need to read it yeah uh okay next one can we do sorry can we do a recap of why all the segments are named accordingly i.e the michael will bond i played golf with obama last week who's back of the week so our sorry whatever happened to todd and gordo mm mm pft i i didn't really hear that mums can you speak up he basically

is asking how we named the segments and uh i'll start with the todd and gordo he said what happened to todd and gordo todd and gordo is still alive i i think we just realized that you know we did it we did it well and then i think we did it in miami it didn't come people didn't love it as much i think we'll bring it back at some point for a video we can't do it we can't do it all the time i think we have to save it for a special occasion if there's something big that happens in canada if if a canid team gets to a stanley cup final i'm sure todd and or gordo yes we'll make a reappearance at that point yes but yeah you can't we can't live life as canadians who's that would make us too soft who's todd and who's gordo um i'm gordo you're tired all right i did not remember

that but yeah most of the other segment names we haven't done segments traditionally we kind of evolved off of that but like those just you know came from our brains dumb actually i remember where they came from i remember when big cat and i were starting to plan out this podcast it was probably like a month before we even taped a demo of it because we did one demo show um and before we even got to that point we were just on like a google chat with each other back and forth what do you think good segments for the show would be i distinctly remember texting back and forth like pr 101 spin zone mike will bonds name drop of the week these things back and forth and the ideas for the segments are really i think what got us excited about doing the show in

the first place because we realized oh this is the person that thinks about sports the same way that i think about sports this show is gonna be funny yeah and we we still kind of do the segments we just don't say it before like we still do spin zones and pr 101's and and mike greenberg's dumb rules but yeah we just don't say it announce it before yep next one we all know how pft got his name but how did big cat become big cat well my last name it's not hard to figure that one out and uh i am a little bit larger so people used to call me that and uh yeah it's it's quite a leap yo when you think about it neither one of our names really should take a rocket scientist to

figure out like damn wondering how that happened yeah that was a bad one uh what i tried i i tried to i always wanted to be Cadillac that would have been sick that one didn't stick i tried to force that all my friends that didn't stick like kate no just like call me Cadillac like imagine if i was the big Cadillac like i had nothing to do with the name cats yeah what just Cadillac Cadillac yeah it sounds like similar kind of similar but like yeah i'm sure people called you cat too let's make what's up cat and then yeah people call me cat yeah yeah so you want to be Cadillac yeah Cadillac yeah it's it's funny because i sometimes i hang out with people from like different parts of my life that know me by different names and a couple months ago i was with somebody that was one of

my best friends in high school one of my best friends in college one of my best friends in austin texas and then somebody from barstool and all four of those were calling me four different names at the same time and it was it it blew my mind to to try to respond to all of them and they'd also confused everybody that was at the table trying to figure out why other people were calling me different names yeah by many names yeah and that i don't i don't really i call you pft all the time i think hank sometimes calls me daniel when he gets mad at me um i call you dan in meetings which is i always get a kick out of like yeah we'll talk we'll see what dan dan at pft though i saw i always just call pft that's not that's not true because hank sometimes when you

are mad at me you'll call me a nickname that one of my other friends has taught you that they call me so it's almost like you making fun of me for having other friends no i like i like leg your friends call you leg and cracks me out yeah uh okay is that it that's it great job memes round of applause for memes nice job memes the camera work was not great no that's okay that's okay um all right hey memes have you ever gotten this nope should we do the lottery ball i'm ready is everyone ready billy can you move the mic away from you for a second let jake do it you know what you know what you know what what i'm gonna get mad one more time in the studio before i leave okay and it's gonna be fun numbers but it's not over six oh that was pft

pft no that was pft that was very clearly you were in the middle of a talk you were talking and i said numbers said 69 it's crazy because me and big cat were making eye contact over a video feed with a lag and i still beat you i just had to get him in a sentence yeah i'm talking all right so pft has 69 billy what's your number 21 okay uh pink what 17 okay memes seven never gotten it 20 jake 18 i'll go 26 the only number that has never been there's never come up i'm rooting for you pft let's go 57 57 nobody's guess 57 jellyfish come out of their mouths they come out of their mouths yeah okay squirters love you guys

it's for me yeah Take on me Take on me Take on me Take on me Take on me Take on me

Take on me