PTI - Who Set the Tone on Opening Night of the NBA 2025-26 Season?

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser discuss the 2025–26 NBA season openers, whether Broncos coach Sean Payton’s comments went too far, and a new NCAA rule allowing G League players to play college basketball. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, sports fans, the ESPN app has all of ESPN all in one place. The ESPN app is your home to thousands of live events, ESPN shows, and originals across every ESPN network and service. And now you can check if you already have ESPN Unlimited as part of your TV package for no additional calls. Visit activate.esPN.com to learn how to access your account or sign up, then start streaming in the ESPN app. It's all of ESPN all in one place. Sign up or activate now. Pardon the interruption, but I'm Mike Wilbon. It's National Color Day, Tony. What's your favorite color?

I'm Tony Kornheiser, pale yellow, the color of my body. Stop. I thought you were going to say green. The color. Money. Your alma mater's color. Binghamton. Yeah.

Oh, you would have said purple, man. Always purple. I always remember getting the big box of Crayola crayons when I was a kid and going through and finding something called burnt sienna. And I'd never heard of it. I hadn't heard of sienna and certainly not burnt sienna. And I always thought that was a cool color. Kind of thing?

Sort of darker, sort of darker than oranges. Welcome to PTI Boys and Girls. In today's episode, Russell Wilson is Miffed. Tom Izzo is irked. And Steve Young joins us for five good minutes. But we begin today with last night's two opening games in the NBA. Champions Oklahoma City at home on Banner and Ring Night, went two overtimes to beat Houston.

And the Lakers at home, but without LeBron James, we're beaten by Golden State by 10 points. Wilbon, which was the more intriguing result from the NBA last night? I'm torn between talking about the Warriors. We've talked about since 2014. But just because they now have Jimmy Butler the whole year, they have a lineup. They have Al Hoare. Well, they have them the whole year until he says, I want to leave.

He's not going to say I want to leave. Okay. But I'm torn between that and looking at Houston OKC, which could be a Western Conference Final. They could be the two best teams in the league. Oh, wait, I think they are right now, tonight, the two best teams in the league. I thought you like Denver. I thought you like Denver. I like Denver.

to wind up being in the Western Conference Finals. But right now, I think these are the two best. Right. And Kevin Durant had a weird sort of night. He called time. He called time out. It's a technical. Except they didn't call it technical.

They didn't call it. The referees was right there. We all saw it. But setting that aside, Kevin Durant played 47 minutes last night. And it was actually for an opening night game. I wasn't going to watch it all. And I wound up staying with it. I thought it was sort of riveting because you have these champs,

these young champs out there. have Kevin Durant leading another young team. I just thought that was cool. But the old people, which you would have liked if you'd have been awake, is to talk about Steph Curry and Jimmy Butler and Dramont Green. So look, we are all familiar with the Warriors and the Lakers. Yes. That's a great rivalry and they have big stars.

And so the tendency is to say that's a meaningful game and maybe even a foreshadowing game. But LeBron didn't play. So I can't attach any meaning to it because LeBron didn't play. Because the Warriors right now are Steph Curry and Jimmy. Butler and the Lakers are LeBron and Luca. I could talk about Lucas 43, but if Ron plays he doesn't get 40, but he doesn't get 43 because it doesn't need 43. So it's

the other game. And the reason it's the other game is because this is what Oklahoma City is going to face all year. Everybody's going to give them their best shot. And young improving teams like Houston, like Detroit, like Orlando, are going to be sky high to play against them. So Oklahoma

City won and that's great. It's good for them that they won, but this is what they're going to look at all year long. And Tony, this is what I know you frowned yesterday, but this is the reason I'm saying you can't repeat. Because when you look at it every day from now till June... That's right.

They had to sweat to win the first game at home. Come on. Let's talk. Let's move to Russell Wilson's issue with his former head coach, Sean Payton. Payton's Broncos beat Wilson's Giants on Sunday. And afterward, Peyton said he wished the Giants and waited to start Jackson Dart until after this game, implying,

he would have rather faced Wilson, more than implying. Wilson called the comment classless. Tom, what do you call it? I would call it deliberate, and I would call it goading. There is history there. Russell Wilson started 15 games in a row for Sean Peyton. In 2003, Peyton's first year with the Broncos. And then very publicly, Peyton benched him.

All right? And then Peyton came back and drafted Bow Nicks to be his quarterback, and he let Russell go. So there was a sour taste there. I wouldn't blame Russell Wilson for feeling this way that it's classless, that it was aimed at him, that was a cheap shot. But I think you also have to say in the interim that Russell Wilson had a rocky year last year in Pittsburgh

where they lost five straight including a playoff game at the end of the year, a rocky beginning with the Giants where they benched him for Jackson Dart after the third game. So I think that Russell Wilson can say this was a classless shot and Sean Payton can go back and say it was thorough analysis. Because even we sat on this set and we talked about when are they going to bench Russell Wilson and when are they going to go to Jackson Dart?

Sean Payton is a really, really, really fine coach. He's Chicago guy. I lean toward letting it slide. Eastern Illinois? Except, yeah. Except Sean Payton behaves too often like a classless bum. That's what he behaves like. And he thinks he's so chesty.

He can say stuff, but you can't say something back. Russell Wilson can't come back to him. He did. He did. He did. He's got his many Super Bowl rings as Sean Payton. And Ben to one more. So Sean Payton will tell you what he did as an assistant

and trying to take credit for that. And what does Sean Payne thinks is like 1948? Like Russell Wilson as a quarterback can't come back at him as a man. Good. I'm glad Russell Wilson did. And they can be equals in that way in terms of status in football. But Sean Payne, who do you think you are? You ain't that good where you can just take shots of people

and you better go in the rope a dope. I wish Russell Wilson had gone further. Do you think Russell Wilson will stay in? in the NFL? Do you think he'll become an itinerant like Joe Flacco and trying to get starting jobs here and there because his effectiveness has diminished. Effectiveness has diminished, Tony. He wasn't ever the most popular guy in the room he was in. But he won a Super Bowl and he should have two. He should have two. Should have two. We moved now to college basketball and a consternation by Tom Izzo over the NCAA,

allowing two G-League players to play college basketball. In the past, if you played pro basketball, you were barred from college play. But 21-year-old London Johnson has been cleared to play at Louisville next season, and 21-year-old, and I hope I'll pronounce this right, Thierry Darling, or Terry Darling, has been cleared to play at Santa Clara this year. Isot was livid about this and said, quote, it's ridiculous, it's embarrassing, and I love my job, I don't respect my profession. I'm not real excited about the NCAA or whoever is making these decisions, unquote. Wilbon, are you okay with ex-G leaguers being approved to play college basketball? I'm not as outraged by it as Tom Izzo, though I understand his outrage and applaud it.

And if I saw him, I'd dab him up. It's less than ideal at best. And then, but Tony, the only thing I started thinking about, I thought about this a lot. Because Tom Isso, to me, in a lot of ways, is the conscience of college sports and particularly college basketball. But what is ideal about anything, any element of college sports now? Right now. Right now. Yeah, I know.

Nothing. And so I don't know where you go. Yeah. So my feeling is I'm not crazy about this. I'm not crazy about this. You know, but I can live with it. I can live with it. And the reason I can live with it is because every college player now is a pro.

That's right. They all get paid. Where I would draw the line is if you played in the NBA, I would say, no, you can't come back to college. But I don't, I'm not going to go to the barricades to keep out two G-leaguers who never played in the NBA. So now they just join a greater pool of college players trying to get to the NBA. At least to the G League. Just like these two. Right, just like these two. So, you know, I asked today how much money does the average guy make in the G League? It's $40,000. It's less than any good high school player. There's hundreds of college players making more than that. Way more. And there's

no scandal in this. I mean, you get to the point where room and board and tuition at a private school like Northwesterns, way more than $40,000, right? Yeah, like almost $200,000. So we both love his, though, and we both sympathize with him. We do. But, you know, you can, like, European players or African players, they may be in a pro league over there and they're recruitable to college. One thing I wouldn't let happen.

No going back and forth in the same sense, like minor league call-ups. No, no, no. Major League baseball. Let's go. No, you can't do that. But I think we're going to have to live with it. We're straight down the line on this. Let's take a break.

Coming up, Jordan Love takes on Aaron. and Rogers on Sunday, and we're going to ask Steve Young what it's like to face a guy who once had your job. We'll also ask him how Justin Fields should feel about the Jets owner taking this shot of him. Another dude who behaves like a classless bump. That owner, who's a dreadfully awful owner. Did you see the pictures of Young in Montana? Did you see that? That exciting. Yeah. Yeah. We were there. Come back to Pardon the Interruption, presented by Twisted Tea, Hard Ice Tea. Part of Happy Hour.

We have some NFL questions for our great friend. The man who was set on being a long snapper until I convinced them to give flinging it a shot. Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young. Let's start with this. Yesterday, the Jets owner, Woody Johnson, stood by his new coach Aaron Glenn, but said of Justin Fields. This is a quote, it's hard when you have a quarterback with the rating that we've got, unquote. If you're a quarterback and you hear something like that from the team owner, you think what? Well, if I'm Justin Fields, the quarterback has to stay 100% accountable, despite how irritating that comment would have been to me.

Like, that's who you are. Now, can I comment as me as the quarterback watching this? And I would say to the equity owner of the team, that rating that your quarterback has has been repeated over and over and over again. You keep having head coaches go through, like around and around, around, general managers, around, and around and around. I think that there's got to be a time when he says that comment that the vulnerability to actually hear yourself say, oh my gosh,

another really talented quarterback has a terrible rating. On my watch, what can I do different? What can I bring to this new blood to this situation that seems to be going around and around and around? And that's what I mean, I would, you know, you always say I want to be king for a day.

I'd love to run the jets for the day, you know, And like it. Only one day. Make it great for quarterbacks. Like, wouldn't that be a miracle in today's NFL that you'd make it great for quarterback? Isn't that a great idea?

Steve, you're asking Woody Johnson to have some self-awareness, which as lousy a stinking owner as he's been, we know he doesn't exactly have that. But let's go to another quarterback situation, which reminds both Tony and me of you. Aaron Rogers has to go and face Jordan Love Sunday Night, which we're all aware of, And we do remember Tony and I are old enough to remember you having to go and play a number 16 and Mr. Montana with all the time now that you can look back and have some perspective, Steve. What was that like? Well, the difference between the two situations you just described as ours, and I mean ours because we're in it the other thick. He was traded to the chiefs.

Like he was not, Aaron Rodgeron traded. And so being traded has its own emotion, right? And then this was a couple of months later this game. So it was raw. It was all of that. And so this has been too much time. Aaron's been in a couple different places. Time's gone on.

They'll still be a little Packers. Aaron Rogers, there's probably some. You don't leave a team and not feel like you've been disrespected in some ways. Like, that's still going to be a thing. Jordan's going to probably avoid trying to get in the middle of it. And it's probably, and there's just not that much emotion. But the one you're talking about with Joe and I, it was raw and real and visceral and palpable. And like, it was a thing.

And I remember it vividly. Have you guys ever talked about it since? No, I mean, not specifically. We wouldn't talk about. We wouldn't like, oh, you know, hey, I got you that day, you know, Joe. You know, that was a championship year for us. And it is just a regular season game at the end of the day. It's just that it was the emotions and the rawness of it all was something you just, you know,

you had to deal with. And I think that's what's different about this one. I want to ask you about my favorite quarterback of the moment, the Bears Caleb Williams, who seems like there's some real indecision, I guess there would be at his stage, of when to pull it down, when to throw it. You know, he throws on the move pretty well sometimes. When he decides to do it, you went through this process of figuring that out. How do you do it? How long does it take? How complex is it?

It is the question, Michael, that we need to really dive into to understand. That's today's game. That's the drama. Number one dramatic question for everything in the NFL today is mobile quarterbacks, which own the league today and will end of the future. How do we teach them how to be sophisticated passers, yet hold on to this incredible skill that they have? And the harder, the more talented you are as an athlete, the heart of this. question is. And the thing that I went through that I think really helped me. I remember Sid Gilman, he was like 80 years old when he coached me at the LA Express of you believe it, the great Sid Gilman.

And he was like, you don't know how to stay put. You know, go get me a jump rope. Someone ran in to the locker room and got a jump rope and he came out and he literally tied my legs together, like ceremoniously, right? Like, now go somewhere. Now, now show me what you can do. In a way, that was an important visual for me because if you're going to be great in the NFL, you have to be great as a sophisticated passer of the football. That has its own drama, its own filters, its own hurdles. But be about it because what I learned is you never lose

your ability to get outside and make people miss and make for big first downs and touchdowns. And in today's game, there's so much room that even the less mobile guys like Justin Herbert, we talked about last week, They're now threatening the line of scrimmages because they know there's too many free yards. And so the question of the day is how to coach that.

Who can coach that? Who can talk about that dilemma? Somebody who ran around because otherwise you didn't experience it. And that's the question of the day. We will get you out of here on this. Another quarterback question. Patriots quarterback, Drake May. He went 21 of 23 against the Titans.

What does it feel like to have that level of efficiency? Well, you, it's beautiful because no one's open. in the NFL. You know, everyone's open in college. And then you go pro is like, we're all the open people. Like there's nobody. And so when you're getting that kind of efficiency, you got things rolling. You, first of all, we talked about last week, you own the data, you're ahead of it, you see the safeties, you understand what we're trying to accomplish. The balls earlier on time. And then you got receivers that get it. They're all connected. But the thing that people don't understand is you have a play caller. Somebody in the background that's in the booth or on the sidelines

that understands play combinations to set you up for success. And we talked about last week, there's only five guys like that who are elite in the NFL. There's 30 guys that are competent, but the best put plays together and put you in a place and put defenses in a bind, play to play. Not like so many offensive coordinators, they'll have a big play.

And they're like, oh, okay, I got to rest. And then you tell a couple plays, and they'll come back with something else. Great ones are always connected. This play leads to that play. at least that play. Oh, that got screwed up. I was thinking about that. I got this answer for that. That's what you guys got to understand. There's there's great offensive coordinators in the background on a 21 to 21 to 24 for 23 kind of day. Make sure you give that guy a hug too.

It's our greatest pleasure to have you here. Thanks so much. Steve, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. You guys, the best. Got my tie out today, so I know I'm good. Look like an adult. Wilbon doesn't. You do. I do. Let's take one last break. Still to come, we've got injury updates on Lamar Jackson and Jaden Daniels. And a tough guy. I'm tired. Tears up. In Boston, I want to connect Steve with my man Caleb. Because it sounds like Steve Young is the person

he needs to talk to. About the same size, same height, athleticism. You haven't given up on Ben Johnson. You loved Ben Johnson, but he wasn't Steve Young. Ben Johnson got a gold jacket from playing that position. Not that I know of. I didn't think so. You know.

Part of the interruption is presented by the refreshing taste of twisted tea, hard eye. ice tea. Please drink responsibly, part of Happy Hour. Happy time, people. Happy 52nd birthday, Ichiro Suzuki. If you add up Ichero's 1,278 hits in Japan, and his 3,089 hits in the majors, it's move over Pete Rose, there's a new hit came. Ichero joined the Mariners in 2001 when he was 27. He played 2,653 major league games, mostly for Seattle, but also for the Marlins and Yankees. He scored 1,400,000. 20 runs, had a batting average of 311, and in 2004 set the Major League record with 262 hits

in one season. He went into the Hall of Fame this summer as a first ballot entrant, named on 393 of 394 ballots. At one point, Echero offered to take the one writer who did not vote from him to his house for dinner. But at his induction in Cooperstown, Ichro joked that the offer had inspired. If I'd do a Mount Rushmore of just the greatest pure hitters. Yeah. Cobb, Williams, Gwen, and Itcherot.

Are you okay with that? I'm okay with them, but I got to put Pete Rose in there because he was just a great contact. You're going to stick an extra head or you can take somebody out? Just a great. No, I'm not taking anything about that. Not so happy anniversary, Joe Thomas. On this day, eight years ago, the Brown's future first ballot Hall of Fame offensive tackle

was injured on a run against Tennessee. He left the game clutching his left arm with what was later diagnosed as a torn triceps. The first play that Thomas then missed was the first play he ever missed since coming to the Browns as a rookie in 2007. Thomas had been on the field for 10,000, 363 consecutive snaps

and is believed to be the only player ever to record 10,000 straight snaps since the NFL began keeping track in 1999. In the off-season after this injury, Thomas announced his retirement. He played in front of 20 Browns quarterbacks in his 11 seasons, made 10 consecutive Pro Bowls, first-team All-Pro six times,

He allowed only 30 sacks in 6,680 blocking attempts. He played largely a thankless career from the outside. Yes. So shouldn't there be an award for an NFL lineman, not a college lineman? You can do it. NFL lineman. Best lineman. Name for Joe Thomas.

That's fine. He's earned it. No, I agree with that. Okay. Happy trails to a win for the Bruins. The Bruins rallied in the third last night to tie the Panthers at three with 131 left. But with less than 30 seconds to play, the Panthers put one off the public. that was then accidentally deflected into the net

by Boston defenseman Andrew Peake, giving the Panthers a four to three win. Last night's game began with a memorable moment. The Bruins and their fans welcoming back Bart, Brad Marchand, with a tribute video and a standing ovation, bringing the great player and notorious nuisance to tears. A lot of times these video tributes and these returns

are just, you know, they're just getting away. They're just sort of, eh. This seemed genuine. He was sobbing. So when you get a hockey player, these are the toughest guys, and when they are uncontrollably sobbing, you know that it has reached him on a very primal level. And I would think if you were there that day and you saw that,

that would be a memory you would keep forever. I would think so. Let's go to the big finish if we could. The NFL network reports that the Raiders have assured Max Crosby, they're not trading him, your thoughts. I don't know if the Raiders are ever doing the right thing these days, but he's your best player. You want to get rid of him?

What do people pay him? Watch then. The San Francisco Giants are reportedly hiring University of Tennessee coach Tony Vitello as their new manager. Aren't you surprised? I am surprised. I don't know that there's ever been a college coach who went straight to being a major league manager. And Buster Posey doing. And Buster Posey needs to literally stand by this guy and put his arm around him at the beginning of spring training and walk him through the locker for days.

For days to make sure people understand this is good. Lamar Jackson joined the Ravens, or at least part of today's practice. That's a good sign, right? Not for me, not for anybody who cares about the Bears, because we're in Baltimore this weekend. That's right. Tomorrow, take your time. You know, just so he'd chill. Jane Daniels out for Monday night's game against the Chiefs.

That's a big deal, isn't it? It is a big deal, and that is why, at the moment, Washington's getting 12 and a half on the road. That's a tremendous amount for a team that was in the NFC chance. You're a quarterback. That's right. He's the guy. That's right. Twelve and a half?

Come on. Wow. Last one, Cam Boozer, had 33, 12, and 4 in Duke's exhibition win over Central Florida last night. Is that significant? We're going to be talking about another Duke freshman all the college basketball season. Aren't we good for Carlos? We're out of time. Try to do better the next time.