The Bill Simmons Podcast - Five NBA Playoff Takes, Plus David Letterman’s First-Ever BS Pod Appearance (We Did It!!!)

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons give his thoughts on various topics around the NBA with Round 2 of the playoffs well underway (3:06). Then, David Letterman comes on to talk about his upbringing, the evolution of talk shows, sports, and much, much more! (38:51). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: David Letterman Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is sponsored by State Farm®. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.® The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit https://fanduel.com/playwithaplan to learn more about the resources and helplines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Bill Simmons podcast brought to you by Fandul. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast Network. I put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did There's Something About Mary. And then this Monday, because we're doing comedies all month for Netflix as a joke month, I did. Tropic Thunder with Chris Ryan and Van Lathen and Joel Anderson, first time for him on the pod. So that's coming at some point Monday afternoon.

Stay tuned for that one. For this podcast, I'm going to freelance. a little bit at the top because we had two basketball games tonight. I had a lot of a lot of scattered thoughts. But I really wanted to get to our guest because David Letterman after I've had this podcast since 2007. So this is the 20th year I've had the podcast. And he was always bucket list someday, maybe, really number one for a long, long time ever since I had Larry Bird in 2012. And then really after that it was letterman my three guys growing up were bird letterman edie murphy so i guess now edie murphy moves into the poll position of guy i really need to get on my podcast but uh having letterman

was incredible he's coming up later i'm going to do some basketball first i thought about doing a viewer mail at the top just as an homage to uh or listener mail in my case just as an homage to the mailbags that he used to do because um i took the concept in 1997 the moment moment I had my own column. I just was trying to figure out things I wanted to do. One of the things I want to do right away was have my own mailbag because I knew it worked because the letterman. He had a huge impact on my life and it was an absolute pleasure to sit down for him. We talked like, it was like 75 minutes. So I want to get to that as fast as possible. We have a lot of basketball stuff to cover at the top. We do it in one second. We're going to take a break. Then ProJamp.

The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandul. It's been a wild playoff run. Not over yet. wants to bring you closer to the court to make all of that action come to life for you, the basketball fan. Fandle, the best place to bet the teams, players, plays during NBA postseason, build a same game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout or try live betting and jump into the action right after tip-off, whatever you want. That's the whole point of live betting. Download the Fandul's sportsbook app right now and play your game.

21 plus select states are 18 plus D.C., Kentucky, Wyoming. Game problem called 1-800-Gambor call 888-7-8-7-77 or visit CCPG.org slash chat in Connecticut. All right, this top segment is brought to by New Era. I am recording right after Thunder Lakers, game two in Oklahoma City. And game two was the game for the Lakers. You got to stay one of the first two against the team as good as OKC. They gave it everything they had. They shot 50, 40, 90 from the field.

You do that. You feel like you're going to be in the game. Nope, they lost by 18. OKC ripped off a 23 to 5 run in the third quarter. Suddenly it was over. They're just too deep. They're too scary. Look at their box score.

Did they have anybody that even played 30 minutes tonight? Let's see. Shet 32. Mitchell played 30. Wallace played 30. But, you know, they played 10 guys. They really played more than that. But really, they have this 10-man rotation.

Jailin Williams played 14. minutes tonight. He was their second best guy during the title run last year. Now he's, I think, their third best guy because I think Chet has officially put on the Robin costume to Batman, to flopping Batman, SGA. I kid. I joke. This is why I couldn't really get there with the SGA MVP, even though I don't begrudge anybody who voted for him. I just think this OKC team is incredible with the depth, the shooting, the defense, all the different lineups they have, that can step up night after night after night. And I'm looking at what the Lakers did.

I thought JJ did an awesome job in these two games. The whole team was locked in. They were running good plays. Their defensive strategy to kind of really hound SGA, press them, force the ball to other guys. That's what you should have done. They were in these games in the second half where you look up and it was like a six point game,

four point game, and none of it matters because OKC can just do these runs. Basically, the Lakers, because Luca has been out since, I think, April 2nd, they're turning 35 Luca minutes into about 10 for La Ravia, who's been a bust, 10 extra for Karnard, 15 extra for Rui and Reeves. And then on top of that, you're relying on the Marcus Smart. He was 4 for 13 today. I think he is for the two games. Let's see, I have it down, eight for 27 or 8 for 28. It's one of those two numbers. But, uh, relying on him. I actually really like how LeBron's playing. One of the things that I had flagged for

this series was how old was LeBron going to look now that he's going against like, you know, the Oklahoma City Pit Bulls. He's kind of holding his own. I mean, this is pretty incredible what's happening here at age 41 LeBron. It's certainly something, you know, the Houston was disjointed. It was a weird team. They were poorly coached. Didn't have a point guard. LeBron. He stunk in game five, but for the most part, had a really good series. And it was like, all right,

well, let's see what happens. It's OKC. He's been really good. And none of it matters. And they're going to get swept unless OKC just has a game where they shoot like 30%,

which I don't see it happening. They just have too many answers. So noble effort by the Lakers, and they lasted longer than the Celtics. Although if they don't have a playoff win, nope, they still lasted longer than the Celtics. Fuck. Two notes.

Was watching AJ Mitchell tonight, who was just incredible, really, really good when you think like he's a bench player who can also start when they need him, but he can also do like a pretty good SGA impersonation. He's only a second year guy and he's on a cheap contract. And I wonder, like you assume OKC or San Antonio or Minnesota, one of those three teams will win the title, but OKC is the favorite. They won the title again. Is AJ Mitchell, has he been good enough that you could trade? A.J. Mitchell with the number 12 pick, because I assume they're going to land number 12 in the lottery. And maybe other picks that they have because they have some future ones down the road,

maybe Lou Dorts in the trade. Could they get creative and do like 130 cents on the dollar type of trade and move up to the fourth pick and try to get Caleb Wilson, try to get another blue chipper? Because the foundation of this team, you know, during the Durant-Westberg-Harden era, blue chippers. During this era, you have SGA and you have Jalen Williams, you have Chet Holger, and you have blue chippers. And you got to replenish the blue chippers and you also want guys on rookie deals. And I wonder, like, is how much of an asset is A.J. Miller, A.J. Mitchell. Because Legler was on here. I remember, I'm going to say he was either late November or December, and we were talking about how impressed we were with A.J. Mitchell.

And he was getting big minutes because I think SGA was out for a couple games. and we were just like, could this guy run his own team? Could you look at this like a Jalen Brunson situation? When Jalen Brunson was on Dallas and Luca got hurt in that Utah series and Jailen Brunson came in and he kind of ran the team in a way. You were like, huh, what's this? Is A.J. Mitchell, if I'm a GM on another team and I'm thinking about, you know, could I make, how could I elevate fast?

Like, let's say Atlanta gets the number four pick. And Caleb Wilson is the guy left or Cambo. I would personally take Caleb Wilson over Kim, Boozer. But let's say Caleb Wilson is left. And you're Atlanta and you're like, well, we could take Caleb Wilson here, put them in with the nucleus we have, give it a couple years, we'll see where it goes. Or we can get A.J. Mitchell, we could get the 12th pick. We could get Lou Dork because they have cap space too?

Like, could they do some sort of Godfather move to try to be better right away and put the team in A.J. Mitchell stands? I think he might be good enough to maybe be like a discount Jamal Murray or a discount Shay on the right team. He's certainly shown it in the leaps that he's made. This is why this lottery on Sunday, which we're going to be covering right afterwards on Netflix, this lottery has so many variables to it, starting with the Indiana, Quippers pick, but then also who lands?

Nobody's trading one. If you get one, you're taking DeBanza. I think two, three, four, it's debatable. Teams moving back. teams may be being overwhelmed. And then if you're OKC, like you're stashing all this talent, do you start thinking about?

Now, of course, I'm making trades for them and they're trying to win the title this year and go back to back, and this is the last thing they're thinking about. But I do think this is what Sam Presti thinks about. So just watch Mitchell. He's averaging, I think, 17 a game in the playoffs.

He's arguably been the best bench guy, even though he has not, you know, he started tonight. But you know what I mean? So where does that go? Where does this lead? maybe it leads to him being the focal point of a trade with the 12th pick and some other stuff. Keep an eye on that one. There's going to be a lot of stuff that happens this next five weeks.

The other thing is the review system has to be better. This game was almost three hours tonight. And we had a couple no-brainers where it was like in the fourth quarter, there's an obvious clear path foul. It seems like you just go over the monitor. You watch it once. Like, oh, yeah. And then you just do it. There was a couple of flagrant possibilities.

And they just stare at it. And they're watching replays like they're Christopher Nolan, you know, editing the Odyssey. And it's like, just look at the replay. You should be able to know in then 10 seconds. I don't understand why they haven't sped this up. And you have a sport like baseball that has added the shot clock and all these little wrinkles to just increase the pace of the game. And the NBA just seems completely uninterested in it.

So maybe instead of expansion, maybe try to improve the product before we start adding teams of the product would be my advice. Anyway, I think OKC, I thought they were going to sweep. I still think they're going to sweep. And if you're the Lakers, you didn't have Luca. I don't know what else you could have done other than maybe he traded a number one pick for Dissoon-Moo. I still don't think he changes the outcome of this series.

And you have a really good coach. LeBron's done enough. I think you have to think about trying to bring him back on a smaller deal and trying to pay Reeves and then trying to build a, around them unless Cleveland keeps doing what they're doing, which is what we're going to talk about next because this Cleveland thing is going so bad that we are now moving into a scenario of LeBron as the savior over the summer. I didn't think it would happen during this season because I never thought Mitchell would allow it. But honestly, Mitchell doesn't have a lot of say.

He has never really had true playoff success. The stats are fine, but he has never made a run. And you watch this series and Cade's the best guy in the series and Mitchell isn't. Cades controlling all aspects of it, Mitchell isn't. And I think Mitchell has probably lost the right to tell the team you can't get LeBron. This team's going to make some moves. But I want to talk about Detroit first. They've won five straight playoff games. It's basically Cade just being awesome.

And then enough Tobias, I think Tobias has been really strong the last week and a half. He always, they always know they can go to him with like, eight seconds left on the shot, he'll get like a decent shot, he'll get his turn around. Their defense has been great. They've bullied the calves all over the place. What they did tonight was nuts.

And I think the only good sign for Cleveland, I don't even know if this is a good sign. Detroit went 14 for 28 from three, and this game was still close with two minutes left. So if you're Cleveland, you're thinking, they shot the lights out. We played like crap. We're going to be home.

We can flip this. The difference is not only can they not get stops when it matters, not only did they have trouble chasing the three-point shooters around the line, that Duncan Robinson stuff was terrible. Like, literally, he can do only one thing. And you're letting him move around picks and getting wide-open shots. The thing I was worried about with Cleveland and why I thought they had a, I thought last series would be tough just because their defense is so sketchy,

especially, you know, I just feel like you can get good shots and three-point shots on them if you want. Detroit's doing it. Detroit looks now the best they've looked all playoffs. But then you look at, you know, Hardin's going to take all the shit tomorrow because he's nine for 28, the series 11 turnovers. Today was three for 13. He was over four in threes, four turnovers. It was minus 15. The defense was worse than the offense. He looks slow for him. He always played like at a methodical picked his spots kind of way. And it just, he actually Detroit's making him look old. And he's lost the ball multiple times on moves that he used to make in his sleep for the first

16 years of his career. So this trade so far has been a disaster unless you just think of it as a salary dump. And maybe that's what it was because Garland had that contract for a couple more years the Clippers took. I don't know if they made a wink, wink deal with Hardin. But if he thinks he's going to make $40 million next year or something, like that would be irresponsible for a team that's way over the luxury tax anyway. He just hasn't been good.

And the crazy thing is there were no signs at all that James Harden might stink in a playoff series over the course of his career. We had no evidence. Oh, I guess we had a decade and a half evidence. Mobley is the one that's more interesting than me. I assumed James Hardin would be up and down in the playoffs and he'd probably forget to guard people. and he'd have some bad games. And I'm sure maybe he'll come back in game three

and have 27 points and 10 assists and it'll look fine. He'll stink it. He'll do his whole James Harder and roller coaster head. Mowgli is the more egregious one to me. He's put up nine points of one rebound today. Not in the first quarter in the whole game. It was a classic, I forgot you were out there game.

And this is, you know, he's 24 years old. And Atkinson made excuse, for Hardin after the game. He's basically like, we can't have our Hall of Famer take two shots in the second half. I'll take that one. I would argue you probably could. And I don't think he's playing like a Hall of Famer anymore,

James Harden. What he really should have said is I'd love for Evan Moble to show up in this series because Detroit's pushing us around and pounding us. I got this email. I was gonna do a mailback at the top, but I ended up having too many basketball thoughts. Zach Connolly from Australia wrote,

I'll keep it simple. Does Evan Mobley suck compared to what he should actually be? Interesting question. So it's not that he sucks. It's just the standard we have in our head does he suck for that? He now has multiple playoff appearances and nothing to really show for it. What are you doing with your Evan Mowbly stock, which I have a ton of from when he got drafted? All right.

So we're five years in. He's 24 years old. This is where you should start showing signs that you're rounding into the player you're going to be, I think. He's an 18 and 9 guy. this is what he's been pretty consistently all the way through. He's been 18 and 9. Shot 30% from 3 this year. And he went backward.

Like last year it felt like he was coming on as a three-point shooter. It went the other way this season. In the playoffs, every playoffs, he's dropped to basically being a 17 and 8. It's fine. He made second team Omba last year. He was not in consideration this year. And the fear for me, is he noticeably better than he was three years ago? or did we just kind of flatline it from year two on?

Is he just doing this? Because when you're 20, I think from 24 to 27 is when you should be going up. And by 27, 26, 27, you should be at the peak of your athletic powers and pretty close to the peak of who you're going to be as a player. The fear is he might be, you are where you are guy at this point.

And I don't really know, you know, you could say maybe if they didn't have, of Jared Allen, he was center, maybe his stats would go up. Maybe he's almost like a smaller ball five. Sure. Here's the contract numbers because it kicks in next year. Five years, 269 million. I'm getting a really good defensive player

who I don't think got any all defense votes this year, but did last year. And I'm getting 18 and 9. And I'm getting situations where I don't really feel him. I don't feel his impact in the game the way I should for a max guy. And I wonder, like, will he be the fall guy? What's he worth? Like, let's say Brooklyn got the third pick in the draft.

And they have a ton of cap space and they don't have their pick a year from now. So it's actually in their interest to be better this year. And Cleveland really has to get away from luxury tax. And what if they offered Mowbby straight up for the third pick? Is he worth it? would you rather have Cam Boozer on a rookie contract or Caleb Wilson or a rookie contract? Or would you rather pay Mobley 50 million a year? And if you're the Cavs, would you rather save $40 million, give half of that to LeBron?

And that's your new team. You have Caleb Wilson and LeBron instead of Evan Mobley. I just think these are the questions that are going to be asked about the Cavs. And the calves have now moved into a poll position for, I'm prepared for anything. I'm prepared for Mitchell. I'm prepared for Mitchell and just trade Mitchell. I'm prepared for a mobile trade. Jared Allen would be easy because he's making less money,

but he's still making, you know, 30 million a year, which is a lot for a center that's not an all-star. And then Hardin, are they going to keep his contract or not? This team, everything's in play. Yonnes is in play. Pick a Jamal Murray for Mitchell, like crazy shit like that. They're just going to be an all-time trade machine if they continue to proceed in this series like they are.

And the trade, I think, is just more physical. I think they have the best player, and I think they're going to win this series. And I find it hard to believe that Cleveland will come back and win four out of five. So that will open the door for a lot of stuff, including what do we have with Evan Mobley? Where are we going?

Nick Sixers, really fun game two. A lot of lead changes. I never felt like Philly was going to win. Now, Embed wasn't playing, but I just kind of trusted the Knicks to finish it. And I don't really know why. I trusted in the same way where last year with the Celtics, I didn't trust the Celtics to hold on to the lead as it was evaporating.

Embed lasted a week and somehow knocked out the Celtics and then went out again. And I can't tell you how many phone calls, emails, texts related to the Celtics I've been on. As all the Celtics fans have spent the last five days just kind of wondering what the F happened. why did Tatum, why wasn't he out of minutes limit? Why did they run Tatum into the ground? Why did Ron Harper start game seven? Why did they get away from their style that worked for the whole regular season? Why did they play Vucevic at all?

Why didn't they just put Jordan Walsh and Hugo on Maxi for the entire game and just try to slow him down and wear him down because he was the key to the entire series? why didn't they put Embed into the pick and roll stuff that the Knicks just immediately did in game one, just the recipe that was sitting there for the entire series for the Celtics? I need it. I need some honey water. Hold on. I want that on camera.

That's how worked up I had to get water from my voice. But really one of the worst series losses I can remember for a Boston team. Because as I've said now in three podcasts in a row, I don't think they ever think. thought they were losing in Philadelphia. I think they used the series as this testing ground, let's fuck around, and then panicked when things started to not work out. So the Sixers, it was great.

They advanced the next round. They're going to lose the Knicks. And I think the best thing is they flip those Celtics, Sixers situation. They revived Paul George's trade value, which is huge because I think they can get off that contract now if they want to. They might not want to. The way he went at Brown and Tatum, and even in the, in Knicks game two, I thought he really went

toe to toe with those guys. Their one chance of coming back is if Ananobe's not healthy. It seems like he's going to be a game time for game three. We'll see what they do with the refs in game three. The thing with the Knicks is that they're deep enough that, you know, they'll just tell Bridges to go in the Ananoi role. They'll play their bench. They have good bench guys, I think.

And I would just be surprised. if this went more than five games. And I think the big mistake, Chris Ryan said it. We did rewatchables. We taped the Tropic Thunder rewatchables on Monday. And Chris Ryan said it. We hadn't even seen a Sixers Knicks games yet.

And he was just like, I don't know why we're playing a beat tonight. We're not going to win. Why are we putting the miles on him? Rest him, like make game to the game. And somehow Chris Ryan knew more than everyone on the Sixers because they played him and ended up getting banged up. We'll see if he plays.

I'm not really sure it's going to matter. And if the Knicks end up blowing this, it would really rank way, way up there because it just feels like they're in complete control. Knicks fans, I know a lot of them, a lot calmer than they were before game four of the Atlanta series. I got an email from Tony Showtime, who said in the last few months,

Kat has improved his defense. He's fouling people less and has stepped into a playmaking leadership role. technically true. I mean, he is averaging like six assists right now. He's also just kind of likable. I've been telling my friends, he's Rocky 4ing me. Cat is Rocky and Rocky 4, and I am the Russian crowd. I came into the experience, not as a fan, but his play and perseverance has won me over. Have you ever been Rocky Ford by an athlete? Take care of BS. Don't forget to Feed House. That's from Tony's Showtime.

I put some thought into that. I was trying to think who my greatest Rocky 4 guys were and number one is jd drew who the red sox signed in the mid two thousands and was i just really disliked them um the the patience at the plate oh and i just never thought he was going to get a hit ever uh he played passively and i have the spirit of the o four red sox and we paid him i think 70 million for five years and i never liked them and then um he hit the 70 million to our grand slam against the Indians and ended up swinging the 2007 playoffs. And he totally rocky forward me. I have him.

I have Derek Lowe. Rollercoaster ride with Derek Lowe and the Red Sox for years there. And then he threw no hitter. Then he became a playoff hero. I mean, with so many heroes in 2004 and he was one of the best ones. I think I can't remember he pitched on like two days rest. All those playoff games spun together with that.

But he was one of the heroes. So he's one. Chris Hogan. when the Patriots signed him and it just seemed like we've pushed it one one too many white guys too far and then uh and then he came up big in the one playoffs and made a couple big catches and gained my trust he rocky forward me and then poor zingas was my last one I really was worried about poor zingis what was that going to look like why couldn't you play with luka the trade made sense but deep down I was never a poor zingas guy and then by the time we finished the

2024 finals. I would have run through a while for him. So I think those are my four. Finishing last, Nicola Vucevich. I think he's a Rocky 5 guy. That's where I landed on him. Last series, Wolves Spurs. I thought the wolves were actually going to have the eye of the tiger the rest of the playoffs. And they played game two with, we got one already. The rest is gravy. Anytime you can see it right away. And the spurs played great. They got Fox going early. they tested out Carter Bryant, which I feel like is going to be really important for this series because the way he guards Randall and Nas Reid

gives them a little size with Wembe. Nice win all the way around. They killed them. The Spurs are one of those teams where when they're up 20, they look unbelievable. Still a little worried about them in the last four minutes of tight games. We'll see what happens, you know, when we get to Minnesota. I still feel like this is a 50-50 series.

That game two did not scare me off. Nick Wright and I talked a lot about it on, on Tuesday's pod and whatever. It was a recipe for a blowout. I didn't see it. I thought Minnesota was going to show up, but they got the game they needed again. A couple of mailback questions.

Then we'll get to Letterman. This is from Frank. You did the lottery karma rankings and mentioned the heat, not having a top 10 picks since 08. You mentioned the BAM 83 point game. But the biggest karma coming Miami's way is Miami getting screwed on the Rozier trade,

only getting a measly second round pickback. the league left them in limbo for months and then ruled that Miami couldn't even get its own first back. Could that incentivize the basketball gods to sprinkle enough karma to grant them a top four pick this year? That's from Frank. You know what? When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I should have thought of this. They really got screwed on that Rozier thing. They traded for a guy who is now under a federal felony investigation for point shaving. And for stuff that he did when he was on the Hornets. So, yeah, I have to adjust my rankings.

I still have Indiana first, Atlanta, second, Washington, third. I think Miami's fourth because I forgot about the Rozier trade. I think that's a lot of lottery karma points. So thanks to Frank for pointing that one out. This comes from Morgan Taylor, who is a Toronto Raptors fan, and he says, Masay, you Harry Stan. And he says,

my biggest fear now as a Raptors fan is that Yonis asked to go to Dallas. And in the opening press conference, Janus comes out and says he's always

wanted to play for Maasai. These guys have had a long-time relationship. And when we first thought Janus might be available, Toronto was always a team. Morgan says, I really felt like Toronto

had a solid chance to landing him up until they fired the best exec in the NBA to save a few bucks. Thoughts. I hadn't thought of this. I've been very,

focused on Janus Jalen Brown trades and whether it made sense to trade for Janus and how many years he could have left here at an elite level with a lot of miles on him and a lot of injuries the last year. And I didn't even realize Boston might not even be the main contender. The Dallas thing makes a ton of sense. If I'm Dallas, I have that pick, which we'll see what happens in the lottery, but they're going to be somewhere between one and eight. I think they have like a 35, 36 percent chance of moving the top four. But what, Let's say it's going to be six, seven, eight range, which will still be a really good player in this draft. And I think a nice trade thing.

I was trying to figure out things they could do and things Milwaukee would want. And one thing that would really help, ironically, the Celtics had this giant $28 million trade exception. So they could take Daniel Gafford in the trade because they need another center. He's making almost $20 million a year. Send Houser back to Dallas into the trade exception they have. So Dallas would save $10 million there and then be able to add Janice. And then Milwaukee, they would get the Clay Thompson, Naji Marshall expirings, Max Christie, Dallas is 2026 first, OKC's 2026 first because they have that end of the round,

but still. And then they have the Lakers 29 first and maybe you throw in a swap there. And the only reason I don't think they would do this trade, Milwaukee, is because, you know, they don't have control of their picks the next five years. So just doing a trade for picks and to save money, basically, doesn't help the situation of, well, what happens if we have a top three worst team next year and we don't have our pick? But it is interesting.

So I wonder, like, what would be the tipping point of picks and stuff Dallas would have to throw in there? If I'm Dallas, I'm doing everything I can to end up with Kyrie, Cooper Flag, and Yonis, you know, within reason. And if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. But really interesting to see what Janice's trade value is and how desperate teams are to go after him. And we've been talking about it for nine, ten months.

But I think a lot of teams are looking at this the same way. Guys been in the 2013 draft to now 13 years, hasn't really been 100% healthy through a season for a few years now. And what are you trading for and how much do you want to trade for the risk of this could be Dwight Howard in the mid-2010s for all we know? thinking about that with my team. I think the reason the Celtics would think about it is Jaylen's got the three huge years left.

Yannis has one huge year left. You add an extension to that, so the money would be around the same, and then you would hope you get lucky. If you saw Brad Stevens' press conference, he was not happy with the playoff series, how the team played, being as three-point happy as they are.

He mentioned dunks multiple times and mentioned just being more physical, and it felt like he was laying a lot of breadcrumbs to, Yanis trade. So we'll see. This could end up being. Janus, I think that teams will keep, we'll keep adding to the list as more and more teams have unhappy endings to their season. Tom from Toronto, this is the last one I'll do. Oh, I got two left. Tom from Toronto, I want to know, has there ever been more of a peak time for local sports radio content in Boston? Thank God I'm not there right now. From Vrabble to Jay

to the Red Sox, hot topics all around, has any other time beaten it? So right now for sports, Sports Radio topics. And you have to understand Boston Sports Radio, which is notoriously horribly negative and always glass-half full at all time. So this is like a gold mine. You have the Celtics choking in round one. Joe Maz ran Tatum into the ground. Does Jalen want out and fake Yannis trade?

So that's the Schmorgasbord right there. The Red Sox just fired their manager. Their GM's a robot. They have the curse of mooky bets. They've won since 2018 now. They've been 20 dumb moves and everyone wants John Henry to sell fodder all the way around. Bruins, 15-year cup draft, wasting pasta's career. He's 30 years old now.

They just got screwed over in the lottery where the Maple Leafs pick dropped one spot. They got the six pick in the draft instead the Maple Leafs won the lottery. See, you have that. And then you have the Patriots, embarrassing Super Bowl loss. You can do, though, were they ever good all along? Fourth play, fourth play schedule to first play schedule. Drake May, Did you rope it up us? You have all that.

You have the AJ Brown trade. and then you have Vrable, the head coach in the Lincoln Patriots, being involved in one of the two or three craziest Boston scandals ever for sports. So there's that. So I went through all the years of my head and I settled on a year.

The only one I could think of that was as kind of loaded as this one, 1996. So I'm talking winter 96 into 1997, which was one of the worst winners to live in Boston. just in general. I think we had like four blizzards that year. But we had the Patriots made the Super Bowl and then Parcells decided he was on his way out. He wasn't going to coach the team. So breaking up with Kraft to make the Super Bowl, find out that he was maybe even planning to do the Jets. So we had that. Everyone's taking sides. People are playing the craft, Parcell's unbelievable talk

radio topic and the Super Bowl loss. You had the Celtics who were in full tank mode at that point for Tim Duncan and Tim Duncan's playing college basketball. You had the Bruins, who were the worst team in the league that year, they ended up tanking as well. And then you had Clemens leaving the Red Sox and drawing the ire of everybody. We were so mad. I think my second or third piece ever for his pin in 2001 was called is Roger Clemens the Antichrist. Also with the Yankees just won the World Series. So if you're just talking about like a dark, dark, dark place for Boston fans. I think 96 was worse.

You know, we've had a lot of good stuff happening with the Boston teams, but this is a lot of fodder, which leads to my last email from Zach in Parkland, Florida, is the big winner out of the Vrabi-Vir-Bel Rossini scandal, actually Drake May. Had a terrible playoff run capped with the Super Bowl performance that would have followed them all offseason. However, Vrable, like a true leader, has completely taken that burden off his young QB. Even if May starts off slow next year, it's a lot of. almost a guarantee that Vrabel will still be shouldering the blame due to the chaos he has caused.

Zach from Parkland. Finally, a silver lining in the Vrable Rucini scandal. This story was, I did a whole thing, I think, two, three weeks ago about how crazy the story was. And every time I think it's over, something else happens, leading to what happened today, which was TMZ video of a seven months pregnant, Diana Rossini, going on a clandestine boat trip in Tennessee with Mike Vrable while she was carrying her future

son, Michael. Yeah. This is a fucking crazy story. I don't, this is the first time I talked to my dad today where we were like, can he still coach the team? Like, this is, is he going to take a leave of absence?

Is more stuff going to come? out. There's video them on a boat trip in 2001, 2021. I just, it feels like every day there's three social media clips of her on some podcast and Rabel's somehow on the show too or she's talking about her husband. This is like, this story's a nightmare. I feel so bad for everybody involved and yet you can't look away. It's like a car accident. And honestly, I usually, I I used to have this thing, the Tyson zone, when any story, I think I started in the early 2000s, where the Tyson zone got to the point where you would just believe any story about Mike Tyson. You'd be like, Mike Tyson got in a fight with a zombie bat and bit the bat's head off.

You're like, I believe it. I'm hitting that point with this Racine Vrabel story. I don't, I went from, I don't want to talk about this at all to being like, wow, we're, we might lose our coach. And I guess the only reason we wouldn't is you know our owner hasn't exactly doesn't have a clean slate of things that's happened with him either

maybe he'll be a little more forgiving trying to be nice just a bacher's story I don't have anything else to say I just hope no more videos come out please I'm tapping out I'm tap it out I'm like I need Arnold Scalent to throw I'm in the camel clutch with the iron cheek

I need our own scaling to throw the white towel and then save you. I really need to tap out from this very broad receiving story. Please no more. Please. Please. We're going to take a break. We're going to come back with my hero, David Letterman. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to by Fandul.

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State Farm is there. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, and eligibility vary by state. David Laderman is here. I can't believe it. I can't believe it either, Bill. Thank you very much. We talked about this forever.

Thanks for inviting me. I really appreciate this. I feel honored in some respect. Inviting you. You needed to invite yourself, because this was up to you. I'm just so glad you're here. Oh, well, now I feel less important if I invited myself in here.

But thank you for having me. Thank you for tolerating me. And thank you for whatever we have ahead of us. So you were here for L.A. for... Well, Netflix is a joke. That's right. Oh, yeah, we talked to John Mullaney last night. I don't know.

I just love the kid. He's tremendous. He's so nice. He's so bright. He's so. so funny. He's so multi-talented. And I think he would make it different for, difficult for other comedians in his group because he is, he's the guy to chase, boy. Do you feel like he's somebody that in any era, he could, he would have been exactly as successful? I think, you're right. I think

you alluded to that earlier. And I think that does apply to him because he doesn't seem to be, uh, locked into the 2020s. You know, he could have been in the 1990s and, and earlier, heaven's sakes. So you have a son in college. I do have a son in college. Why, this is like working with Kreskin. Well, I have a daughter of college, but how much, I have the daughter in college and a son who's a senior in high school? Yeah. How much have you learned from comedy and content just through your son? Uh, not much. He doesn't give me any tips. Very little. He's, uh, he is, I don't know how to describe him. He's not, uh, he's not forthcoming. he's not standoffish, he just would rather not share with his father.

Interesting. Yeah. I'm always like, I'm always badgering my kids. What are you watching? Yeah. What do you care about? Yeah. Who are the people?

Well, I badger my son as well, but the response is always, yeah, what do you care? So I will say he frightens me. From the time he was born, I've been afraid of him. Because in the beginning, I was fearful that I would do something that might damage him. Yeah. And I kept cautioning his mind. mother, I said, don't drop him. Because you hear these stories about infants being dropped. She said, oh, don't worry, I'm not going to drop him. So I'm at work one day and I get a call in the

middle of the day. Oh, I'm so sorry, I dropped the baby. I said, oh, well, good Christ, there you go. You've dropped the baby. Congratulations. Yeah. Baby was out to say okay. Yeah, the baby is okay. Unless that's the reason he has that attitude toward his father. I'm not sure. You ought to be angry with his mother for God's sake. I'm still angry with his mother. You had all this stuff. I mean, how old were you when your son was born? You're in your mid-50s, right? Later? I think I was, I think I was 57. Is that about what was? Oh, my God. It's just stupid. I'm trying to imagine what my life would be like now if I had a baby and I don't know. I'm so set in all these different structural ways. Sure. Just introducing that. Well, that was my reluctance

up until the time I realized we better do this now. Right. And then it became the best thing I ever did in my life. I know every parent feels that way, but I certainly shared that. And then great regret about not having done it earlier. Well, when you did your retirement show, and you told that whole story about you were out looking at birds with your son. And there was this bird you couldn't figure out what the bird was. And he came back. And with the way you set up that story, and I just was watching it when it was happening, like, oh, my God.

Is he setting up the retirement? there was like real thought put in behind. I'm telling you this story because this is now becoming more important to me than this show, these little moments with myself. That's right. And I thought that was a pretty good device. Yeah. I'm not sure if you took it to court, it would hold up.

But at the time, it served a purpose. How difficult was that show for you? I thought that was one of the four or five best shows you ever did. Oh, you do the weight of it. Nobody else did. Yes, you're very kind. And here we go. But thank you.

Thank you very much, Bill. Let's talk more about you. No, I want to hear about the show, though. How hard was it to know you were going to do that? There were so many other things tangential to that moment in my life. It was not difficult. And I had been doing it for three decades, more or less, every night. So part of me, the internal mechanism felt like, oh, don't worry, you're going to continue this without knowing it.

It's like getting out of a car that's still moving. I just assumed, oh, yeah, there'll be more of these. So the real difficulty of it didn't set in for about, I don't know, a year, two, three years. Well, two years. Because everything had been programmed for me. I was taken care of. And I wanted for nothing. Whatever that is.

I didn't want for anything. So I just assumed to keep going. So it wasn't difficult. Because there's this moment when you actually said it. where it felt like there was like two seconds for like, oh my God, it's the words have left my mouth. Yes,

I was more concerned with telling the story than I was with what those words meant. Right, the result. Because it was television and there's a certain artifice about television as we all understand. So there was nothing personal about it.

It was a piece of business. Right. Yeah. Because you grew up, I will not grew up, but when you were a young adult, idolizing Carson, which I did as well.

Yeah. And Carson left, and he was gone. I don't even know if he has an IMDB credit after the Tonight Show. He was just, we never saw him again. Yeah, I was sorry. There was a fellow who was a comic of some success, and he loved Johnny Carson, and he was out in Marina del Rey after the retirement. And Johnny's boat was anchored in a slip there at Marina del Rey.

And as he's walking down the dock, he sees Johnny in a chair on the dock, reading the newspaper. Well, now he's crazed because, my God, there's Johnny, and he starts calling Johnny, because this is after Johnny is retired. And he wants an interaction with Johnny. And Johnny recognizes that he's being called, stands up, holds up the newspaper, and goes below decks. That was it. That was it, yeah. I just love that. There are a million stories of friends of mine who have had interactions with Johnny where it was like, poof, and he's gone. Wait a minute. Johnny was just here. Now, now he's gone.

He's doing the Irish goodbyes. Exactly. He came on your show after he retired, which was. It was great, yeah. That was a significant thing. And I think that was the last thing he ever did. Might have been. Might have been.

Yeah, might have been. But also not surprising, at least in his case. Well, the fact that he went away, just cold stone, goodbye, good night. I'm not coming back. I found that trouble. a little bit. And I can't imagine that of happening for myself, not that I can make that comparison to Johnny, but suddenly you stopped doing something. And he really did, but I could never have done that. I had to keep doing stuff. That's why I brought that up, because part of me

thought you were just going to be like that. We'd never see you again. You'd be living wherever. I kind of wish I was that guy, but I'm just not. There's a lot of people from, I would say, your generation who are still going at either the same rate or a slightly reduced rate. But like Lauren is still doing SNL, right? He's over 80 now. Howard Stern just re-up for three years. Larry David, who left Kerb, I think, I don't know if Kerb's going to come back, but now he announced this HBO show.

And I actually asked Larry, like, I thought you were done. And he's like, what am I going to do? I still love doing it. That was his attitude. No, the real trick when I was a kid, when everybody was a kid, was it 55 was retirement age or 60, 65, something like that. What a joke that is because you get to that or to the threshold of that and you realize, holy crap, I have nothing beyond this. What am I going to do? So if you're productive and happy, just keep going for God's sakes.

And I understand this is no great revelation, but it's what I experienced and I think it's just what you described there. Yeah, and some people, people a lot of times will say, like, the people who keep going and keep going and keep going, they end up living longer anyway. Oh, is that right? The people that, you know, basically like, all right, I'm done. I'm just going to play golf. Like, that's when you get into trouble. Yeah, that doesn't work, does it? Yeah. No, you have to have interaction.

You have to be doing things. And you like to think if I, I love having ideas. And all my life, I've had trouble taking them from being ideas to fruition. and you can have a billion ideas. And when they're ideas, they're the same size. So when they're that size of an idea, everything is manageable. And I have trouble getting it to the stage where, well, how do we do this? How, in fact, do we change it from something you manage in your head to an actual occurrence?

I can identify with that. Well, I don't think that's... No, I'm good at having ideas and sometimes not good at executing them. You look around your life, and it seems, me like you've had very little trouble executing ideas. I've had some help. I had a lot of good people around. Yeah, what you said about people retiring at 55,

I feel like the curve is totally screwed up now. You know, because if you think about the way life was 50 years ago, people didn't even really expect to live past 60, right? All the ways things were different. I even think about this with horse racing. I saw somebody had this great point about how much people used to care about horse racing because horses were part of our lives.

Yeah. Oh, that's right. And now in the 2020s, how many horses, people with horses do you even know? That's right. They were integral to existence in the world. And then the sport that transformed them as recreation for us.

Yeah, I never occurred to me that that's the origin of that. Yeah, now it's like been replaced by cars. And people care more about F1 than horse racing because people identify cars. I have this thing I brought you. I saw a documentary with your, name on it. Uh-oh.

About yacht rock music. Yeah, that was one of my two years ago. And I'll just tell you about yacht rock. This was the music when I went to California, Southern California, it was K&X FM. And that's all they played, the mellow sounds of Southern California. And it pretty much was all what we now know of as yacht rock. And I thought it was trifling and didn't have much interest in it as serious music. And then I saw how it was a kind of.

have dissected and discussed on that documentary. And I realized, no, wait a minute, these guys were really up to something pretty good. Yeah. High, high quality stuff. And I'll tell you what's been a problem for me, if you have the serious radio and you dial up Yacht Rock, they have some stooge, some cartoon character pretending he's some snobby, wealthy, superficial asshole enjoying Yacht Rock. And it's not for the people. It's only for the elite. I hate that guy and is what poisoned Yacht Rock for me, until I I saw your documentary. Oh, thank you. And then once again, I had real respect for it.

It was great. I enjoyed that. One of the things I loved, thank you, one of the things I loved about that idea, it was an era as it was happening, and nobody realized it was an era until like 15 years later. Yeah.

Those are the best ones because we're actually telling a story of all these people didn't realize they were part of something. They felt marginalized and the bigger picture of rock. I just thought it was California. When I got out there,

that's all I listened to, and it was delightful. And then later, when it was given this label, and I understand how the label was applied, as I learned on your documentary. But then this moron on Sirius XM with that bullshit accent about, I'm upper crust, I'm East Hampton. Yeah. And this is what appeals to me. Can you do that? You can do that.

You can make people disappear. My big passion is when they play yacht rock music that's not yacht on the Yacht Rock channel. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bread is not yacht rock. Just stop. Air supply is not yacht rock. Get them off. Yeah.

And then listen to this. But of course you'll listen to it. You're sitting right over there. And the producer didn't bother coming in. When I had a morning show on NBC. Yeah. And I knew a friend who was a friend of Irving Azoff. And in those days, Irving Azoff, I think before he became a flat-out criminal crook in the world of music.

And by the way, if I got the facts of this wrong, I'm sorry. They said, well, we can get Michael McDonald if you want Michael McDonald to write your theme music. Oh, my God. Yeah, oh, my God is right. And I said, you're kidding me. And they said, nope. And sure enough, Michael McDonald wrote the theme music to our morning show. And now, having seen him as the integral iconic.

The king of yacht rock. King of Yacht Rock. Now I'm eager we have this piece of music that he wrote for us a thousand years ago. And here's another idea. I would like to use that somehow. So if you have any ideas, and by the way, I think he must still, no, of course he doesn't own it. Irving Azoff must own it.

Oh, Jesus. But use that on something. Yeah, we couldn't get Steely Dan to be in the Yacht Rock thing because they hate the Yacht label. They feel like they weren't Yacht Rock people, like really genuinely hate it. Well, let's call it something else for the love of God. Yeah. I mean, the mellow sounds of Southern California is what I identified it as.

Yeah, so we finally talked them into it, but only if he got to trash Yacht Rock as the interview he did for the Yot Rock. And then he cleared all the music for it. Yeah. Because really, they set up, they set up that Southern California sound that became Yacht Rock. So we had to have them in documentary. So anyway, here, when I saw your name on producing things, and I knew you were the genius behind 30 for 30.

And this came across my desk, Jimmy Murphy, American icon. Take a look at that and see if you can do anything with that. Jimmy Murphy, American icon. All right, I'm going to look at it. Okay. Give me the pitch, though. Give me the... Well, he's the only American to ever won a Grand Prix race in an American-built car. That's not true. He's one of two. The other one was Dan Gurney. He won the Belgian Grand Prix in a car that his company built. And this man, Jimmy Murphy, won the French Grand Prix. And this man, Jimmy Murphy, won the French Grand Prix. pre back in the teens i believe in a duesenberg which was built in the united states two men have won races in the f1 system wow in american built cars and this is in the era of board tracks when you would have oval courses oval tracks and they were all made of wood the the track surface was wooden highly perilous because of guess what splinters who would have thought right uh but he but he was a true

icon and went over to France and the French disliked him because he won so handily, even though his car was falling out from under him. And they were going to disqualify him because, well, sure, he won, but can he drive at home? And they said, well, no, he can't drive at home, but he still won the race. And other drivers in the event protested on his behalf and said, good Lord, the man won the race. Who cares if they can drive it home? Just typical of the French. You feel that way? I do it. I do as well. Because the NBA, Victor Rambayana, Yamba, is going to take over, 7-foot-7 French guy. And I'm a little nervous because we've had a mixed checkered history with the French. Is it because he's 7-7?

And French. No way. But his skill set, mostly because he's 7-7, or he contains that other quality that makes him a great player? So being 7-7 helps because he's a huge obstacle anytime you're thinking about trying to score. But, But he also plays like a guard. And there's never really been anybody who moves like him. And it's weird because his whole life has been conditioned to be successful in the NBA from when he was like 12 years old.

Is he the new face of the NBA now? I think we're heading that way. If he can stay healthy. But he's learned how to fall because he knew he'd be falling a lot. Oh, learned how to actually fall or not flop. How to actually fall where he doesn't get hurt when he falls. He learned English when he was like 12, 13. Like he's been ready for this for 10 years.

So I'm a little nervous. You mentioned Southern California in the 70s. I could never tell how much you liked California. I loved it then. I came from Indiana and moved out there. And it was troubling to first move to California from Indiana because you'd go days. Well, here we are in Southern California. You'd go days without seeing a cloud in the sky.

And I thought that was odd. Do you thought that was bad for you? I don't know if it was bad for me. I just thought it was odd because in Indiana, every two or three days, you get a rip-roar and thunder and lightning storm and maybe tornadoes and high winds and stuff and hail and it was great but in california it was always that white hot silvery sun in the egg robin's egg blue sky right like nothing was going to happen and i can remember one time a surprise thunderstorm blew up in over mexico somehow and it rained unexpectedly and nobody had known it was going

to happen. And oh my God, hospitals quit scheduling surgery. They shut down the freeway. Schools were closed. It rained for like eight minutes. And I just thought, I can't, I can't be friends with this place. Yeah, we have floods sometimes and the floods come from like an inch and a half of rain. Yeah. And then whenever the freeways get wet, it's holiday on ice. Yeah. It just look out. So it took me a long time to get used to that, and then I began to love it for every reason everybody loves California. Yeah, you were here initially in the 70s in one of the greatest time. Yeah, that was like one of the best times ever to be here. Well, I always like to mention it was so good because Jerry Brown, the governor, was dating Linda

Ronstad. Oh, wow. And I just thought, well, this is heaven. Can this go on forever? Yes, why, not? One of the first great celebrity couples. And you're in that whole stand-up scene in the 70s. Oh, yeah, the comedy story. It was great. And I think many people identify a creative circumstance, period in their life as, oh, it was like Paris before the war. Well, maybe, maybe not, but it was pretty good. It was a bunch of really funny, funny people.

And you would go to work at night. And in return for your time on stage, you got to hang around these people. And they would make you laugh because not only their material, but they were funny people. and they would do funny things and they were unusual folks, quite a great stimulating peer group. Yeah, so you're doing the stand-up, but you're also like writing for these sitcoms because we had a million sitcoms back then.

Yes, that's right. And that was so good, too, because you'd get hired to write a TV show and the pre-production would be like six weeks. And in my case, I got to understand that I was only going to have that gig for six weeks, and then I'd get fired. And then they'd get another six-week gig,

and then I'd get fired. And it was delightful because I never had the headache of actually having to work on some show day after day after day, week, month after month. And it would always be new people and new stuff. And you knew from the beginning that they sucked. Was there a show where you're like, how the hell am I picked to write this show? Why am I on this one? Yeah, most of them.

I was hired to write on something called the Paul Lynn Comedy Hour. Oh, got it. And Paul Lynn was tremendously funny. He was an actor, the Hollywood Squares. He was always the center square on Hollywood Squares. And really funny and quick-witted, but he was neurotic and I'll just say wacky. And the Paul Lynn Comedy Hour, it was Tony Randall. It was Paul Lynn and it was Doris Leachman, Loris Lechman.

Lorisleachman. And this one sketch that we were rehearsing, Paul Lind was marrying Cloris Leachman. And the minister conducting the ceremony was Tony Randall and Tony Randall was the ex-husband of Cloros Leachman. So there's comedic stuff there. That seems like a lot of things happening for that one. It's probably not a wedding that would be happening now. And the big business was Cloris was so upset with somebody that she threw her bridal bouquet, and it hit it hit to him right in the face.

And it was, oh, Cloris, and he went running out of the rehearsal. It was a high drama. Oh, my God. Yeah, but he was very, very funny. And then you were on the Mary Tyler Moore variety thing, too, I remember. Yeah, that was a good experience because it confirmed everything I knew about myself, which was I have a very low threshold. of embarrassment.

Very low. And every Wednesday they would bring in the choreographer, and that threshold would get lower and lower and lower. And there would be professional dancers, and it would be the cast of which I was a member. And we had to, I can't even say it. I would watch everybody in the room dance. And you would just kind of sort of mimic.

That move you just, made there. I couldn't even muster that. I would have to be hooked up to a car battery to make that movement. And so we did 10 shows, and then I just had to get out. They changed the format. The show was not successful, and I just excused myself. There's some things about, like, when I think about the stuff I watched growing up, variety shows are one of those that I just can't explain it. And it really only worked for the 60s and 70s. And then they would try to keep making work in the 80s and 90s, 2000, never worked. But we watched Donnie Marie.

That was a really important show. Ben Vareen had one. I watched a lot of those. And I don't know if it was just because we didn't have better choices. The backbone of network television, that in a half-hour situation comedies. But boy, you were in for something with those one-hour variety shows. Yeah. Flip Wilson had a variety show.

Dean Martin had a variety show. On and on and on. Now we just have shows where it's three straight hours set in shows. Chicago, and it's like fire, police, hospital. Yeah. You just get to go with the worst parts of jobs in different cities, and that's three hours of your life. Yeah, it's interesting.

And back in the day that you're referring to, you couldn't even pretend that TV would ever go away. No. And now here it seems to be teetering. Well, I talk to my kids about this a lot, because I'm really fascinated. my generation, we all watched a lot of the same TV shows, a lot of the same sitcoms,

a lot of the same movies, we watch you, we watch Saturday Night Live. And then as we got older, we had this foundation of things that we kind of got all the jokes that the other ones would make. And I don't know what that is now if you're 20, because you have like a million,

cajillion social media people. And I guess there's shows that cut through like Euphoria or Tell Me Lies Everyone's wrong, but for the most part, it seems way more scattered And I don't know if it's good or bad. Yes, I don't know if there's an answer to this. But I rarely watch television anymore.

And I don't know why. It wasn't a decision I made. Okay, today is the last day I'm watching TV. I just don't watch it. You want to know the show that I do watch and I get a little edgy if I miss it or it's preempted or something. Is it network or streaming? It's on ESPN and it's part in the interruption.

Oh, wow. Still. It. Yeah. Those are my guys. I don't know. I don't know. I find something pleasant and welcoming.

And they're both a vuncular. Tony Kornheiser looks like my new dog. So I have that connection. I don't know. But that's about who is the kid that was the sports writer at the Washington Post? Oh, Thomas Boswell. Yeah. Were you predated him or you came after him, right?

I came after him. Yeah. Yeah. But that book, Life Imitates the World Series? Yeah, that was great. Just great. Yeah, PTI, it's like, it's just nice knowing it's there. Yes.

You can pop in and out. Sometimes I'll just watch the first, you know, first act of it, which is like 10 minutes, but just seeing those guys and them weighing in on the biggest stories. I talk to Cornerizer a lot, and he's just, he's been doing the same thing for 12 years about, I got to get off. Yeah. Nobody wants to see me anymore.

I'm too old. But I feel like he's just going to die on the air during that show. I talked to a friend of mine about what the appeal of that show is, and he just abruptly said, it's the clock. That's it, it's the clock. That's not it, is it? It's those two guys. This is how we feel about podcast, too.

It's the chemistry over the idea, I think. Oh, with that question. People are there for the person every day, not the guests, not the, gimmick. I do think, though, that this shows the perfect amount of time because ESPN has multiple times tried to extend it to an hour. And Tony has always thrown his body into it. He's like, I'll never do it if it's an hour. This is why it's good. It's a half hour. We leave people wanting more. Well, it may be partly the clock because when you see where they are on that countdown column, you get a little grumpy because, oh, they're just about to say good night. Right. The other interesting

thing is nobody else has been able to replicate it, come up with their version of it. And people have tried. There's been all these different gimmicks, and none of them have worked. It's only been that. But I really think it's those. And I was lucky enough to host that show a bunch of times. People are always going to want the two. Absolutely. I figured I had to fit in and what my role was, but those two were always going to be the best. Whenever there's a guest host or somebody filling in for one of the two, it's discouraging. I mean, perhaps that's too strong a word. I'm able to pull myself together.

Yeah. Yeah, anyway, that's what I like watching on TV. Did you ever think, like Carson used to have guests all the time? You never really dabbled in it that much, right? Oh, no, I was deadly scared that if I gave up the seat, I'd lose the show. Right. Oh, you were worried somebody was going to come in and be good. Because the list of people better, more qualified, funnier, and better looking than me, infinite.

And so, no, I wouldn't go on anywhere. don't give up the damn chair. I'll wait to talk about watching birds with my son. In the meantime, don't send anybody in here. Yeah, because Carson would have, at one point, Chevy Chase was rumored to replace him. Oh, yeah. You were rumored to replace.

And then it was Joan Rivers, and then she got her on show, and then Leno was the last one. Yep. And then, you know, that was it. Johnny was a man among men, for God's sakes. He knew, just don't, you know, anything you want. Give it a try.

let's see how that works. He was so good. And now for a special part of the show called Crunch Time Gifting. It's brought to you by Sephora, where you'll find the best beauty gifts for the mother in your life. You know, I've always got my sports hat on, but seeing as we're gifting Crunch Time for Mother's Day, it's Sunday, by the way.

Right now I can't help but compare it to the final two minutes of a playoff game. How are you going to come up, quatch? Are you going to be like Jalen Brunson? I think Jailen Brunson is the score, Jalen Brunson in the east, Shea in the West, the scores I probably trust the most in the last minute of the game. You're panicked, you're down one. Who's going to come through? I would trust Brunson.

I would trust Shea. So when it comes to last minute, Mother's Day gifts, only those who turn to Sephora will make the buzzer beater like those guys might be making this round. Because a gift from Sephora lets mom know she has loved and celebrated. It's simplest play there is. And with their Mother's Day gift sets, Sephora has made it easier than ever. Shop Mother's Day gifts at Sephora. What is a late night show in 2006?

As both of us are friends with the one and only Jimmy Kimmel. We have Seth Myers. We have Colbert leaving. Can this format exist in 2013? I don't know. You're asking me an impossible question to respond to. I love Jimmy Kimmel. It took me a long time to fall in love with that guy because I thought there was something.

Because he was stalking you? Well, it just seemed peculiar. He loves you the most. It seemed wrongheaded. And then I love Seth Myers. Yeah. I think Jimmy Fallon is an outlier because I'm not sure if he knows what decade we're in. But he just comes out and does a show.

He can sing. He can dance. He can tell jokes. He is rock solid. Right. But he doesn't quite fit the mold of the other. And then Stephen Colbert, who had the show yanked out from under him. Yeah.

I don't know how to answer. that because it used to be those shows were so cheap, easy to produce, and long running. I mean, Carson was the proof of that, and everybody tried to mount one like that, but it's like PTI without Carson. It was nearly impossible. I don't know what a new show would look like anymore. I felt this way in the 2010s, especially when you were leaving, wondering what era we were going to move into. And what you couldn't really tell at the time was what was going to happen with podcasts and all these different interviews and the ability of people to respond immediately

and late night shows taping stuff and being on six hours later and then people under 35 are they even watching? When you had your NBC show, Jimmy was the same way, I either watched it live or I'd VHS, you know, recorded it and watched it in the morning.

Yeah. And I don't know. It seems primitive, doesn't it? All of that? It was fun. When you went to L.A., that was like that in WrestleMania, I think we're in the same three months. And it was, who was the true highlight?

I was like, I feel seen. WrestleMania is now going to be a giant pay-per-view. Letterman's going to be blessed by Carson. Like, this is all happening. Yeah. I was in my basement. But then again, we're dumb if we don't acknowledge that everything changes. True.

And knowing that, you can't hang on to things. I'm kind of getting a kick out of I will see a category name the category I don't care what it is of important current celebrities so I'll think all right let me see who these people are number one

no I'll just run the list I did not have heard of two dozen people and it's people that are making healthy good happy livings I have no idea who they are yeah it's attention you can get attention without talent.

Well, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying... But it's just true. I've just turned into the old man who has no idea what these people are doing. Yeah. But I would say when you had your show, talent was usually the great differentiator,

whether you were a great actor, great musician, great comedian, whatever. Now you can skip all those steps, that seems like. Yeah, I'm not sure if you... If your position is that in the old days, those people were talented, Well, then it's the guy on the lawn telling the kids to go home. That's true.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to think you didn't. There were no influencer type people in the 80s and 90s. There were more oddities. It was more like, whoa, what's going on with this person? Yeah, we used to, you know, subscribe to newspapers from all over the world, all over the country, and small towns. And we would find stories about there was a woman who collected potato chips that looked like

famous people. Yeah. There's a little local story about her. You'd try to get her. There was a guy who collected insects, praying manas. You'd try to get him. But now they just, that is the lifeblood of the internet. You were really good, especially in those first few years of the show,

of tapping into normal people in a way that, like you had the mailbag. Yeah. The pet tricks. It was like, oh, these are normal human beings on the show. This is cool. Right. But that was by, that was a bit of a consideration. constraint put on us by the Tonight Show.

Yeah. We couldn't duplicate celebrities. We couldn't have a lengthy monologue. We couldn't have a big orchestra. And so a lot of people just put people on TV. And the thing that was always satisfying to me is just regular people who aren't on TV. You put them on TV, they're just fine. You know, by and large, they're just fine.

Yeah, it's, it was interesting as the show, when it started to take off, you were always so self-deprecating about the show and joking about whether it would be on next week. And then people would come on and be like, this show is amazing. You're my favorite. And you could always see you'd be like, so I can only imagine what it's like to do with people like me and Kimmel.

We're telling you, like, we watch you every night. You grew up with you. You're the biggest reason up doing this. This is what I hear now. It will be a fellow or a woman in a certain age group. And I think, oh, because I keep forgetting how old I am, Yeah, here's a peer of mine. We have the same influences in life.

My great grandfather used to watch you. Oh, Jesus. Oh, ladies. Okay, here we go. But it's very gratifying. I had these two women tell me the same story a year apart about the morning show. Now, nobody watched the morning show on NBC. Yeah, I'm not going to claim I watched it.

Yeah. And that's why I was afraid to give up the chair because that thing just came and went, you know, like a strong wind. And the story that I heard from these two women, I used to watch your morning show, and that snapped your head around because the response is, right, you're the one. Right. Yes. And it was right after little Jimmy, our first son was born, and I would be up early in the morning, and I would be feeding little Jimmy and watch your show. I heard the identical story from another woman. And I, for some reason, those elements, it was a very pleasant reminder of it's not really all about me.

Yeah. It's supposed to be something for others. Right. And in these two cases, it had been, and I thought that was very sweet. So, I mean, that was your big quote-unquote failure of the morning show, but it turned out to be the best thing it never happened to. Yeah, and the worst year of my life, being out of work, it was just horrifying. How long were we out of work?

I think it was a full year before I went back at 1230. And what were you doing? Just stand up? pitch and stuff? Not even. I was doing, you know, looking, sniffing around at what would be failed projects, but mostly I was drinking and drinking to excess. And it was a dark year. Are you in L.A. or New York? It was in L.A. Yeah. And I describe it as a dark year. I know of people who actually have had dark years. So forgive me. I'm not pretending that being

an out-of-work comic really rates as a dark year. dark year. But for me, you know, my own little self-centered world, yeah, things weren't going the way I wanted them to go. Yeah, sometimes I feel this way about me with a couple things. Like, failing turned out to be the best thing that could have happened, but I didn't see it as it was happening. Right. You don't realize until after like, you know what, that was actually pretty good because that led me to this, this, this, this and this. And yeah, I was told when people ask me for advice, I always say like, just keep taking chances and sometimes it's okay if it doesn't work out. Just move on to the next thing. I never know what to say when people say, can you give me some advice?

I don't know. I don't know what to say because it was so easy for me in the beginning. Yeah. I just had a plan. I saw it. It was all there. The blueprint was obvious. And I followed the blueprint perfectly and it worked for me. So I don't know what to tell people. I wouldn't even know what you'd do. I know people that I just think are people. And then they say, well, yeah, you can contact me on my socials and then they give you whatever address you need. and they've got like two billion followers. And I do, I don't, how did that happen? How does that happen?

You're one of those guys, right? Yeah, I don't have that many, but it's, I, you know, I came in with some of the social media stuff right at the right time when you could build audiences. Now it's like the TikTok. I don't do TikTok at all. I don't really understand it. I mean, I understand it.

I don't understand it for me. Like, I'm in my mid-50s. I want you to help me out with something. Yeah. And going back to our discussion of ideas. Yeah. I went to Finland and watched hockey games. I went to hockey games in Finland and was...

What kind of hockey games? Professional hockey in Finland. Yeah, one in Helsinki and then another in a tempere. I think that's the name of the town. It was great, by the way. It was delightful. Yeah. And then some of the kids on those teams showed up for the Finnish Olympic team.

But I watched tie games, saw two tie games, and then the shootout. So here's now what I want you to help me with. Yeah. The NFL, and I know, like Chris Rousseau hates the fact that there are guys kicking 60-year-old and field goals now. And he thinks that that should be banned. That should be limited. Get rid of it.

It's not football. If a football game, pick two teams. Yeah, Patriots and Jets. Okay. at the end of regulation, the score is 7-7. What do we do? Okay, we have another full overtime period, okay? Yeah.

If at the end of the overtime period, the score is still tied, then what do we do? Well, in the playoffs, it just keeps going forever. No, no, we have a kickout. Oh, that's what you want to add a kickout. Yeah, we start the kicker at the 50. He makes it, then the other kicker, opposing team has to duplicate that. If they both score, go to the 55-yard line. and if that works you go to the 60.

And the first one that can't convert a kick from that, then the game is over. What's wrong with that? It's pretty good. Now, you've heard this before, haven't you? I can't be the first one to think of this. No, I've heard variations of it. But then other people would say,

why would a kicker determine a win or a loss? Like, some people hate that. Like, I have people in my life who feel like we should just get rid of extra points and field goals completely, just have touchdowns. touchdowns and two-point conversions. What's wrong with just a bit of variety in the goddamn game? Yeah.

You know? Turn the regicrousies now would work. The kid for Dallas, the guy who kicks routinely 60 plus. Yeah, Brandon Aubrey. Yeah. Well, that's tremendous to see. What a great physical accomplishment that is. Nobody seems to understand why kicking has gotten so much better.

Secretary is still faster than horses we have now. pitchers can throw four or five more miles an hour than they used to. Well, Bob Feller comes to mind. Right. Well, but I'm saying like the radar gun was usually 96, 97, 98. Now there's guys throwing like 104. Yeah, yeah. And then the three-point shooting being so much better.

But yet, like the marathon, I was talking about this with Malcolm Gladwell. We were always wondering when somebody would go under two hours. And it actually just happened in London. They did one hour of 59 something. but it's like how is there a point where you can't just run faster in a marathon well you just hit a wall basically perhaps but going back to kicking let's just see how far a guy can kick can he can to kick a hundred yard field goal so you love field goal kicking this is one of my big revelations and the fact that it ought to be determined by moving the football on

the ground uh if you if you can't determine the outcome of the game in five quarters yeah moving the ball on the ground passing and running okay you're paying the price for that, we're turning it over to the kicker. And it's football for the love of crap. You know, why do we resist that? And here's the other thing. And you can do something about this because I know you know people. I'm a powerful man.

Yeah. The quarterback ought to punt. They used to have this. Thank you. Thank you very much. Senator Jorgensen. Yeah. He's another one.

But it used to be part and parcel of the gig. So punters are out. We've just cost 30 punter jobs. Now, I don't want to get in trouble by saying punters would be let go. No, keep the punters. We'll have punters and they can do stuff. They'll do other stuff. They'll do other stuff.

What do you think of the theory that we should get rid of, either there should get rid of three-pointers completely in basketball or there should be a cap on how many you can make in a game. Okay, here we go. You're 15 and you're done. The thing that I'm having trouble with is the three-point line isn't consistently the same distance. What do you mean? Down toward the end of the court.

Right. And then it goes up. Yeah. So you get a shorter three-pointer down in the corners, correct? Yeah. Then you do at the top of the arc. Right. So extend the court. I don't know, but you're never going to get rid of the three-point.

Can you imagine just going back to watching guys do layups and soft jump shots? No, we need the three-pointer. I wouldn't mind the cap, though. I wouldn't mind being like you can only make 20 in a game. And that's, once you get to 20, you just, it's removed. Here's what I want to do is you, 10-foot, the basket. at the rim is 10 feet. The first quarter, it's 10 feet. Second quarter, it's 12 feet. It just keeps, just goes to move the road. So in the fourth quarter, what is that? 16 feet. Let's just do

that. One of the theories is that every team should. No, I don't think you're taking that seriously because you quickly, quickly changed this. I think that, what do you mean? They have to stop the game to raise the bass. They don't. The thing is in a hydraulic deal and it's just okay. The fans, here it comes. And maybe some lucky ticket holder gets the press the button. It goes up to 12 feet. One of the ideas that people do like is that every team can determine where the three-point line is. So you could build a team.

Oh, so it's like a baseball field in your hometown. Yes. You could build the team and like, you know what? We're going big guys. We're going bigger. And you make the three-point line. It's like basically 30 feet because you're not going to shoot them. Yeah.

And you dare people to do them. Baseball, I have a lot of faith. I've always been a, I've always had this thing where I've called myself, the sports are, give me the job. I would do all these things. Baseball pitch clock is the single most successful new idea. I think anyone's come up with. But they're slowing it down,

slowing the game down now with the automatic ball and strike counter. Oh, you don't like that? Well, I haven't actually seen it. But doesn't that then slow the game down? It's quick. They just do this, and it's like 10 seconds. What it's done is it's, they do this on their helmets. I know they hit the helmet, and then that solves everything.

Well, what's happened is they've completely undermined the confidence of the umpires. because what we're realizing is the empires are all terrible. These guys got a union of their own. They've got to be raising hell. They're like, what the F? Yeah. How did we end up with this? Who was the empire retired a couple of seasons ago who was known up and down throughout the league as being God all?

Pick one. Yeah. Yeah, there's a couple of them. And they just, well, here he is again. And there would be highlights of him blowing calls. But in terms of baseball, there is an advantage if you're a left fielder, a left-field hitter. Left-handed hitter, yeah. You get a jump.

You get a step down to first. If you're right-handed, you've got to cross the plate and get down to first. True. So it should be both of you got to cross the plate. If you're a left-handed batterer, you run the bases the other way? No, you got to run to third. Interesting. If you're right-handed, you can run to first.

That would be a controversial change. And then here's where the fun gets really fun. They meet on second. What do you do then? They cross-pass. Well, you'll figure it out. Yeah, all right. I'll work on that one.

What would you change about golf? What's to change? Yeah, you like golf, right? Or you like watching? I enjoy watching golf. I'm so pleased that the Live golf tournament seems to be having financial troubles. Oh, yeah. Because in the beginning, yeah, and he can wear shorts and we'll give you a billion dollars.

Shorts, yeah. And now all of a sudden they're looking for other ways to finance it. I did get a kick out of the Masters, Rory McElroy or whoever that was. That was tremendous. You ruined for him? Well, how could you not? Trying to win two in a row. That was pretty cool.

Yeah, I like him because I got this great mailbag email. Thank you for the mailbag idea, by the way. It stole that from the moment I started writing a column. But I got a great mailbag idea. Somebody who was a Celtics fan and a Rory McElroy fan who lived in Ireland. It was basically saying it's the same experience rooting for both. where it's like a lot of talent, but I always feel like they're going to fall apart at any time.

Celtics, you miss threes, worried, like, we'll self-combust. And it's like, is this just an accident or is this what I'm attracted to as a sports fan? Yeah. But very similar. Yeah. And then the Masters and we call them patrons.

Have you been? You would love it. They take your phone. It's like going back to 1920s. You have to like interact with people. I'll tell you what appeals to me. Perhaps this is a single, feature that appeals to me about the masters is the pimento cheese sandwich.

Unbelievable. Because we used to, I don't think they even make that anymore. They have to make it at the course. It's not legal to actually prepare that. Is it pimento cheese? They have pimento cheese sandwiches, but then the hack is you also buy the barbecue chicken sandwich and you mix them. My buddy Joe House, I think, invented that.

How drunk do you have to be to do that? At least a couple drinks in. Yeah, yeah. And the sandwiches are like $1.50. nobody has phones people just walk around right if we you and i get split up i might not see you again for four hours there's just no way for me to know where you are and we're just gone and then you compare that to the waste management open in phoenix well that yeah that's a social outing prison break isn't it yeah they just want everybody to be super drunk there yeah and that's okay with the golf's uh i think

they kind of lean into it i'm interested to see what they do with the new commissioner because i think he wants to move more events to the West Coast, have it be prime time on the East Coast, stuff like that, like to try to speed it up. I like when people come into leagues and want to change stuff. Yeah, I don't have a problem with that.

Yeah. But in golf, you know, the big tracer mark they have, you'll hit a T shot and then they show you the trace of. You like that? Where they show you where it went? Yeah,

and how high and how fast. If they could generate that, so it happens in real life, not just on TV. Oh, boy. You'd have to beat people away with a stick. They'd be, right? They'd be when the gates open.

That would be a really good... Oh, man, what a visual. It'd be like fireworks. Did you get an F1 or you just, your old school? No, I used to love Formula One back in the era of Ayrton, Senna and Nigel Mansell. Oh, yeah. And those guys. And went to a lot of Formula One races and just, just really loved it.

And I think in those days, for me to really love it, it was because of, like we're talking, it's the personalities more than the content. Yeah. And I just, something about Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell, and they were enemies on the track and the personalities and the characteristics. And I don't know. I did love it. And now it's IndyCar, I'm part of an IndyCar team.

And it's, I enjoy that. I love that. Did you ever think about buying a minority stake in a sports franchise? No. Never? Never? No. No.

Just buy a little piece, a little taste. I think for a while I was part owner. I had some stock in the Seattle Mariners. Really? Yeah. Yeah. When was that? Jesus, it would have been in the 80s, mid to late 80s.

Wow. Jeff Smollion, for a time being, the guy who owned MS Radio, sports radio and beyond, I think had purchased the Seattle Mariners, and I was a stockhold. or our board of directors or something. You did like, I think over 6,000 shows on NBC and CBS. Were athletes ever really good guests? Or were they, or you were the one that had to do all the work? Can you remember guys coming in and actually being good,

other than like Charles Barkley? That's something to reflect on. I think they were pretty good because I always knew exactly what I was going to talk about. Right. Because this was in the ending, when Sports Illustrated was a thing. Yeah. And it helped me live my early life, getting the weekly Sports Illustrated magazine. So I had that kind of interest built up from looking at the voluminous detail and data and personalities.

So I would attribute, I would use that to talk to sports figures. So they were always pretty good. Because I remember Michael Jordan the first time he came on. Michael Jordan. He was great. You could tell he had it. No, he, yeah, you could tell he had it, but he had a disliking for me. Oh, really?

Yeah. He was on once, and he was on to promote his. The New Air Jordan's, yeah. The Air Jordan. I just saw that movie not so long ago, Air. I liked it. Tremendous. Yeah, I really liked it.

Oh, it's so good, yeah. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. So, yeah, but we couldn't get him back. He would never come back. Really? Yep.

And I finally called him. because I kept imagining and perhaps not imagining, perhaps really, that I had offended the guy. And I certainly didn't want that to have happened. And I called him and I flat out asked him, I said, we really would like you to come back. Is there a problem? And he said, no, it's not a problem. But he never came back. Interesting.

Yeah, a real disappointment. Yeah, because you had in the 80s that your show was how I found out about a bunch of people. Like Seinfeld, he came on your show. That's how I knew who he was. And that was why when he got the NBC show was like, oh, no, this is going to be good. He used to kill it on Dave. Yeah, that's right.

There was a bunch of those from that era. I get very little credit for the success of Seinfeld. You should get a percentage. I was right there. You were right there. I was like, what's his name, Kramer? I could have been the, could have been a Kramer.

I saw him do stand up twice in the 80s. I made my parents take me just because of the letterman appearances. Really? Oh, yeah. I thought he was one. I thought your best guest. during that stretch. Like the ones that was, Leno was the best one. I mean, that was

like every three, four weeks, but he would come in and just kill it. Jay was so good. Yeah, and you were so delighted, but you guys were just great together. So he was one. Seinfeld. I just thought Michael Keaton was great. Oh, I love Michael Keaton. He would come on and just, and crush.

But see, those guys, now Jerry was a class or two behind me, but me and Leno and Michael Keaton, we were all there in the same room at the same time. So I always got a big kick out of, we each knew something about one another that we weren't going to share. It was great. Well, and you had George Miller too a bunch back then. Oh, my good friend George Miller. Oh, my God. What a fascinating, interesting fellow. Just tremendous.

Yeah, so it went all the way through to when you were still doing the show. And then it seemed like Norm became your favorite, Norm became your new favorite one. connection, George Miller was the connection to Norm. Yeah. When I found out Norm like George Miller, then I fell in love with Norm. We've never, Norm is one of those guys. I think social media has weirdly really helped him. Because he was always really funny. He had a good career. But now, like the snippets of him, nobody like him. He's like growing in esteem now. That's right. You can't, you can't get enough of those things. He was like an all-time one-on-one. Yeah. And everything he does is still as funny as it was.

Yep. Yeah. And a guy who, kind of reveled in dead silence after a joke, just like that wasn't his problem. That's your problem. Right. He loved it. And the audience was so comfortable. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel this way when I read stuff I wrote and I don't remember when I wrote that I wrote it. Like I'll see some, I'm like, I think I wrote about this and I'll find some column in like 2004. And I'm like, I honestly don't even remember writing this. I'm reading it like I'm the reader. Like I didn't write it. Do you feel that way when you look back at 6,000 shows where they just blend into I don't remember how I got here.

But I want to tell you one of George Miller's story, which I absolutely love. He had a girlfriend, and they were together for years. And it was always George and her girlfriend, his girlfriend, her name was MJ. That's right, MJ, initials for other names. Yeah. But they were close. And then she decided she had had enough of George. And so she said, George, that's it.

You're done. So George, because he was George, broke into her house when she was out. She started dating an architect. And this drove George nuts. Right. Because he wasn't an architect. He wasn't, you know, he was in the sweatshirt and the pants and his tennis shoes and he was telling jokes. So he breaks into the house and she realizes that it's been broken into by George.

So she calls the police. the police go to George's house. And they say, do you know, and George's plan dumb. No, no, that wasn't me. What happened over there? Well, nothing was stolen, but the thing was damaged and poked around. And there was a picture she had of Jesus Christ that had an obscenity written across the face of Jesus Christ. And George says, Jesus Christ, I thought that was Dan Fogelberg.

And I just, I mean, how can you, isn't that, and here's how delightful that is. And his memorial, his girlfriend told that story. Wow. I mean, that's otherworldly. I thought it was Dan Vogelberg. So who, was he in your top five people who hit your funny bone the hardest? He became a good friend. He was in the same class with me and Leno and Michael Keaton and Robin Williams.

came in a little bit later, but still in that class. Yeah, he counts. And, yeah, he was just such a strange character. He, I never met anybody quite like him. Does Kaufman count that, or is he a little earlier? Kaufman was so, no, I think he'd gotten a head started and was way ahead of us at the time. But he was, you didn't buddy up with Andy.

Right. You, you know, stood aside when Andy. So you would see he was on the show and you'd be like, okay, buckle up. He was great for the show. Yeah. Because it was just, you knew, but you didn't know the dimensions of what you knew. You know, you had the idea, but you knew it wasn't going to be this big. You know it was going to be that big.

Right. And you just sat back there and were entertained by it. So who hit your funny bone the hardest out of anybody? Well, Jay made me laugh really, really hard. Well, because he would come in and he'd come at you. It was like, he was like the road team and he would try to turn it on you every time. Yeah, but he was when we were working at the comedy store, he was the funniest in the group. You know, he would go on. You couldn't follow him. He was so funny. Right. Yeah.

You know, I know you hate talking about this, but I used to love Leno. And then when all the stuff happened with you and he got the Tonight Show, I really felt betrayed. It was like, I was learning, like, the lessons of like business friendships versus actual friendships. Because my attitude was like, I would just never do that. Like Letterman was my friend. He used the whole reason I have a career. I would never want to like go head to head. But then you get older and you learn. in life. A lot of people are going to do what's best for them when they have the chance. Sure. I wish I could say he was a dangerous criminal. He's not. Right. And that's what happened and that's what happened. Did you ever see the movie? I think I asked you this. I can't imagine anything

you would hate more than the late ship movie and somebody playing you. I couldn't watch my own show. I'm not about to watch a movie about my own show. That would be a fun if you ever got it to social media. social media should just be you on camera watching the late shift. With a steady camera on you as you start convulsive. I think that maybe I mentioned this to you, but they, at some point, a friend of mine who worked with us on the show named Stuart Smiley. Stuart Smiley, is that who it was? Stu Smiley, yeah, had given me some kind of,

trampoline thing where you would pitch a ball into and it would return back and they depicted me at my home on the weekend throwing I don't know something it toward this thing and it bouncing back and it was complete fabrication I don't I don't think I have it right I don't think I was ever even

I know the scene yeah I know this scene you're talking about it's actually a really good movie but like I always with these things, it's based on a true story. And once you say based on a true story, you can basically do anything. Yeah. You could just have you, you know, hitting three woods in your backyard. Well, that would have been preferable. This was something a dope would be doing.

Right. Here I am depicted as a man in his 40s bouncing the, I don't know what it was. But it was humiliating, I tell you. What has drawn you to this Netflix show? In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. What makes you want to keep doing it? What's your favorite thing about it?

Nothing but fun because the schedule is just about right, going back to retirement. It's enough work to keep you juiced. And if you don't have that, then you get sad. Right. So we've done enough of those to be. And then here lately, we've done a string of stuff that's been pretty fun. And you get to travel, you get to see people, and you get to run into people that tell you about when their grandfather used to watch in the hospital when he was dying.

And they were all there around. him and they were watching the top 10. His last wish was to watch your top 10 last before he died. So, yeah, the people at Netflix, and I would love to just go nuts and tell you how awful I think they are, because that's, I have that gene. Yeah. Just pick a place where I worked and I hate them. But I can't do that with Netflix.

We started, I don't know, years ago, four years ago, I don't know when we started. They've been nice. They've been friendly. They're pleasant. they invited me to their barbecue on Thursday. Right. Yeah. So it's been a great experience.

And like I said, the schedule has been enough to satisfy me being out of work. I feel like I learned that from you, the always turning it on your boss, the person who's employed when I was at ESPN. It's so easy. Well, I ended up getting suspended and I'm excited to leave. Oh, you get suspended?

Yeah, I got to spend it for three weeks. Well, what were you doing? I was very critical of Roger Goodell and knowing that he was their biggest partner. and, you know, in retrospect, probably pushed a little too far. Oh, that blows. That's not right. Because they're the punching bag in the gym.

And you don't take the punching bag out of the gym. That's why they're there. There's nothing you can do to personally affect the bottom line or the stock price. Well, then they realize, like, by the way, there's nothing you can do to affect the bottom. You're going to leave now. And we'll be exactly the same, which is what you learned. I'm telling you, this is exactly what's wrong with this country. Is it really?

I don't know. Maybe. Well, the thing, when I started writing my column, and they had all these media criticism rules, so I had to figure out all of these different ways to, like, make fun of announcers and Chris Berman and, you know, do these roundabout things. And it actually kind of was fun creatively.

Like, how do I get to the message across without hitting somebody up the head with a hammer? You know, which I think Howard Stern was probably like that a little bit, too, when he was on the radio versus being on. satellite. You're not satellite. You can just say anything. But you mentioned the NFL has a large share of ESPN. Is that correct? No, well, the ESPN, their most important TV partner was the NFL. Right. So they didn't really want people to be that critical in the NFL. And at the time, there was a lot of things to be critical about.

But I understand recently that there was a great- They bought a stake, yeah. So is that okay? That the single biggest topic of the sports broadcasting owns that? outlet? It seems a little dubious. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's they own a they own a piece. They run the NFL network. I mean, they would say and I would agree with them that they're still doing investigative journalism. They'll still write about the league. They try to be objective, but you always have that air of like, ah, is this objective? So you just got to prove that it's

objective. Yeah. And what is the line before you get the phone call, you know? Right. That was my issue. when I had all this stuff with Goodell in 2014, because it was all about that Ray Rice story that had happened. And we did good, ESPN did good reporting on it. And I was expounding in the reporting. I felt like he changed his story and probably went too far. You probably, I'm trying to think when you went too far, probably late 80s.

You started pushing it with NBC a little too much. The only real trouble I got in was making a joke about Sarah Palin. Oh, and CBS. Yeah. And then I remember one time, what's his name from CBS, Les Moonvez. Yeah. He said, he called me.

He was in town for the upfront or some nonsense. I don't know. Yeah, I'd like to come over and have a chat with you, Dave. That sounds terrible. Yeah. So he comes over. And I always try to make them uncomfortable somehow. So I would sit where you're sitting and then they would have to sit behind my desk.

So I knew that that was a bit of a head fuck, you know, like, why am I sitting behind his desk? And he looks at me, and it was like being back in high school, he said, what is your problem with me? So I love that moment. Why did he think you had a problem? Because I was making fun of CBS. I was working him over on the air. And then, of course, because I'm just, I guess a class. That was your show for 30 years, though.

You would always make fun of whoever else. But I folded right up and I said, oh, geez, nothing. It's all fine. We're just having fun here. We're just a bunch of kids. And it was like that. Whereas I could have just gone after him, but I didn't. Well, if people didn't play along with the joke with you, it would make me the viewer not like them.

Yeah. Because I remember you did the bullhorn thing with Brian Gumbull when he was doing the Today Show and he didn't react great to it. And I was like, that guy's a fucking asshole. Like, why doesn't he get that this is a show? Yes. Brian Gemmell was a thousand percent right to be upset. Yeah. They're doing a prime time live today show,

and I'm leaning out the window with a bullhorn. And then conversely, like on the opposite side, like when Vince was on your anniversary, Vince McMahon was on the anniversary show, kind of having fun. It was like, oh, Vince McMahon, didn't realize he had a sense of humor. Like, you know, it could definitely sway how you felt about people.

Costas was another one. Yeah. Costas was always great. Well, Cassus was, I mean, he was on the payroll in the beginning. He would do anything, and he was great because he had the right sensibility, and sure, I'll play along. And it's not going to lean on my integrity as a sports broadcaster. He was great.

Yeah, Kimmel and I have talked about that. You felt like, especially for us, like, growing up, like idolizing the show, everybody who played along or could fit in, we just like them. We were like, okay, they're in the club. Let's bring them in. It was like the Soho House. Well, you're explaining power I didn't realize I had. You had it.

You know, you know you have it. You just pretend. No, no, I know because in those days, I don't know how you feel about this, what you're doing right here. I didn't realize was not aware or didn't have time to consider that what we were doing in that studio was anything beyond the 300 people in the audience. Yeah, because you're doing it every day. You're doing it every day. And it's like running a restaurant. If people are sending the soup back, you realize, oh, we got bad soup.

And I think for a while, we were the only TV show that served soup. Well, I remember, I think you were on the cover of Rolling Stone at some point, and that felt validating, because it still mattered to be in the cover. S.I. and Rolling Stone, if you made the cover, like, something was happening. So that was, that you probably knew at that point. I only knew of the Rolling Stone importance because of the song on the cover of the Rolling Stone. and I realized then, oh shit, maybe this is something I would like to be on. And so I finally ended up on the cover of the Rolling Stone. And that was cool. I loved everything about it, but the photo shoot, you know.

It was always something wacky. Can we do something wacky? Yeah. And that always made my skin crawl. They taught Kimmel. Kimmel had an ass crack shot. They did it for an hour and then he did like a fake plumber thing. And of course that was the one they used.

Yeah. Yeah. They just, they try to let your defenses down until you do something dumb and then that's the one they use. Yeah, yeah. You just can't trust those people. So what's, what's next for you? More Netflix shows? Well, no, when I leave here, I'm going to have lunch with a friend at a deli.

That's what's next. What about rest of the year next? Any, like, chance we see you court side for like a next playoffs game or anything? You never do that stuff. Let me tell you something. It's like we're connected psychically here. Saturday, I will be in Indianapolis at the Herald Square Arena, whatever they're calling it now. Oh, for the Caitlin Clark? Yeah, season opener for the fever.

Tommy must have helped you. Dallas wings. I think I did this on my own. Did I do it on my own? You did it on your own? I didn't. You didn't need Tommy? I think Mary did this.

Did he do it? Oh, he did it. I'm sorry. Oh, you did it. You know, Tommy is like the string puller of the. I just don't know about Tommy. I'm still figuring about. Well, I don't know.

Remember, did you ever see the Woody Allen movie, Zellig? Yeah, that's Tommy. I'm being told now. Yeah, it was a Brandtta connection. And anyway, I'll be there. Speaking of Courtside, not court side, they tell me they can't put me at courtside,

which is fine, huh? Might have changed? No, you're going to, they'll be putting you in court side. This is breaking news for you, You'll be a court side. A big court side. This is great. I just say a few things about Caitlin Clark.

I got to know her a bit. Yeah. The same way you can tell people that you know me. Yeah. And nothing beyond that, please. I just say a bit if they ask. I know they have a bit. And I just fell in love with her because as a person,

that would be like the daughter who comes home for Thanksgiving dinner from college. And you just, the house would light up when she, pulled in the drive and was home for two or three days. I had that feeling about the kid. Oh, that's nice. And so we did this show with her on Netflix. And about a month afterward, I thought, let me call Caitlin, because I feel like I put in my time.

Right. I can get a call. And then it was all of a sudden to begin, well, what do you want to talk about? Well, I just want to see if she was happy with the show. Yeah, okay, well, let me see. we can do. I don't know. That was two years ago. Never got to call her. It's a lot of protected people. I don't know. Is it me? Is it just don't do whatever you do, don't let asshole call? No, that I don't think it was, she probably didn't even know you called,

would be my guess. Your mistake was not going through Tommy. Tommy, didn't we go through you? No. See, Tommy never happens. Well, who the hell did we go through that? How often? Let's try and get her on the phone now. How often do you go back to Indianapolis? I go back every year for racing activities. And then I go back to visit my family here and there, which is the family's getting smaller and smaller. You know, death. Yeah. Yeah. And I like going back.

Indianapolis has turned into a tremendous place. It's a great place to live. You've got to overlook a few things. You have to overlook a few things. Yeah. You have to overlook some things. A couple things. But it's still a great place.

I went back for the finals for two of the home games for Pacers, OKC. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I spend like five days. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's perfect for, it's a perfect, like, come in and out for four days. But didn't we know that that was not going to last? I mean, Therese Halliburton, and then all of a sudden the- Yeah, but here's the thing. So we're taping this before the lottery on Sunday, and they have a really good chance to get a top-four pick,

and the draft's awesome. Tyrese is coming back. They traded for a center. So I think they're going to be really good next show. Well, that would be delightful. I go back to the ABA days, and it was just, I loved it. Oh, that's right. You were there for the old Pacers.

Yeah, yeah. It was delightful. Who else was on that team? Freddie Lewis, Billy Keller, Mel Daniels, Roger Brown. Mel Daniels was a Rick Mount played. They won the title. I think they won three ABA titles.

Yeah. And it was delightful. It was in the old Indiana Fairgrounds Coliseum. And we would, tickets for 75 cents, and you'd go, and it would be like an old black and white movie about fighting. You could just see the haze settling over the ring. Right. And the only way you knew there was because of the colored ball. You could, oh, I see them.

They're down there playing basketball. It's so funny, like, that there's, like, barely any footage of any of the games. It was just this alternate league happening. Well, there's a tremendous documentary that I just watched. It was on Amazon. Yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty good, pretty good stuff. Yeah, I hope, hopefully Indianapolis will come back. So you won't go to a next game?

No, I would. You could be on Celebrity Row with Shalame, Larry David. You could be right there with those guys. Good for them. I'm afraid that I would probably get beaten. I don't know why. I just have that fear wherever I go. But I mean, when you're in New York, you're like New York royalty, though, aren't you?

Really? I think so. I mean, you did a show there for 33 years. And that's what it takes to become royalty. Yeah, I would say. Well, people have been very, very nice to me. And Colbert will go through this. Yeah.

It is now, oh, we miss you. And you'll get to the point where I know, if you really miss me, I'd still have a show. You understand? You see what I'm saying? Like that. All right, this is a true pleasure. Now, don't tell me we're finished.

because I'm just going to settling in. Tom's ready to go. How long has this been running? Yeah, this is. Oh, yeah, I'll be at the deli. Yeah, you've got to go to the deli. They heard of your Rubin. Yeah, comedy. They heard of your Rubin.

Well, this had been a great pleasure. And I feel like I would like to come back and do a better job. I thought you were great. I had a great time. I'll tell you what happened. Last night, I feel like I was dragged out of a bar and beaten because it was, it was John Mullaney. Yeah.

And it was a big, big, big deal. Yeah. And so, of course, I didn't sleep. And now today you're getting me at like 60%. Getting groggy Letterman? Yeah. I thought you did great. Thanks for coming on.

Well, what are you going to say, for God's sake? The producer's not here. I had a phenomenal time. I wish in retrospect, I would have invited the producer. Well, now you're going to look into this guy. I'm going to look into this guy for you. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Bill. enjoyed myself as much as I'm able to. Thank you for the for the viewer meal idea for the mailbag. Anything you got it's all year. I got 18 years out of mailbags and now more on the podcast. So thank you. Thank you. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to the one and only David Letterman. Thanks to Ghow and Eduardo as well. Don't forget to watch Tropic Thunder this weekend because that's the next rewatchables on Monday. So here's the schedule for this weekend. Sunday night. There's two games. New York, Philly, the lottery. And then San Antonio, Minnesota, which should end around 10 o'clock ET. I'm coming on live on Netflix with a couple guests, and we're going to break that in the lottery and all the basketball for the weekend.

So enjoy the weekend. I will see you on Sunday night. Must be 21 plus in President Select States for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in President D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Opting and required bonus issued as non-drawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration of max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook. that fender.com.

Game a problem called 100 gambler or 1-800-800-7-7-7-7. or visit ccpgagging.org slash chat in Connecticut or MDgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gambling helpline, ma.org or call 800-327-50-50 for 24-7-support in Massachusetts or call 8778-8-Hop-N-Y or text Hope NY in New York for Louisiana. Call 877-7-770-8867. Thank you.