The Bill Simmons Podcast - MJ’s Second Retirement, Explained. Plus: Chuck Klosterman on 'Survivor,' Defining Greatness, and Two Months of Quarantine Life | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons shares an essay he wrote about Michael Jordan’s retirement (4:25) before he is joined by author Chuck Klosterman to discuss the 40th season of ‘Survivor,’ generational gaps between athletes, nostalgic basketball behavior, and the 1992 dream team, as well as quarantine life, the historical weight of the COVID-19 pandemic, and more (24:45) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the BS podcast on the ringer podcast network brought to you by zip recruiter. Hey, we don't know what the upcoming football season is going to look like. We don't know if there'll be one 10th as many people in every section. We don't know if they're going to be in alcohol sales to cut down on bathroom trips, or if people over 65 aren't going to be allowed to go, who knows things might be a little up in the air, but some things remain certain like our presenting sponsor, ZipRecruiter's mission. Through all this, they're dedicated to helping people find jobs and helping growing companies hire for their teams. If you're looking for a job, ZipRecruiter's

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It's a charitable donation. Once again, that is the ringer.com slash WCK. If you haven't heard TV concierge, I popped on there ironically today to break downending Jacob, this new Apple TV Plus show. Amanda and Dobbins and I talked about it. It's very flawed. It's enjoyably flawed. It's very flawed. And we had fun talking about all the stuff going on there. If you love TV, The Wire is still going strong

way down in the hole. Van Lathan, Jemele Hill, they are doing the damn thing on that Wire podcast. And more TV. We have Behind the Billions with Brian Koppelman and David Levine. They're popping on after every Billions episode on Sunday night on Showtime and giving the director's commentary, which they've earned because they're the showrunners and co-creators of that show.

If you like the rewatchables, by the way, we had a special guest on Wednesday's podcast. Issa Rae came on to talk Groundhog Day with me and Sean Fantasy. You can find that on the rewatchables feed. We're doing Crimson Tide next week. We have a couple more good ones coming up. We've been on a nice run on that podcast.

Just trying to pump out the content, take people's minds off stuff. Not a lot else we could do here. Coming up, I wanted to revisit something that I wrote two years ago, actually, when LeBron James was about to be a free agent his last year in Cleveland. And I was comparing it to what happened when Michael Jordan was about to be a free agent in 1998 and the revisionist history that came out of him retiring a second time. The truth is he didn't have anywhere else to play. And I don't even know if they're covering this in episode 9 and 10 of The Last Dance,

but this is the crucial amazing point of this whole Last Dance series as you watch it. The fact that the Bulls, most notably Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner, and Bulls GM Jerry Kraus, were so willing to just cast this dynasty away and not try to figure out a way to bring Phil Jackson and Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan or two of the three or whoever to work just to try to keep winning titles. It's amazing. So I did all the research on this two years ago. I talked to some people. I was surprised what I found out. So I'm going to read that at the top. It's about 20 minutes long. If you want to fast forward and not listen to that and listen to my awesome skills, my, my, uh, audio book skills. If you don't want to hear that, just fast forward 20 minutes. Chuck Klosterman is going to be on and we're talking survivor.

We're talking, uh, just generational stuff with Jordan LeBron, whether basketball players get better, uh, just in general, why we have to try to keep figuring out the greatest player of all time, when technically the players should just be getting better every 20 years. We dive in all that. And then we talked a lot about the quarantine actually, and what life is like, and it gets a little deep. So be prepared. Anyway, that's all coming up first. Our friends from Pearl Jam. Remember when Roy Hobbs finished the natural with a majestic home run that won the pennant and exploded the lights? Well, Michael Jordan nearly pulled that off in real life.

Trailing by three points in Utah with 41.9 seconds remaining in a dangerous game seven looming, Jordan casually shredded three jazz players for an easy layup, stripped an oblivious Karl Malone on the other end, then drained an iconic jumper in Brian Russell's tumbling mug to swing the 1998 finals. No other Bulls player touched the ball. I repeat, no other Bulls player touched the ball. We already thought Jordan was the greatest. And then he did that? Even if the Delta Center didn't shower everyone with sparks, those 41.9 seconds reside on a different

planet, like Tiger prevailing at Torrey Pines on a busted knee, or Ali pouncing on a tiring George Foreman in Zaire, when we already believed someone was truly great, truly different, truly special, and then they delivered again anyway. And when that happens, it's almost eerie to watch. It's the final level of everything. I caught that game six in a disbelieving bar in Boston, where we had recently waved the white flag at our increasingly pathetic, Brad was better than Michael stance.

By 1998, MJ had evolved into America's one-man 1980 U.S. hockey team. Our generation's answer for the Beatles and Muhammad Ali. It's fair to argue about the start-to-finish careers of Jordan and LeBron, but LeBron can never truly challenge Jordan unless he reaches that specific point. In the past 50 years, only Jordan, Ali, and Tiger were so transcendent that everyone rooted for them during their primes. They unlocked the following achievement,

unanimous approval. We respect LeBron. We revered Jordan. So when MJ retired from basketball seven months after game six in Utah, it felt just as heartwarming as Roy Hobbs playing catch with his bastard son who could barely throw. What a way to go out. The end.

But what if I told you that Michael Jordan wanted a comeback, only he couldn't find a team? 30 for 30 presents Goat Without a Team, directed by Jason Hare. Let's go back to the fall of 1997, back when Chicago was turning out two compelling dramas, season four of ER and Jordan's final bowl season. Jordan genuinely despised Chicago's paranoid general manager, Jerry Krause, who had been aggressively planning for the imminent departures of Jordan, Scotty Pippen, and Phil Jackson.

The problem with Krause, as David Halberstam wrote in Playing for Keeps, was that Kraus, quote, deserved more credit than he got, but wanted more credit than he deserved, end quote. Imagine HBO's president seething about David Chase and James Gandolfini getting too much credit for The Sopranos, then spending season seven openly searching for a new showrunner and star.

Well, this was worse. Krause constantly bristled about getting credit for the Bulls dynasty, and when he couldn't get it, he effectively detonated it. Maybe they should have written that on his Hall of Fame plaque. Yeah, he got in in 97. The other problem, miserly Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf paid record-breaking money to his meal ticket, Jordan, but wouldn't oblige for MJ, Phil, and Scotty. Ever the opportunist, Jackson nicknamed that season the last dance and motivated his tribe accordingly. Two-plus decades later, it seems impossible that Kraus and Reinsdorf underestimated Jackson's connection with Jordan that badly. Even worse, everyone knew that Kraus planned on replacing Phil with a college coach named Tim Floyd.

You know, because anytime you can jettison Phil Jackson for Tim freaking Floyd, you have to do it. Meanwhile, a sulking Pippen headed into the final year of his criminally underpaid contract determined to get paid. And not by Chicago, the franchise that had duped him with lowball extensions not once but twice. Scottie headed into the last dance as a top 10 player in future Hall of Famer and the NBA's 122nd highest paid player.

And even Jackson's finest Zen master tricks couldn't soothe Scottie's bitterness. He rested an ailing left foot all summer. He screwed the team by waiting until October for surgery. He lost another three months and he left Jordan to carry everything, which of course he did. Also not helping, their third wheel, the increasingly erratic Dennis Rodman, who was Charlie Sheen-ing his way out of the league.

The finish line was coming. You could see it. Near the end of part one of Allison Elwood's incredible documentary about the Eagles, as the band's members slowly grow to despise one another, everyone expects them to break up until it finally happens in Long Beach in 1980, with Glenn Frey and Don Felder nearly brawling on stage as the band implodes. The Bulls never had their Long Beach 80 moment, just a drama-filled final season that became

its own farewell tour of sorts. They shook off an eight and seven start in a slew of, is Chicago done? Think pieces by ripping off an astonishing 51 and 10 stretch fueled by, as always, the homicidally competitive Jordan. And yeah, I know Jordan's GOAT resume kicks off with six rings, the dream team, the 93 finals, the Roy Hobbs game. But for me, Jordan's greatness resonated the most during those boring nights in Jersey

or Charlotte or Sacramento. Anytime he took offense to something, a heckling fan, a dopey foul call, an opponent's sneer, whatever it was, and he would immediately transform into the NBA's John Wick. Everyone else wanted a win. Jordan wanted something else.

And by the mid-90s, coaches were warning their players Not to trash talk, eyeball, or provoke him in any way Keep your head down, shut up Don't give him any reason to get going We didn't have league pass for those Monday and MJ nights Just SportsCenter And those 11 p.m. highlights with Stu Scott narrating MJ had 12 points at halftime,

but in the third quarter, Jason Williams gave him a hard foul. And let me tell you, my man MJ didn't like that. And we had next morning box scores when you glanced to page four of USA Today's sports section and say to yourself, Jesus, MJ had 49 against the Clippers? I wonder who pissed him off. Every night, this stubborn lunatic

searched for a reason to demolish his opponent. And when he couldn't find it, he made one up. Kraus and Reinsdorf, they stacked the deck against a 35-year-old legend during that final bowl season. Guess what? It didn't matter. 62 wins, 20 losses. MJ played every game.

Jackson gathered players, coaches, and trainers for a special meeting before the 98 playoffs, asking everyone to write a message about what that final season meant to them. A poem, a sentence, a song, whatever. It had to be 50 words or fewer, everyone obliged. They went around the room reading their messages, even Jordan. And when they finished, Jackson burned them in a coffee can. All the chaos, all the dissension, it all burned away with it.

They banded together for eight weeks. They prevailed one last time for a lot of reasons, but mainly because they employed the greatest basketball player who ever lived. Jordan finished his Bulls career by winning three straight titles, playing 304 of a possible 304 games, and logging an incomprehensible 11,786 minutes, opening the door for an understandable, he's just spent narrative. Jordan Rules author Sam Smith later wrote that Jordan, quote, couldn't stand playing

with Scottie Pippen anymore, and that Jordan was, quote, sick and tired and burned out, just like in 93. Throw in Jordan's hatred at Kraus, and that's why Jordan walked away after that sixth title. Or that's just the story we always believed. Look, this happens sometimes. A narrative emerges and takes hold, and the truth is much more complicated.

The Eagles, they broke up because the band hated each other. That's easy. Jordan retired that second time, still the best player in the league, because he had nowhere else to go. And that's complicated. And it's also perplexing. Former teammate BJ Armstrong told me once that Jordan walked away in 93 because he was completely spent, both physically and mentally,

and that he only returned 17 months later after noticing how dramatically expansion had diluted the league. MJ realized he could steal a few more titles, Armstrong believed, without the schedule and an unforgiving talent pool draining him too badly. And eventually it did. The second three-peat finished Jordan once and for all, but ask Armstrong about MJ's second retirement now, and he'll scream,

he was done. His body was done. Others around Jordan believe mitigating circumstances played a much bigger role. A damaging lockout followed the 98 finals with owners intent on repairing a broken salary structure that empowered younger stars in ominous ways. Turned off by Latrell Sprewell choking his coach, two unlikable Dream Team sequels,

the rise of a polarizing Iverson hip-hop generation, and a slew of overpaid lottery picks wasting their talent. Older fans were openly rebelling against on-court behavior and skyrocketing ticket prices. They just didn't like the league that much. Life after Jordan quickly became the scariest three words in basketball. The man bumped TV ratings by 25 to 30%, generating more attention

and adoration than every other superstar combined. Without Jordan, the league's business model was broken. David Stern knew it. The commission spent seven months playing chicken with the Players Association, desperate to rebuild a suddenly troubled league. He grew a Dr. Richard Kimball beard and played up the gravity of the situation, speaking to reporters in heavy tones, exploiting the fresh scars of 1994's devastating baseball lockout. Only when the NBA stalemate stretched into the holidays did everyone start believing Stern. You know what didn't happen during that stretch? Guess what? Michael Jordan never retired.

You know why MJ never retired? He never wanted to retire. He just didn't have a basketball team. Over the months and years that passed, we came to believe a story that, like a handful of other moments in Jordan's career, baseball, never really added up. Jordan officially retired on January 13th, 1999, only a few days after Stern broke the players and spawned a new collective bargaining agreement.

And if it seems like MJ waited until the last possible moment to leave, that's because he did. He handled it beautifully, telling 800 reporters in the United Center that, quote, mentally I'm exhausted. I don't feel like I have a challenge. Physically, I feel great. This is a perfect time for me to walk away from the game. I'm at peace with that.

So to recap, the most homicidally competitive athlete we've ever had quit basketball, not once, but twice at the peak of his powers. What? I mean, think about this. Every competitive MJ anecdote describes his pathological need to conquer others, to wager against them constantly, to search for victories big and small, ranging from let's play horse after practice to I bet my luggage comes out before yours does. The man was consumed, utterly consumed by competition. You don't shut that off.

It's not a fucking faucet. At age 35, we were expected to believe that Jordan found serenity. Adding to the mystery that week, we learned that Jordan recently sliced his right index finger on a cigar cutter. Jordan claimed that he couldn't have played basketball for two months anyway. And yet he played golf in the Bob Hope Classic with Charles Barkley the next weekend. Hmm, I wonder if they gambled. By November, when Skip Bayless, whatever happened to that guy? Skip Bayless wrote about MJ embarrassing Corey Benjamin at a practice

and mentioned Jordan's nagging finger injury in the piece. A convenient backup narrative emerged. If Jordan never sliced that finger, maybe he would have come back. Nope. One of MJ's closest friends told me that had the Bulls brought Jackson back after the 98 finals, Jordan absolutely would have stayed. That's how much he respected Jackson.

But once Kraus and Reinsdorf nudged Jackson out, that flipped Jordan's stance the other way. Now he had to leave Chicago out of loyalty to Phil, and also, he just didn't want to start over with anyone else. Jerry Kraus underestimated the MJ-Phil connection so egregiously and in such a damaging way to Chicago's future and NBA history, too, that it's difficult to recall a bigger misread in the seven decade history of the league.

It's completely indefensible. It's like this scene from Fast Five. Look, they're setting millions of dollars on fire. What are they doing? That was the Bulls. Unfortunately for Jordan and for NBA fans too, no other late 1990s franchise was savvy enough to realize, let's hoard our cap space in case Jordan decides to jump teams.

Nobody thought that way. You know who created that idea? Orlando. They cleared the decks in a heroic effort to land T-Mac, Grant Hill, and Tim Duncan after the 1999-2000 season. They got two of them. In 97 and 98, nobody thought that way. And in January 99, the new CBA favored teams keeping their own free agents, which of course spawned some of the

dopiest contracts ever. Class of 96 stars like Kobe Iverson and Ray Allen, they signed 70.9 million max extensions, but unfortunately so did Sharif Abdur-Rahim and Zydrunas Elgazkis. The Nets, they splurged $86 million to keep Jason Williams, not the white chocolate Williams, the one who accidentally murdered his chauffeur. Atlanta and Golden State, they locked up Alan Henderson and Jason Caffey for a combined $80 million, which was roughly 20 times too much. And the Knicks, they spent $56 million to keep Charlie Ward and Chris Dudley, or as they'd later be known, Charlie Ward's expiring contract and Chris Dudley, or as they'd later be known,

Charlie Ward's expiring contract and Chris Dudley's expiring contract. There's a lot of mistakes back then. Maybe a quarter of the league possessed real cap space. The Kings, they smartly spent theirs on Vlade Divac and a six-year supply of Marlboro Reds for just 62.5 million. Six other teams landed marquee free agents who flopped or eventually flopped.

Phoenix, Tom Gugliotta, Denver, Antonio McDyess, Charlotte, Derek Coleman, Philly, Matt Geiger, Chicago, Brent Berry, and Detroit, Lloyd Vaught. They would do those over again. Oh, and Donald Sterling's Clippers, they didn't spend any of their cap space as usual. Although they probably spent a corresponding amount on non-disclosure agreements. Anyway, our seven contenders for that goofy lockout season, San Antonio, Portland, New York, Indiana, Houston, Utah, the Lakers. Only one had cap space, the Rockets, who ironically landed Pippen in a sign-in trade for 67.2 million. Nobody else could have afforded Jordan, who was coming off a record one-year salary of $33 million, unless he played for a truly seismic discount. So I ask you again, what was Michael's move? Create an old guy team

with Pippen, Barkley, and Hakeem in Houston? Team up with Duncan and Robinson and live in San Antonio? Slum for ring number seven in a tiny market like Portland, Utah, or Indiana? Join forces with Shaq and Kobe and play for, yikes, Magic Johnson's team? Please. Only New York loomed as a legitimate possibility. If you remember, the Knicks traded a bunch of crap for Sprewell only eight days after Jordan retired. Could they have gone for Michael instead? Would Kraus have sold out Jordan's Chicago legacy for a poo-poo platter package and a couple of picks?

That was Jordan's only real play unless the Lakers hired Phil Jackson. And unfortunately, that didn't happen for another six months. So did the league inadvertently checkmate its greatest player? Actually, yes, that's exactly what happened. And that's how Michael Jordan ended up

extending his own bizarre record. Most times that the GOAT retired on top as an NBA Finals MVP. Two. MJ skipped the lockout season and returned in January 2000, joining Washington as a part owner and president of Basketball Operations. In September 2001, Jordan stunned everyone by deciding to play basketball for the Wizards. An astonishing 39 months had passed since the Roy Hobbs game in Utah. A stretch that included the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the real Slim Shady, Sosa versus McGuire, bye, bye, bye, and oops, I did it again,

the Bush-Gore election, Kurt Warner's Rams, the premiere of The Sopranos, the first internet stock boom, the rock versus stone cold feud, Belichick jumping to the pats, Chuck Nolan mourning a volleyball, Who Let the Dogs Out, Y2K, Y2J, two more Jay-Z albums, and fuck, three more Yankees titles. Jordan announced his return two weeks after 9-11, later promising to donate his salary to families of the victims. The country was reeling. None of it felt right. Those two wizard seasons played out like a reunion concert tour. And even if we knew the band had already peaked, we didn't care. Just play the hits, Michael.

Many nights he couldn't do it. A couple nights, magically, he did. But Jordan's creaky body just couldn't hold up. He'd been away too long. He missed his window. So could Jordan have stolen that lockout title in 99? We'll never know. But isn't that what sports is all about? Defending your title until you lose it? Here's what Michael said in June of 97, right after he won championship number five. If only they'd listened to him. I guess it could have been worse for Michael. His son could have thrown a baseball like that.

All right, we're bringing in Chuck Klosterman in one second. First, let me tell you about FanDuel Sportsbook. They are very, very, very, very, very excited for UFC 249 this Saturday. Our friends at FanDuel, they love a 10-part sports doc or a classic baseball game as much as anyone, but sports just aren't the same when you know the ending. So FanDuel is pulling out all the stops for this fight card.

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Hello, Colorado. Refund issued a non-withdrawable site credit that expires after 14 days. See sportsbook.fanduel.com for terms. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Or in West Virginia, visit 1800gambler.net. Or in Indiana, call 1-800-9-WITH-IT. In Colorado, call 1-800-522-4700. That should all just be one number. All right. We are going to bring in Chuck Klosterman right now. Here we go. All right, Chuck Klosterman is here. I texted him and said, I really want to talk about Survivor. I'm really into that season.

He loves Survivor as much or more than anyone I know. And he just texted back, I want to talk about Michael Jordan. Okay, first of all, I can't imagine that I love Survivor more than anyone you know. I feel like you kind of live in a survivor world. You're, you're, you're up there. You're in the,

you're in the inner, inner circle of people that love it the most. You bet. I mean, we've also grown up with it too. It's been almost 20 years for us. Okay. So there's been 40 seasons.

I've seen 39 of them. Um, so I guess that makes me a pretty big fan. I'm certainly a loyal fan, I guess. I will say this, though. I don't feel as though the show has evolved in a good way. Okay, why? It did for a long time. For a long a long period survivor kept getting better and better

because you know it would it moved more and more into the idea of the game strategy right and that's real interesting because initially i think that they thought survivor was just you know this is reality program we need to explain that this fireman has firefighter friends back in New York. We had to talk about why the mom misses her kids. And that became less and less and less. And the show got better and better and better. As it became less popular, the people who stuck with it, I think, continually liked it more. But now it's in this strange spot where it's only nonstop strategy.

And you can't even get a sense from watching the game what's actually happening in the kind of insular world. I feel like I'm just constantly getting information that ends up being completely meaningless when the vote actually happens. Also, how do you feel about these fire tokens? I think that's dumb. getting information that ends up being completely meaningless when the vote actually happens. I also like, how do you feel about these fire tokens? I think that's dumb. I didn't like them. If people crashed on a desert Island and had to survive, I don't think they'd be like,

one of the first things we need to do is fabricate an economy. Like why, like why would that, there's a weird thing to add. It's, it's, you know, it's like,

it's moving it back toward actual life, I guess. The fact that there's all previous winners on this season, in some ways, is good because no one's going to dump the rice or try to create chaos for no reason because people who do that never win. But as a consequence, it's almost like, I don't know. I watch this show and I almost find my mind drifting toward other things while I'm watching it, which is weird because nothing else in the world is happening. So I think they made two mistakes.

One is that there's just too many people on the show still. We're heading toward there's the season finale is a week from now. The jury has, it seems like there's like 40 people now watching. They did that. You know, they move into the extinction Island when you get voted out, but then they didn't get rid of any of the people on extinction Island or have any sort of elimination thing or anything with them. And you know, it's only an hour a week. I find myself more fascinated by the people on the Extinction Island because they went into it a little bit in the two hour yesterday. And, you know, and that one lady had been there really since the first day.

And she's like, I know every inch of this island. Is that like Boston Rob's wife or is that Natalie? Natalie. Because Natalie seems like the best pure athlete on the show this night. Oh, yeah. And she's like, I've explored every inch of the island. I know it like the back of my hand. She's turning into Tom Hanks from Castaway.

But then they have all these other people there. And it's like, why do you have 20 people on Extinction Island? That doesn't make sense. Well, I know what the logic on that was. I think the thinking was we don't want to get into a situation where there's characters that people actually want to see who disappear maybe for the very reason that they're interesting,

that the other sort of champions realize, well, this person has a lot of charisma or whatever, let's get rid of them. So they can keep someone like Tyson or whatever in the game. Yeah. That doesn't bother me as much. I, I, it, it just isn't a situation I feel like where maybe they have played this concept to its logical conclusion. I mean, it's like, you know, uh, um, it, it, none of the people involved with the show anymore seem to have a problem

dealing with the adversity of the conditions. They're almost like, I'd rather be here than I would be at home or whatever. That's like when the people were like, there was one season, I think maybe it was even season two or season three where they kind of made a tactical error and put them like in Africa and almost like a desert Savannah. And it was like a real dangerous, terrible place.

As a viewer, that's kind of what I'm looking for. I don't want to see people this comfortable being able to purchase like a 24 ounce tub of peanut butter. That doesn't really seem like a survival world. You know, I keep watching it i i just i like one of the only shows that me and my wife just always have watched together and um you know it's it is it's the kind it's kind of like watching a local baseball team where it's better the more you watch it like it improves over time um it i if I wish I could be a consultant on the show, I think there's a lot of things that they could do that would make it, uh, a more interesting deal, but they're on

this trajectory and they're not going off. So with name, like two of the things you think they should tweak. I do think that they need to, uh uh sort of move back in the direction toward um uh of a more sort of for lack of a better term dangerous setting where where where just the experience of being there is is uh part of the the kind of the assault on the, on the competitor. What about Florida? What? You said you wanted a more dangerous setting. We should just have it in Florida. It's very dangerous there right now.

I suppose. Yeah. People just show up on, you know, yeah. They just walk in without masks. I also like, you know,

I said earlier, this will seem like a contradiction, but it's just like, sometimes you overcompensate. Initially, reality programming was too much based around the personalities of these people. But now I would like a little more understanding of what their interpersonal non-game relationship is. Because that's not, it really has become, maybe this is why you like it maybe. It really has become closer to conventional sports in that the only people to really logically root for

are just the best players. Like that's the only thing left to find. Like why would, like I think a lot of people like someone like Boston Rob now as sort of as a character because he's good at playing the game but that's only because the only slice of his personality we see is his gameplay like all the other aspects of his persona if I recall were pretty unlikable so it was like oh he's this guy I don't like but he's good at this game now we've taken away that first part and all it's it would be like if we were um if we were following boxing but we didn't get to know anything about robert

duran's life or anything about thomas hearns's life or anything about marvin haggler's life we just saw them box now i don't know why i just used a bunch of guys who boxed in that 91 but what i'm saying is like it's it would be odd to watch sports and have no relationship to the people we're watching. Cause it's not survivor. The game of survivor is not that fucking interesting. It's not so fascinating that I don't care about the people involved. Well,

I think they should have gone 90 minute episodes. Cause I do think the show is missing the two guys hanging around the campfire who didn't realize that they had blank in common or the two people who didn't get along who now they're finding some common ground or the flip side, people really starting to annoy each other, which you can set up over five, 10 minutes. But I will say though, I think why I've been, there's two reasons I'm really interested in this season. One is just the star power has been awesome and everybody's won. Everybody's been successful.

And more importantly, they know each other's moves because they've watched all the previous seasons. And I thought like last night, there was a really interesting moment when we're in the tribal, tribal council and Denise, who's doing her whole woe is me routine, trying to throw Nick off the scent that they're not actually

going to blindside him. I don't know. I use rice. I just figure if I'm going to go to Extinction Island, I want some rice in my stomach. Does the whole thing. And they cut to the jury and two of the jury people are like, oh, she's, she's fucking making a move right now. This is all bullshit. They know each other so well. It's, it's like watching basketball where the two teams have played six games in a playoff series and they just kind of know each other's plays. So I think that part's been really fun. And then the second piece is just, you know, at this point, all of them are just so good at the game. It feels like in a lot of ways they've advanced it. You know, if you're going to compare it to sports where it's like in basketball, they just know better shots to take now.

In Survivor, they kind of know the moves to make now, which is like there's a game behind a game behind a game now. Isn't that going to complicate the voting? Because typically at the end of Survivor, there is always this fundamental question. Do I, you know, am I going to vote for the winner to be the person who played the best or the person I like the most? And the tradition of Survivor that since the very first season is to say, you've got to vote for the person who plays the best, you know, but they've all won before. So they're all good at the game. It's hard. It's going to be really hard for any of these people to establish that they played

uh you know like that they somehow played better made bolder moves they all have no such a high awareness of each other like in their kind of kind of culture they're all super famous right like it's always weird when you hear these people on survivor talk about survivor it's so ingrained in their psychology that like every you know that like like that somebody like russell or one of these characters is like this towering wilt chamberlain like figure from the past like like they they i don't know how they're going to gauge who should win this outside of like almost their own fandom if that makes sense i don't know i i it's strange that i have so many complaints about this but

as i watched it last night and then i was watching it on delay because i i recorded it and started it later and i got your text so i was almost watching it more critically and more seriously um and i just i don't know i'm'm, I have disappointments. Yeah. But here's the thing though, cause they all know this game so well, right? You would think the one thing that couldn't happen. And in the earlier part of the season with Boston, Rob, everyone was really wary of like letting him run the game. Oh, here he goes. He's going to control it. We can't let him control it. We're all too smart to have somebody pulling the strings. And yet this happens every season as this goes along and they become suspicious of who's the

string puller. But then there's somebody who actually is pulling the strings and they can see it, but they don't see it. Like this year, it's been Tony, the last like four or five episodes where he's running the game now. And yet every time they go to, Oh, who should we vote out? It's always, nobody ever kind of looks at this and goes, well, wait a second. Tony hasn't won an immunity challenge yet. Like, let's just take this fucking guy out because he's going to go to the final. We know who his three people are. And I don't know whether it's fatigue, hunger, uh, sleep deprivation, all the things that go in where your brain just stops working as well. But I'm always amazed that they can't see like a right around this point when there's seven left and there's seven left,

that's when you can flip the game and that none of them could see that Tony was running the game. So I saw, I still feel like the basic DNA of survivor is still working the way that it did in 2000. Maybe, maybe I'm just, maybe I've just seen seen enough of it I think you have starting to just it's starting to all seem the same to me like I I have a hard time at the time you know sometimes recalling what happened earlier in the game I combine it with past seasons I don't know maybe well I'll tell you this I had kind of stopped watching it I you said you've seen 39 seasons I've probably seen somewhere between 27 and 30. And sometimes the sameness of the show, there'll just be years where if I'm not in on the first

episode, I'm just like, ah, I'm out. Or they start piling up on my DVR and I just never end up watching them. This year, there's so many people I liked in the show. And I really liked that they went old, old school and grabbed some people from the two thousands. I mean, survivor now has become something that I don't experience that much with television, which is a show I don't really have to watch while I'm watching it. Like I can return texts and I can have various conversations.

I can read while I'm watching it. The other shows I watch tend to be, for lack of a better term, like very good, like complicated or whatever, that I want to actually see what's happening. Yeah. That there would be a real,

like you can sort of space out for long stretches of Survivor and there's no consequence. The challenge is like that too. Yeah. Now that's something I don't watch anymore. You're still watching that, I guess, right? I'm like two out of every three seasons I'll watch.

This now that we have no sports, anything where anyone's competing in any way, I'm probably going to watch. I kind of drew the line at the Korean baseball though. When he spins like, hey, we have Korean baseball. I'm like, all right, cool. I don't feel like there's any scenario where I would just watch.

I barely want to watch American baseball at this point. I'm definitely not watching Korean baseball. I'd rather watch the old games. Like I've been watching some of the old 2000s games that they've been showing and the intensity of it and just seem like there's just more famous people in the game and things like that. But the old sporting events have sufficed for me.

You know what? Because this leads me to kind of why I wanted to talk about this Jordan thing again. I realize we talk about this all the time, but I am finding the way this is impacting like the sports discourse is pretty it fascinating to me that this that this documentary about something that happened all these years ago is prompting i feel like lots of of pretty sort of complicated fundamental questions um have you it does doesn't seem to really be pushing this idea that some decision now has to be made about whether we just concede everything is better now or that it is possible for things from the past to have been superior.

I see there was a story in New York Magazine or whatever. It's like watching old sporting events makes me think that how great things are now, how great athletes are. But I don't feel like that's sort of the conventional reaction. I mean, it really is coming to this Jordan-LeBron thing again. It's amazing to me how it seems

to infiltrate everything. I'm sure you saw this. Okay, so that guy in Georgia got shot, right? He was out jogging and two guys shoot him. LeBron comes out and is like, this is terrible. How could jogging and two guys shoot him. LeBron comes out and, you know, it was like, this is terrible. How could this be? Like, we're being hunted. And then there was a tweet from Jason Whitlock, who's sort of like, he's doing this to establish himself as more

political than Jordan? I was like, wow, this is really in everything now. This is like, it was what a bizarre reaction, first of all, to have to LeBron tweeting this. But even that, it was like, it didn't seem so far afield. Like, I'm not surprised someone had that reaction. And I feel like I may have unlocked why this Jordan-LeBron thing is just so fascinating to people. Okay. I think that both the LeBron people and the Jordan people

feel like they're having the same argument, but they're actually making two different arguments. The people in Jordan's camp are saying he's the greatest basketball player of all time. And the people in LeBron's camp are saying he's the best at playing the game of basketball. And it seems like those things are the same, but they're different. Do you agree or disagree? Yeah, because I always thought the case for Jordan

was more than just the stats and the rings and how great he was at playing basketball. It was the force of personality and the charisma and all the stuff that I felt like when I was like a little kid growing up and you just gravitated to Ali. Remember? Yeah, I'm older than you. But when Ali was on Wide World of Sports, when I started watching Wide World of Sports,

whatever it was about him as a six-year-old, I was just like, I love this guy. How can this guy be in my life? And I do think Jordan had that. And I think, honestly, those are the only two athletes in my lifetime that had that, that when they were in the room, they were the most important person in the room to everybody, to the people that are competing against, to people on their team, to the people watching. And that's why, like, I feel like our generation never challenged the Ali thing. Like when Tyson came up, nobody was ever like, fuck Ali, it's Tyson. Like we had like a rever never challenged the Ali thing. When Tyson came up, nobody was ever like,

fuck Ali, it's Tyson. We had a reverence to the Ali thing. I think there was a sense of that when Tyson was 19. Well, just that he had a chance, but nobody was ever like, he's better than Ali. Going back to the thing I just said, though, I know you placed Jordan as the best player of all time, but who was better at playing basketball?

Jordan or LeBron? Yeah, but that gets tough because you got it. But I think a lot of these people are, I think people think it's the same question. Right. If you're a LeBron person and you say that, clearly LeBron is better at playing basketball than Jordan for all these reasons, his physicality, the advantages he had, his maybe the things that he was able to take from Jordan, when there's a totally new generation of guys playing basketball, that the best player from that period will be better than LeBron. Like you can't say LeBron's

the best basketball player of all time and also believe that that will always be the case. Where someone who says Jordan is the best basketball player of all time can also work from the position that this is static. That it doesn't really matter what happens going forward. It's not a pure measure of how skilled they are at the rudimentary elements of the game. It has all these secondary qualities. And I'm wondering if a lot of the people who now feel that LeBron is superior to Jordan, if they also can see that they're not going to feel that way in 20 years. Because it almost has to be. I think Jordan was better in whatever question you're throwing at me.

I do. I just think he was better. I think the only advantage LeBron has, which we've discussed a million times is his career was longer and his prime was longer. And that has a lot to do with advantages that his era had. And that's it. Well,

so, so you feel that Jordan was a better passer than LeBron? I just think he was better. Like we've been doing these rewatchable games. But would you say that LeBron, who among between Jordan and LeBron is a better passer? I see. I think Jordan was a really underrated passer.

I really do. I'm saying which one is better between those two with that skill. I would say LeBron was, was slightly better because it was more of his DNA than it was for Jordan. Who was a better rebounder between the two of them? Pretty. I mean, LeBron was two inches taller, but Jordan was a really good rebounder. I mean, he would have.

This is the thing. It's not like I'm not trying to criticize Jordan because this is what the weird thing is. Watching this documentary series. I had moved into that. I thought that I had sort of gotten this position where I was like, you know, LeBron is better than Jordan. That like, just for all these various reasons, he is better. And I'm watching this now and I'm realizing that I was looking at this

question incorrectly. That I was like, that it's not just a pure measure of who is better at these things. I feel like LeBron at most aspects of basketball is better than Jordan and Jordan is still superior. Um, and the, the explanation for that is, is confusing to me, but I think real. Yeah. But I think, I think the biggest piece of it is you have to compare the person to who was in the league with them at the time and the distance between them and whoever the peers are. The Jordan thing, it was over and over again,

the fact that he just stood out in such a dramatic way. Whereas LeBron always had these different rivals and people that could go toe-to-toe with him. And with Jordan, remember we argued about Jordan versus Drexler? It wasn't we. It was a couple of media members. Things like that.

It was like Jordan versus Magic in 91. He extinguished that. It was like, Barkley's the MVP. He extinguishes that. He kind of crushed everybody all through the 90s. I also thought, Rossello makes this point. Like he just had the most unbelievable body control

playing in play out of anybody we've ever seen. Like he always did the perfect thing athletically. And I've never seen another guy. The only guy I would compare it to is almost Jerry Rice, which is another one where I just feel like Jerry Rice is the best receiver I've ever seen. And maybe there are newer guys that technically we could say, oh, they do this better. They run their 40 a second faster. But I just know living through the Jerry Rice thing,

it was absolutely unbelievable and always got open and could do whatever he wanted on a football field. So that's why. So I like the distance with the peers matters. But what you just said, though, is this kind of this confusing thing. It's like. OK, is it is it irrational to not believe that the current generation of any sport is not the highest level of, the performance level is higher in that sport than any other. I think you're right. But you almost have to look at it like cars, right? Like if you took a Mercedes from 2020 and you compared it to a 1986 911 Porsche

and you were like, which car drives better? And the Porsche, you know, the 86 one was the single best probably driving experience you could have unless you want to get like a Ferrari or something. But if you compare that to a Mercedes now, the Mercedes would just drive better. But does that mean it's a better car than the Porsche in 1986 doing all the things it was doing compared to all the other cars? That's where, that's where my brain starts to bleed a little bit. Well, I mean, the confusing thing to me is maybe when we were saying this individual is the greatest basketball player or Jerry Rice is the greatest receiver.

And we throw these caveats in like well of course things have changed for example like in the in the in the in the series where jordan plays his last game at mass and square garden and wears those original shoes and they hurt his feet yeah his feet are covered in blood by the end of the game like that would never happen now but no nobody would do that now. Nobody would wear an inferior product on their shoes for a game. I don't believe that would happen. You know, but that was still something that guys would do.

You know, that it was an interesting thing to him to do in 1997 or 98 or whatever. So he just did it, you know, in the same way that maybe 20 years before that you know a guy might as you like will often mention like smoke cigarettes or something at at halftime like that would never happen in the later time that detriment would be gone like there's something that has changed about the way these things are done that that a lot of these you know these qualities that are these things that people do would just never be done again. But it's almost sort of like, when we're saying greatness, are we saying like what we want from the person? That Jordan did the best, is the best version of what sort of we ideologically want from a basketball player, even if there are guys in the present

who might, by any sort of measurable quality, be better. I do think it matters that you have so many more ways to try to reach your ceiling for whoever you are athletically now. That can't be understated. Just even what's happened in the last 10 years, because I remember writing about this and talking about this in the 2000s, but then think about all the things that have just changed in the last eight, nine years. These devices you have that like whoop where you can just wear it on your wrist and track every single moment of your day. If you're sleeping at the right times, you know, what you're eating,

all these different people that can just study your body and realign it if something's wrong. Like the great example is Steph Curry, whose career just does not happen 20 years earlier. He has ankle problems his whole career. And he's like a Grant Hill kind of bummer to us. We're like, oh man, Steph Curry would have been a fun NBA too bad about his ankles. And we just kind

of move on, but you put him in this decade and now he's a top 30 all time player. And I, that's the part I think where it gets really tough to compare players. Do you feel like the gaps between various generations are getting smaller or larger? What I mean by this is like, okay, imagine a basketball player in the 30s compared to a basketball player in the 50s. And then think from the 50s to the 70s, the 70s to the 90s, and the 90s Into this period now. Do you feel like the changes in those kind of those generational sweeps or whatever is getting more or less accentuated? I think.

I would say 70s through the end of the 2000s was pretty easy to compare players. I think this decade made it harder because of the shooting, the shooting and the percentages and the way the game is played has changed absolutely everything. And by the way, football and baseball, same thing, right? Like you, you watch,

I was watching the 1978 Yankees, Red Sox, one game playoff game. And Jim Rice had 46 homers that year, but was not a big guy like we have now. It's all like skinny guys to their muscles. You watch the NBA seventies, eighties, same thing. The guys are all kind of lanky, you know, and wiry and just had certain types of bodies. There weren't like the big Carl Malone type bodies back then football. How big are the linemen now compared to what we saw, you know, even through, I would say the mid late eighties, we didn't have 360 pound linemen back then. So you think the gap is getting bigger? I do. I think physically it's different.

Okay. Cause that's, I, I, I sort of feel like the best basketball players actually, no, let me change this. An average basketball player from the seventies would have dominated the fifties. I don't know if an average basketball player from the nineties would have dominated the seventies. I don't think they would have. So the gap is getting smaller. So the best basketball player in the world in 1977 is Jabbar. An average player in 1970 is, give me like Lionel Hollins. Okay. Like I can imagine you take Lionel Hollins and you put him back in the 50s and he's a

Hall of Fame player. Okay. So you go to the 90s. Jordan is the best player. An average player is, who's a great, like who's, to you, what's the epitome of an average 90s, Jordan is the best player. An average player is... Do you want the epitome of an average 90s player? Average star?

Average 90s player. The fourth or fifth best guy on... Let's say Brian Russell. Okay, Brian Russell. What's Brian Russell's career if he plays in the 70s? I honestly don't think it's that much different. I think he probably scores 22 points a game.

Maybe. If we're actually transporting him. I'm saying this is not like the, we have to imagine Brian Russell grew up. I'm saying this is like the time machine thing. Okay, but here's the one thing you're forgetting. You have less teams in the 70s. And you have the ABA for a while and the NBA and the NBA is just like a less athletic league. The ABA is where a lot of the younger guys are. It's blacker. It's just more, it's got Dr. J

and Marvin Barnes, all those guys. And then when the leagues merge, you still only have like 21 teams. You have a bunch of awesome athletes at that point. And each team has four or five. And the guys that just get squeezed out of the league are like the Don Nelson types. Cause they can't guard half the perimeter guys in the league. I think, I think there were less awesome guys,

but they still had awesome guys and they had good athletes. What was the height and weight of Russell when he was playing in 1996? He was probably like 6'7", 200, something like that. So he's bigger than Elgin Baylor. It seems to me like he would be a pretty, like while we never would consider a guy like him a physically dominant player. If we were giving Russell compliments,

we'd be like, well, he was a smart defender. He was an unselfish player, all of these things. I think if you put him back in the 70s, he's a physically dominating player. So now we look at an average. I disagree. I think the 70s were athletic. I think 60s are different.

It really shifts in the 70s. Even somebody like Bobby Jones, the guy was an amazing athlete. 60s are different. It really shifts in the 70s. Even somebody like Bobby Jones, the guy was an amazing athlete. Sure he was. But like we've seen in this documentary, Jordan didn't start lifting weights until 1989. Right.

So Jordan, who was a naturally strong, kind of like a farm strong type. He wasn't from a farm, but he had that kind of just natural strength or whatever. Something like Bird or these guys who never lifted weights. I think anybody who would have done weight training through high school and college and became a pro athlete would have went back to the 70s, and it would have been like Maurice Lucas would have been afraid of him he'd been like this is the strongest guy in the league I so so but these

gaps were I mean we're kind of looking at this I guess more differently than I I just assumed you were going to agree with this I feel like every generation is getting a little smaller in terms of how different or the difference from the, from one end to the next. And I do wonder if there's, if it's ever going to get so small that it will just be the same. Well, so that's going to be, but that's going to be where, where the shooting evolves. Cause I think the biggest difference these last 10 years is how good everyone is at shooting now. And you like house and Marcello and I, we broke down night game two, 1997 bulls bullets. And we were like, what is Juwan Howard? Is he even in the, in the league playing more than 15 minutes a game now?

He's this six, 10 forward who he shoots 18 footers. He doesn't post up. He has no three point range. Not really that good at protecting the rim. Where would you play him? And meanwhile, they had Tracy Murray on their team as a three point shooter. And you watch that game now. And Juwan Howard's like one of the highest paid players in the league in the game. And it's like he would play 15 minutes a game and Tracy Murray would get 20 of his minutes.

Because we know now that it doesn't make sense to have him. play 15 minutes a game and Tracy Murray would get 20 of his minutes because we know now that it doesn't make sense to have him. I mean, but this is why it's just, I don't know. It's kind of a fascinating deal. I mean, you must remember this from when you played basketball as like a junior high kid or a high school kid. If the center on your team was taking a lot of outside shots in practice, it was upsetting. He would be reprimanded. Yeah. Don't do it.

So like for someone like Jawan Howard, how long was it before any coach ever even sort of would have, would have said like, you need to work on a shot that's longer than a free throw. We want you to take that. Like now that happens all the time. And that happened real quick. Like you say to work on a shot That's longer than a free throw We want you to take that Like now that happens all the time And that happened real quick Like you say like Could the jump happen again

Like I guess I didn't think That in my lifetime One of the things in basketball That would so radically change Is how well guys shoot I thought that would kind of be the same Because it seemed Like that did seem from the 70s and 80s and the 90s.

Think about the reason why though. Well, which is? Because if you go back and you watch 50s, 60s, 70s, one of the things that stands out that I really love is how many different styles of shooting there are.

And you have guys who have one handers, guys, Jamal Wilkes shoot from the side, guys shooting on top of their head, guys with a hitch, guys who jump, stop and shoot. And that's been beat now over the last 20 years by just this AAU system where by the time you're 10, you know how to shoot. And if you're talented, you're on some sort of team and they teach you how to shoot a certain way. Everybody shoots the same way now, even with the little exceptions like Durant who releases it, you know, top of his head. And it's one of the reasons he's so unstoppable, but they just, the quirkiness is gone. And anybody that's coming to the league now,

their mechanics are just going to be so much better. They're just going to shoot better. But athletically, other than the equipment and stuff, like I refuse to believe like David Thompson couldn't like come into the league right now and athletically just be as incredible as he was in the mid seventies, you know? Well, it does seem as the, in terms of how high a guy can jump that hasn't changed or body control. You know, I think we had a lot of good athletes back then. I think Georgetown Ewing could come into the league right now and be an absolute problem. You know, I think the difference is the efficiency in the shooting

and guys having a better intellectual understanding of what they're good at and not good at. And that was like, we had on the Flying Coach podcast, Steve Kerr and Pete Carroll had Dave Roberts on this week. We just put it up. And they were talking about analytics and how they filtered in a player development and how you're using analytics now to try to figure out who you should take, not just like looking at their stats, but other stuff like their backgrounds and, and whether like, were they a pitcher in high school, that might mean they're a better shooter and all these variables that, you know, I, I just think things are so much smarter in general. And then you get somebody on your team, you know, you have like Juwan Howard on now in 1997, you're like, Hey, Juwan, those 18 footers suck, man, either post up or shoot threes. Like you're shooting 47% just in general

from, from that spot that you love, you're like 42%, which means there's a 58% chance we're not scoring. You just got to change that or you're not playing. So then he goes that summer and he shoots threes all summer. And it's like a Brooke Lopez situation. Do you ever think Brooke Lopez would shoot threes in your life? Never. And also it's odd how maybe possible it now seems to become a pretty good three-point shooter. It's not impossible. We're talking about Juwan Howard.

Maybe it would have taken one year. Maybe that's all it would have taken. I think anybody who's going to just work at something, this is why I believe in R.J. Barrett. It's why I believe in R.J. Barrett. It's like, oh, R.J. Barrett can't shoot threes. Well, he'll figure it out. The guy works hard.

If you give him three years, I think where I get suspicious is somebody like Lonzo or Marco Faltz where it just seems like their form can't be fixed. Well, and also, I guess the thing with R.J. Barrett, though, it's like. I now assume that that skill he has tried to learn already. That's in high school and where in the past it always seemed possible, like a guy could have just never attempted to,

to sort of, uh, to, to master something. I mean, that's like going back to the Jordan thing. It was like, he did not want to post up for a long time.

Phil Jackson had to convince him that if you do this, you will be, it actually plays to your strength more than facing guys 18 feet away from the basket. And then he became the best postal player of that period. The idea that that had not occurred to him, maybe it wasn't even that didn't occur to him, that he fought against that.

Well, guards didn't do that. And I think that's part of the genius of... Although some guards did. I mean, like Vinnie Johnson used to do that. There's kind of a history of guys who, uh, like, uh, of, of like, of two guards who would basically bring other guards down to the block and score on them. That was a little bit. Ricky Pierce used to do a little bit.

Yeah, there were guys, but I mean, this turned into Jordan's big gimmick. The game that we did for Rosales party is 55 points. He's like 22 for 35 and he only makes one three and it's all jump shots, one-off moves, post-ups, double fakes. And he's, he's just kind of slowly mastered it. And it's actually creepy watching it because that's the version of, of MJ that Kobe really modeled his game after. And a lot of the moves he has like the, the quick and the up fake and then shooting or like the little drop step and then the fall away.

Um, he basically just modeled that stuff and admitted it and is proud of it. And, um, I think that MJ just the genius of putting that together. That's why when I hear like, well, he didn't shoot threes back then.

I was like, well, he would, he would have figured it out in one summer, how to, how to shoot eight threes a game. It would have happened. Here's something else I wanted to ask your opinion on. Yeah. So many times, I don't know how many times you've probably said this or written this in your life. You kind of miss the period where teams and individual players really hate each other, right? Yeah. You love that. I think everyone loves it, right?

Okay, so what if the Bulls would have walked off the floor against the Pistons without shaking hands. Do you think the way that we have decided that almost everything Jordan does is great due to his competitive intensity, that that would not be seen as this terrible misstep. It would be seen as proof that Jordan cared so much he couldn't even shake their hands. Or do you think the same thing would have happened where suddenly in this weird

thin slice situation, it's like they weren't sportsmen enough? I think you would have taken heat for it. It's really hard to overstate how much everybody hated the Pistons. You think about when Parrish punched out Lambert, people were psyched. They were like, that was awesome. I'm so glad he did that.

I went to that game. Even in the stands, people were like, awesome. Someone finally did it. People just hated that team, and they were intentionally dirty in a lot of different ways. So when they walked off the court, it was the exclamation point of that, I think. So it had to be them to take 30 years of heat for that. If when Samson catches the ball and hits that turnaround, eliminates the Lakers in 86, if the Lakers would have walked off the floor, that would not have been a problem

in the same way it was for Detroit. It's tough because that was a series winner. I'm trying to think like if... What's another example of the Lakers losing? I don't know. It was the fact that they were home and they did it deliberately before the game ended. There was no reason to do it other than to be dicks. And they knew it. They knew it as they were doing it. They were just like, fuck these

guys. We're not even giving them the satisfaction of a post-game handshake. And that's, people didn't like that. And they also, let's be honest, they don't like Isaiah. And Isaiah has taken a lot of shit over the years, a lot deservedly, but like the Dream Team stuff, it wasn't just that Jordan didn't like him. He had issues, as they said in the doc, with half the people on the team. At some point, he had crossed- Will Biden came out and said like, hey, I overstated that.

It was not that many guys. Because he goes, many sources have come to me and said like, that's not true. He kind of implied it was like nine of the 12 guys. It wasn't that, but it was Scotty and Michael. He had a whole thing with Bird. I doubt Bird would have ever cared enough to say, don't put him on there.

I feel that Bird has been pretty complimentary to Isaiah over time. But he had the thing with Magic too, and there's been varying reports on how true that was or untrue, but they had a real falling out. And the two guys who ran that team were magic and Michael,

and they weren't going to let him on. I think in the moment, it only matters that Jordan did and magic. I think both of them, I think it only matters that Jordan did. Well, yeah, cause they needed Jordan to play.

There was no way magic. Johnson was not going to play on the dream team. If it had been Magic Johnson, like he was going to do, he wanted it. He needed it because of what had happened, you know, for all these reasons,

for the fact that, you know, I was like, but Jordan didn't need it. And I think that, that, you know, so I think every guy in the team could have hated Isaiah,

except Jordan and Isaiah. Go deeper though. They really needed Michael to be on the team could have hated Isaiah except Jordan and Isaiah. Go deeper though. They really needed Michael to be on the team and they were really genuinely concerned. He wasn't going to want to be on the team was the other piece. Cause they, you know, he was talking about how tired he was and all that stuff. But I, that in the moment, the thing that was indefensible was Stockton making it over Isaiah. Because Isaiah was just a better player and had had way more success. And, you know, it was supposed to be the coronation of, he was the fourth best guy of that whole generation. You know?

And he should have been there. But at the same time, I get it. I think it makes sense that he didn't make it. And by the way, everyone leaves this part out. His fucking coach was the Olympic coach. And his coach was okay with him not being on it either. Like that's how deep the issues were when Chuck Dilley was like, all right, man, forget it.

I won't fight for him. Well, also, you know, he was the best player on the 1980 Olympic team that didn't get to go. Yeah. There was any, like, I feel like it really like, like it was kind of owed to him. Not owed to him is a weird word. It's not owed to anybody, but it is odd.

I think Daly was like, well, what can I do? Well, Daly wanted to put Dumars on because they really needed a defensive guard. As it turns out, they didn't really need anybody more. Well, true. Yeah, yeah, true. Good point. But that was like their one quote unquote weak point was you had Magic and Stockton as your guys.

But MJ and Pippen could have done whatever. But yeah, I think it's unfortunate with Isaiah, but I also feel like, you know, kind of make your own bed sometimes. You know, you might be the only person in the world who I'll say this to and he'll be like, I felt the same way. But, you know, I never like stuff about the 92 Dream Team

because it always bums me out. Because I remember how bad Bird was at that point in his life. Oh, yeah. It was tough. I mean, he couldn't fucking run. He couldn't. Like, do you remember when they put him at the end of the gold medal game? It was brutal. I hate thinking about that.

I mean, I'm glad he was on the team, obviously, but I almost wish that he would have just like almost never participated, would almost be seen like as a coach or something. I think he knew he was going to retire. He knew he wasn't going to play that much. He wanted to be part of it. I think it was important that he was on the team. But yeah, it was tough because he was on the team but yeah

it was tough because you had so many of those guys at the all time peak of their powers you know and he was the opposite he was like barely barely hanging on and then about to get major back surgery so yeah I agree with you it bums me out to see

him and you can see it looks like he's fat but it's because he has this giant back brace on. Yeah, but they show all those classic practices. And it's weird because even in the little time you see out there, it's like, God, he's the 10th best player on the floor. And that just makes me, I can't accept that. I hate that. I don't even like talking about it now.

It should be this great thing, but I, I, I hate thinking about that. I think the most underrated part of the dream team was that magic goes away for a year and comes back and it's like his team and MJ's team. And he's still as good as he was when he left. And then MJ, same thing goes away for 18,

19 months and comes back in that 95 season and scores 31 a game in the playoffs. For people to just disappear at something where it's almost imperceptible, if you lose 3%, that's enough to knock you from I'm the best player in the league or the second best player in the league to I'm now the 20th best player. And for those guys to keep whatever they were able to keep and still be able to hang at the same level, I always thought it was amazing. Like, I'm really interested to see what happens with Durant

when the NBA comes back and when Durant comes back, even if he loses 3%, that's going to be such a huge 3% for him because he was one of the three best players in the league. So does he drop to 20? I don't know. Here's my prediction on that. Yeah.

Why I'm making the, I mean, I'm not a doctor obviously, but I feel Durant is going to be the first guy who comes back from that injury, essentially unchanged. It's very possible. You've seen this,

like, you know, that injury used to be, it's over to, it's like, you can come back. Oh, Dominique came back and became a different guy or whatever. So like, you know, I think that because of his age and because of medicine now and all these things, I think he's going to be the first guy that's going to come back kind of unchanged. Um, are you, uh, before we go, are you getting scared about what the fall would look like with no college football? Because I don't see a roadmap for college football coming back.

And I mean, look, there's so many terrible, awful, weird things about 2020 so far. One of the weirdest things is you spend the sports schedule getting knocked out. Football is still probably the most basic essential American thing we have. High school, college pro, such a big part of August and September. And I don't see how college football comes back. I don't see how campuses potentially open unless they shut this thing down over the next six weeks, which seems unrealistic, the virus? Well, you know, I would like to answer your question by saying yes, but I would be lying. Right now, all I'm thinking about is there was a story in the Times today about the possibility

of this like kind of kid covid have you seen this yeah and besides the risk that would you know suddenly change the idea that this is something you got to worry about your kids schools would not be opening until what fall of 2021 22 um it to me the way like i mean like you talk about like i think i said this in the lesson like you said you're like kind of get bored or whatever it's like i don't feel bored i feel tired all the time. I get up in the morning and try to write as much as I can until 11. Then I'm with my kids for the rest of the day. And that physically and emotionally exhausts me. I don't know if I have it in me to care about sports in that way now. I just, I don't, I mean, I'm not, and I'm not,

there are people who have it so much worse than me. It could get worse. I don't want this to come out. Like I'm saying like, Oh, my life is terrible now. I realize how many people have it worse than me, but this has been a, as an adult, the hardest period of my life. Now I hear, I am sitting in a place talking on doing a podcast. I, I, I, I want to keep saying that, like, I understand that it could be so much worse than I, you know, it's like I'm alive and all these things, but the idea of sports being gone,

it just, it just seems like everything is gone. It just seems like the world is gone. And sports are just one of the many things that I used to look forward to. And now it seems like that part of being a person is gone. It's over. Or postponed for the time being. Yeah, I'm with you.

It is weird. It's weird to think on the one hand, I really want sports to come back because I do feel like it's going to be a welcome distraction to a lot of this stuff. But on the other hand, I think a lot of people are like you where it's like it's back. I don't care. I've kind of I've spent every chromosome in my body. Of course I would watch it. And, you know, it was weird for the first couple of weeks of this. Every so often I would be just waiting around for something and I would open the app on my phone for my fantasy basketball team. What am I doing?

Like, what am I, what am I looking at? Like, like, you know, it's like, like,

why am I, it's just, there's certain things that are just kind of ingrained, but, um, can I ask you a weird question? Because somebody asked me this yesterday and I realized that when I answered it, I was like, that's kind of interesting. That's my answer.

Where do you go to get your information on what's happening day to day with the virus? Because my answer surprised me. Well, okay. I would say that this pandemic, with the possible exception of Arab Spring, has been the first time where I feel like Twitter has been a net positive for society. Wow. Like I would say in every other period, there are good things like about social media and there are bad things. And generally the bad things outweigh the good things. I think Twitter particularly, I think.

I think during this period, it is like, you know, when there really is only one story in the world and it's being experienced by all people in the same present tense moment. It has been a good way to sort of keep because I like this is stuff I really, you know, you talk about about people say well like privilege this really does show privilege to me this is the first time in my life when the news actually affected me ever I've never really had a time when national news impacted me in this way um 9-11 9-11 you were in New York at the time, were you? I was in Ohio Oh, okay, gotcha And that scene, I probably would have said the exact same thing in 2001 in September I would have said, for the first time, national events are really impacting me in a kind of an interpersonal way This is really the first time for real that has happened. Okay. And so, you know, I,

I read the times and I read the Washington post and I know that everything that happens that is significant in the media about this virus, I'm going to hear. Someone's going to send it to me or some other source is going to connect me to it. I mean, I feel like I read the whole internet every day. I muted a lot of people on Twitter because I don't like the hystericalness of certain things. I'm really bare-boned right now. New York Times, Washington Post. The Atlantic, I think, has been surprisingly good to me because I always felt like they were definitely liberal in a lot of ways. And I thought that would maybe color the coverage

that they're doing. And I think they've done really good stuff. I think Derek Thompson's done great stuff. I feel like I learned stuff from some of their pieces and, and, um, that, and I think the daily has done a great job too with, uh, just kind of succinctly explaining, Hey, this is happening. Here's what it means. But for the most part, I'm trying to avoid a lot of the news where I feel like somebody's giving me the news, but there's some agenda behind it. I don't want any political agendas anymore. It's just like, how do we win? I don't care anymore what this says about left, right? The 2020 election, I know all that stuff's coming. I just want to know, how can we win? How are we going to solve this? What are we learning

from other countries? Like, what is the end game for this? That's what I care about. The fact that, that it has taken on this kind of political framework

that has, I mean, it's been obviously detrimental because now, you know, when there was the sense that Trump wanted to open the country up,

you know, he was very straightforward about that. The people who hate Trump almost seem to view this as like, well, we need to stay in and somehow the virus will beat the virus that way. We'll beat it by not going out. The fact of the matter is. We're probably all going to get this at some point. We're doing that to basically keep the hospitals from collapsing. But I don't... People will bring forward ideas

on how to deal with this, and every idea seems bad. Like what are the good ideas? There are no good ideas. Like the best ideas have such a profound downside that like to look at the best idea in that context. It's like, I just, I don't, I don't know. I, you read everything and sometimes it'll be like oh you'll see these little glimmers of hope you'll see certain curves changing or you'll hear about like the oxford thing you know like the people in oxford might have this vaccine um or there's a story about some fucking llama or something this llama these have you find you know and then you just keep reading though and you just realize

seven more things that are worse like i i it's it's i mean i'm thinking about like you know like okay so so oregon opens the football season this year in theory against north dakota state and north dakota state's coming was going to go to eugene maybe they still are i don't know opens the football season this year in theory against North Dakota State and North Dakota State's coming was going to go to Eugene maybe they still are I don't know um I was going to go to this game my family was going to come out here and go to this game or whatever you know um and I was really looking forward to it for a lot of different reasons. And now the whole idea of it, it just seems like this is bad. Like, this is a bad thing. It's like every part of it, you know, the idea of being in a stadium with lots of people is bad.

The idea that a large chunk of society sort of sees sports is so essential that it is worth the gamble. And it makes me feel weird about sports in a way. Like it seems odd that, you know, it just, it proves that so much money is now built into kind of the, the, the,

the comp, like the sports industrial complex or whatever that, uh, it's almost like too meaningful to say, like, we have other things to worry about. Like, we're still worried about this. Like, like, do you think, I mean, I know you've kind of given every side of it. Like, do you think the NFL will have, if it happens,

it will be because of all the money at stake for the owners of the networks and to the players to a lesser degree. And that's what I talked about this on Sunday. My wife asked me like, what's the point of sports coming back other than to save the money from the people? And I was explaining like, ah, you know, there's some other, there's some other ancillary things, Like Rossello talked about the sports media. People get to cover stuff and work and things like that. But ultimately, it's a greed move to try to keep it going because there's too much money at stake.

And that's just the way it is. Let's be upfront about it. That's the number one reason. It's because of the money. That's why it's coming back. I wouldn't even say it's the number one reason. I'd say it the money. That's why it's coming back. I wouldn't even say it's the number one reason. I'd say it's the sole reason, right? What's number two?

The fact that we need this? Money. You could say distraction, national psyche, trying to make it seem like life's more normal. Mike, here's my question though. And I'm admittedly reading way too many stories about this stuff. There was a story in the Hollywood Reporter

about how people think that the virus was at Sundance in late January, beginning of February. I was at Sundance. It's really, really, really clear that some sort of terrible something was there that was probably the virus. I know somebody who was at Sundance who got sicker than they ever were in their life and was sick for like eight days, who doesn't normally get sick, who now is reading the symptoms of what it was and was like, oh shit, I had it back then. Is it possible this has been around it was misguided, is that when this first started, me and a lot of other people were like, I think I might have already had this. I think I might have had these minor symptoms in February or whatever. And, you know, that I'm essentially like asymptomatic outside of these minor things. And that perhaps most people have had it. Maybe they're, you know, maybe it's gone through the country in a way,

but now that it's starting to look less and less possible, whenever I see like kind of widespread tests for antibodies, it's always like 7% or 7.5% of people, you know, like it's, it doesn't seem as widespread as I kind of had initially thought might've been the case. But it was definitely here in a much bigger way

than I think we realized. I think that's clear. At least in the bigger cities, at least in LA, San Francisco, New York City, maybe Chicago. Like three basketball players get it from two teams playing and say, it's like, boy, this must be the most contagious thing in the world. You hear about, oh, I don't

know if this was true or apocryphal, but I saw something about where, oh, there was like a, a plane with, with 70 people on it. And one person, uh, had COVID and then 45 people got it from this or whatever, you know, it's like the most contagious thing in the world. And yet at the same time, how does Trump not have it? How does Pence not have it? How do all these people who are constantly in the world not experiencing it? Obviously, a lot of healthcare workers are getting this, but not all of them. Some of them seem to be all right. Yet it's so dangerous, like I can't take my kids to a public playground, even though it rains here every day, because it could still be existing on the metal.

I mean, I'm doing everything that I'm told to do. I'm not breaking any of these rules. Well, and then there are also. It doesn't make any sense to me. contradictory information about how contagious it sometimes seems and how everyone should have it if that is the case, if it really is that viable. The idea that such a huge percentage of people are asymptomatic, but yet- Can pass it on. Well, and it can also kill people. I mean, I'm friends with these two doctors, and that's one thing we were talking about over text, and they were both like, the fact that so many people have

no symptoms and it kills a lot of people, that's, it's an almost uncontainable problem. Like you, it's like, it's, it's, it's one thing if a disease is real deadly and everyone is aware of that. It's another where it can seem like huge swaths of the populace have no reaction and they can still kill somebody it's just it's so weird i mean well that's why they've been saying it's like it's almost like a virus you would create in a lab to fuck with society the the most possible and it's like okay and it's like oh don't smoke do not smoke and it's like oh okay. And it's like, Oh, don't smoke. Do not smoke. And it's like,

Oh, actually maybe people who smoke are less susceptible to dying. It's like, they just, it goes, I don't, how can I, it seems like 90% of the information ends up being reversed or debunked,

you know, like the, Oh, if you get it once, you're not going to get it again. And now it's like, well, you might get it again.

So I said, well, well, what is it? Is it, it's a pretty big, a pretty big change. That's why I say this seems like the first time where Twitter has sort of been somewhat positive in that the stories are changing all the time anyways. So the idea that like, if we waited and it's red, got red one source at the end of the

day, the next day would be different anyways, Might as well have a change every 10 minutes. But the thing I can get a sense for is kind of the mood of the populace. How bleak is the perception? Are people joking about it? Every every so often you can see a few days will go by and there won't be any sort of like, like, you know, like asteroid type story. And you'll see people kind of making jokes about it again. And then it will shift. And, you know, because it's. But those are only the people you're following, though. I mean, you're probably in a little bit of a Twitter bubble, right? You're not.

Because if you were following a bunch of people down South, they would just be mad that things aren't open yet. Well, I mean, I'm following people in the news, basically. Yeah, yeah. And media people. I don't, yeah.

Or just, well, people I don't know necessarily, but just like, just kind of information-based stuff. You know, because it's like, how long do you think the majority of Americans will be willing to be locked down? I think we're about to hit the point where it's going to shift.

I think we have four weeks left before a lot of people are just going to be like, fuck this. So is it going to end up being that this whole period was essentially a, because you could argue that even if everything that was going to happen anyway still happens, at least we've had these three or four months for hospitals to kind of build up their infrastructure a little better

to get, you know, to at least know that this is going to be, you know, the center of everything they do for a year or two or whatever. We fucked it up though. Everything should have been shut down for four weeks. Everything. Four weeks. Keep it contained. There's no way for it

to spread. The people who have it don't give it to anybody else. And then the stats in South Korea are pretty amazing. They basically got rid of the virus, but they also did a whole bunch of things that I don't think as a country we'd ever be prepared to do. Oh, I know. The tracking and stuff.

I don't. Yeah. I mean, but the bottom line is they got rid of it. And if we had even put half of that stuff in place, we probably would be in a lot better place than we are now. We didn't get rid of it. And now we're opening stuff up again and there's going to be a second wave. We'll be more prepared to handle it from a hospital standpoint, but it's still going to, it's still going to come back

for anybody who's like, nah, I think we've seen the worst of it. Like that's insane. There's no way we've seen the worst of it yet. It's going to come back. And people, people are, I think it's taught us that people have a fundamental need to be around other people, people are, I think it's taught us that people have a fundamental need to be around other people, to be outside, to not be told what to do, which we knew anyway, but it's not sustainable to just ask everybody to do the right thing. There's some people that don't believe, you know, that if you go on the Reddit conspiracy board, it's fine. It's like bonkers over there. Like they really genuinely believe a lot of the people on there that this is all hoax

to reset the economy and that this isn't as bad and the hospitals aren't in nearly as bad shape as they were. Like there are people out there that believe that. So I don't know.

I just think we're having protests now. Have you seen like all this like the plandemic stuff? Yeah, yeah. Well, but this shit happened after 9-11. People think 9-11 was orchestrated. What do you think is going to be

the ultimate outcome of this? What do you think is going to happen? I think we're going to have... I hope I'm wrong, but I think we'll end up having a second wave and it's going to really scare people and we're going to be back to square one. And that's how this put square one being like where we were in the second week of March.

We'll be more prepared for it than we were in the second week of March where we weren't prepared at all. But I think if there's a second wave, it's we're back to square one. I think the good news is from a New York City subway standpoint and from 18,000 people at the Staples Center, things like that where it could just so easily get way worse, that stuff's not going to happen. But there's going to be a second wave because people are still dying from this thing every day. It's not like it's calmed down.

The numbers in New York have gone down. The numbers around the country have gone up. Do you, uh, do you ever leave your house? Yeah. For what? Um, to walk, to, to get exercise. My wife is, you know, doing grocery shopping every once in a while, things like that. We had, my mom came over on Saturday. She'd been kind of isolated for six, seven weeks. And it was like, well, this just can't go on. There's, you know, I think you're seeing people take little baby steps toward at least being around people that they can trust. Other people I think are just out and about. Well, it is, it's a confusing thing because it's like so okay for example like we don't if you have little kids you don't want to see their grandparents right because they could be

vectors of this yeah but how long do you wait like at what point is it clear that the kids don't have it grandparents don't have it when we have tests. I mean, like if you're keeping your entire family isolated, how, at what point can you be comfortable knowing that it's like, well, either we all had it and it went through us or we don't have it. It's like, I don't, because there's going to be dates when like the country opens up and people like, what will be the difference between two weeks ago or two days ago, as opposed to the day when you finally make this decision? I don't know. Well, then the most underreported thing has just been if you're over 70, just the fear you're in every day. That thing's coming for you if you get it and how you avoid that. You're just,

the virus was put on earth to take you out if you get it, if you're 70 and up. And it's a real interesting deal. Like, you know, my mom, she's like 85, right? You know,

she's, she's almost sometimes when I talk to her, she's sort of like, I'm already 85. Like, I don't know how much long, like, like, you know, like how, how long are you, is your expectation of life?

So it's like, do you want to spend two of the last years on earth in your house? But you have to, you can't be like, you can't be like, I don't, it's just, it's, it's, you know, it, I mean, I guess the fundamental question, you know, to keep talking about opening up, you know, I mean, I guess the fundamental question, you know, keep talking about opening up the country for the economy. It's always about the economy. But at some point, is there going to be a question over what is the value of life if your life is essentially a kind of self-enforced house arrest? I don't know. I mean, is that, is that, are people, is there going to be people who are be like, well.

I feel like my mom, my mom was in that spot when, when she came over for my daughter's birthday on Saturday and she was really like, it took like two hours to jog her out. She's definitely depressed. She's like, I live by myself. I don't get to see my family. I don't get to go to, you know, the four things that she had that she loved. All of them are out the window. Like going to the gym, taking French class, going to these wine tasting things she went to. It's like, those are all gone.

So she's by herself in her place every day, watching Netflix and British shows and just going bonkers. You can do that for six, seven weeks. But I think once, you know, like Castaway, which we just did on the rewatchable. So it's fresh in my mind. He starts talking to the volleyball about what a year and a half in. And it's like, well, that seems realistic. He's probably going a little stir crazy. Like there's a lot of people out there who are probably in the, it's conceivable. I might start talking to a volleyball stage of this a couple months away. No, it's, I don't even think it's the, the lack of human contact as much as it's like the complete removal of agency. Like I have no problem staying, you know, I don't leave my house a lot

as it is, but it's weird that it is not a choice I am making. It's the odd thing. You know, the, um, this idea that like, uh, uh, this is just how, how the world is now. I know else is crazy. So in about 10 years or 12 years, you know what's going to be the most popular essay to write in the Atlantic or Slate or any of these places or the New York Times, and they still exist? People who have kids who are 19, 20, 21, kind of moving on to their old life, you know, their own sort of life, and people saying, I miss that period of the pandemic when I was with my kids every day and they were still at age when they wanted to cuddle up and snuggle with me. And I know, you know, what's weird. Part of the reason I know this is the case is I want to be probably one of these fucking people. I know it because like, I am real close to my kids now. Like I always was close to my kids now. I always was close to my kids, but this is different.

This is like our lives are intertwined. And in 12 years, when my son moves out and only calls me when he's calling me back because I called him or whatever, I'm going to remember this period. And I'm going to remember how intense it was emotionally to be close to my family, even though now in the present tense, I just got done saying how this is the worst period of my adult life. This is why memory is totally fucking worthless. It's like it's almost idiotic to value your memories because they're all false. They're just the injection of emotion into these kind of visual audio remnants of in your mind. And then you kind of decide like, Oh, I guess that was great. I guess that was wonderful. Or I guess that was awful. Or it's like, it's never true. You know, it's never true. Well, what you just laid out was the nuclear family is definitely closer. I think there's no question.

But then it's come at the expense of all the other relationships you have. You know, and then if you're by yourself without a family, that's even worse. Like I really, you know, if you're stuck in your apartment or your house or your condo or with a roommate all day and that's it and you don't have you know what we have like i i'm with you i've spent more time with my daughter the last three months i was really close with my daughter i actually feel like we're probably closer now um and i'm sure there will be a small part where you look back and you go well why didn't we always spend that much time together like isn't that the whole point of having a family and, and you end up not doing it.

My kids have never been happier. Like they love this. Yeah. Like my daughter is in a good mood every day. Like she, like, you know, that was not the case when she had, like she, you know, when she had to go to preschool, she hated it hated or whatever she like always wanted me to pick her up earlier or whatever so they're real happy i think their memory of this will be like that was kind of a good time you know and and for them it will actually be accurate i think when a young person remembers their life there they have a it's like it's like more accurate depiction but when you're adult, you kind of include all these other sort of ideas about what happiness is supposed to be like. And like, what is supposed, you know, you know, all, all of these things, you know, it's like, you know,

I always say like, no one ever laid on their deathbed and it was like, Oh, I wish I had worked more. And it was like, well, what are you supposed to think about on your deathbed? Actually, I'm going to think that I say kidding on 10 more. And I was like, well, what are you supposed to think about on your deathbed, actually? I'm going to think that. I'm kidding. I got 10% harder. What you described, though, made me think of when I was a kid in Boston, we had the blizzard.

And it came out of nowhere. And it was just three weeks where we got four feet of snow and nobody was prepared for it. It completely derailed everything. And when I look back, that was like one of the fondest memories of my entire childhood. Didn't have to go to school, made weird snow shit every day

and my parents were home. And yeah, I was like, this is great. What a great three weeks that was when we couldn't go anywhere. So I do think if you're a kid, you probably, I think for a lot of other people, they'll feel the opposite though.

We should wrap it up. Hang in there. This was fun. It was good talking to you as always. I'm glad you're in decent spirits. And after the MJ doc, we'll have to do one more of these. Sure. All right. Good seeing you. All right. Bye-bye. All right. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Thanks to Fando. Thanks to Chuck Klosterman. And we will be back on Sunday night on the BS Podcast with Rosillo coming off of Episode 7 and 8 of The Last Dance

and doing another episode of MJ's Rewatchables, which if you listen to Rosillo's pod, we did Wizards Bulls, Game 2, 1997. You can find that one on Rossellos Pod right now. And we will see you on Sunday night. Enjoy the weekend. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. I don't have feelings within On the wayside I'm a bruised soul

I never was I don't have feelings within